They walked along the lawn toward Graydon Manor, following the curve of the drive under the heavy trees. The grounds had been kept up well by someone, probably a gardener hired by the realty company, and the acreage was enough that you'd need outside help--it would be a bitch to maintain otherwise, unless you liked the natural look.

"So what do you think?" Giles asked.

Xander glanced at the other man. There was no mistaking the proud smile on Giles's face as he strolled along with his hands in his jeans pockets, looking like a tweedy lord of the manor. All he needed was a few hounds, a cracked rifle, and some Wellies and you could drop him in one of those BBC miniseries where everyone punted and cricketed and drank hock, whatever the hell that was. It would be a shame to wipe that smile off his face. Then again, you should never pass up the opportunity for fun. Bad for your heart, they said.

"Well, the house was built before zoning ordinances, so you've only got a twenty-foot setback off the eastern bluff, and with three inches of annual recession you'll have your own lakeside bathtub in another eighty years. Since you're not a vampire, you won't be around to worry, but you'll probably still want to build a retaining wall. Your septic system needs to be pumped out first, maybe even replaced, and you should re-roof in a year or so. Oh, and your realtor was wrong--you'll need to apply for a change-of-use permit before opening the school."

Glassy eyed, Giles drifted to a stop near an apple tree littered with windfall and said, "That all sounds...very expensive."

"You'll be fattening the college funds of dozens of blue-collar babies, no doubt about it. Think of it as your contribution to higher education."

"Lord help us," Giles murmured. "I hope the council accounts are flush." Visibly shaking off these distracting thoughts with a return of good cheer, he said, "We do have apples, though." He bent over and scooped up one, straightened again. "We'll be able to make a bit of extra money, I imagine, by...er...selling..." He trailed off, examining the withered, wormy fruit.

With a pang of sympathy, Xander took it from him. "Just close your eyes, think of England, and get out your checkbook," he instructed.

Giles sighed.

A hail came from the direction of the house, and they looked over to see Buffy and Willow on the second-story wraparound porch, leaning on the rail with sunny grins and waving down at them. A pretty snapshot of halter tops and girlish legs held Xander's imagination for a moment, reminding him of a time not so long ago when he would have appreciated the view even more. In a loud, forced, anxiety-ridden sort of way. He had a sudden impression of himself as he'd used to be, his entire personality like a gaudy shirt, worn as a disguise. If that Xander were here now, he'd be shouting naughty witticisms and bounding puppy-like into the crush of flesh and action.

Not really missing you much, old buddy.

The girls began mock-fanning themselves and blowing kisses over their shoulders like southern debs. Or maybe ladies in a cathouse. He wasn't entirely sure what they were going for. Next to him, Giles chuckled.

"Giles, this place is great!" Buffy called. "Did you know it has six fireplaces?" She'd leaned forward over the porch rail, bracing her arms on the weathered wood.

"Yes," Giles replied in tones that didn't carry. "No doubt useful for burning our heating bills." He turned to Xander a moment later, frown etching his brow. "You're quite sure that porch is safe?"

Xander squinted against the afternoon sun, then shaded his eyes. The three-story Victorian had been squatting out here in the backwaters of Sunnydale for a hundred years, and it looked disheveled, as if it hadn't been expecting company and got caught napping under its gables, but was solid for all that. "They built them to last back then," Xander assured him. "This house has survived a half dozen earthquakes and several generations of the most destructive force known to man."

A curious glance. "The Hellmouth?"

"Children. I used to bike out here when I was little, chuck rocks at the windows. Place has been empty for years. Real white elephant. You'd need a lot more than one perky slayer to--"

There was a shriek from the house and they watched, frozen in horror, as Buffy tumbled through a shattered gap in the rails and down the porch roof as if wiping out on a ski slope, then crashed to the ground below.

Xander and Giles ran to where Buffy lay groaning, meeting Willow, who'd hurtled down the exterior steps nearly as quick as gravity.

"Buffy!" Xander wondered how many times he'd said her name over the years with just that degree of urgency and fear, or he might have wondered, if he hadn't been overcome with urgency and fear. She'd pushed herself upright by the time they reached her side, and was sitting in her divot of grass, frowning more with pique than pain.

"Are you all right?" Giles asked her, dropping to one knee and not quite touching her shoulder. If you're British, apparently you save physical contact for truly extreme moments, like actual death.

"The Russian judge gives me a three for dismount--ow--and I just mowed the grass with my," a glance at Giles, "rhyming thing. Otherwise, fine." She got up without assistance, dusted off her rhyming thing, and looked up at the broken railings. The rest of them craned their necks to follow her gaze.

"I don't get it," Xander said. "Those railings broke like they were rotten, but when I checked them out earlier they looked fine." In bafflement he turned his attention to the debris, kneeling to study a cracked piece of wood. Flexing it in his hands, he said, "It's kindling." With a hundred hi-karate slayer sessions in mind, he looked at Buffy. "You weren't putting a lot of weight on it, were you?"

"Weight?" Buffy said with a woman's horror, as if he'd just accused her of forking up a troughful of Twinkies and chasing them down with the blood of the unborn.

"Giving it a little slayer oomph?" He punched the air lightly with a fist.

"Completely oomphless," she said, voice emphatic, folding her arms. "And who was supposed to guarantee a slayer-safe play zone?"

His professional rep called into question, Xander felt both defensive and guilty. "I swear, Buffy, it was fine."

Giles lowered his gaze from the porch, grimness edging his expression; not a look you wanted to provoke from the watcher. "The most important thing is that you're unhurt. However, I intend to have a few sharp words with the realtor." Having redirected the blame to everyone's satisfaction, he said as one struck by a thought: "I wonder if she might knock down the price."

"Glad I could help," Buffy said dryly. "Oh, hey, you want me to limp? Or I could black out a few teeth."

"No, of course not, I--"

"Giles, how can you think of money at a time like this?" The teasing in Willow's tone squeaked as clearly as helium to Xander, but Giles looked even more flustered.

"I only want to ensure that proper accountability is, is upheld--" Gathering his wits, Giles sighed. "You truly are cruel little beasts," he declared, dismissing them with a brisk sweep. "Worse than any demons the Hellmouth could spew forth."

They all grinned and caught his arms to guide him toward the house, a trio of tugboats escorting the dignity of Her Majesty's vessel to harbor.

None of them looked up again as they went inside, but above their heads a butterfly ascended toward the porch as if to investigate a crime scene. It flickered around the edges of the gap, then settled with breathing wings on the broken end of the balustrade.

By the open French doors a whirl of dust stirred without a breeze and took shape, drifting from the floorboards inside across the porch tiles, thickening as it moved. Halfway across the porch, the nebulous darkness stopped and coiled, lifting one undifferentiated end into the air and weaving like a snake preparing to strike, which it did a moment later, snapping across the porch to wrap itself around the butterfly. The creature struggled in its grip, growing brighter, wings illuminated like stained-glass windows that suddenly shattered in a brilliant flare.

The remains of the butterfly fell to the porch floor. The coil of darkness hovered a moment as if watching without eyes, then turned toward the house and slowly slid back inside.

The common room of Fischer Hall stayed busy even during class periods, and Willow loved to study there. It gave her the feeling of being a cell within a running artery of students, all carrying books and backpacks, their presence validating her own, even if they didn't know it. It wasn't like high school, where having a brain marked you as different, freaky different. Here, big brains were cool and sexy, and besides, most of these people didn't know her, which was liberating. They didn't know she'd been only one short step above a nerd for most of her life, shoved aside in hallways by girls with clicking heels and bright, shiny laughs. All they saw now was Willow 2.0, a smart, sassy college chica. She was confident, she was strong, she was--

"Oh no," she said, pawing through her bag and then dumping its contents on the table. Pens, fruit, and sage sticks rolled hither and yon, and panic set in. "Quick, look around. Do you see a green highlighter with a lucky tassel on the end--it's got to be here somewhere. Buffy, help me smoke it out!"

With a maddening lack of urgency, Buffy leaned forward to scan the messy spill of Willow's bag, plucked a marker loose, and held it up. "What about this one?"

"That's blue," Willow pointed out, staring at Buffy as if she'd lost her mind. "Blue highlighter for psych, green for history. I can't get psych in my history. It'd be, like, psychohistory! I'm not that advanced yet!"

"Okay, chill."

"You don't understand. I have a carefully calibrated study system. I'm a, a study machine. But the motor needs parts, and without that highlighter I can't study for my quiz and the car grinds to a halt and crashes into a ditch, and pow. Game over. I might as well quit school and sell my body to tramps."

As this nightmare vision of the future filled her mind--a parade of shabbily dressed men clutching bags of pennies, lurching through a junkyard toward the mattress where she lay--Buffy glanced around and then stretched to retrieve something from under the sofa. "Hey, here it is."

Willow snapped back into the present. "Oh, thank god," she said, beaming her gratitude and relief at Buffy.

"A loss for all tramps everywhere," Buffy said, tucking her legs back up onto the chair in side-saddle fashion.

"Did someone say tramps?" Xander asked, appearing from around a corner and dropping into a seat across from them with the most casual tude imaginable, as if he were simply hooking up for a quick chat between classes.

"Too late." Buffy waved one hand, sweeping the subject away. "We defeated them with inky goodness."

"I miss all the cool battles," Xander complained. He leaned back in a guylike sprawl and gave Willow a once-over. "Would I be the absolute gay stereotype if I said 'sweet boots'?"

The compliment startled a grin from her, and she extended her legs for ogling. "You like? We did the mother-daughter shopping trip this weekend."

"Way liberal with the Rosenberg funds, isn't she." Faint envy colored Buffy's voice.

"Yeah, she still has all this lingering guilt about trying to burn me at the stake. I mean, it was two years ago and she doesn't remember anything, but sometimes I'll pretend to grab a hot casserole from the oven--you know, without mitts?--and she'll be good for three, four hundred dollars at a pop."

Her friends looked at her with new respect. "You are the master manipulator," said Xander. "Slip me some skin." They slapped palms, and even added the little finger-waggle they'd tricked up last year during their big code-word-and-hand-signals phase. Willow felt ridiculously content for a moment, but kind of nostalgic too. It would be great if Xander were still going to school with them. Speaking of which.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked. "Just droppin' in to scope the fashion scene?"

"Lunch hour. Buffy asked me to stop by at," a swift check of watch, "twelve-thirty on the dot. Some kind of errand."

They both looked expectantly at Buffy, who'd straightened up in her seat, almost like a prairie dog sensing danger. "Yes, I--I wanted you to--" She hesitated. "I don't know. I forgot. Guess it wasn't important." She shrugged, nearly dislodging the white cardigan draped on her shoulders.

