Previously on Buffy Season Noir:

"Hey," she called, bending over. "You dropped your notebook."

The grey man turned and stared at her outstretched hand with disbelief. Impatiently she stood and held out the little book until he took it from her. "Thank you," he murmured, backing away a step, then another, before turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Buffy stared after him, frowning, then shrugged off her confusion.

"A slayer on the loose has not been factored into our plans." .... Nilec narrowed his gaze and cast the spotlight back on the other man. "You have a contingency plan for finding her, of course."

"Never fear, sir." Naziren's darkly hooded eyes held his. "I know just where to start."

Stacks of crates and cartons crowded the interior, a storage maze illuminated by safety lights. Buffy knocked Spike's cap off, baring his hair, which absorbed the glow and cast it back brilliantly.... Palms sliding around his chest to meet behind him, she kissed him again and he kissed her back in that longing way of his, a licking fire inside her mouth.

Eyes fixed unwaveringly, almost blankly on this interesting display, Xander tucked the gun back into his belt and withdrew a large hunting knife. Its blade gleamed in the swinging overhead light. One edge of his lips quirked up.

"Now," he said gently. "Tell me if this hurts."

Clude didn't need to follow Spike. He knew where the vampire lived; in tony officer's quarters reserved for the Reich's best and brightest. But the slayer--it would be prudent to follow her, see what she called home these days.

Anya held the strip in one hand and the paper instructions in the other. .... "Okay," she said at last, as it sunk in. And then, with giddiness, she tested out the words in her head: "Mom. Mama. Mother. Moeder. Mommy dearest."

The Grauth's bullets hit Kerry first as she spun to face the arriving guards, knocking redly against her chest and sending her to her knees, and with that same slow force struck Jason, who was leaping to catch her. .... Bullets smacked into their flesh and the smell of blood was raw and rising.

"...I'm a demon, Xander!" The words burst out like an unkept secret. "Even when I'm not. I have a thousand years inside me and they haven't gone away." .... "They're probably thinking, 'That Anyanka, she must be very happy now that the Reign of Eternal Night has fallen.'"

As the light winked out from where Buffy lay, Willow shifted, bringing her chin to rest on the hard curve of Tara's sleeping head. She wanted to sleep too, but worries pressed close, filling her with anxious shadows. She watched her own candle flame flicker and lifted a finger toward it with a soft command: "Exstingue." But the candle kept burning, and she had no choice but to reach over and kill its light with her own hand.

She glided through the crowd under an expensively chandeliered glow, using her wide skirts to brush aside whoever stepped in her way. Ahead of her she spotted her prize; he'd been pointed out to her earlier and she recognized now the distinctive shape of the back of his head, the hair whose ridiculous color matched the brilliance of the lamps. In dandified, formal attire tailored for his short stature, he stood by the outstretched branches of a fir tree that had been uprooted from nature and strung with fairy lights. His head was bowed attentively as he listened to someone, an affectation of politeness she despised in her kind, even when she politically adopted it herself.

When she reached him, she touched his sleeve and asked, "May I have this dance?"

Her voice made the vampire turn slowly on his well-shod heel, a swivel of black suggesting a corkscrew as his head followed the movement of his shoulder, gaze drifting down to note the white-gloved hand she'd laid across his arm, then lifting to level clear blue eyes on her. For one second, she could see him deliberating--on the question of her identity, on her possible status, on the propriety of his reply--and then he rudely said, "No." And turned away again.

Perhaps she shouldn't have asked him in game face. With a mild snarl of irritation and a sense of social embarrassment, she snapped open her fan, hid her fangs, and slunk off to regroup.

"Really, Aurelius. What a toffee-nosed little cad you are. You shame even the dogs." Sordicov peered at Spike through his monocle. "If you don't dance with some of them, you'll get yourself a reputation in the ladies' lounge."

Spike drew a toothpicked olive out of a martini glass of blood and said, "That would be tragic."

"Many a hero has walked safely off the battlefield, only to be gutted in the powder room. When you're my age, you'll know better."

"And then forget it a hundred years later," Spike agreed absently, spotting Tara across the floor as she edged sideways through the crowd, hunch-shouldered and awkward, offering a tray of hor d'ouevres to the party-goers. He caught her eye then let his glance slide away so as not to attract notice.

"Oh Sytos, here comes the rank and file." Sordicov's grumble casually established his own snobbery and drew Spike's attention to the entrance, where a troop of red-jacketed demons were just arriving, creating a bottleneck in the arched doorway. They looked stiff and nervous even en masse, and had an unmistakably bureaucratic air to them. "Clerks and bootblacks," Sordicov remarked in dismissal.

"Bootblacks?" The Grauth were a retro race, as mired in anachronism as a disco dance class, but literalism still seemed unlikely.

"Secretaries, aides, that sort. Don't know why Naziren put them on the guest list. Cramped enough already, even in a house this size."  He inclined his head toward the balconies edging the vast ballroom, where rows of ladies and officers leaned in pairs between the paneled columns like an array of brightly colored dolls, like--Spike thought--a collection of Dru's little friends.

"Posh digs, though," Spike observed. "Guess Naziren must have some pull to rate a place like this. To the manner born, eh?"

Sordicov gave him a strange, blank look. "Well, precisely so," he said, as if there were some blindingly obvious truth in what Spike had said.

Before Spike could follow up on that there was a rustle of skirts and bodies, and from a part in the crowd a figure rose, stepping onto the stage and gesturing a halt to the orchestra's music. As it was silenced, their host gazed out over his audience and smiled, the darkness of his eyes overshadowing the smile without lessening its twist of charm. And looking at him, it struck Spike for the first time that Naziren had hair. He squinted sideways at Sordicov for comparison, noting the monocled demon's bald pate, then back at Naziren. No doubt about it. Lush head of hair too, like some wild maestro after a round of Wagner. All the other Grauth had the cueball look down, or else a short fuzzy pelt more like mold on an orange than a proper do, while the females wore top-heavy wigs with elaborate ribbons and pearls.

He decided this was something to think more about, and tuned into the demon's words. "Thank you all for coming tonight," Naziren was saying. "As we welcome in the new year together, let us also celebrate the destiny that has brought us here and remember those who have fought and died for it." He bowed his head briefly, and the crowd followed suit with respectful quiet. Spike, surveying the sea of wigs and horns, barely held in a snort.

Naziren raised his head again, a sardonic line to his jaw and glint to his eye, as if he'd heard what hadn't been uttered. Smooth bastard. "I hope that you will all enjoy tonight's festivities. We have very special treats in store, and when your exertions on the dance floor leave your blood warm," a ripple of laughter from his audience, "you can cool down in the ice garden, crafted by our very own Director of Winter." He nodded at an official fellow in the crowd with a white sash, who bowed at the sudden spotlight of everyone's applause.

"And now," said Naziren, commanding a hush again, "for your enjoyment, native dancers will perform an interpretation of The Fall of Sytos."

Native dancers? Spike wondered, watching with everyone else as a troupe of adolescent human ballerinas took the stage and began flitting around, waving scarves and flexing en pointe in some wispy rendition of Grauth mythology.

"Lovely, lovely," sighed Sordicov. Spike gave him a black-browed, disgusted look that went unnoticed.
 
"Isn't it?" crooned the vampire woman who'd accosted him earlier, slinking up alongside Spike and turning a pristinely fangy smile on him. "A shame we can't eat them." His eyes narrowed as she cocked her head. "Of course, dancing is a competitive art. Not everyone makes the...cut." She clinked her glass of blood gently against his own, as he froze and stared down at his martini dei sangui.

Under the stage lights the dancers continued to perform with a stiff perfection; as if their lives depended on it.

It was a spacious kitchen, made cramped by rows of prep tables and an army of busy bodies whose job it was to feed the party guests. Demon matrons bustled through the counters, lending distracted aid to each area of food preparation.

At the long central table a row of trays held appetizers in various states of assembly: concentric rings of crackers covered in mysterious substances, ranked celery stalks embedded with green cheese, bowls of sugared nuts and candies, and--

"Oh my god," Buffy said in a strangled, high-pitched voice.

Tara glanced up anxiously from the tray she was covering in folded meat. "What?"

Buffy gestured at her own serving platter, on which lay rows of neatly overlapping hors d'ouevres, which appeared to be the bodies of roasted and skinless... "Mice," Buffy hissed.

"Oh dear," Tara said faintly.

"You can still see their tails." Buffy eyed the display with a kind of mournful horror. "I can't serve this."

After looking surreptitiously around, Tara edged closer to offer moral support. "Maybe they're demon mice." A disbelieving stare from Buffy prompted a small, helpless shrug. "At least--they probably weren't anyone's pets."

"I hate this job," Buffy muttered under her breath, grimacing as she began to poke toothpicks in the mice. "Why did we get stuck with the maid uniforms and the mouse serving?"

Tara raised her brows before saying wisely, "I think the coin flip had something to do with it. Though I did like your idea about arm wrestling," she hastened to add.

"I said I'd take a three-shot tequila handicap, didn't I? And no one knows what the slayer looks like, really--all humans look alike to them. Hmph. There should really be more slayer perks. Like...a free pass to clubs, and discounts on nail polish, and no kitchen duty."

"Life is tough," Tara sympathized. "But hey. At least we aren't lying deep-fried on a bed of radicchio."

Holding up a leaf, Buffy frowned. "Wait, is that what radicchio looks like? What have I been eating all these years?"

Smiling, Tara didn't reply, but a moment later her smile dwindled and, with other thoughts on her mind, she said, "I hope the kids are okay. I hate leaving them alone--even if Dawn is there."

Because she's a kid herself, thought Buffy. "I know. But they'll manage. They have to." A glance around confirmed that no one in the kitchen was lurking nearby or paying their quiet human chatter any mind. "They've seen their friends die, they've spent weeks training...it wasn't the way I wanted things to go, but a lot of decisions are being taken out of our hands." She paused, then lifted a mouse on a stick and stared at it sadly. "I would have taken a four-shot handicap, you know."

Buffy shouldered through the swinging door carrying her tray in both hands, afraid she'd drop it and send fried mice sliding across the parquet into the milling shoes of demons.

When she was nine, she'd been afraid of bees. Nine had been a good age.

In the steamy kitchen she'd begun to sweat and now her outfit was scratching her in a number of unseemly places that she couldn't attack in public. The French maid's uniform, with its black skirt and white apron, made her feel faintly ridiculous, as if she'd been exposed in the middle of some kinky sex act. Most of the party-goers paid no attention to her even as they plucked crisp mice off the tray, but occasional male gazes tracked her progress, and one sneaky fanny pat caused her to jump and nearly stumble into a demon officer.

He turned at her appearance and flicked dark eyes down her body without much apparent interest. Buffy tried not to show any familiarity. The only time she'd seen General Nilec before now had been on stage during the victory speeches, when she'd shot at him and his compatriots. Not that he'd know that, but she couldn't help but feel that her identity and all her secrets were written on her face. She smiled at him.

"Mouse?" she offered, holding out the tray.

"General," someone said, "you know Captain Aurelius."

Buffy tensed and General Nilec turned his head, shoulder shifting to reveal Spike being ushered into his presence by another officer. His uniform was as black as her own dress, and as much a costume, but less frivolous. The tunic collar encircled his neck, lending a stiff, unSpike-like formality to his posture, above which the jut of his chin shelved an expressionless face that could have been made of marble. His gaze passed coldly over Buffy without any sign of recognition and moved on as if she were beneath his notice.

For one second she was unreasonably hurt, then rationality regained the upper hand. She left them to their socializing and passed through the crowd, distributing the remainder of her mice. By the time she reached the far doors, her tray was empty. She laid it on a buffet and slipped out into the hall, where she met up with Xander. His waiterly tux was more dignified than her own outfit, but she quashed any resentment and drew him into an alcove under a nearby set of stairs.

"Harris. Xander Harris," he clipped out before she could say anything. After adjusting his cuffs with double-oh panache, he looked furtively around, then lifted his wrist to his mouth and pretended to speak into a hidden transmitter. "The cow is in the pasture. Repeat, the cow is in the pasture."

That might have been offensive, if she'd been inclined to take it personally. "Have you found anything?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"Oh, come on," he said. "Get in the spirit, Buff." There were layers of darkness in his eyes that time on the Hellmouth had added, but recent months had worked even more visible changes in him, chiseling at his face until the years fell away, leaving hollows under his cheeks and edges to his jaw that hadn't been there since high school. An old, flippant humor laced his voice now, carrying her back. "You know, the usual perks of espionage may be lacking--wine, women, invisible cars--but we do have code words."

"Moo," she said blandly.

"Good enough." They fell silent and waited as a demon servant passed through the hall, trundling a cart of pastries; he paid them no attention, but Xander drew a little closer. "The traffic's kind of heavy around here, so I started at the top and worked my way down. Not much interesting on the third and fourth floors, unless you count a drawerful of ladies' lingerie, a book of naughty etchings, and a pair of handcuffs."
 
She chewed her lip. "Not exactly what we were looking for."

"Speak for yourself."

"I'm going to poke around down here," she said. "You head back up to the second floor. There might be offices up there, or--"

"What's going on here?"

Buffy and Xander both turned in startlement at the appearance of the head butler and his assistant. "Nothing," Buffy said quickly. "We were just, ah--" Plotting, her mind supplied. Spying, thieving, hiding, code words, invisible cars, cows. God, she hated extemporaneous lying and she'd always sucked at it, which explained why she'd been more or less permanently grounded from grade school to graduation. "We were just--"

"Canoodling," said Xander. He draped an arm around her, where it lay like a side of friendly beef. "We just can't keep our hands off each other. It's like the honeymoon never ended." He smiled fatuously at the demons and squeezed Buffy's shoulder with a rather forceful show of enthusiasm.

"Oh yes," Buffy piped up, after a moment's blink of confusion. "My man." She slid an arm around his waist and let him pull her close. "He's so...super. With the bulgy man-muscles and, mmmm, those abs." She patted his stomach.

"Get back to work," the butler said in disgust. "And if I catch you at it again, you'll both be out on the street."

They slunk off in opposite directions under his watchful eyes, leaving the demons alone by the stairs. "This is why I advise against slave labor and temp agencies," the head butler said to his assistant. "You get what you pay for."

After the butlers had moved on, Buffy doubled back and sidled down the hall toward the rear of the house. At a junction of identical-looking hallways lined with fluted lamps and ancestral portraits, she turned in the direction that led her even further from the music and laughter spilling out of the overstuffed ballroom. Here it was quieter, quiet enough that her own footsteps on the plush carpet spooked her once or twice, but when she turned, no one was following her. She tried the knobs on doors until she found one that was unlocked, and slipped in.

The room was a study, lit only by a small desk lamp with a red shade, its walls lined with densely packed bookshelves, broken here and there by oil paintings and exotic wooden masks. The drapes on the windows were open, showing a swirl of snow outside, though it could have just been a layer of powder disturbed by the wind.

Buffy inspected the bookshelves and knick-knacks as she passed, giving her surroundings the cursory but practiced eye of a slayer who'd had one too many monsters get the jump on her. The desk was big and glossy and heavy-looking, covered with the usual stuff you see on desks: neat stacks of paper, a few books, a fountain pen. A letter knife with a bone handle. A wooden box that revealed cigarettes when she opened it. A rock, worn smooth by someone's hand, serving as a paperweight. The personal litter reminded her strangely of Giles--didn't he have that exact same memo pad?--and gave her a momentary pang.

There was no computer and that was a relief. These demons did things the old-fashioned way, and so would Buffy. She sat down and flipped open a leather-bound file folder. The contents were in a strange language, what must have been Grauth but was no better than Greek to her. She rolled her eyes in irritation and continued searching, opening drawers and sifting through their contents.

When she heard the sound, she at first thought it was another false alarm, that her own movements had merely knocked something aside within the desk. Then it came again, this time nearer, a click of tumblers. She looked up to see the door handle turning, and felt a twist of shock that bumped her heart rate up. It would be stupid to get caught like this, like the amateur sleuth in some potboiler. It occurred to her for a split second that she might be able to go out the window and make her way around the house back to kitchen. But there wasn't time for that, so she did the embarrassingly obvious, and hid beneath the desk.

In the powder room, Anya turned sideways and examined the profile of her gown, running her hands down her belly, smoothing the line of the material. Nothing was showing yet, and she sighed in resignation, then returned to her grooming, leaning toward the mirror to apply a fresh coat of lipstick. White light panels surrounded the glass and raised a glow in the marble counter beneath it. Behind her the room stretched, a box of shadowy red walls captured by the mirror as if by a camera. You could tell the expense of things by their simplicity. Darkened except for the mirror, the room had a plush and muted emptiness, broken only by a few ottomans upholstered in wine-colored velvet. Even the toilets were hidden away behind high stalls of polished wood, as private as closets and as easily overlooked.

Anya had to admit she liked Grauth style. The world would be a better place if all toilets were so discreet.

As she was gently widening her eye-liner with a pencil, Willow appeared next to her. Anya cut her gaze over and inspected Willow's dress for comparison purposes. Its material gleamed with the richness of spun gold, which of course could not really be spun, except by that stupid little dwarf, Rumplestiltskin, for all the good it had done him. With critical satisfaction, Anya decided that the dress made Willow appear sallow. Also, her hair was too red.

"Hey," said Willow rather glumly, staring at herself in the mirror with a frown.

"Hey," Anya replied.

"Do you have any aspirin?"

Anya rooted through her handbag, discarding its contents on the counter one by one: compact, gloves, comb, Erymanthian hex powder--you never knew when that would come in handy--handkerchief, Kit-Kat bars. "No. No aspirin. Sorry."

"'S okay. I'll live." The gloomy note in Willow's voice suggested otherwise.

"You look awful," Anya said frankly. Willow glanced at her. "Not your dress or your hair," Anya clarified. "You need some more powder to cover those dark circles under your eyes. Here." She handed over her compact, an admirable little clamshell of ebony and silver she'd picked up recently in the new downtown ladies' department store. Most of the make-up was designed for a greyer complexion, but she'd managed to find this.

Obediently, Willow began dusting it on. "I haven't been sleeping too well. Not since our trip to the mines, and the you-know-what."

Anya put on the expected show of sympathy. "Yes. I imagine it's unpleasant, having your magical energies sucked away, leaving you a depleted husk incapable of the smallest spell or glamour, vulnerable to demons and dependent on humans for your well-being." Sarcasm had gradually wedged its way into her voice like a thin blade. "Not that I'd know anything about that."

"I forgot you've been there." Willow's reflection smiled at her in the mirror with a wan kindness, and Anya immediately regretted her own lack of same. "I'm not sure I'm dealing as well as you did. And you had, what, a thousand years in? I've only had magic, real magic, for a few years, but living without it is like living without a leg or an arm, or without any limbs at all."

"So you're just, like, a torso with a head. Huh. I cursed men with that fate once or twice...okay, two hundred and eleven times. Understandably, a popular choice for a disempowered social group." Anya paused. "You know, even if we find the plans for this magic-sucking thing, it might not be reversible."
 
"I know. But at least looking for it makes me feel less useless. I mean, it was bad enough when I thought it was just some weird cave-rock anti-mojo. But now they've got unmagicking dynamos all over town, and I can't even snuff a candle."

"That's a shame," Anya said, more or less sincerely, and then broke off as someone entered the powder room to join them. "Hello, Euphemia!" she said with robust welcome. "What a darling outfit!"

The demon matron preened, looking at herself in the mirror and touching her wig with self-conscious satisfaction. "Anya. I'm glad to see you could make it, dear. You wouldn't want to miss the social event of the season." They air-kissed, and then Euphemia turned slightly, her gaze descending over Willow like a cool bank of clouds obscuring the sun. "Why don't you introduce me to your...friend." Unsaid went the word 'human', but her tone carried its faint whiff of suspicion. Grauth women had a more rigid social rule book than Grauth men, and some were inclined to snub their human counterparts--at least those who didn't come with a pedigree and an approved introduction.

"This is Willow. Willow, Euphemia. Euphemia's in my bridge club." Willow smiled a hello in her awkward way, and Anya went on, "Willow's a courtesan, but all her old clients have been killed or imprisoned. She's hoping to find herself a man. Preferably rich and not too terribly ugly."

Euphemia took an atomizer from her purse and perfumed herself with professional care. "You should reconsider your standards and cultivate an ugly man, dear. They are usually more grateful, and inclined to bestow extravagant gifts."

"I'll keep that in mind," Willow said, her face giving an amiable twitch that Anya didn't buy for a second. "Thanks."

"My first husband was appallingly ugly," Euphemia went on, rouging her cheeks now. "Bloated as a tick, with a face like a pudding gone bad. I couldn't look at him without wanting to put him out of his misery. Eventually I did, and became a very rich woman." She snapped her compact shut. "Kindest man who ever lived, though. Come," she took Willow's arm, "I'll introduce you around and we'll see if there isn't a fat fish to be hooked tonight."

Willow threw a desperate look over her shoulder as Euphemia swept her out.

"Good luck!" Anya called, waving her good-bye. "Have fun fishing!"