Oo-kay, Willow thought. Flaky. Xander seemed to be thinking the same thing, but merely said, "That's okay. I needed to get off-site for a while. There's only so much Whitesnake a man can endure before he takes the law into his own hands. One of these days I'm going to--"

"Hey," came an unfamiliar voice. Willow twisted around to see a standard-issue guy in Gap gear planted next to her couch, gripping the strap of his carrier bag like a mailman making deliveries.

"Derek!" It was Buffy's brightly-feigned-surprise voice, and it gave Willow a very bad feeling, the kind you get just before talent shows, or when you meet strange girls from South America, or when one of your best friends is intent on managing the life of your other best friend in a really horrible, embarrassing way. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, you asked me to meet you."

Willow felt a desperate urge to cover her eyes. If one of those face-hugging parasites from Alien struck right now, she wouldn't even try to stop it from laying eggs in her throat. Go ahead, she'd say, make me a host for your foul and deadly implantation, as long as I don't have to witness this. If she wanted to see badly staged dramas, she could go to community theater.

"Oh, right!" Buffy said. "Sit down. Will, scoot over." She made scooting gestures with her hand, and Derek sat next to her on the Xander-facing end, looking as awkward as Willow felt. "Guys, this is Derek. Derek, this is Willow--" They murmured lamely pleasant hellos. "--and Xander," she finished.

"Hey." Xander sort of waved without actually moving his arm. He clearly hadn't gotten it yet, and Willow's dread keyed itself up another pitch. It was now like watching a car wreck in slow-motion. With proximity, she noticed that Derek smelled strongly of cologne, that he'd had a recent haircut, and that the inside of his left ear was shiny. He was wearing a hoop earring from which dangled a tiny, pink enamel triangle. Breathing softly through her mouth, Willow stared at it, trying to mesmerize herself into a state of hysterical blindness.

"Hi," Derek said to Xander. "Nice to meet you."

"Derek's in my social studies class." After Buffy imparted this information she paused, and with their stretching silence this fact seemed to take on special importance, as if it might explain the mystery of Easter Island or the Anasazi.

"Ah," Xander finally said. "Social studies. One of the more misleadingly titled subjects. You might think it'd teach you about dating and the fine points of club etiquette, but you'd be sadly wrong. Of course, maybe it's different in college."

"Not really," Derek said. "Though we do have a chapter on political parties next week, so who knows. Maybe Professor DeBecker will get her groove on."

Buffy laughed abruptly, then laid her fingers across her lips as everyone looked her way. "Sorry. I was just picturing that and you really had to be there...in my brain. Ignore me. Keep talking!"

"So you're in construction," Derek said to Xander, making an earnest show of interest.

With a bemused expression, Xander said, "Yes-s-s-s." Willow could see the connections forming. "Yes, I am." He shot a dark look Buffy's way from under his lashes. "Where I have access to power saws, cement, and conveniently sized pits."

Derek laughed. "Sounds like you have a few bodies to bury."

"Just one."

"Derek's dad is in construction," Buffy put in.

"My cousin, actually," Derek corrected. "My dad's in banking."

"Still." Buffy smiled, not to be diverted from her agenda. "You two have a lot in common." Willow closed her eyes and prayed for the heavens to open and blood to rain from the sky. Wasn't it time for another apocalypse? Any moment now. Any moment. "You both like science fiction," Buffy went on, "and you're both into music."

"You both have noses," Willow muttered under her breath, talking to no one but herself.

"You watching Farscape?" Derek asked Xander.

"Oh, hell yeah. Man, did you see the last one? Chiana--"

"Her brother!"

"I would have kicked that Varla's ass. Mind-frell me, will you--"

"They say there aren't any more eps until January--"

"I'm in withdrawal already--"

Buffy's face suggested that the conversation wasn't going in the direction she'd intended. "Oh," she interrupted, "you guys should go see Cibo Matto tonight at the Bronze!" She'd obviously meant this to seem like a spontaneous idea, but it smacked of scripting and she didn't quite pull it off.

"Yeah, sure," Derek said, smiling affably at Xander.

"Sorry." Xander's discomfort wiped any trace of a smile from his own face. Willow could tell he felt bad at having to hurt the guy's feelings, and it made her all the more angry with Buffy. "I have other plans tonight."

"Oh, come on," Buffy said. "You can cancel them." Meaningful look.

"No. I can't." He turned back to Derek. "Sorry. Bad timing."

"That's okay." Derek stood up as awkwardly as he'd sat down. "I understand. Here's my phone number if you change your mind." He handed over a folded slip of paper--it nearly broke Willow's heart that he'd had it already written--then he said his goodbyes and made himself scarce.

After he left, Willow laid an irky little glare on Buffy, who said, "What?"

"Buffy, how could you do that? That poor guy. And poor Xander," she slung a hand at him like a game show hostess displaying a prize, "having to turn him down."

"Poor Xander didn't have to turn him down, Will." Buffy flared her own hands wide. "Why didn't you say yes?" she challenged Xander. "He was nice."

"Do you know me at all?" Xander wondered. "Let's look at the Xander Harris dating catalog. Cordelia, Faith, Anya, Spike. Are we seeing any common theme there? Nice it ain't."

"My point exactly--why not try on nice for a change and go for a relationship that has a chance of lasting longer than yogurt."

"Has it ever occurred to you I might like a little bang in my buck?"

"Has it ever occurred to you to seek therapy?" Buffy shot back.

"Oh, man." Xander shook his head and stood up. "I'm outta here."

When she was in first grade, Willow's teacher had taken a special interest, would sit with her during recess and play logic games, or show her tricks. Once she'd given her a piece of paper and told her to make two small tears on one side, like a fat letter E. Now hold the ends, she'd said, and tear the middle section in two. Willow had tried and tried, growing furious and panicky when she failed and not letting go of failure all that easily even when Mrs. Hemming explained that it could never work; it wasn't supposed to.

She'd finally figured out the trick, though. It took two people, and when you ripped, all three parts came undone, and the middle tore too.

"Stop it," she cried. "No fighting!" Might as well reduce the issue to simple decibels. Plus, tart finger shaking never hurt.

Her friends seized up mid-spat, and Xander took a deliberate breath, acknowledging Willow without quite bending to her will. "I have to get back to work," he said. He made a strange little skim of fingers across air, like piano scales, and said: "If you all figure out my love life while I'm gone, here's a thought--don't tell me. Also, dressing myself, paying the electric bill--I've got that covered too."

As he left, Buffy slumped in her chair. "Crap," she said with an eloquence Willow couldn't fault, her voice smaller than before. "I screwed that up."

"I'm gonna go with...yeah."

Buffy's blue gaze implored her. "You know I care, right? I'm not just Buffy Buttinski?"

Her honest concern took the edge off Willow's irritation. "I know. He does too. But you've got to let him work things out for himself. Nineteen-year old guys--they're not so much the Dear Abby demographic."

"Yeah." Buffy looked downcast. "And I'm thinking Dear Slayer isn't hitting syndication any time soon."

The foreman consulted his spec as he circumnavigated the first floor of the house. The kitchen drainage system needed to be brought up to code and in some places completely replaced, and half a plumber was visible, legs sticking out from under one of the sinks as he exchanged new pipes for the corroded pieces piled on the floor next to him. The room was big enough to serve up meals for the dozens of students who'd once lived here, and the lumber and equipment they'd stacked on its tiled floor barely filled a corner of its space.

In the dining room a two-man team was in the process of spackling and painting the walls, and the foreman paused a moment to inspect the job before moving into the library. The walls here were almost entirely covered in bookshelves, currently empty, their looming forest broken only by a few tall windows, inset into the shelves and bedded by window seats. Their casements had been opened to let in a breeze, and a worker was stripping the floor. After a brief thumbs-up, the foreman strode through into the front hall, where the clamor of hammers and saws echoed through open doors and descended the wide stairs from the second-floor balconies.

Scanning his clipboard, feet carrying him on autopilot, he was brought up short by an object that didn't move out of his way. Halted by unerring radar, he gave a squint and recognized the owner of the house. He hated it when they turned up on a site, inevitably getting in the way of important work and delivering uninformed opinions picked up from amateur DIY magazines.

"Mister Giles," he said glumly, rearranging a wad of gum in his mouth.

"Ah, Mister Dinsmore." Giles stood with hands buried in pockets, surveying the scene as if the emancipation of slaves and victory of upstart colonials had never occurred. "I was wondering--the work you're doing to the stairs. It seems as if it would be more sensible to do that last, after the repairs to the second floor were finished."

"Yah-huh," Dinsmore said, snapping his gum and scratching his stubbled jaw a few times. "We could do that. 'Course, if we don't fix the stairs, someone could fall through, sue, and bankrupt us both."

Giles cleared his throat. "Good--good job there. Keep it up."

"Yah-huh."

As Dinsmore was congratulating himself on distracting the owner with threat of litigation, Giles went on, "I say, I've noticed a few...oddities that require explanation."

Listening to the other man speak was like listening to a stage actor who couldn't pass up an artsy pause on certain words. Dinsmore had already decided it was a British thing. "Do tell," he said. His parody went unnoticed as Giles removed a notepad from his pocket and consulted it.

"The flagstones on the rear patio have been dug up and stacked into a pyramid as if for removal, one of the apple trees has been chopped down, and someone has scrawled graffiti on the east wall of the house--'Leave Now, You're Not Wanted'." Giles raised his gaze over the slant of his glasses and abandoned the pretense of reading from his list. Dinsmore was willing to bet he had it memorized. "There have been other acts of vandalism within the house proper--this morning, the first-floor bathroom was defaced with what appears to be a mix of baby food and pistachio pudding." The notebook merely whispered as Giles closed it, but Dinsmore felt as if something had snapped shut smartly around his windpipe.

Cursing the current labor market, he said, "Look. That kind of stuff happens on any work site, and nine times out of ten it's a bunch of kids with a wild hair up their yahoos."

"While normally I'd be inclined to take this as the work of disaffected youth, the paint came from a can inside the house, which was presumably locked." Giles stared at him coolly.

Dinsmore had just opened his mouth with no real idea what he was going to say, when there was an enormous crash and cry from above that caused both men to race across the hall and up the stairs, Giles with surprisingly athletic vigor, Dinsmore with a jingle of loose pocket change and clomping work boots, clipboard abandoned behind him. By the time they reached the north landing, a group of workers was clustered around one of the bedroom doors. Dinsmore shoved his men aside, clearing a path for Giles to shoulder in next to him. At the threshold they stopped short.

"Good god," Giles breathed.