There was a lot of huddle room under the desk, a lot more than necessary, unless you were a man with very long legs. Or maybe unusually large knees, like, basketball sized. Whatever the case, Buffy was grateful, but she still nearly bumped her head when she heard a familiar voice.

"You look lovely tonight," Spike said from somewhere across the room. It was his silky, private, only-for-her voice. At least she'd thought it was only for her. Discovering otherwise filled her with a sense of outrage. "That's quite a dress," he went on, his comment followed by a silence in which she imagined his fingers slipping across someone else's velvet.

"Thank you," said a strange woman's voice, colored with a faint accent. "It was given to me for the evening. They like me to look expensive."

"I'd call it a rousing success then." Dryness flattened Spike's words.

Buffy frowned at the repartee. He sounded almost disapproving, and she sounded mocking. The tones no longer matched what Buffy thought of as normal flirting, unless she was dangerously out of fashion. Now that was a scary thought.

"There was a man asking about you the other day." The woman must have shifted or sat down; Buffy heard her dress rustle.

"Who?"

"A Grauth. Clude."
 
"Don't know him."

"He wanted to know what your tastes were."

"Oh?" A rude smile curled around the word, as clearly as if Buffy could see it. "What'd you tell him, love?"

"I told him you were into leather and toys, and that you liked to bite."

"Said that, did you?" A shadow of something passed through the vampire's voice.

"Was that wrong?"

"Not your fault, pet. Just that I'm not really the biting type these days."

There was another rustle of fabric--shifting, standing?--and then the woman said sultrily, "Not at all?"

Now that was flirting. Anger and itching curiosity finally propelled Buffy out from under the desk and to her feet. Across the room stood a human woman in a red dress that clung to every curve, outlining her body like a long exclamation point against Spike's dark uniform. Her hair partially obscured her features until she turned her head, revealing a face too perfect for Buffy's liking. Brown eyes, elaborately framed by shadow, widened in surprise when she caught sight of Buffy.

Spike wore the appalled look of a guilty man, or an innocent man who knows he will look guilty under the circumstances. He took a quick step back from his companion. "Slay--er, you there." He adopted a supercilious tone, superior to servant. "What are you doing sneaking about here, missy? Shouldn't you be passing out rodents or champagne or somethin'? Get back to work."
 
She came out from around the desk. "Give it up, Spike." Folding her arms, she looked her competition up and down. "Flashy, but I guess some guys like that. And I'd have to agree, expensive looking."

"Buffy." There was sharpness and warning in that one word. "This is Rosa. She's a friend."

"I can see that."

Irritation flashed across Spike's face, eradicating all traces of guilt. "She works for me," he said carefully, voice lowered to significance. He was trying to communicate something to her with his eyes, but she couldn't tell what and she was still angry, even if was more pose than poison.

"Gee, I didn't know you had employees. Works for you as what, exactly? An au pair?"

"She gets me information."

Rosa was looking back and forth between them with puzzled curiosity. "You have a girlfriend," she said. It wasn't quite a question. "You never mentioned her."

"Funny," Buffy said. "He didn't mention you either."

Spike sighed and moved with impatient self-restraint. "Yeah, all right. This is a very cozy little scene, but let's move on, shall we, before the guards come knocking us up?"

As the words left his mouth, the study door opened and a Grauth guard nosed in, pausing in startlement when he spotted them. "Sir," he said, straightening and saluting. It would have been a smart gesture if he hadn't been holding a semi-automatic, which smacked into a lamp and sent it broken and extinguished to the floor.

"Er, yes, Corporal--Sergeant--whatever." Spike gave a negligent salute in return. "Carry on."

The dismissal almost worked. The soldier righted the lamp and shouldered his gun, and looked prepared to back out and apologize for his clumsy intrusion, but then he hesitated. "Sir, this is Colonel Naziren's study."

"I am aware of that, soldier." The cloak of authority Spike's rank lent was a bit ragged at the moment, and he didn't sound particularly intimidating to Buffy's ears; nor to the guard, it seemed, who was giving them a dubious look.

The guard visibly nerved himself. "With respect...what are you doing here, sir?"

Spike drew himself up sharply. "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm..." He paused, eyes flickering in an internal, brain-searching way as he dredged up words. "...having a bloody assignation, of course."

Buffy and Rosa exchanged a glance and flanked him with immediate support, winding their arms around him. "Yes," said Rosa in her delicate voice. "We were about to have sex." She hesitated. "On the carpet."

Ewww, thought Buffy. The guard just looked amazed. A beat passed and Buffy felt she should add something. "It's a really nice carpet," she perked, smiling at the guard with Buffy-Bot intensity. "Plus, who can ever get enough of these big, manly vampires?" She dug her fingers into Spike's ribs and twisted them with satisfying viciousness. "And their tight abs."

"Ow!" said Spike, recoiling.

"He likes it rough," Rosa confided, turning her own, more sultry smile on the guard, who stood mesmerized in the doorway.

"Yeah," Spike rallied, chin lifting with a jaunty flair. "I was fancying a bit of rough and a couple of tumbles. And now you've gone and ruined the moment, mate."

"Sir, I'm--I'm sorry, sir." The guard bowed himself out with enormous respect, closing the door behind him.
 
When he'd gone, Buffy pulled away from Spike and smacked him in the chest. "What the hell was that for?" he asked, putting on that wounded, baffled face she'd only seen, like, a thousand times. Been there, slapped that.

"What?" she snarked. "You like it rough. With the leather and the biting. And the toys." Behind Spike's back, Rosa tipped up the sides of her lips in a complicit smile.

"Look, it's not what you think."

"Save it." She didn't think it was anything, to be honest--Rosa was too cooperative for a real rival, and Buffy had begun to piece things together--but it seemed a betrayal of her gender not to put him through the usual hoops. "What are you two doing in here?"

"Just ducked in for a chat." He frowned. "You turn up anything yet?"

"No. I looked through his desk, but I didn't see anything that looks like plans for a Weimaraner."

"Wynariver," Spike corrected with a look that asked if she was putting him on.

"Whatever. I just call it magic-sucking-thingy for short."

Spike ignored this. "Keep looking," he said curtly, as if he were actually the boss of her, Big Vamp on Campus now in his uniform with the shiny trim, Mister Captain Pointy-Teeth. She gave him the Arched Brows of Excuse Me in response, but he'd turned to Rosa. "You should get back to the party," he said, taking her elbow and guiding her toward the door.

"No, wait--" Rosa unclasped herself before he could dispose of her, and turned wide, urgent eyes on him. "I wanted to tell you. That man who was asking all the questions about you--he's here tonight. He's at the party."

Xander came down the stairs empty-handed, without a plan. Namely the plan to a wynariver, which to him sounded like something you'd hang next to your socket wrenches and take down when you wanted to drill a hole in someone's head, and why did his brain go to these places anyway? Because it had a ticket to ride, that's why. It's a good thing he kept the thing attached to his spinal column, because if he stopped watching it even for a minute, he just knew it'd bust loose and hotfoot it off to Vegas.

As he passed down the hall, idly wondering what a real waiter would be doing about now, a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him into a closet full of furs and evening cloaks. He went stumbling, reflexes primed to lash out, before he realized it was just Willow. "Hey," he said, "are you--"

"Do I have a big sign on my back that says, 'Will sleep with you for food?'" she asked.

He peered over her shoulder. "Not that I'm seeing."

Fiery eyes held his captive, while girlish hands waved left and right. "That's right! No sign! So, do I just look like a slut?"

There was only one answer to that. "Well, your dress is kind of low-cut--" Her eyes flared like the high-beams on a Mack truck. "But, of course, no," he finished smoothly, with the diplomacy of an old friend who does not want a fat lip.

"I can't go out there again, Xander," Willow said, pacing in the confines of the closet. "The mauling, the toe-crushing, the hunting stories--"

"Hunting stories?"

"It's like a school dance, but with demons." She paused, face arrested as if by remote control. "It's exactly like a school dance."

"It does resemble some of my more colorful nightmares," Xander acknowledged. "Although I'm usually more naked, and sometimes my pencil breaks." He gripped her shoulders and squeezed. "Buck up, soldier."

"I really don't want to buck," she said dangerously, fists clenched.

"So don't buck. Look, if you don't want to go back out there, don't go."

She deflated a bit, while retaining a scrunchy anxious-face. "But we're all Mission Impossible, and I'm Cinnamon. I can't leave you guys in the lurch."

"Hey, when it comes to lurching--" And then the door opened, and he kissed her. Light from the hall fell across them, while she squeaked into his mouth and grappled with him in confusion.

"What the hell are you doing?" Tara asked in a low voice, managing to sound both ticked off and extremely polite.

"We thought you were a demon," Xander said breathlessly. Willow was adjusting her dress with fast and twitchy hands, speechless, her expression dazed and horrified.

Tara raised one skeptical, Spock-like eyebrow. "And you always kiss my girlfriend in front of demons."

"No, because--" He realized she was yanking his chain. Or maybe not. "I'm going to go now, because there are demons out there who need daiquiris and because it's more frightening in here. And by the way, no, I haven't found the plans." Xander slipped out, leaving his favorite lesbians in the closet. Back in the safe hallway, he spotted a furtive figure disappearing around a corner and decided anyone trying that hard to look nondescript deserved following. Stealthy as a cat, he dogged the other's heels, rounding the corner after a glance ahead to make sure he wouldn't be noticed. He found himself leaving behind the rich carpet and wallpaper for a more utilitarian corridor of white marble and plain, plastered walls. His skulker exited the building through a set of French doors, and after a few, carefully-timed moments, Xander did too.

Outside, crisp snow blanketed the ground and lined every surface, while ice-laden tree branches creaked above. His breath puffed white in the air, and he was briefly afraid it would betray him, like smoke from a campfire revealing him to the Indians. Breathing through his nose, he followed a trail of footsteps into a maze of hedges higher than his head until he heard voices, then crept close behind a concealing wall of shrubbery.

"Is it on?" a man asked.

"I don't like this, Sondi," said a second voice by way of answer.

"Like has nothing to do with it. We do what we must."

"But killing a Colonel--"

"Half breed. Human-bred dreffa," the one called Sondi spat.

Xander shifted, managing to find a gap in the hedge where the leaves were thin. He couldn't see much, no faces to put to the voices, but one man bore a distinctive medal on his uniform jacket, and Xander strove to imprint the design on his brain.

Sondi continued in a harsher voice. "When Naziren is dead at the hands of a human assassin, the Reich will have no choice but to contain the population. It will be the first step of many in rectifying the gross perversion of our destiny."

"Our agent is prepared," the other man said in heavy resignation. "He will strike tonight. It will be done."