From the ceiling a supporting beam now protruded like an arrow through a broken ribcage, and from the beam a man hung by one foot, slowly turning. His foot was bound by a yellow power cord, his hard hat lay on the floor under him in a spill of coins, and he was groaning.

"Emmet?" Dinsmore said, wondering how the man had gotten himself into this predicament. He drank a bit, but that didn't explain...this.

Emmet shook a fist as he swung to face Dinsmore, one finger jabbing the air for emphasis. "It's always one joke after another with him." His voice took on mimicking tones. "'Hey, Emmet, you hear this one? Guy was so fat that when he stepped on the scale it said, 'To be continued'.' Har de har har."

A few of the guys standing in the hallway snickered, and Dinsmore whipped back a glare that silenced them.

"Or how about the guy who was so fat, he had to get baptized at Sea World?" Emmet went on more or less to himself, the bitterness in his voice strangely out of proportion to his actual girth; in his upside-down position, his shirt had slipped to reveal a belly not all that bigger than average for Dinsmore's crew. It wasn't the prize-winning melon by a long shot.

"Oh, stuff a doughnut in it, you big cry-baby!"

Startled, Dinsmore finally noticed the broken window just as Bill Templeton leaned through it, his furious face reddened with dozens of small cuts. He had to be standing on the roof--if he'd been flung out, though, it was a wonder he hadn't fallen, and so Dinsmore's thoughts led him in a distracting way until Bill lobbed a shingle through the window at Emmet, bouncing it smartly off the poor man's head.

"Hey!" Dinsmore exclaimed a beat too late for prevention.

"Whine, whine, whine," Bill sneered, jerking half out of sight as if looking for another shingle. "Every day, it's whine, whine, whine," his words carried from outside, "Light's too bad, boards are too heavy, break's too short--" Another shingle flew in, missing Emmet and rolling across the floor to rest at Giles's feet. He bent down and picked it up. Dinsmore stared at the object, which wasn't a shingle. It was a Bismarck.

He didn't know what to say, and was doing his damnedest not to look at Giles, because any minute now the bastard would start biting off unanswerable questions in that very British voice that made anyone in range feel itchy and unwashed.
 
"Shut up!" Emmet yelled in the direction of the window, still spinning by one foot in a lazy circle.

"Dough-Boy!" Bill yelled back.

"Perhaps we should..." Giles hesitated, clearly as much at a loss as Dinsmore.

A flash of light made Dinsmore and Giles flinch back, shielding their faces. As their eyes grew accustomed, they lowered their arms and stared at the doughnuts raining down from the ceiling and bouncing like hail stones on the boards. With ten or fifteen seconds, pastries carpeted the floor.

Murmurs of approval rose from the crowd behind them.

Dinsmore felt his entire psychological foundation creak and list to one side as he tried to process the impossible. "I won't bill you for those," he assured Giles in a stunned, automatic voice.

"Good...good man." Giles looked cautiously ceilingward as the storm petered out, one last doughnut falling to earth with a jellied plop. "Let's just hope there's not coffee to follow."

He'd had too many nightmares like this to count, of being lost in someplace familiar but wrong, the lights out, plastic sheeting hanging like ripped and dirty ghosts from a web of pipes, stirring as he shifted through them. You tried to make no sound, but the floor was covered with chunks of broken plaster and even though you stepped between them in your bare feet, you heard tiny scrapes that something else would be able to hear even better. It would know you were coming and the sword you carried would be useless against it, because it was stronger, faster, and far more evil than you could ever hope to be.

Those were the nightmares, but this was real, and Xander caught his breath and went still as the thing stalking him moved somewhere ahead, a fleeting shadow behind layers of plastic. Flexing his hands around his sword hilt, he turned sideways and eased shoulder-first through a tattered corridor that filtered out more light than it let through. As he grew conscious of his breathing, he tried to control it, but his lungs kept harshing the air around his face. Stupid lungs. Too bad you couldn't turn off your body for a little while, or turn down your feelings. Most distractions were tiny--crumbled insulation beneath his feet, a splinter in his left sole, sweat pooling in the small of his back--but they added up into one big swarm of danger. Focus, he told himself.

Another shadow flitted by, closer now, sending a whisper through plastic, leaving a few strips flapping in its wake.

It was just toying with him.

He gave up on sneakiness. "Now you may not know this," he said, ironing the ragged edge of his voice, going for nonchalance, "but I happen to date a vampire. Big, hulking Richard Kiel of a guy--or, if you're not a Bond fan--built like a brick shit-house. Mean too. Of course, all you vamps are, but he's in a class by himself. He's the whole school, really."

A draft kissed Xander's ankles and he spun, sword slicing across plastic. Half a swathe fell, folding onto the floor. "I think we can reach an accommodation," he offered, poking the tip of his sword ahead of him as he moved in the hope of randomly hitting his mark, since his senses were telling him nothing. "You let me live, he lets you leave town in one piece." Laughter floated out of the darkness. "Deal?" he called.

"No deal," came the mocking voice. "But when I've finished din-dins, I'll track down this fancy poofter and give him your head as a memento of...fonder times."

Xander lunged in the direction of the voice and succeeded in lodging his sword point in the slats of a pillar. He yanked it out and dropped as a whistling blur cut the air above him. Bouncing up into a pile-driver, he sent his opponent staggering back a few paces, into an area of the room where the boards were bare and the air clear of obstructions. Across the floor from him, Spike lowered his brow and drew a swift, restless figure-eight in the air with his sword. He was smiling in that not-nice way of his which would make dogs retreat, his eyes blue and empty as the sky. He might as well have been wearing a tee-shirt that said, "Your blood, my nachos." Or maybe, "Fuck your corpse, baby."

But he wasn't wearing a shirt, and his jeans were black, and it was almost as if the upper half of his body floated in the darkness behind the flickering fan of his sword. The motion of Spike's wrist was hypnotic. After a few moments Xander tore his gaze away. He knew better than to try and show off himself, so he just circled in. Spike slid counter-clockwise, bare feet drifting across the boards. They had timing based on familiarity with each other's style, which made it all the more unexpected when Spike lashed out ahead of schedule--damn him--and danced by like a clock-hand springing loose from the face.

Answering with his own dance steps, Xander felt nowhere near as graceful. His feet carried him out of range for only a second or two before their swords began to clash with an angry sound that would have woken anyone's neighbors except for Spike's, who were probably out for a midnight brunch. Xander's wrists began to feel the strain almost immediately as Spike's blade dragged and snapped at his own. The edges were dull, Spike chipped, and these were compensations, but human strength still wasn't much against a vampire's.

Spike was just toying with him.

"Don't watch the blade," he reminded Xander, his voice low, smooth, and dangerously lulling. "Watch my shoulders. And ease your grip--you're not throttling its bloody neck. Got to squeeze your sword gentle, pretend it's your best friend." A nasty lick of a smile, a head tilt heavy with innuendo, and Xander had to suck in a breath to keep steady.

"I ease my grip, you knock it out of my hands. Nuh uh."

"Yeah," Spike admitted as he parried a thrust with lazy attention. "Got a point. Doesn't help your opponent's always going to be stronger."

"Hey! You don't know that." Thrust, parry. "I might have to fight an angry dwarf someday."

"Dwarf'll put you six foot under right quick."

Sparking with anger, Xander lunged blindly and was promptly tumbled to the floor by a casual kick of Spike's foot. He rolled over and found himself looking up along the blade whose point rested in the hollow of his throat. It ended in the hand of an irritated vampire. "You're dead," Spike announced. His eyes were cold. After countless practice sessions, he still seemed to take it personally when Xander lost, as if it were his own failure to impart some critical skill that was responsible and not Xander's less-than-demonic strength and agility.
 
The indignity of lying flat on his back wasn't helped by the arrival of Byron, who stepped delicately onto Xander's chest and rubbed his cheek against Spike's sword. Spike sighed, ire deflating. He pulled his weapon back and leaned over to scoop up the cat, then held it a moment one-handed, at face level.

"You're going to be a flaming shishkabob if you don't stay out of here," he warned, speaking to the cat as if it could understand him perfectly well.

Byron dangled in his owner's hand and stared back with aplomb until Spike slung the animal across his shoulder. It rode there like a limp stole as they returned to Spike's place through the huge, gaping hole he'd knocked in the wall separating his apartment from the rest of the floor, thereby claiming it for himself. (A few ichorous evictions later, with full success.)

In the jaundiced fluorescence of Spike's kitchen, Xander went to the beat-up old fridge and took out a bottle of water, downing half its contents in several gulps. Behind him, he could hear Spike toss a rattling handful of kibble in Byron's bowl. When he put the water back and turned, Spike shoved him against the closing fridge and sealed their mouths together. He was half-hard.

Fighting. Got vamps all riled up.

There was some serious tonguing that Xander could feel heading toward dirty kitchen-floor sex, and then he made himself pull back for a breather. Spike let him exercise his lungs, but his hips didn't stop riding against Xander's, and he touched his tongue to his lower lip as if trying to decide what he wanted to taste next. It was hard to think when you had an armful of pervy goodness snugged up against you. Still, Xander made a point of not being a pushover.

"You know, Buffy asked the other day if we were back together."

Spike was looking at Xander's lips in a way that suggested he wasn't listening too closely. "Did she now."

"We need a code. Like the handkerchief code. But for other people. A red handkerchief means we're broken up. Green, we're back together. It'd be easier than trying to explain..." He paused, shifted his hips a little. "...this."

"Never apologize, never explain."

"You have a future in greeting cards. But I'd like to keep my friends." He hesitated, his mind adding, and you. But right now Spike was full of electricity and static cling, hips climbing up Xander's, his whole body like a blanket you couldn't peel off, and the words seemed unnecessary.

Leaning in, Spike mouthed his neck right on the pulse line, then dragged his teeth across it, like a surgeon marking the spot for his incision. Lust slammed through Xander's body right to his balls, but he turned his head away and said, "Not there."

Spike pulled his head back. "'Fraid they'll find out, give you a stern talking to?"

"They already think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. It's not like I'd let anyone else dick me around like this."

That did it. Spike stepped out of his arms and stared at him with a combination of affront and suspicion, the corners of his mouth tightening. "You got something to say, say it."

"I just need to know where we stand. Two steps forward and we're living together, one step back and you're here again," he waved at Spike's apartment, "because you need your space. One day we're fighting, the next we're necking. I know this is just your run-of-the-mill vampire soap opera, but it's kicking my ass."

"This the part where I'm supposed to go down on bended knee, give you a ring?" Spike paused for thought and blinked. "Hold up, that sounds fun."

"That," Xander said with frustration, running a hand through his hair. "That's what I'm talking about. This isn't all about sex."

"No?"

"Did I mention that Buffy tried to set me up with this guy? Nice, normal, probably not cursed. I could be out with him right now."