"So what's this tosser look like? This--Clude, d'you say his name was?" Spike grabbed a drink off a passing tray and leaned against a pillar. Next to him, the fronds of a plant draped close, brushing his shoulder like an over-friendly drunk; on its opposite side, a pair of young Grauth women gossiped, emitting carrying tinkles of high, conspiratorial laughter. Their slippers seemed to barely touch the black-and-white tiles of the ballroom floor.

"Short," Rosa said, discreetly scanning the crowd over the rim of her champagne cocktail. "And he wears glasses."

"Geek, eh? Not spoiled for choice with this crowd." He noticed that Rosa's gaze now lingered on him and frowned at her regard. "What?"

"Your girlfriend...she's attractive."

"Yeah?" Spike said dubiously, waiting for the other shoe to nail him.

"And human," Rosa noted.
 
Spike looked away. "Most days."

"It's an unusual girl who would date a vampire...or is it? There's so much I didn't know before all this happened." She was looking out over the crowd again, and Spike looked with her at the waltzing demons couples, the colorful whirl of the women's skirts like a bleeding watercolor.

"Oh, she's unusual," he said dryly. He emitted a short, rough laugh. "She's--" He broke off, swallowing whatever he'd been about to say. Even he wasn't sure. Thoughts of Buffy crowded his mind: Buffy poised above him, sliding down his prick with her hair tumbling loose; Buffy in a rage, striking him senseless; Buffy smiling at him like a bright beam of sunlight captured in a slim, warm body. Buffy in kindness, Buffy in rage, Buffy in sorrow and a terrible pity. "She's like no other woman alive or dead," he said softly, eyes unfocused by the blur of color and motion that seemed to be sweeping his imagination up into a dance of longing. His voice was lighter than usual, his accent softer.

Rosa considered his profile for a moment, thinking how human he could look when the light was right, when for instance the globe of a lamp hung near his head, dusting him with its soft, grainy glow. In her world now, the dead walked. She made herself look away and gazed into her champagne. She'd had enough to loosen her tongue, and a languorous numbness was beginning to seep into her limbs. Even the bitterest things were sweet when you were drunk, as easy to tell as a story. She heard herself speaking aloud, with no real care for whether he heard. "When they killed my husband--when they killed Derek--I thought there could be no more love or goodness in the world. I wore his blood for days. At first I thought I'd gone mad--and then I thought that God's wrath had been visited on us, that devils had come for our souls."

After a brief silence she looked up to find Spike's intense, frowning gaze on hers, as if something essential had been lost in translation. "They have," he said.

The dead had no need to be polite. In this, there was no surprise.

"Buffy!"

Buffy nearly dropped her tray as Xander came hurrying around the corner to catch up with her, and her gaze flicked up and down the hall to make sure they were alone. "What's wrong?" she asked, anxiety cresting in her like a wave.

After dragging her behind a statue of some demon hero wielding a sword of masculine over-compensation, Xander leaned in conspiratorially. "You won't believe what I just overheard."

"I will if you tell me."

"There's an assassination plot--they're going to kill this Naziren guy tonight. They've got some human lined up to do the deed. They want the Grauth to crack down on the human population--God."

His exclamation made her tense further. "What?"

"'The human population.'" He shook his head in dismay at his own words. "That's us, Buffy."

Releasing a ragged breath, she nodded. "That's us."

"There was something else," Xander recollected, caught up by his thoughts. "They said Naziren was a half-breed, part human."

Buffy absorbed that for a moment, factored it into her immediate appraisal, then let it slide away for later contemplation. "Right now what matters is stopping the assassination--all we need is for the Grauth to beef up security. We can barely move around as it is." Anxiety colored her voice, along with the frustration of recent weeks.

Nodding his agreement, Xander said, "I didn't get a good look at these guys, but one of them was named Sondi, and the other had some kind of fancy medal," he gestured at his own chest, "with a dragon and an orb."
 
A dragon and an orb, Buffy thought, mind racing back through memory across all the medal-laden chests she'd seen that night and coming up blank. "Okay. Good. We'll look for that, and for this other guy--Sonji."

"Sondi."

"Right." Buffy squared her shoulders. "You find Tara and Anya, tell them what's going on, have them try to account for all the human men here--there can't be that many. I'll tell Willow and Spike."

"And Spike can warn Naziren," Xander filled in.

"No. If they find out a human's involved, they'll lock this place down tight and question us all. Our covers won't hold up to close scrutiny."

Jaw tightening, Xander said, "Then again they might just kill us all and sort it out later."

"Exactly," she said, wishing that idea hadn't been placed in her head, along with an image of heaped, familiar bodies. "We have to take care of this ourselves. And we need to hurry."

Xander nodded, looking ready to take off on her command, then stalled in place. "Wait--what do we do if we find these guys?"

She hesitated, various options clicking through her mind like tumblers on a slot machine before she said, "We take them out." Buffy met Xander's eyes, conveying the firmness of her resolve, and saw him nod slowly again in return. And for one suspended moment out of time it took her breath away--his readiness, his loyalty, his acceptance of all things ridiculous and extreme and possibly fatal. She'd met him in high school, and taken him at first for just one more goofy guy with a puppy-dog crush, but here he was years later, battle-scarred soldier in a war they would never win.

On impulse she managed a smile for him, hoping it carried some fraction of her feelings. He didn't quite smile back, but his eyes were deep and reflective and she saw something in them that reaffirmed her purpose.

She needed that now.

Willow forced a smile at the demon waltzing her around the dance floor. He was an older fellow, with a jowly face and a pair of distinctive horns that curled down and along his temples like bicycle handlebars, and he loomed over her in his decorated dress uniform, a grizzled Beast to her Beauty, making her feel like a hundred-and-ten pound twig in gold lamé. His compliments didn't help.

"You dance prettily, little tree. Like branches in the wind, leaves whirling at your feet."
 
"That's, uh..." Nice, except nice thank-yous led to misunderstandings, which led to groping, which led to drinking, and from there possibly to drunken sea chanteys on the bar-top. "Hey, shiny," she said in a high-pitched, edgy voice. "Medals. There, pinned on your chest. What did you win that one for, the one with the, uh, giant squid getting gored by a...pterodactyl?"

He looked down at the one she was describing. "That was for my victories in the Gulf War."

Willow stared at him with parted lips for three mechanical dance steps, before bringing herself to say, "You were in the Gulf War?"

Her beast smiled reminiscently. "Yes, when the Great Gulf opened up between Grauth and the Dark Kingdom of Myrrhia, there was much warring and the blood of thousands rained down from the skies."

Good times, thought Willow. Good times. "Wow, that must have been...hard on the birdbaths. But, hey, good for the umbrella industry." The wear and tear on her own smile was becoming irrevocable. Would this song never end? Who knew you could squeeze so many instrumental solos out of "Stormy Weather"?

"You know, I had a concubine once who wore a wig of red hair, back when that was in fashion. You remind me of her, such a tiny thing."

"This is my real hair," Willow said, hitting an apologetic note. But there was no deterring him.

"No matter. Tell me, have you ever bathed in a pool of crushed taula juice while listening to the music of the spheres?"

"Not that I recall. Mostly it's wine coolers and top-forty...though, uh, I have been hit on the head a few times, so maybe I..." Across the room, through a break in the crowd, Willow spotted Buffy signaling to her. She was tugging on her ear-lobe with more force than was probably necessary, while rather impressively balancing a tray of glasses in her other hand. "Oops," said Willow, feigning a stumble. "I've turned my ankle."

"My fault entirely. Inexcusably clumsy of me."

Willow almost felt guilty as the demon led her with unexpected gallantry off the floor and to a couch against the wall. She took a seat and said, "This is nice, this is great. I'll just...rest a bit." After he bowed himself away into the crowd, she left her seat and met with Buffy, coming her way. Taking a glass of champagne as cover, Willow edged close. "What's up?"

In a low voice, Buffy said, "Xander overheard a plot to assassinate Naziren."

"Oh. That's good." The words came out automatically, because Willow couldn't think of what else to say. Who cared?

"No, that's bad. They've set up some human to do it, so they can--" Buffy broke off as a demon lady swept toward them. "That's right," she said loudly to Willow, "Champagne. Made with real American cham." The lady took a glass without a word and veered off to more socially elevated climes. "If it goes down," Buffy said, voice lowering again, "humans will take the blame. We could find ourselves under twenty-four hour curfew. Or worse."

"Reprisals," Willow said in dismay.

Buffy nodded. "If you get a chance, tell Spike to keep an eye on Naziren. He can't tell him about the plot, though, because--"

"Already there." They were too vulnerable out in the open like this, and Willow had a feeling the Beast's predilection for twiggy redheads wouldn't save her from a firing squad. She darted a few looks around the room to make sure they weren't drawing attention, and pretended to sip at her champagne as Buffy went on.

"We're looking for a human male with a death wish, and two Grauth, one named Sondi and the other with a medal--"

"Buffy, you could armor-plate a tank with the medals in this room."

"A medal with a dragon on it, and an orb," Buffy finished impatiently. "You find anyone, come get me."

That tone irritated Willow a bit, but she swallowed it down and let herself drift back into the littoral of bodies that ran in loose clusters around the dance floor; the dancing lapped close to bystanders on waves of music and then slid away again, the women's skirts dragging across the tiles.

Trying not to be obvious as she stared at men's chests--there was a twist, for you--she worked her way almost entirely around the room without seeing a medal like Buffy had described. Back at the grand doorway, she dithered to a stop, worrying her restless hands against her dress and wishing she had just a pinch of magic left. One spell and she could illuminate the conspirators in a twinkling, she felt sure of it.

Glimpsing by chance a sharp profile among the flotsam of heads, she dove forward into the dark sea of tuxedos and tunics.

Spike, a dissatisfied look on his face, was waltzing with a pie-eyed Grauth debutante until Willow put an importunate hand on his arm and pouted, "You promised me this dance, William."

Brushed by hurrying waiters, the swinging doors to the liquor stockroom were never allowed to stop swinging, and when Xander noticed a short and very human-looking figure dart between them, he added his own shoulder to the momentum, barreled in after him, and threw him against a shelf.

"Don't kill me!" his victim yelped, half-strangled by his collar.

Xander loosened his grasp, recognizing the pudgy face and trying to put a name to it. High school. Clock tower. Swimsuit calendar. Bad thought, wrong thought. "Jonathan?" he said, startled to a gape. And then a rush of relief and bizarre, unexpected affection flooded him. "Man, is it good to see you." He clapped the guy on both shoulders.

Jonathan, still cringing from the attack, looked doubtful. "It is?"

"C'mon. How many surviving members of the class of '99 are there? We bested a giant snake demon together at graduation. Those bonds are lifelong." Xander stepped back. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm supposed to be getting olives," Jonathan said, inching away along the shelves. Behind them, another waiter breezed in, grabbed a bottle, and zipped back out through the flapping doors. As the light brightened a moment, it illuminated a bruise on the other man's cheek. Xander gestured at it.

"What happened to your face?"

Flinching away with a look of anger so swift that Xander almost thought he'd imagined it, Jonathan mumbled, "Nothing. Look, I have to go." Olives in hand, he pushed by, leaving Xander alone among the bottles, bemused and concerned.

For the first minute or so, Spike had held her at arm's length and danced like a marionette or a reluctant twelve year-old, but when she'd snapped at him to behave normally, he'd relaxed to a somehow sarcastic gracefulness, his lazy glides mocking her own less finished form. Willow glared at him, and he glared back, then they both looked away.

"Do you see any dragon-orby medals?" Willow asked.

"Yeah." Her heart quickened with startlement at his words. "Spotted one a while back. Thought I'd keep it to myself, though. What with you being such a soft and cuddly armful."

Gritting her teeth, Willow stepped hard on his foot in reply and almost stumbled off-balance into another couple as he jerked her through the next few moves. Smarting and deeply irritated, she said, "If I could turn you into a toad--" Her words dried up as Spike leaned in close.

"If you turned me into a toad, Red, I'd crawl into the princess's bed and stay there till she kissed me better." He smiled nastily. "Too bad your magic battery's gone dead. Not for the first time, I'll wager." The innuendo of his words was perfectly clear.

"I'll never know what Buffy sees in you," Willow seethed.

"Sure of that, are you?" He let one of his hands slide lower, to a place insufficiently covered by the sheer material of her dress. She stifled a squeak. Unable to zap the leer off his face, or the face off his body, Willow shoved herself free and slapped him across the cheek. Spike looked amazed, and nearby dancers paused to watch with interest, but Willow was already flouncing off, the steam of her temper trailing almost visibly behind her.

"Red birds," she heard Spike say in a carrying voice. "Can't keep 'em in hand. Always flying back to the bush."

Xander and Willow nearly ran into each other in a doorway leading to the back parlors. They looked at each other in surprise, hesitated with a shared awareness of the people around them, did a few rounds of the two-step side-shuffle, then passed on their separate ways. Xander thought Willow looked even more brassed off than when he'd seen her earlier, and if she didn't already know about the plot, he didn't particularly want to be the one to tell her.

"You there," said a voice. Xander, scanning for conspirators, didn't register the hail and jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder. It was the head butler. "What are you doing?"

"Right now?" Xander asked, buying time as he groped for a plausible explanation of why he was idling in plain sight.

The butler steered him over to an open bar. "Get back there and start serving drinks, you lazy piece of human meat."

"Meat reporting for duty," Xander said, faking good humor from years of practice. He began to mix drinks under the butler's steely eye, until the demon was certain of his obedience or bored with the show. Left alone, Xander was forced to wait on the dry-mouthed Grauth bellying up to the bar, but he realized quickly that the gig was useful to his purposes, allowing him to scope out chest medals and cock an ear at voices with the hope of recognizing one.

Within a minute of his tenure, Spike wandered up and leaned on the bar, elbow perilously close to tipping over a bowl of wet cherries on his uniform sleeve, a fact Xander didn't see a need to mention. "Blood-n-Beam," the vampire demanded, then deigned to notice his bartender. "And mind you don't stick your fingers in it. Can imagine too well where those've been."

I will not reply, I will not reply. Mastering his disgust, Xander poured the bottled blood into a glass and dosed it liberally with bourbon that he wished were poison. Not that poison would kill Spike, but it might give him a nasty hour or two, and wasn't it sad how low he'd come, pouring drinks for conquering demons and wishing tummy aches on vampires.

"Here you go, sir." Xander shoved the drink across the bar at Spike and not-so-accidentally splashed it down his uniform. Oh, yeah. Zing went the strings of his heart, with the satisfaction of a job well done.

"You bloody berk." Spike, after a stunned look at the damage, lashed out and hooked his fingers in Xander's shirt, pulling him along behind the bar so that Xander was forced to yield or be strangled. Bottles toppled over and the cherries went tumbling, while around them heads turned. "You can wash this up," Spike said, "and then I'll just have another drink." He smiled in a cold way and tilted his head, eyeing Xander's neck. "On the house."

Xander stumbled in Spike's grip out of the ballroom and into an alcove where a demon and his doxy were kissing. "Get out," Spike said, and they hastened to obey. He let go of Xander and stepped back, tension flowing out of his shoulders like water as he lit up a cigarette.

"What the hell was that for?" Xander said, straightening his collar and hoping it wasn't him making that squawk.

"What?" Spike frowned. "Thought you wanted a chinwag in private."

"No! I just wanted to spill a drink on you. Stop looking for ulterior motives."  Annoyed and flustered, Xander thought about leaving, then decided it was time for his break anyway. He leaned against the wall. "Have you found out anything about the assass--" But before he could get more than a couple of asses out, Spike was in his face, a disturbingly cool hand clamped over his mouth.

"Do you ever know when to shut it?" He glared and took his hand away.

"We're alone. No one's going to--" A rustle at the curtained doorway interrupted them, and they both looked over as a guard poked his head in.

"Captain Aurelius," he said in surprise. His gaze registered the tableau and he cleared his throat. "I'll just--excuse me, sir. Again." The curtain fell as he retreated.

Xander looked at Spike, who looked back. Within a half second there was a safe three feet of carpet between them again and Spike was hiding behind a plume of cigarette smoke.

"I'm going to..." Xander gestured at the exit.

"Yeah."

With mutual relief they parted.

You'd think that it would be easy, tracking down one very ordinary assassin. No magic tripping you up, unevening the odds. But after an hour, Buffy had to admit that looking for one needling human in a demon haystack was no walk in the park. Unless the park was full of haystacks.

She halted a scurrying footman mid-scur with a hand against his chest. "So, is that a gun in your pocket or are you just really glad to be here?" He stared at her in befuddlement as she reached in and yanked out a--

"A corkscrew. Oh." She handed it back to him. "Sorry. Carry on." Sighing with frustration, she let him go and continued scouting the hall, hoping to run across a killer, or maybe someone with a tray of those little fishballs she'd seen earlier. She was getting hungry. "This search is losing its fruit," she said to herself. "I'm fruitless!" Pausing to look in a mirror, she touched up her hair and then tipped her head to one side dejectedly. "I need fruit."

Turning away from her reflection, she bumped smack into a bulky figure in uniform grey. "Oh! Sorry," she said, practicing the deferential tone of a maidservant. All she needed now was to be diverted from her search and sent off to wash dishes. The Grauth grunted irritably and started to shove past her, but Buffy had already seen, at nearly perfect eye-level, a bright gold medal with a dragon and an orb. As he passed, she kicked down hard on his heel and chopped the back of his neck. He fell to one knee and she hooked her arm around his throat, punched him in the side of the head, then dragged him toward a door which turned out to lead to the cellar. Handy. She released him to tumble down the stairs, and after a quick glance up and down the hallway, went down after him.

It was a wine cellar, dim and filled with racks of gleaming bottles, its floor rough concrete. Her prisoner lay in the middle of it, groaning. Buffy looked around and found a coil of rope hanging on the wall, just above a stack of small barrels. She took it down and tied up the Grauth, taking no care to be gentle. Once she'd positioned him on a crate, she stood over him, arms crossed. "Hi," she said. "Let's talk."

The demon shook himself and then strained at his bonds with an air of confusion. "Who are you? What do you want?" His eyes focused on Buffy as if seeing her for the first time. "Where's your accomplice?"

"My who?"

He was peering around the cellar, apparently trying to conjure more attackers from its shadows. "The one who hit me."

Buffy raised her hand. "That would be little old me." And since she wasn't likely to get through to him on credit, she proved her point by delivering a sharp blow to his jaw. "Though, really, not so old."

Blood was trickling from the Grauth's mouth and his eyes had narrowed. "No human has such strength. Especially not a woman." He spat at her feet.

Raising her brows at that Buffy said, "I'd give you my girl-power lecture with the accompanying slides, but I've kinda got more important things on my mind. Who's the assassin? And by the way, ick." Grimacing, she rubbed the toe of her shoe on his trousers.
 
"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh huh." Buffy struck him again. "You're not too terribly convincing."

"Neither are you," he sneered.

"Okay, you wanna play gloves off?" She hauled back and then stopped, fist poised. "You know what? I've got a better trick." Three short steps put her behind him, and she unsheathed the knife at his hip, drew his head back by one horn, and held the blade to his throat. "Tell me what I want to know, or I'll cut my losses. Literally." His pulse jumped up toward the gleaming metal, visible beneath the grey skin.

"I do not think you will do it, little girl."

"Think again." Her hand tightened on the rough scabby surface of his horn.

"A true killer would look me in the face."

Buffy leaned down and made her voice soft. "A true killer knows not to get blood on her dress." The blade pressed closer, and the Grauth inhaled.

"I would die for my people."
 
No, no, no. That wasn't what she wanted to hear. Nobility was inconvenient in demons. Stupid, stubborn hell-spawn. "I'll see if I can arrange that for you," she said coolly, stuffing her apron in his mouth as a gag and using the strings to tie it around his head. "I'm here to serve."

Leaving the cellar, Buffy hurried toward the ballroom to find Spike. Though she hated to admit her own resourcefulness had limits, Spike might know who this guy was and who he palled around with. All that brass and attitude he wore lately ought to be good for something.

As she rounded a corner, she came face to face with another Grauth. It was like comedy, but without the laughs, she thought in exasperation. They both stopped short, mutual recognition dawning at the same moment.

"Slayer," Clude breathed.

Buffy's eyes widened as memory clicked: graveyard, carnival, spy. As he began to open his mouth again and turn, preparing no doubt to flee and trumpet her identity to the world--the kaleidoscope of dancers whirling just out of earshot through the doorway at the end of the hall--she sprung upon him, catching him around the neck and twisting it sharply. The crack sounded unnaturally loud to her ears, blotting out for several moments the spill of music and chatter while she dragged the Grauth into a closet and rolled his body under a swaying hang of coats.

When she straightened up from her task, the door opened with a blurry rush of illumination and perfumed air. Like a trap-door spider, Buffy grabbed her prey, muffling the person's tiny shriek and shutting the door on their encounter. With her free hand, she tugged on a cord and lit up the cloakroom. "Rosa." Relief made her light-headed. "What is this, Vaudeville night?" The words came out aggrieved and louder than she'd intended.

"Buffy." Rosa touched her throat, leaving her hand in a defensive gesture that was probably pure instinct. "I came for my stole."