Something in Spike's eyes closed over, as if part of him had disappeared behind a lizard's transparent lids. "So why aren't you?"

"Hell if I know."

"Maybe this'll jog your memory," Spike said, grabbing a handful of Xander's jeans and twisting in a just-this-side-of-painful way.

Xander knocked his hand aside. "Cut it out."

"Spoiled for choice now, that it? Figure you don't need old Spike anymore. 'Course, Boy Normal can't give you this, can he?" Spike vamped out and bared his fangs with a wicked smile.

The vampire's display didn't so much scare Xander as make him feel weirdly sad on Spike's behalf--but was there anything more annoying than someone who referred to himself in the third person? "I don't need that," he said steadily, despite the flickering ache in his most recent bite scar.

Spike's demon dissipated like ripples across a pond, leaving an indulgent smile behind. "Care to make a small wager on that, pet?"

Willow lay across her bed, chin hooked on a pillow, and stared at her class notes with a sense of deep bewilderment. Auditing a graduate-level course on the asymptotic evaluation of integrals had sounded far more exciting when her advisor had suggested it, but now she just had a purple notebook full of nonsensical numbers, and what the hell did wave-propagation theory have to do with her anyway? She suspected that her professor was making half his lectures up, and that was no fun. Because sure, if you assumed that radio waves were actually created by reflections from the ionosphere, you could use that to explain echoes of radio energy, but that didn't even consider the effects of refraction and scintillation--

"So, if the earth revolves around the sun, what does the sun revolve around?" Buffy wondered aloud from her own bed.

Dragging her mind back into place, Willow propped herself up on her arms and looked across at her friend, who was kicking her heels bouncily assward and toeing off one frilly sock. Willow tried to figure out if the question was evidence of extraordinary ignorance or unexpected insight. "Actually, it revolves around the center of the galaxy, about once every two hundred and fifty million years."

Buffy popped loose her raspberry sucker with a cheerful, slurping sound. "Oh. Cool."

With a small affectionate smile, Willow rolled herself up into a seated position. "So, hey, are you and Riley going to the Bronze tonight?"

Matching her movement, Buffy sat up and abandoned her text book. She played absently with her lollipop as she spoke, turning it between her fingers like a shiny, sticky microphone. "I don't know. We haven't talked yet. Today."

Willow tipped her head to one side. "Are you guys having The Rift?" Gamely she made finger quotes, trying to convey the illusion of some shared, girlish vocabulary she wasn't sure existed outside of Cosmo.

"Grand Canyon size. He won't talk to me about the job thing."

"Maybe that's because you call it 'the job thing'?" Finger quotes again.

"Why are you," finger quotes, "air-quoting everything you say?"

Sighing, Willow had to admit, "I think I over-Seinfelded last night. Next time, take my remote away before the ab-sculpting infomercials come on."

In answer to her plea, Buffy just smiled with a peek-a-boo of amusement. "But you look so cute when your mouth is hanging open, with the drool and the glassy eyes."

Horror. "Oh my god, did I drool?"

"I'll just let the instant photos speak as evidence."

She may or may not have been joking, whimsical cur of Satan that she was. Just the possibility of doubt made Willow wince, though. "Okay, I'm confiscating the sticky film. It will be rationed out only to those who use it responsibly."

The phone rang then, interrupting girltime, and Willow slouched across the bed to answer it. "Hello?"

"Hey," came the voice of her boyfriend, mellowing from hundreds of miles away. Her boyfriend. His very existence still made her squeaky.

"Oz! Where are you? It's like you're right in my ear!"

"I'd rather be. Though, cramped." Background sounds filtered in, a steady beep like a truck backing up, and the tinned bark of someone's voice on a loudspeaker. "We're at the airport in Salt Lake. Which is not much like your ear. Flight's delayed so I thought I'd call."

Willow was smiling. She could tell by the stretchy ache in her cheeks, a good ache, the kind you got when... Oops. Sexy thoughts. "I'm glad. Glad you...called. How was the gig?"

A thoughtful pause. "Well, apparently they have vampires here too. The lighting guy at the club tried to get a bite in. I told him I was seeing someone, but he pressed."

"Did you stake him?" Across the room, Buffy looked up from her homework, attention drawn.

"Oh, no. I was going to, but then we got into this whole discussion about self-control and the concept of abstinence as a spiritual tool. He got kinda upset...and then he just took off before I could grab him. He gave me this interesting pamphlet, though. Apparently I can save my soul in six easy lessons."

"Okay. That's good, I guess." It wasn't, really. But the fiction of Sunnydale demanded that they treat such anecdotes lightly, fodder for casual phone chats. Just another encounter that raised all kinds of troubling questions about vampires and the world outside city limits, and even about Oz himself. But Buffy was obviously still listening--to be fair, she couldn't help but overhear--so Willow kept it light.

"Are you alone?" Oz asked, his voice sultry. Could men have sultry voices?

Could they ever.
 
"Um, Buffy's here." Willow flashed a smile as Buffy glanced up again.

"Say hi for me," she instructed around a suck of lollipop.

"Buffy says hi."

"I say hey."

"Oz says hey," Willow informed her, then lay belly-down across her bed, chinning her pillow in a way that turned the conversation more private.

"So, damn." Oz's voice was matter of fact, but somehow he conveyed in even his most bland and ordinary tone a touch of sexiness. "Too bad you're not alone. I was going to say inappropriate things to you."

She got excited by this development, almost giddy, her body unrolling one long flush and her ear tips burning with self-consciousness. She didn't disapprove. "You were? Like what?"

"Nahhh. Better not. You might spontaneously combust, ignite the drapes, trap dozens of students in a crucible of fiery death." A thoughtful pause. "I need to tone down my scenarios. This may explain why I killed my sims."

"You deprived them of food!"

"That too."

"No pet hamsters for you, mister."

There was a comfortable silence in which she could picture Oz's tiny smile, and then he said, "I miss you. That thing with your nose, where you pretend to be Samantha...I miss that."

Oh, she thought, as she entered the city limits of Swoonyville. Oh oh oh. "I miss you--I miss your nose too!" Delighted at their mutual want and need and nose-appreciation, she wished she could send a breath to him through the phone, a kiss of warm air in his ear, and immediately wondered if there was a spell for that. Distracted, it took her a moment to track his words as he said,

"They're boarding. I have to go. Um. We may stay over in L.A. with Devon's brother, drive up tomorrow."

"Okay," Willow said, with a pang of disappointment. "I'll see you soon. Be, be careful, okay? Stay away from the stewardesses."

"Why--demons?"

"Well, you never know. Strapped in at twenty thousand feet, you don't want to antagonize the spirits of the air. They may look perky, but their bosomy carapaces conceal hearts of blackness that doom mortal men."

"Wow," he said with a note of subdued respect. "One might think you're a little jealous there. It's good, I like it. You've got that redheaded thing going for you. But...you know I'm with you, right?" The way he said 'with you' made it firm and deep, like a promise.

She felt a pang of embarrassment at her own transparency, and her voice lowered and softened. "I know. It's just that, sometimes I think of you with someone else and even if you're just making eye contact...they're not my eyes. And if you're smiling, it's not at me. And I think maybe you'll see something in them that you don't see in me, and you'll look at me differently the next time we're together."

"Willow, when I look at anyone...all I see is you."

"...so I wound up in Oxnard, and let me tell you, until you've seen Oxnard by moonlight in a car with no engine, you haven't lived."

Derek chuckled--and no, you couldn't call it a full laugh, you had to call it a chuckle--and Xander felt a flush go through him. He wasn't sure if it was attraction or discomfort, or some weird, malfunctioning valve that might cause both. It was nice to be laughed at, when you meant to be. And Derek, objectively speaking, was an attractive guy, which made it that much better. He was tidy and smart and personable too, like someone who might help you pick out a new stereo at Radio Shack, and he was wearing khakis. Xander tried to picture Spike wearing khakis. It broke his head.

"You've had a lot of adventures," Derek said.

"You don't know the half of it." Xander nearly bit his tongue after the casual remark, hoping it wouldn't invite questions, but Derek just smiled some more, then shifted his gaze to watch the band for a moment, which allowed Xander to watch him. Examine him. There was nothing to find fault with. He had a nice neck, showing signs of a recent hair cut under the ears. A mole at the jawline, small and ordinary. Very, very tan skin. When Derek turned back to catch his eye, Xander manufactured a smile automatically, but it had real, wholesome ingredients. He wasn't unhappy to be here. It had been a good idea, a healthy decision, to call Derek and get out. Do human-type things for a change, which--because he often drank and yakked and shot pool with Spike, too--he defined merely as 'things done with humans'.

"I'm glad you called," Derek said, then ducked his head almost at once, making a sheepish face as he played with his beer. "Man, that's a corny thing to say."

"It's not. Besides, I don't really have a big problem with corn. Creamed, cobbed, popped. Corn bread, corn pone--" Aware that he was entering Bubba Blue territory he pulled out fast. "What is a pone, anyway? I've always wondered."

"Uh, I'm not sure. A kind of cake?" They gave this a moment of mutual reflection before Derek took a deep breath and said, "I'd ask you to dance, but..." He shrugged one shoulder toward the herd of couples on the dance floor, where girls danced with guys, and guys with girls, all of them giving off a young, nervous animal vibe that didn't invite homosexual deviance.

"It's all right." Xander twisted a straw between his fingers, knotting it. "Tuesdays are a good night to come, if you want to dance."

"You like to dance?"

"I've been known to cut a rug." Sweet fancy Jesus, he hadn't just said that, had he? "Actually, I've more often been known to mangle a rug." Derek laughed, encouraging Xander's bad wit, making him feel he could get lucky. What would that be like? How disturbing was it that he didn't know how human men fucked, what they tasted and smelled and felt like? Was Spike anywhere near the norm, or was he more likely smirking at it from a great distance?

And then there was a lull. Flag on the play, as they both fumbled with drinks and napkins and whatever else was handy. Time enough for Xander to flash back to high school and think about how much had changed, and how little. Now he was a nervous goof with guys instead of girls. It wasn't what you'd call progress.

"Do you want to," Derek began, just as Xander said, "So what do you do--" And they both stopped and laughed and went through the equivalent of a Japanese bowing routine as each of them tried to get the other to go first.

"Well, isn't this cozy," came a well-known drawl just as Derek, mouth open, was gearing up for round two in their Special Olympics conversation.