"Sorry. I was just--" Buffy indicated the body silently. "Corpse."

"Oh." Rosa seemed to take this in stride. "It's that man."

"You knew him?"

"The one I mentioned earlier, who was asking questions. Clude."

Buffy frowned, thoughts rearranging themselves in her head like parts to an equation that didn't equate. "He used to spy on me before the invasion. I never knew his name." After a moment she shrugged. "Guess that's two birds, one stone."

The door opened and Anya poked her head in. "Hello. Why are you in the closet?"

"Get in here!"

With the aplomb that only a Dolce & Gabbana dress could lend, Anya entered. "Is this a lesbian thing? Because I could come back--oh, look. A dead body." She cocked her head at Buffy. "It is dead, isn't it?"

"Very, and what are you doing here, Anya?" As she spoke, Buffy pulled a heavy fur off the rack and draped it over the corpse to better hide her handiwork.

"I heard voices. Also, I was hungry." Anya withdrew a Kit-Kat bar from her purse, unwrapped one end, and began nibbling. Brows creased, Buffy watched for one bewildered moment, then shook her head, dislodging the distraction. She turned to Rosa.

"I need you to get Spike and bring him to the wine cellar. I've got one of the conspirators tied up down there."

"Conspirators?"

"Never mind. Just have him come as soon as you can." Buffy looked back at Anya, who was worrying chocolate off her lower lip. "Anya, can you--" She hesitated, not really certain what to tell Anya to do, but certain that Anya needed a purpose.

Anya nodded her head as if receiving some unstated message. "Get the plans to the wynariver. Check."

"What? You know where they are?"

"In some sort of secret meeting room upstairs," she breezed, still more interested in her candy than in Buffy. "An old man with extensive nose hairs is going to show them to me. I told him that blueprints got me hot and bothered."

"Anya, you can't steal them now--if this guy knows you've seen them, you'll be a suspect."

"Oh, I'll just take pictures," Anya assured her. She dug into her purse and put on a pair of black cats-eye glasses with rhinestone studs, smiling sunnily at Buffy. "There's a tiny camera inside the rim. Cunning, isn't it? I got them to take compromising pictures of Xander, because he never let me videotape us when...you know."

"And I so wish I didn't."

The cellar held a chill the rest of the house lacked, but Buffy had stopped noticing, and now the coolness and the quiet seemed to detach the room from the rest of the house entirely, as if there weren't any other living souls for miles.

Of course, only two here were living; only one souled.

"Yeah," said Spike, circling their demon captive, his head tilted at an angle of inspection. "'S what I thought." Buffy looked at him expectantly. "Don't know him."

"What good are you then?" Buffy griped.

"Hey! Doesn't mean I can't torture him." Affront flowed into a smile of anticipation, the planes of his face realigning into evil so smoothly and easily that Buffy shivered. He never had to vamp out to look scary--but if he was scary, why would she be feeling that bad, low-down ache?

"No torture," she said, as he prowled over to her. His arm slid around her and then down. Hand moving down, hand moving up, up her short skirt. "Torture bad." Her voice had turned breathless, and she felt herself flex against him in a kittenish movement while his hand slid into her panties. "This is so unprofessional," she groaned.

His forehead rested against hers a moment. Wicked eyes up close, thin wicked smile. "You don't get paid, love." She shifted and so did he, face not quite touching hers, but shadowing her movements in reverse, as if they might brush against each other, but not quite yet.

An eloquent grunt came from across the room and they both turned their heads to look at the Grauth, who glared at them as if he had a lot of comments stored up behind his gag. Buffy felt Spike's cheek caress her temple, sending electricity through the fine hairs and across her scalp. "Don't be in such a hurry, mate." Spike turned his attention back to Buffy. "Only got two hands." He proved this for Buffy's sake and she gasped in delight. Looking at her rather than the Grauth, Spike said, "Watch how we take care of slayers around here."

Unable to find a single member of the Scooby gang, Tara pondered the very real possibility that some great plan was coming together elsewhere and everyone had forgotten about her. Fine, she thought, heaving a tray of crudites onto the parlor sideboard. She was perfectly capable of acting on her own initiative. All she needed was...some clue as to what the hell was going on. Sighing, she removed the empty tray she'd replaced and tucked it under her arm, then hugged the wall to avoid bumping into any guests on her way out.

Near the door she spotted someone familiar and brightened. "Anya," she murmured. The other woman's back was to her as she laughed, waving a glass with casual gestures as if to illustrate some joke. Champagne spilled over her hand and she exclaimed. Tara grabbed a napkin off a table and approached, touching Anya's arm lightly on the pretext of offering to help, but when the woman turned, she saw it wasn't Anya, but a grey-face demon in an elegant wig. The demon took the napkin without acknowledgment and turned back to her companions, while Tara backed away in disappointment.

She left the parlor, crossing one corner of the ballroom on her way to the kitchens, pausing just a moment to look out across the floor. The lights had been lowered as the evening drew closer to midnight, and there was currently a break in the dancing, filled by light chatter. Two men in tuxedos mock-jousted with candlesticks in to an audience of giggling ladies on sofas; near the bar, a short Grauth officer toasted victory to rousing cheers; and, almost close enough for Tara to stake, a vampire in a sequined evening gown snapped her fan and hid flirtingly behind it while her companion teased her. It would have all been charming, if not so terrible.

Outside the ballroom, a commotion was taking place, its scope wide enough that Tara couldn't pass without cutting straight through.

"She was supposed to be here an hour ago," a stout, well-dressed Grauth matron was saying to a bevy of butlers and footmen, all of whom looked eager to placate. "Her set is for three hours. That's what her sponsor's being paid for. It's outrageous."

"I'm sure she'll be here soon, madam." The chief butler's tone was soothing, his hands--clad in impeccable white gloves--steepled as if to implore her forgiveness.

"This is The Social Event of the Season." Tara could hear the caps in the woman's articulation of the words. "I will not have the Colonel embarrassed by--oh, Colonel Naziren."

Tara shrank back against the wall, trying not to call attention to herself as a slim Grauth in black dress uniform stepped into the fray. She'd heard of him a few times from Spike, who was apt to call him "the boss" with typical irreverence, as in, "Can't stop by tonight, kiddies, the boss wants me to clear out a K'thaba nest over by the docks," but this was the first time tonight she'd seen their host in person. He didn't look much like other Grauth; the small horns sweeping back from his temples were almost obscured by glossy dark waves of hair, and the ridges down his cheeks were all the more striking against the unusual smoothness of his face.

"Euphemia," the colonel said. "What distresses you?" His dark-toned voice layered politeness over impatience over a base note of cold power.

"Our star singer isn't here and she's due on stage. Tardiness is unacceptable."

"I'll have her shot."

Tara swallowed a gasp, and even Euphemia looked taken back. "Oh, Colonel, that's...very kind, but I don't think..."

He gave an almost imperceptible smile. "A joke, of course." Euphemia trilled nervous laughter, which was echoed by the butlers and footmen. Naziren's gaze wandered and caught on Tara. "Perhaps someone else can fill in for our missing chanteuse. You." Tara's heart tumbled over as Naziren called to her. "Come here." Feet dragging across the heavy carpet, Tara approached the cluster of Grauth, whose eyes all turned to her with varying degrees of doubt and interest. "Can you sing?"

"N-no," Tara said, with a vigorous headshake. "I'm just helping in the kitchen."

"Sing," he said.

Caught off guard by the abrupt command, she froze, but his eyes were implacable and she obeyed, aiming for a toneless croak that would dissuade further interest. "Mary had a little lamb--" To her own ears, her voice sounded faint and flat, breaking when he reached out and lifted her hair, letting it slide through his fingers with dispassionate curiosity.

"Get her a dress," Naziren said. "She'll do."

Cheeks flushed with the lingering traces of arousal and embarrassment, Buffy watched Spike slide the blade further into the flesh underneath the Grauth's left horn. Years on the Hellmouth had hardened her, she thought absently. She'd once been afraid of that, and supposed she still was, somewhere underneath her new layers of skin. Maybe when they'd beaten back the latest army of darkness and owned the world beneath their feet again, she could afford the luxury of angst for her lost innocence. It would be nice to come home at night, go up to her bedroom, and have a nice, long cry among pictures of her mother and mementos of childhood.

"Now as I understand," Spike said, crouching next to the Grauth, one arm slung almost affably around his shoulders, "horns are important to your sort. Symbolic of manhood and pedigree and all that spiffy twaddle. Means nothing to me. Might as well glue a big penis on your head, I say. Put it all out there in the open--paint it bright blue if you like." He tapped the knife against the horn. "But I'm betting you're attached to this, isn't that so?"

The Grauth's gaze bore into Spike's with hatred. "You will kill me anyway. I know too much." He looked over at Buffy, mouth twisting in contempt.

"Yeah, but I can make it quick or slow. Your choice, mate."

"Slow."

Head cocked, Spike smiled in what might have been admiration. "Stubborn old tosser, aren't you? Right, then--"

"Spike, wait!" Buffy stopped him as the knife was poised to cut, and Spike stood. "He's just keeping us here." She was thinking aloud, realization coming to her as she spoke. "If he wants it slow, then there can't be much time left. We're not going to get anything out of him."

"You must be the brains of the outfit," the Grauth said in a low, snide jeer.

Spike looked over at him, eyes narrowing. "Yeah," he said, "she is," and the knife flashed out once with brute force, sending the demon's head toppling to the ground. "And I'm the pretty face."

The Grauth had died so quickly there was almost no blood, but Buffy grimaced at the remains. "We'll have to figure out what to do with him later." A glance to Spike. "You should stay close to Naziren, make sure no one assassin-like gets in range."

Spike tossed the knife down. "Right. What'll you do?"

Hiding her own utterly at-a-lossness, Buffy tipped up one shoulder. "What I do best."

My. That was a lot of frogs.

Buffy stared down at the squirming bowl. "I think it's time for my break," she said plaintively. The frogs were crawling over each other in an attempt to escape their prison; as she watched, one flung itself into the air in a desperate hop for freedom. She caught the frog mid-leap in one hand and cupped its quivering body. Its eyes bulged in panic and it seemed to be gasping. "They're so cute," she said. "How can they be a delicacy?"

"Stop asking questions and pour the batter over them," the cook said, slamming a pitcher down on the counter near Buffy.

"You know," Buffy said, "when you found me, I was just on the way to the bathroom, and I didn't actually have a chance to..." She trailed off at the cook's expression. "I'll just...batter the frogs." She picked up the pitcher and held it over the bowl. "Sorry, guys. We're all making sacrifices these days."

"There's a saying old, says that love is blind. Still we're often told, 'Seek and ye shall find.' So I'm going to seek a certain boy I've had in mind."

Tara clung to the microphone stand for dear life with one clammy palm, demons swaying in her view, their faces turned to her with a nightmarish and weirdly romantic approval.

"Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet--he's the big affair I cannot forget. Only man I ever think of with regret." She took a deep breath, voice lifting. "I'd like to add his initials to my monogram. Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?"

As the song trickled into his consciousness, Spike turned his head toward the stage with drawn brows, looked away still frowning, then did a double-take with wider eyes. Hell's bells. That was the little witchwife warbling up there, all sequined and tit-shy, looking like she wanted to dissolve into the stagefloor.

"There's a somebody I'm longing to see--I hope that he--turns out to be--someone who'll watch over me."

Her desperate eyes had picked him out of the crowd and she might have been singing directly to him. Nodding back to her, more amused than worried, Spike resumed his shadowy stalking of Naziren, who was strolling through the crowd, glad-handing the quality and inspiring the riffraff. Spike was forced to pause as some hoary old veteran buttonholed the colonel for a chat that threatened to drag out, which was when he noticed the human waiter veering their way with a tray of drinks.

Hastening his steps, he melted up alongside Naziren, positioning himself between Grauth and waiter. Naziren noticed his arrival. "Ah, Captain Aurelius. There you are."

"Here I am," Spike said absently, eye on the waiter.

"I hope you've been enjoying the party."

The waiter offered drinks, wilting a bit under Spike's black gaze before slinking away. "Jolly old time," Spike replied, riveted now on the glass Naziren was raising to his lips, as he tried to figure out a way to deter its progress. "Er, how are you? Sir?"

Naziren paused, drink midway to its target. "Very well, Captain. By the way, I've been meaning to thank you. The help you procured for tonight's festivities has proved most...satisfactory." The glass began to rise again.

"A spot," Spike said sharply.

His non-sequitur halted proceedings again. "I beg your pardon?"

Spike took the cocktail from Naziren, glaring at it with a venom once reserved for slayers, sodding poofs, and empty vodka bottles. "A spot. On your glass. Won't do." He dashed the glass on the tiles, eliciting a murmur of surprise from nearby guests, who nonetheless stepped away from the debris while politely ignoring its cause.

"You are diligent, Aurelius. But that really wasn't necessary." For the first time since Spike had known him, the Grauth looked almost nonplussed.

"I take my responsibilities seriously," Spike said, straightening up within his uniform.

"Quite." Naziren blinked.

From the corner of his eye Spike noticed more waiters zeroing in, drawn no doubt to the mess he'd made, and ready to provide more cocktails, any one of which might be deadly. "What say I make you a proper drink," he offered before thinking it through. "Somewhere quiet."

"Somewhere quiet?" Naziren's arched brow took in the party spilling around them. "Whyever for?"

Blanking, Spike stared back into the Grauth's expectant face. "Yeah, well...thing is, I've been meaning to ask you something...your advice." Spike's face cleared. "Your advice, on a bit of business. Private business."

"I see." Naziren smiled. "Then by all means, let us go."

White Russians seemed to be a popular drink among the young demon set, Xander observed. "Ladies," he said, sliding the glasses across the bar at two giggling damsels whose faces looked upholstered with the hide of an elephant's ass, if you stretched and ironed it a bit. Not that they didn't seem otherwise nice. And see, this was the problem; hang around demons too long and the tragic wrongness of the universe began to tilt and you started to believe it was all right, even normal. Like it would be somehow bad if he whipped out a machete and cracked them on their noggins, splitting them open right down the middle. One...then the other.

Xander tried to shake off the darkness of his thoughts, but it was like a tree trying to shake loose the wind. He wasn't bloodthirsty, wasn't a sick monster with delusions of righteousness. He was the right, because he was human. Right? Hey, it sounded good.

And the sun should fucking rise in the morning.

"Xander."

During his disturbing thoughts, Buffy had edged up to the bar, where she laid a tray of what appeared to be deep-fried--

"What the hell are those?"

"You do not want to know."

"What's up?" he asked, gaze skating around their immediate vicinity to make sure no one was listening, his hands towel-drying the interior of a glass as he spoke. In the background of his awareness, the band started playing "I'll Be Seeing You" and a woman's vaguely familiar voice floated across the room.

"We found one of the--recipes we were looking for."

"One of the recipes," he parroted, knowing he was supposed to get the code, and wishing as usual that someone would simply clue him in beforehand.

"Yes. It required chopping. And frying. It wasn't very good, though."

"That's too bad." If he pretended like he knew what she was talking about, what harm? She'd let him know what she wanted sooner or later. "Maybe it needed a dipping sauce."

"What?" Buffy looked at him strangely. "Never mind. Did you find any recipes?"

Okay, he'd figured that one out. "No dice. Still hungry. Speaking of which." Xander picked up one of the beer-battered monstrosities off the tray and took a bite. "Hmm. Not bad. Tastes like chicken."

"Oh, Xander!"

"What?"

Buffy's lower lip pushed out and she looked as if she might cry. "Nothing...I have to...ohhh." She more or less ran away.

"Women are odd," he said to himself, before tearing off another bite of his snack. He tossed it aside when Jonathan appeared, though. "Hey. How goes it?" The other man's pallor and dark-shadowed eyes concerned him. After all, they were both humans, and humans had to look out for each other these days.

"Hey," Jonathan mumbled, pushing several empty glasses off his tray. "Two martinis, extra dry, two Tom Collins, and one Balthazarian Bog-Blaster."

"You have got to be kidding. What's in that?"

"Don't ask me. I'm just the help." No laughing in the face of disaster there; the guy sounded bitter about it.

"Well, let me just pull out my handy Hitchhiker's Guide." Xander laughed, to show how it was done. Jonathan stared at him dully, with just the faintest trace of loathing to suggest that he might be doubting Xander's sanity. Or maybe, Xander realized a beat too late, his loyalty. "Why don't I just make those drinks now."
 
"Good idea."

Xander felt the need to establish some kind of rapport. They had plenty of history, twisted though it was, and besides, Jonathan was one of the few representatives of his fellow man that he'd spoken to in weeks, outside of what he'd come to think of as the compound. "Sounds like the occupation isn't treating you well," he said.

Jonathan made a sound, like a laugh shattered by a hammer. "What do you think? We're all going to die sooner or later. We might as well..." He clammed up, drifting back into his private funk.

"You know," Xander said, turning to search for some Collins mix on the shelf, "Buffy's here. If you're having any kind of trouble--" He turned back with bottle in hand to find that Jonathan had vanished. A flash of white jacket caught Xander's eye, what might have been the other man slipping off into the crowd. Alarms went off in his head. "Crap." He ducked out from behind the bar, tapping a passing waiter. "Hey, take over for a minute." And then he went looking for their assassin.

"...and it's taken longer than I expected, but I'm getting a bachelor's degree in Comparative Religion and World History, with a minor in Psychology," Willow told the glassy-eyed demon, secure in the knowledge that he would be too drunk to remember or care tomorrow what she said. She wasn't sure she was all that sober herself. She leaned closer, tapping him on the chest with one finger. "And what good will it do me now? The best career I can hope for is dance hall hostess or, or paid floozy." She gestured with her drink at the vast futility of it all.

"You could also be a maid," the Grauth said helpfully.

Willow stared at him in disgust. "A maid. I mean, okay," she caught herself, "I believe in the inherent dignity of any gainful employment. I'm not a snob. I don't look down on meter maids or waitresses or fry cooks. But I worked hard to be more than that." The Grauth nodded. He appeared to be gazing at her breasts. "And now I'm the underclass!"

"Willow."

She shifted on the couch and glanced to the side, where Xander hovered. "Hey there," she said, smiling with affection at her old friend. Her waiter. "Did you bring me a drink?"

"Uh, no. But you're needed...in the kitchen."

"Pfftt. I'm not a fry cook."

Xander reached over and took her arm, gently helping her stand. "No, but you are quite fried."

Willow handed her drink to the Grauth, who took it with semi-conscious readiness. "Bye bye," she caroled, waving as she was drawn off. "It was nice talking to--hey, take it easy. Ow." She rubbed her arm.

"Come on. I don't want to have to shave your head and disavow you."

"Where are we going?"

"I think I know who the assassin is."

That sobered her up enough to ask, "Who?"

"Jonathan."

The name tugged at her memory. "Jonathan...you mean Jonathan from high school?"

"Yep."

"Wonder Jonathan?"

"The very one."

Stumbling slightly, Willow rested a hand against the wall for balance. She could, in the fuzzy orbit of her senses, see Xander looking around as if afraid they might be causing a scene. "I don't have any mojo, Xander."

He focused on her, a bit impatient. "Will, pull it together."

"Why? You don't need me."

"I need you to find Buffy. Tell her what's going on. We have to stop him, or we're all going to be up a very deep and stinky creek."

As the words penetrated, Willow swallowed. She remained unsteady on her heels, but she'd been given an assignment and she could carry it out. "I'll find Buffy." She met Xander's eyes and a broken connection sparked, as if they were still two people who understood each other. But he just nodded and left her there, and there she stood, feeling at that moment like nothing more useful than a girl.

"What did you want to speak to me about?" Naziren asked, taking the drink Spike handed him.

In a haphazard, restless sort of way, Spike sat down. He couldn't keep his eyes from sliding toward the half-open door now and then, beyond which the party's revelries continued. "Well, it's about..." Stumped, he turned his gaze around the room as if something might inspire him. He noticed a cluster of photographs on a table, sepia-toned shots of demons, posed in gowns and suits during various leisure pursuits--lawn tennis, picnics, boating. In one a woman with a floppy hat smiled at the camera and held up a fishing line from which something other than fish dangled. Disturbing. "...about a girl," he finished.

"A girl? Really?" Naziren's gaze sharpened. He leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, a heavy tumbler of whiskey balanced on spread fingers. "I've been wondering what your type is. You're a mysterious fellow."

Once this would have been no more than a natural tribute to Spike's cultivated lifestyle and persona, but under current circumstances, it suggested that Naziren might have been poking around in his private life, looking for information. Not comforting, since he spent his off hours sneaking off to snog a slayer and plot the downfall of the Reich. "That so?" he said.

"Who is this dolly of yours?"

"Name's...Joan." By Prince Albert's bloody balls, he used to be a good liar. When had he lost the touch? "Heavyset girl, bit slow-witted."

Naziren's brows knit as if he were trying to work out a picture of this imaginary inamorata. "Indeed? Human?"

"Yeah...well, no. Dead now."

"I see. A vampire, then."