Xander tensed in his seat, throat locking up, jaw tightening, a vein in his temple beginning to throb, and none of these symptoms comparing in physical distress to the sudden plunge of dread in his belly. He made himself look at Spike, who'd manifested by their table like an inopportune violinist, and found himself staring chest-level at a dark blue silk shirt. His own. The shirt, in fact, that he'd almost worn tonight, but it had seemed too dressy. Silk shirt, faded jeans: one vampire, dressed to kill. Bastard. The sheer nerve of it floored Xander.

"Spike. What are you doing here?" He kept his tone casual for Derek's sake, saving the sharp bite for his gaze.

"Just dropped in for a drink." Spike raised his beer pointedly, then uncurled one finger from its neck to point at an empty seat. "Mind if I join you?" His question was directed to Derek, who nodded back in a startled way before turning an uncertain look on Xander.

He was ready to protest, but it was already too late. Spike slid his ass onto the chair, sitting close enough for Xander to get a dizzying breath of soap and laundry detergent. The scents you knew well held a kind of magic, carrying messages you couldn't resist, and for one topsy-turvy second Spike's presence was weirdly homey and reassuring, as if he were coming to Xander's rescue. Then sanity returned, and Xander wanted to smack him.

"Hi," said Derek. "I'm Derek Chapin." He stuck out his hand, and Spike looked at it, then shook it in a mocking way that Xander wasn't sure Derek caught.

"Hello, Derek." Spike's voice was all poncey marmalade. "I'm Spike."

Hi there, I'm fucked. It was enough to make a man contemplate heavy drinking, relocation, and homicide. Xander didn't quite put his head in his hands, but he came precariously close, and then thought fuck it, and girded his loins with the determination to thwart Spike's thwartiness.

"So," Xander said, raising his brows at Spike's beer. "You're drinking again. I thought that you were on the wagon after your...treatment."

Derek's gaze dropped in social embarrassment while Spike processed the remark--confusion, amazement, and then a keen, dark look of respect, delivered with a head tilt that made Xander want to dry-hump his leg through sheer Pavlovian response. His cock stiffened, and he shifted in his chair. Bastard.

"I'm a slave to the bottle," Spike said with affected resignation, and then his voice lowered to hurt. "I didn't think you'd bring that up. Not in front of someone else." He turned to Derek in a confiding way. "I've tried so hard for him, y'know. Settled down, given up the best years of my life. Made a home for him."

Brain shorting out with horror, Xander cursed the decades of low-brow daytime television that had honed Spike's nefarious talents. The tone of pained sincerity he'd twisted his voice into had Derek looking green around the gills. "I should go," the other man said.

"No!" Xander glared at Spike, games forgotten. "You. Get lost."

"But, Xan--"

"It's okay," Derek said, getting to his feet, expression terribly earnest. "You two should talk. Xander, give me a call later." A quick smile passed across his face and he held Xander's eyes for a beat with more understanding that Xander had expected to see there. "I'll be up late."

They sat in silence as he left, Xander rolling unsaid words around in his mouth, all of them tasting angry. "Congratulations," he said at last. "You made short work of that."

"Oh, your puppy'll be back for more kicks." Spike leaned back, shoulders flaring in silk. "Long as he's got your bone in sights, he'll come running when you call, wagging his cute little tail."

Xander scowled. "Our deal did not involve you barging in on my date and making a big vampy nuisance of yourself." As soon as the words left his tongue, he felt the atmosphere between them change, or maybe it was only his comprehension as he took in the evidence of Spike's mercurial eyes, his borrowed shirt--the very fact of his presence. "You're jealous," he realized aloud.

"Bollocks." Sneer and scoff and Spikey scorn.

"Open relationships must be hard on a territorial master vampire. Never mind that you spent all summer screwing anything that moved. Once I start looking elsewhere, it's a different story, isn't it?"

Mouth tightening, Spike stared at him while Xander stared back. It was a stare-down of epic proportions. "Don't worry about me," he said finally, his voice hard and cold. "I can snap my fingers and find a hundred just like you, all hot and juicy and eager to please."

It hurt, as it was meant to, but it was poker, and Xander didn't know what else to say but, "Be my guest."

With dark and dramatic flair, Spike shoved off from the table and stalked through the club with a sexy hip-roll, on the prowl for his victim of the evening. Watching him buddy up to a beefy guy with a raw and scary display of charm, Xander felt the weight of dysfunction threaten to shove him face-forward into beer. His parents had set the bar for fucked-up misery--set the bar, hell, they'd stocked the bar--and equipped him to continue their work into the next generation. It should be no surprise then that he was acting out a lifetime's worth of issues with one of Satan's own minions.

He kind of missed the days when men were men, and vamps were vamps, and slayers wore short little skirts. Things had been simpler back then.

Of course, before that there had been cookies and nap time. He really never should have left kindergarten.

In the library, the floors had been finished and the workers had promptly tossed down sheets of plastic and rigged a table using the old stand-by of plywood laid across orange sawhorses. Giles absently pushed aside a clutter of tools to make room for the boxes he'd found. 'Celia Graydon, Misc. 1920-25' was scrawled across the side of the larger, and he blew dust from its surface as he undid the flaps. With an archivist's caution he lifted out the contents layer by layer, glancing at each item as he laid it aside, and finally unearthing a plain brown ledger that caught his attention. Its cover was inked with the word 'Diary' in simple copperplate.

Giles opened the book near the end and worked back from the blank pages until the same neat handwriting appeared, and then began reading backwards. Around him, the house creaked and shifted as if moving restlessly on its haunches, a thought that made Giles pause in flipping through the book and cock his head at the room with nervous distraction. On the far wall, the fireplace was a dark mouth that light couldn't fathom, and the high shelves might have held any number of things just out of visible range. They were empty, of course, he reminded himself with firmness. There was no need to get flighty.

When he'd satisfied himself that nothing was going to immediately manifest, he went back to poring across the pages of the hen-scratched diary he'd found, trying to determine what might be relevant to his investigation.

"'January 14, 1921'," he read to himself, drawing some reassurance from the sound of his own voice. "'Ada's temper worsens, and she will speak to none but me for days on end. Her rages like blustery storms steal her rest and mine, and allow no solace--I will not leave her side when she weeps, for fear of the harm she may turn upon herself or upon other folk. I have a terrible foreboding of what is to come.'" He paused a moment, gaze skating over less relevant lines of text, then turned the page. "'I wish for faith that it is God's Holy Will all things happen, but fear the tide of a darker messenger--'"

A series of heavy, rhythmic bangs from upstairs broke Giles's concentration and nearly made him drop the book he held, even though they weren't particularly surprising. "Yes, thank you," he said, raising his voice to the house. "Your point is taken." Annoyed, he tried to find his place again, only to have the diary yanked from his hands by an invisible force and flung across the room into the fireplace. "Oh, really," he tutted with exasperation, circling to retrieve it. "You're not the first possessed house I've seen in my time, and as yet you've offered nothing new to the annals of paranormal study." He picked the diary up, dusted it off. "You'll get no footnotes off doughnuts, you know."

Lights flashed on and off, and the room's doors banged open and shut several times in a rather petulant way. Giles ignored the clamor as best he could, along with the chill gathering at his feet and working its way up his body. The diary had fallen open on its back, pages splayed, and he resumed reading at the new entry which had been revealed almost as if by design. "'We went to the cemetery for Stephen's funeral this morning, despite squalls of snow that stung our eyes and continued unabated as our hearts grew ever more forlorn of hope. I feel to my knees to pray as I never prayed before, to no avail...' Oh, dear," he murmured, all levity draining away as he read silently now, gripped with a rising sense of concern.

The book was ripped from his hands again and dashed against the far wall, where it hung in defiance of gravity, pages fluttering like the wings of a bug dying on a windshield. Swallowing, Giles decided it might be time to leave and seek help. He edged toward the hall doors, one eye on the diary in case it took flight, and so it wasn't until he'd nearly reached the exit that he saw the presence hovering there, barring his way. Rooted to the spot with alarm, he cursed himself for not preparing a spell, however small and generic, against the possibility of demonic spirits. A crucifix he had, but it would be useless to defy...whatever this was. Not a ghost. He'd been very wrong in his classification, even though all the evidence had pointed to a haunting.

The creature flickered at the edges of both comprehension and physical sensibility, teasing the peripheral vision with serpentine lines of light. When Giles stepped back, the thing moved with him, counterclockwise. That gave him pause, then he took another careful step toward the open door, and as he did, the thing moved again too, mirroring Giles and allowing him closer to the exit. Unsure what to think, Giles continued circumnavigating away until he was at the threshold. They were still face to face, except this had no face...

...or did it?

Giles stared mesmerized as something began forming from the void, threads knitting together with features almost recognizable while the figure itself coalesced; dark feathers smoothing the head into shape, wings lifting from the back and spreading out on either side.

"Who are you?" Giles asked, voice low and measured and wary. "I-I know you."

The presence crystallized as the doors slammed shut behind him, and he felt himself knocked back to meet them by a lashing force of darkness. He gasped but lacked air, hands coming up by instinct as he struggled to remove the coil wrapped around his throat, succeeding not at all and feeling its grip tighten as the thing drifted in, filling his vision like a black fogbank. Consciousness thinning, he let one hand drop to his pocket, dragging at the flap to reach the crucifix he always kept there, and he could have wept in frustration at how his fingers fumbled, though it hardly mattered, it would be a mere trinket in its uselessness--

and this might be his last sight, the sword rising above him in a golden arc--

and he could have sworn for one asphyxiated, hallucinatory moment on the edge that he heard a wolf growl--

and then there was nothing.

"Xander."

Turning his head, he saw Buffy and Riley and Willow clumped at his shoulder, audience to the social trauma of a Xander Harris night on the town. Perfect. Angling for calm, he said, "Hey, guys."

"Are you here by yourself?" Willow asked, surprised, managing as best friends so often did to zero in on the painfully obvious in under five seconds.

"More or less," he acknowledged.

"Well, we'll join you," Buffy said brightly, taking the seat that Spike had recently vacated and setting down a fat, freakish purse shaped like a goldfish that Xander couldn't tear his eyes away from.

"Drinks?" Riley asked, being go-to guy.

"Something fizzy," Buffy said.

Willow echoed this with a nod. As Riley headed off to the bar, she settled her butt across from Xander and smiled. "Staggin' it at the Bronze? It's like old times."

She didn't seem aware of the implications of loserdom this carried, and she was so cheerful that he forgave her. About to reply, it dawned on him belatedly that she was fishing--inquisitive note, quirked brows. Clearing his throat he said, "Actually, I had a date." He gave Buffy a glance. "You just missed him. Derek."

"Xander, ohmigod, that's great!" Buffy leaned forward, all cherry lip-gloss and perfume. "Are you guys going to see each other again?"

"I don't know." Unable to help himself, he let his gaze swivel toward the interior of the club and searched the crowd for Spike, finding his electric-white head tipped up at shoulder level to the beefy guy he'd been courting previously, who was now laughing down at him. How the hell he'd pulled off that maneuver without getting his ass kicked, Xander had no clue. His hand clamped more tightly around his glass as his temper began to surface.

"Do you like him?" Willow asked, with a gentle curiosity.

Distracted, Xander said, "Huh?"

Willow twisted to follow his overly obvious gaze before he could collect himself. "Hey, is that Spike?"

Shit. He took a breath. "Yeah. Just ignore him. He's trying to make me jealous." Saying so gave him an intense satisfaction when nothing else did. These were his friends, and they'd accept his side of things.

"Oh!" Willow uttered, startling a confused look from him. She'd nudged out her lower lip just a little. "That's so sweet!"

"Will!" Buffy seemed ready to slap her friend's wrist. "It's not sweet. It's bad and wrong and--and stalker-like."

Riley came back and set down drinks just as Buffy finished speaking. "Are we talking about Spike again?" He sounded unthrilled.

"No," Xander said.

"Spike's hitting on some guy to make Xander jealous," Willow shared as if narrating the plotline of a favorite soap, "because Xander had a date with Derek, and now they're all vibey with the spurning and ambivalence and stuff."

The blankness that settled over Riley's face suggested that big gay love-spats fell low on his list of conversational topics, and who could really blame him?

"Okay, the not talking about him works better when we don't actually talk about him," Xander pointed out testily, earning an apologetic look from Willow.

"Right. Not talking about the blond, chippy vampire who shall remain nameless and who, uh, is headingthiswayrightnow." Willow lowered her head and busied herself sipping from the straw of her drink.

"The Four-H Club meets," Spike greeted them as he reached their table, then with random animosity tacked his gaze on Riley, who happened to be closest, eyeballing his striped shirt as if it were some kind of freakish demon skin he'd found hanging on a tree. His eyes were on level with the bigger man's shoulder, and Riley peered down at him with an almost amiable dislike.

"Spike. Out trading on your good looks, I hear." Riley paused. "What's that worth in food stamps?"

Glaring up with a nasty smile Spike said, "More than you can afford, you massively repressed loaf of Wonder Bread."

Repressing a shudder at where his thoughts went, Xander tried to distract Spike before Riley lost his cool. "What happened to that giant man-mountain you were climbing?" he asked, hating how he sounded in front of his friends but unable to file the edge off his voice. "Guess being Spike's Peak came runner-up to a rousing night of hair washing."

This was sinking to the level of a Will & Grace cat-fight, but every hard stab of Spike's eyes was making Xander hurt in the good place, the bad place, the naughty place.

Man, he was twisted.

"Oh, my enormous friend has just gone off to drain the snake--or, by looks of things, the mighty python." Spike smirked, so shameless he could make dogs curl up and cringe, and Riley ducked his head away in an appalled reflex.

Xander stretched back in his chair, suddenly experiencing one of those floaty, happy moments when the booze kicked in and things stopped mattering so much. "Let me guess--you inveigled him with promises of porn, probably some hot girl-on-girl action, and now you plan to take him home, get him drunk, and molest him."

The smile was replaced with a scowl. "Think you're a right Miss Cleo, don't you?"

"No, Spike, you're just predictable, like a bad sitcom." And then a thought struck him out of the blue, like a baseball whomping his gut in a not unpleasant way. It was a thought that said: Wait. Hold up. How is this predictable? Of course, Spike had that pride thing going, which was less a gay parade and more a perverse one-upmanship mixed with lunatic braggadocio, but when you got down to it, how strange was it that a guy who'd swanned around with Our Lady of Lunatics for a hundred years--a doll-carrying dingbat, a nightmare in frilly dresses--would suddenly start chasing dick just to tick one Xander Harris off? If he was going to such lengths, didn't it mean--

Buffy overrode his thoughts and Spike's voice just as he'd been forming a reply. "As entertaining as this is, guys--"

"Oh, you're all here, thank god," Giles said, materializing non-literally by the table with a frown and a sigh of relief.

"Nooo," Buffy groaned with theatrical resentment. "Not on date night." Then she blinked and drew herself up in her chair. "On second thought, it's good to see you. End of the world?" A note of hopefulness had entered her voice.

"Something far worse."

"Worse than the end of the world?" Anxiety dug into Willow's face, deepening the creases of her brow.

"Too right. It's my bloody house." Giles laid a book on the table with a thump. "I'll tell you, I won't surrender it without a hell of a fight," he said in a rough voice, then cleared his throat and glanced at Buffy's glass. "May I?" He chugged the soda as if carbonated strawberry juice were something he drank everyday, while they all stared at him with frank fascination. When he tilted his head back, livid marks were visible at his throat.

Xander was the one to ask, "Giles, man, what happened to your neck?"

Setting the drink down, Giles grimaced and exercised his mouth with exaggerated distaste like a dog that had just eaten a bee. "Good god, what is that? It tastes like fruit tart boiled in aspic."

"Giles!" Buffy said impatiently.

"Right. Yes. Sorry." Giles touched his neck gingerly. "The manor is possessed."

"Oh," Buffy said, while Willow's shoulders slumped in a way that suggested anticlimax.

"Possessed how exactly?" Xander asked. "Are we talking Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, House, The Haunting...?"

"Like it matters." Spike somehow managed to loll while standing. "If it's like any of those flicks, we'll just lay waste and have a tea-party, won't we?"

Xander bristled at the dismissive tone. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying they're not scary."

"Uh, excuse me--Poltergeist? Not scary? Not scary when the slab of raw meat crawls across the counter, and the guy peels his own face off? That movie is directly responsible for a year of nightlights and vegetarianism. And how about that scene in House when the nice blonde lady turns into a bloated she-beast? Classic childhood trauma, pal."

"Key point being that you were five, you pansy-cheeked git. I suppose you wet your jammies when that old bastard popped out of his coffin."

"That was House II: The Second Story, dumbass."

Spike rolled his eyes.

"If you're both quite finished," Giles interrupted acidly, "perhaps we can focus on the problem at hand, which bears no meaningful resemblance to any film as in fact the menace is quite real, and not fictional." Having silenced the table, he laid his hand on the book he'd placed there. "The behavior exhibited so far does suggest a haunting--telekinesis, minor mischief--but my encounter was with something rather different."

"Different how?" Buffy asked.

"I'm not entirely sure. I-I don't know quite what it is, or even how I got away, really." Giles had a bemused expression that Xander associated with recent head injury, and he wondered not for the first time how many licks it took before your average librarian started speaking in tongues and forgetting his own name. "One moment I was fending it off, the next--it had vanished."

Willow frowned. "What did it look like?"

"Like a rather large...nothing." As if faintly embarrassed, Giles took off his glasses and polished them. "I remember a void," he said more or less to his handkerchief, words slowing with his recollection. "Surrounded by mist. Darkness, and then...illumination."

Well, that was staggeringly unhelpful, Xander thought, meeting Buffy's eyes across the table. She seemed to be thinking the same thing. "So what's with the book?" she said. "Does it have a spell against this nothing-thing?"

"No, it's a diary." Giles, glasses returned to his nose, held up the book. "It belonged to Celia Graydon, one of the house's previous tenants. I thought it might shed some light on the type of possession we're facing. However, so far the clues are vague at best." Passing the book across to Willow he said, "Perhaps you'll find something more. I'd like you to research this angle further while the rest of us investigate the manor. Perhaps your friend--er, Tara--can help."

Buffy shifted to sit up straighter in her chair. "Giles, this thing attacked you. Do we really want to go back before we know what it is?"

"I can think of no alternative, Buffy. Renovation and repairs must continue, and the crew will be in danger if this presence remains."

Scratching his jaw with one fingernail, Xander thought about Giles's words. He felt there might be a flaw in that logic somewhere. A fly in the soup. Too bad he'd finished his drink or he might have been able to figure it out, though even one-hundred percent sober he wasn't exactly Logic Boy. He left abstract thought to Willow. He was good at self-preservation and common sense, though, and common sense was tugging at his sleeve and telling him--

"Okay," Buffy said, the first to stand up. "Do we need weapons?"

"I have some in the car."

As they rose from their chairs, a new voice said, "So, whassup--we headed to a jamfest?"

Everyone turned to look at the hulking stranger who'd casually integrated himself into their social circle, hands in pockets, apparently ready to hitch a ride to whatever kegger he imagined lay in wait. It was Spike's pick-up. Oh goody, Xander thought.

The vampire brushed him off. "Take a rain check, mate."

"Actually, Spike, we don't require your help this evening." Giles gave a cool and abbreviated smile that didn't reach his eyes, the polite British way of saying fuck off.

"Oh, I'd be glad to see you lot get your asses kicked, but this one," a thumb jerked at Xander, "owes me a C-note, and he's not gettin' out of it on account of being dead."

"You did not win that bet, Spike." His surface anger couldn't entirely ice the undercurrent of pleasure he felt at this sign of Spike's loyalty. Mercenary, callous, admittedly unreliable--it really was a sickening dice roll every time, but maybe that was why the pay-off when it came could be so intense.

"Come along then," Giles said to them, resignation making him sharp. "We don't have all night."

Of course, that could just mean that they'd die quickly, Xander thought, but after a while on the Hellmouth patrol, you learned that not everything had to be said aloud.

Tara's glance skittered around her dorm room to assure herself that the bed was neat, the clutter minimal, the arrangement of pillows and candles casual--cozy, but not intimate, not in that way. She didn't want to make Willow uncomfortable, and she feared giving off a creepy lesbo vibe that would frighten the other woman off. You had to be careful when you were around straight women--keep certain rules always in mind. If you're scoping out their clothes, make your glances brief, or they might think you're staring at other stuff. If you compliment a new hairstyle or sweater, don't linger on the subject. When they start to talk about sex or boyfriends, be supportive and nod as if you understand.

There was no way of knowing where straight women drew the line between social chit-chat and personal infringement, so it was better to stay away from certain conversations entirely.

"Thanks for letting me interrupt your study time," Willow was saying with an apologetic smile. She'd settled in at the table, mixing her books and papers with Tara's in a casual rearrangement of items. Friendships were so hard for Tara to negotiate, but Willow made it look effortless--though she often spoke as if hesitant about her welcome, she had a confident way of taking charge with gestures and body that Tara marveled at, especially because she didn't seem to think about it at all.

"No problem." Tara pushed her own smile out through a heavy veil of shyness. "Analyzing the religious and Freudian symbolism of 'Young Goodman Brown' doesn't seem so important when the world needs saving."