"No, just dead. Tragic fall off a church steeple. Before I was turned." Over Naziren's shoulder, Spike was unsettled to see his local ghost materialize like a pointed mockery of his words, her lackbrain face accusing him of sins he hadn't sought to commit. "Haunts me, you see," he went on, eyes narrowing at the spectre. "Terrible bitch in life, broke my heart. Don't know how I'll ever love again."

"I was given to understand...well, I suppose one seeks solace for a broken heart in different ways." Spike's Sunnydale ghost was circling the edge of the room, behind the furniture, as he tracked her progress. Following his gaze, Naziren asked, "What are you looking at?"

He forced his attention away. "Nothing. Must be a draft."

There was a knock on the door, and they both turned as a waiter appeared, poised on the threshold. "Sorry," he said. "I thought you might want service." His eyes shifted around the room in rapid, jerky fashion, and Spike's hackles lifted with instinctive wariness. He recognized the kid--had seen him a few weeks back in the officer's club, and before that too, somewhere he couldn't place.

"We're fine," Naziren said. "Leave us."

But the kid lingered, shoulders hunching with tension that showed equally in his pale, sweating face. One hand slid into his jacket pocket. Spike's eyes darted there, saw bulky angles where none should be. "I have a message for you," he said. "Sir." On a nearby table, a clock began to chime midnight.

"What is it?" Naziren snapped impatiently.

Spike rose from his seat just as the door was flung wide, Xander appearing there, slightly out of breath. "Sorry, sorry--excuse us, wrong room. Jonathan." His voice lowered, took on pressure. "You were supposed to be getting more ice. Go. Now." For a moment the kid stood rooted to the spot as if he might ignore the order, but then he slumped and trudged out. "Sorry," Xander said again, meeting Spike's eyes. "We won't disturb you again."

The door closed behind them.
 
"Aurelius, please. Sit." Spike sank back down obediently as Naziren studied him. "You know, I encourage all my men to take regular leave. It reduces stress, rests the nerves. A few days off might be in order." His next words were light and deliberate. "Who knows...perhaps you'll meet with someone."

Spike raised his brows. "Meet someone, you mean."

Naziren smiled thinly. "Of course."

"Let me go," Jonathan complained, as Xander hustled him down the hall past Grauth who paid them no attention, and thank god for that. Buffy and Willow appeared as he was shoving the other man into a quiet stretch off the main corridor, between the cellar door and the entrance to the ice garden.

"Here's our Manchurian Candidate," Xander said, giving his charge a little shake.

Buffy gazed at Jonathan with a terrible look, mixing pity and judgment, the kind of look Xander always hated to get and was glad to have trained on someone else. "And yet something tells me he knows exactly what he was doing," she said.

"You have no idea what you've done!" Jonathan said, wrestling himself loose and playing a glare across them all. "I was going to...to..." It was clear the words didn't quite want to come.

"You were going to kill him," Buffy spelled out. "We know."

Jonathan's dark, tortured eyes fixed on her in disbelief. "Then why did you stop me? I wasn't afraid to die!" There wasn't so much bravado in him as resignation.

"They were using you, pal." Xander felt a pang of sympathy. He took the gun from Jonathan's pocket, examined it briefly, then tucked it away.

"They were going to use a human attack to justify cracking down on all of us," Buffy said. "If you'd killed him here, right in the heart of high society, you'd have set off repercussions that you can't even begin to imagine."

Shrinking under her words, Jonathan whispered, "I was just trying to do something. Anything. I thought it would help." He looked nearly ready to cry. Xander put his hand on the other man's shoulder, squeezed.

"If you really want to help..." He glanced at Buffy, who made an almost imperceptible sign, then turned back to Jonathan. "I think we can find plenty for you to do."

Anya descended the staircase in grand fashion, slipping her ritzy spy-glasses back into her purse and snapping it shut with a sense of accomplishment. Noticing appreciative looks directed at her from the men arrayed below, she shook her tailfeathers a bit, one gloved hand sliding down the rail. It wasn't so wrong to enjoy a party, especially if you could combine your pleasures with an agenda of politically correct espionage.

She lifted a glass of champagne from a tray as she glided by, drifting toward the edge of the balcony overlooking the ballroom. After a moment, someone joined her, and she looked over. "Oh, hello."

"Hey." Willow leaned gently on the rail. A sigh gusted out. "We found the assassin." Her voice was very soft, even though no one else was nearby.

"Oh, good."

"We've got a new recruit and a couple of bodies to squirrel out of here, but I guess we're further ahead than when we started tonight." She paused, shoulders writing a downcast line. "I still wish we could've found the plans for the wynariver."

"Didn't Buffy tell you?" Anya patted her purse.

"You found them?" Willow's face lit up with a trace of her usual excitement. "That's so great!" But her enthusiasm ebbed as quickly as it had come, leaving a dry cynicism. "Now we just have to figure out how it works and how to counter it, all without using magic." Brooding commenced on cue.

Giving her a critical eye, Anya said, "You look peaked." She held out her glass. "Here, have a sip of this."

Willow winced, her hand gently diverting the offer. "No, thanks. I've had enough for tonight." A glance twitched Anya's way. "Peaked?"

Anya lifted one shoulder in a shrug, dislodging a satin strap. She admired her own pale arm and the jeweled bracelet dangling from it, its links so fine they snagged the tiny hairs along her wrist, and she watched the light rippled in concentric rings across the surface of her drink, broken by rising bubbles. She wasn't supposed to have alcohol, because that was bad for the fetus curled up inside her like a prize in a cereal box--but could one glass hurt?

"I'm only going to have one glass," she said aloud, reassuring herself.

"Okay." Willow sounded puzzled, but didn't question her.

She sipped her drink and it tasted like music, music rising in bubbles from below. "That singer has a lovely voice," she observed. Anya could just make out the glossy hair of the woman on the stage, and the glitter of the sequins on her dress, though the strong light surrounding her blurred her features into a white mask. "I think I've heard her on the radio."

Next to her Willow straightened up and gripped Anya's arm. Anya looked down at it, frowning but not yet ready to voice her feelings about unwanted pain. "Hey," Willow said, "that's--that's Tara."

"Really? I didn't know she'd recorded any--"

"She's not supposed to be up there!" Willow stammered out, anxiety stringing through her voice.

Anya considered this. True enough, but why the fuss? "It doesn't seem like a bad gig." Flinging a tense and not entirely nice look Anya's way, Willow hurried off without another word. "A lovely voice," Anya repeated to herself with philosophical composure, then lifted her glass in a toast to the song.

Hands lifting the sides of her skirt, Willow clattered down the stairs, nearly tripping over the treads in her haste, flinging curses at high fashion as she went. They'd been so caught up in the whole plot thinginess and poor Tara had been up there who knew how long, trapped on stage and forced to sing and she hated even talking in front of people, she'd always been so shy, and sure, that'd changed over the years, but this, now, in front of demons--it made Willow a bit sick to her stomach.

She reached the curtained alcove behind the stage just as a song was ending, its final strains bleeding out, leaving the pure notes of Tara's voice hanging there. After a moment there was silence, and then applause. Willow worried nervously at her long gloves, shoving the fingers up and down until she shed one entirely like a snake skin. She didn't even notice.

Tara was coming down off the stage, and Willow felt a tightness in her chest give way to relief. She moved forward to meet her lover, who appeared sudden and full-bodied and glowing from her exertions and the heat of the stage lights. She grinned at Willow, who nearly flung her arms around her in happiness. But there was still a risk of demons coming by, so she settled for grasping Tara's upper arms and holding her in place.

"You're okay!"

"Oh," Tara said, still grinning, "I'm great! Did you hear me?"

"I did," Willow said simply, charmed by the other woman's goofiness, her own smile unhiding itself.

"How'd I sound?" She was almost jittering with uncharacteristic delight.

"Terrific, of course! What were you doing up there?"

Tara tossed her hair, which slid back lightly across one shoulder. "The other singer didn't show up, so they asked me to fill in--or, well, told me to." A faint, rueful look.

"Okay, I'd'a been having the big freak-out."

"Well, I did. I kept forgetting the words. But after a while, it wasn't so bad." Tara glanced back toward the stage. "I have another set to do after this." Willow hid her amusement; there was an almost professional note of commitment in that statement that Tara seemed unconscious of. "But then I should--" She broke off, lips parted in startlement, and Willow mirrored her glance.

"My dear," said Euphemia, coming in with arms outstretched. Willow stepped back and put some discreet distance between her and Tara, the object of this affection. Two other Grauth dogged Euphemia's heels, males in tuxes, one with eyeglasses, the other fronted by a very unGrauthian-looking mustache. "You were wonderful out there. Brava, brava." She clapped a few times, light applause echoed by the other demons.

"T-thank you," Tara said, her previously strong voice dimming under this attention.

"Clearly you've been wasted in menial labor." Euphemia's hands were raised as if frozen on their last clap, but now she gestured to one side. A Grauth gentlemen bowed himself forward. "This is Major Strauch, who runs our Officer's Club--and many other fine establishments in town." The major inclined his head at the compliment and Euphemia smiled at him, then back at Tara. "He'll be your new patron, dear."

"Patron?" Tara said faintly, beginning to look as sick as Willow suddenly felt.
 
"You will be a prized addition to our stage," the Major said. "We will make you the toast of the Reich."

Tara turned stunned eyes Willow's way, but the plea in them was nothing she could answer.
 
 

Notes: So, this is the one where I was supposed to break the arc just a little, more or less write a fun one-off, sort of Duck Soup meets Gosford Park. Lots of champagne, dancing, girly skirts. All still there. But it did get changed a bit.

This ep starts off in media res with a few events having taken place offscreen over a period of a few weeks. There are a few plot holes, I realize; some more deliberate than not--because, hey, I'm trying to emulate canon after all--and some I probably don't even see. Hopefully they aren't too large. And god, this took a long time. I don't even know what's going on going forward. I feel like I want to re-read the whole set of stories and get a sense of what it looks like so far, but I also want to do that with printed versions and am not sure that is going to be feasible. Must suck it up I guess. Am afraid of losing track of plot points that I meant to string out like pretty pearls, is the thing.

Now that I've wibbled.

Twelfth episode in an alternate season 8, with an AU season 7 in between; everything branches off from "Gone." Standard disclaimers, because I still love Joss, the big mutant enemy, and all his little grr-argh writers, and Santa Claus. I like newts, too.

Do not archive. Links are fine, though. My new LiveJournal is here, the main noir page is here, and my nominal homepage is here, at least if you aren't reading this page in frames.

I still do appreciate feedback at eliade @ drizzle.com. I recently answered some e-mails. Not yours, I can hear you thinking, but the intentions are still there. Some I fear to answer, because they have dust on them, and mouse tracks, and were written in quill on parchment.