"Well, not the world so much as one big house, but if I'm stealing you away from Freud, I don't feel so bad." The words brought a blush to Tara's cheeks. "That big Viennese cigar-sucker gives me a headache."

"Um, so that's the diary?" Tara asked, letting her hair fall forward a little to curtain her hot face. She took it from Willow's hands as it was offered and began fingering through the pages gently. "Wow. Loopy."

"You found something already?"

"N-no, I just meant, beautiful penmanship." Tara traced the ribboning words. "All the loops and curves and arcs."

"Yeah. I guess before computers, neatness really counted."

But Willow didn't sound too interested, and Tara made herself pay attention to the meaning of the words, and not how they were written. As she skimmed the text, Willow was opening and logging onto her laptop, and within moments came the soft little clicks of her hands on the keys. "So this woman, Celia Graydon--she owned the house that Mister Giles bought?" Tara asked.

"Yeah. I'm looking her up in the Sunnydale historical archives to see if I can find out anything about the house, or her life. I was reading the diary on the way over--there was this whole rash of mysterious deaths in her family, and then the entries just stop. I think she must have died, too. Giles thinks the manor is possessed, so it may be the Graydon ghosts."

"And he went back there?" Tara felt confused, but then she still wasn't entirely sure how this whole watcher-slayer-Scooby-gang thing worked.

Willow smiled. "Well, we're adrenaline junkies and crazy rebels. It's this whole 'life on the edge' philosophy. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Or, sometimes, date one." Her smile stayed pinned on with reassuring ease. "Don't worry. Giles always knows what he's doing."

Riley followed Giles's erratically jerking BMW to the manor, Buffy riding next to him and making rude comments about cherry-red penis-mobiles and watcher midlife crises that she'd never have uttered in front of Giles. At least not without severe editing. She even surprised a few small laughs from him, and he wished that they were having a regular date and not another bug hunt with her gang of tag-alongs.

It was an ungenerous thought, but moodiness had dogged him for weeks and he couldn't shake it. And feeling her eyes on him, he knew she'd noticed. "I'm sorry for the change of plans," she said. "Hey, maybe tomorrow we can take off, just the two of us, drive down the coast, no cell phones, no creepy crawlies. Except maybe a few ants. I could deal with ants."

Her romantic streak always amazed him with its timing; toss a monster her way, and you could almost bank on her ability to distract herself with normal, girlish things--dinner plans, some new dress she wanted to wear for him. It was flattering to his ego, if he didn't examine it too closely. But again, there was the matter of timing.

"Actually, I'm cruising low on funds right now." His voice was more abrupt than he'd intended, and he busied himself fiddling with the rear-view mirror as a bar of street-light swept through the car and across Buffy's disappointed face. And as quickly as the light her disappointment seemed to pass off.

"Oh. Well, we can take a picnic out to the bluffs. Hide in the grass, get in a little sunbathing." She grinned like the sun then, and he ached for her, his hands tightening on the wheel as they took a curve and entered a passage of heavy trees.

"I don't know, Buffy." God, he sounded like his father, hedging about some family trip. But nights were one thing; days another. Buffy was in school; she could cut classes and waste time like any other kid her age. To him, those hours were dollars, and the thought of spending them so carelessly lodged in his gut. It was one more thing he couldn't bring himself to say aloud, like asking Willow to pay for her own drink. She'd think nothing of it--she could afford it, she'd paid before. She just didn't always remember. Pride and the habit of politeness often left him mute in front of a bunch of kids who, though they might save the world on alternate Tuesdays, still had the carefree attitudes of students bankrolled by parents. Except of course for--

"They say men have a twenty-four hour hormonal cycle," Buffy remarked, breaking into this thoughts. "We learned that in Psych, but...you knew that." Yes, Maggie Walsh had loved to share that tidbit in her dry, arch voice.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just...this isn't the easiest time for me."

"Because testosterone levels rise in the evening," she said, affecting a bright, breezy tone that might have fooled a stranger.

He spared her a look before returning his eyes to the road. "I'm AWOL, Buffy. I'm in and out of work, I don't talk to my friends anymore. Every week my mom calls with questions I can't answer and I can--I can hear how confused and disappointed she is. What do I tell her? That I had to save a werewolf from vivisection by my own people?" He paused--his own people now meant Buffy and her people, but he wasn't quite ready to go there yet, so he pushed on. "My father...he won't even come to the phone."

From the corner of his eye he saw Buffy look down at her hands, folded in her lap. "You did the right thing. And it will get better."

Even she didn't sound too certain now, and that defused the worst of his anger. "Try finding a job when half your references are dead and the other half want to lock you up, and your social security number is red-flagged by the authorities--then tell me that, Buffy."

"Giles said he might be able to get papers--"

"I don't want to live like that!" He took a ragged breath. "I want my own name. I don't want to hide from the government I swore to protect. I'm supposed to uphold its laws, not break them." The car's wheels were bouncing over gravel as Riley turned the car onto the manor drive, tailing the BMW's headlights through the winding foliage.

"Right." The hard, false note of cheer warned him what came next. "Because it's totally lawful to build big Frankenstein freaks and run roughshod over the citizens. Your tax dollars for zombies: funny, I don't remember that election platform."

As if she'd remember any, he thought. As if she even voted.

He killed the motor, thinking things he was too well brought-up and tight-lipped to say, and they sat in silence as the engine ticked. Riley watched the others unfold from Giles's small car, Spike's hair picking up the moonlight as he bent his head forward to light a cigarette.

Riley reminded himself that his life wasn't a total write-off. I've taken out thirty-four hostiles personally, rescued one guitar-playing werewolf from lab experiments, and made the world one gay vampire safer.

Go, team me.

"Bit drab," Spike said, standing in the center of the foyer and eyeing his surroundings the way a prisoner might inspect his cell, despite the vaulted ceiling, paneled walls, and a marble floor that could garage four cars, easily. The only illumination came from a skylight far above; in its faint glow the vampire might have been a porcelain figurine. He glanced at Giles. "You thought about getting some furniture? Maybe a potted plant?"

Giles ignored him, and Buffy brushed past Spike with no attempt at gentleness. She'd have stepped on his foot if there'd been any point, but from experience she knew that not much penetrated those goth-ugly boots. She settled for bumping his shoulder, just to make it clear who was the dominant animal in the room, and didn't bother to look back to see what his expression might be.

"So where was this big, shiny nothing?" she asked, keeping her crossbow pointed floorward but ready.

"In the library." Giles moved to the sliding doors and pushed them open; they rolled along their tracks almost silently to reveal the dim interior. She noted the work table, the utility buckets, the stacks of paint-spattered rags. A drop-light hung from the ceiling by a long safety cord, swinging almost imperceptibly.

"What happened to the lights?" Xander asked.

Giles turned, eyes unreadable in the shadows. "The electricity went off."

Walking forward, Buffy assessed the room, her senses spidering out to all corners as the others stepped up to flank her; they formed a line at the threshold, and she could feel their readiness to back any play she might make, but nothing moved inside the library.

"There's probably a breaker box in the basement," Xander said. "I'll go check it out."

"A good idea," Giles affirmed absently.

"I'll go with you," Riley said.

As their footsteps retreated, Buffy strolled into the library, which looked far different by night than by day. Big and creepy and haunted. Giles sure knew how to pick them. "So when we find this thing, what do we do?" she asked, turning around for a full view.

"Well, it seemed to need corporeal form to attack." Giles wandered toward the work bench, gaze flicking like a raven's from point to point as if he suspected everything in the room to hold the potential for evil. It wasn't especially reassuring of him.

"Enemies that fall when you whack 'em upside the head--that's the kind I like," Spike opined, and Buffy had to agree, though she didn't have to tell him that.

The house was quieter than most graveyards she patrolled, which had crickets and wind and nearby traffic, not to mention the busy undead, who tended to yap a lot when they woke. Here, every movement of their shoes on the floor echoed in the oversized space, and at the same time the darkness seemed to absorb all sound. Nearby, Spike revolved in a tight circle to inspect the premises in an attitude balancing boredom and watchfulness, head tipped and eyes sharp. In his hand he gripped an axe. Buffy studied him a moment, something niggling as her gaze slid from his tense form to the tall, exaggerated shadow he cast on the wall behind him.

Which stayed right where it was as Spike wandered away.

"Hellooo," she said in a long breath, collecting the men's attention in a pair of synchronized head swivels. They looked where she was looking, while she stood unmoving, crossbow aimed at the hanging shadow.
 
"That it, then?" Spike asked, hefting his axe. "Doesn't look like much."

The thing floated forward and unfurled, expanding tentacles of darkness like octopus legs and spreading at the middle until it covered almost the entire east wall.

Spike inclined his head warily. "Okay. Bigger now."

Buffy tightened her finger on the crossbow, just short of release. "Was it that big before?"

"No, it wasn't." Giles took off his glasses and stepped forward, one hand in his pants pocket, studying it with watcher curiosity and insane calm. "However, it's fed."

"Fed," Buffy repeated, not understanding, and at the same moment that Giles turned and smiled at her the wall exploded, dark ropes shooting out to coil around her throat and Spike's. Instinct demanded that she drop the crossbow and try to free herself from the noose cutting off her air, but Buffy sent a bolt one-handed into her attacker. It disappeared through the form, clinking on something metal behind it--the interior of the fireplace. Gasping, she dropped her weapon and ripped at the tightening tendril; she didn't have much attention to spare, but she could see Spike in less throttled straits, trying to free himself.

Giles moved to Spike with something in his hand--her blurry gaze made out a vial--and thumbed an oily but invisible mark on the vampire's forehead, ignoring its gnarled uprising. After one last thrash, Spike went motionless. Buffy dropped to her knees, tracking Giles's approach. He came to crouch in front of her, his face warm and open, his eyes filled with cloudy darkness. The last thing Buffy saw was his hand lifting; the last thing she heard was him saying, "It doesn't hurt. And you'll be stronger than ever."
 

"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man." Xander paused and slammed yet another closet door fruitlessly. "And clearly that's where the breaker box is."

"You know, pre-Sunnydale, figures of speech never seemed so scary." A flashlight beam came swinging up to peg Riley's face and he blinked and held his hand in front of his eyes. "What?"

"Pre-Sunnydale. I'm trying to wrap my head around that concept. And failing, which is okay, I guess, because to wrap your head around something, you'd have to peel it first, kind of like an orange, and boy, have I been hanging around Spike too long. My point--I've lived here all my life. What's it like to live someplace other than Hell?"

Riley thought about it as they wandered back through the basement toward the stairs, poking their flashlights at corners where anything might have hunkered in wait. "You had a childhood, when you didn't know about vampires. Other places are like that. Happily ignorant. But there are monsters everywhere."

"Right." Xander bounced his flashlight absently, drawing squiggles in the dark. "Hey, if this is the Hellmouth, you think somewhere they've got a Hellnose and a Hellass and a Hellbow?"

It was like him, to make light of what was terribly serious, but Riley understood the instinct. It was the same in the Army: you joked before missions to pump yourself up, and talked yourself down afterwards over a pitcher of beer and double shots, soaking your head in booze to soften the memories and blunt the worst you'd seen. Next to him in the dark, Xander moved almost like a member of Riley's old squad, picking his way with care through the basement's rubbish. It was a change from a year ago, when he'd more often than not bumbled and laughed too loudly and radiated a nervous energy that seemed to attract every predator within range--useful if you needed bait, but not for much else. He was still more sidekick than superhero, but there was a deliberateness to him now, and Riley had seen him turn on a dime from comic to violent when attacked. Rather disturbingly.

"I don't know," Riley said. "Most days I think we've got the full-body experience right here."

A hand was raised in front of Riley's chest and he took it as a signal to halt. "What was that?" Xander said, flashing his light toward a heap of shelves and dressmaker dummies and trunks. The hair on the back of Riley's neck prickled and lifted, and for a minute they both stayed still and breathed quietly, until a rat crept into the radius of light, twitched its whiskered nose in the air a few times, and padded off behind a hat box.

"Just a rat," Riley said, more in hope than in certainty.

"It's never just a rat." Xander sounded dark and cynical. "Probably an ex-classmate."

"Let's not get paranoid," Riley said dryly.

"Hey, I'm only saying--they're not all accounted for. By the time our ten-year reunion rolls around, we'll be lucky if we have enough left to fill a booth at the Doublemeat Palace. Man," Xander's voice veered sharply, "it's freezing in here. I think I just walked through the wall of cold."

Riley sighed as they reached the foot of the stairs without finding what they'd come for. "We should head back. I don't like leaving the others alone."

"I don't think it's them you have to worry about," Xander said. He tipped his flashlight up under his chin and its glow welled the curves of his face like a jack-o-lantern's, hooding his gaze and making his upturned mouth almost sinister.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on, Ri. A slayer, a vamp, a warlocky watcher--they're the original mod squad. But I'm no real back-up for you, am I? Not by grade-A military standards." A touch of mocking had surfaced.

Surprised and uncomfortable at being put on the spot, Riley could think of almost nothing to say. "Xander. Okay, I admit, maybe that was true once, but it's different now. You're..."

"Different?" Xander smiled, rearranging the Halloween shadows of his face.

"Yes. You've turned into a hell of a fighter." Riley put firm respect into his voice. It was the truth, and it cost him nothing to acknowledge it.

"Thanks to one persistent, unsouled vampire. Man, that must burn, huh." Denial lodged in Riley's throat, and he felt a weird kind of hurt that Xander would lash out at him for no reason. "And gay, too. Me, I mean. He's not really gay. He's...Spike." Xander smiled gently, something like fondness in his voice as he said the name. "I'm betting you didn't have any queers in the goon squad. Don't ask, don't tell--off the demons, don't get them off."

It was an ugly comment, utterly unlike Xander, and it left Riley stunned and at a loss. "Xander. Are you..." He shook off questions as pointless and poorly timed. "I think we should head back up."

"Good idea. See how they're doing." Xander smile took on yet another dimension. "They might need us to rescue them."

When they walked up the stairs, the unseen shadows trailed behind.

As they were exiting the cellar, Xander stumbled on the top step and grimaced, one hand rising to touch his temple where a small, sharp pain had lanced him. He'd been struck by twinges ever since they got to the house, which he'd put down to the unpredictable effects of drinking, but this last ouchie was bigger and not for the better.

"You okay?" Riley asked, his voice detached, a bit cool. He moved as if to take Xander's elbow, then pointedly didn't.

"Yeah, I'm all right." Unsure why he was so irritable or why he felt the sudden urge to brain Riley with his flashlight, Xander stepped into the hall and took the lead back to the library.

Inside, his gaze was drawn immediately to Spike, who was leaning against the fireplace, one leg bent at the knee and braced against the bricks in casual attitude as he ran a finger along the blade of his battle-axe. Xander gravitated in his direction, playing his flashlight across the vampire's face. Spike looked up with a flash of golden eyes, a snarl beginning in his throat, then recognized Xander and drew on a smooth smile instead.

"Hello, pet. Have a nice poke down there?" He glanced past Xander's shoulder toward Riley with narrowed eyes, still fingering his axe.

The tone more than the remark itself touched off a flare of anger in Xander, working nerves left abraded by the evening's games. "I've always admired your ability to turn an innocent comment into a complex web of innuendo and mischief, Spike. So maybe you'll tell me what the hell that's supposed to mean."

"Bit testy there." Spike straightened slowly, letting his axe rest along one leg. He cocked his head. "Now tell me you didn't go and get yourself all riled." He might as well have capitalized the last word, the way his tongue laced it with strychnine.

"Give it a rest, why don't you?" Leashing himself, Xander said, "We couldn't find the breakers." Xander looked over to where Buffy sat on the tool bench, swinging her legs. Across the room, Giles was crouched, easing himself step by awkward step along the outline of a large circle he was drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk.

"Are we casting a spell?" Riley wondered, directing his question more or less to Buffy, who was filing her nails with a cabinet rasp she'd picked up from among the tools.

"Yes," Giles piped up, his back to them as he roughed out the arc. "We're going to try and call forth the restless spirit--to communicate with it, and exorcise it if necessary."

"Whoa." Xander boggled at this blandly delivered plan, while Giles stood and dusted off his trousers. "An exorcism? Do we all remember last time--angry spirits, Angelus on puppet strings, getting our asses kicked by swarming wasps?" He stared at Buffy and Giles, who stared back with mild, unreadable faces. "Guys, this is big-gun stuff. We should at least wait for Willow."

"Oh, Willow," Giles lashed back in a voice so venomous that Xander's jaw unhinged itself for a moment. "Always Willow." He closed the gap between them in several quick steps and as he came into focus Xander saw the lines of his mouth sharpening with resentment. "I'll have you know I was casting spells that could rip your soul straight out of your skin, mate, long before that little witch was ever born."

"And that's something to brag about?" Xander retorted, stepping up to meet him without pausing to consider the oddness of Giles's reaction. "Because here I thought that raising Eyghon to piggyback-ride all your friends was a dumb thing to do."

Giles went still, eyes glinting out from behind his glasses. "I have more power than you'll ever know, you arrogant pup."

"Now, now." Spike's voice snaked low and silky into the crackling silence as he took a deliberate step forward. His axe smacked into one palm with meaningful emphasis. "Can't let you bulldoze my boy, there."

"Your boy," Giles said with a lip-curl of distaste, even as Xander was flushing in startled pleasure. "I always knew you had a public-school upbringing, Spike."

"Oh, and you didn't?" Spike had begun to circle Giles, who turned to keep an eye on him from under a slightly lowered brow. Compared to Spike he barely moved, but he seemed just as dangerous, and somehow scarier than Xander had ever seen before.

"Eton."

"Harrow."

"And then?"

"Where else?"

"Magdalen."

"Jesus."

"I'm not surprised." Giles smiled, not very nicely. "They've a long history of turning out intellectually undistinguished swots to fill the ranks of schoolmasters--or was it the civil service for you, William?"

Spike stopped in his tracks, facing Giles in an almost identical pose, both of them like dogs leashed and straining with animosity. "Let's not fight," he said in dulcet tones. "Or--hold up." Rolling his head, he flared into game-face. "Let's."

With a twist of shock in his gut, Xander said, "Spike, no! Your--"

The axe rushed toward Giles, only to be flung by some unseen power into the far wall, where it stuck and shuddered in the wood.

"--chip," Xander finished, blinking.

Snarling, Spike swept up one hand, palm and fingers outstretched toward Giles, who was lifted off the ground to slam back into the fireplace.

"Holy crap," Riley said, and then it was a confusion of movement--Riley coming at Spike with a short sword and a determined expression, Buffy hopping down off the table, Spike swinging around to grin with manic ferocity.

"Always wanted to take you on, soldier boy." He raised a negligent arm as Riley's sword descended--and the blade froze an inch away as if stuck in an invisible barrier. "'Course, not much of a match now."

"Leave him alone," Buffy warned. "Or you can fight me."

Riley yanked his sword free just as Spike turned to meet her, but then the vampire yelled and arched as a blast of light enclosed him from behind, held him for a long, electrifying eternity, and winked out. Gasping, he folded to his knees, while Giles straightened his jacket and said coolly, "Or me."

"Okay," Xander said. "What the hell's going on?" Giles, Spike, and Buffy swiveled their heads to look at him with the eeriely uniform expressions of pod people and Xander groaned. "Oh, man. No, no, and no!"

"Oh yes, yes, yes," Spike corrected, still on his knees and gazing up at him sideways. At least that sly twist of smile was familiar. "Don't worry, pet. It doesn't hurt. Much." And then his eyes lifted as if seeking heaven, and Xander snapped his own gaze up just in time to see a blanket of dark energy unroll in the air above him.

A bolt of shadow shot out and snagged him by the throat as he was stumbling back, trying to evade whatever the hell was going to happen, no way could it be good, and oh man, bad, bad scene, choking to death, mist descending over the eyes like the black oil from the X-Files, blurring the world into a twilight haze through which he could barely make out Giles, one hand lifting to stroke Xander's brow, while a few yards away Buffy did the same for Riley, who was fighting his own empowerment...wait, his own what?

Power.

It was the body's demand for oxygen that kept Xander's mouth gaping as his faceless attacker reared back and struck, driving inside, down his throat, a supernatural blow-job gone horribly wrong--that was his dazed thought as the thing planted itself in his belly and blossomed out into every part of him, like a squid exploding black ink. It was cold and hot and terrifying, and as the darkness spilled through him and then ran clear in his veins, he could feel himself waking up and getting it. Like an all-over tattoo. Like religion.

He opened his eyes into a world of darkness. Worked a kink from his neck. Noticed Spike and Buffy and Giles watching him closely, then turned his head to see Riley rising from his knees in a smooth motion.  Xander, recognizing a fellow soldier, relaxed a notch at the same time he felt a surge of resentment he couldn't quite identify. Like it mattered. No one could be trusted.

Keeping his feelings barely in check, he looked at Spike, who'd stood up and was smiling rather indulgently at Xander. "All better now?" the vampire asked, coming close.

"Oh, yeah." Xander smiled back with dark affection, then struck Spike in the chest hard enough to send him sailing back several feet, where he landed in a startled heap on the floor.

"That's for ruining my date," Xander said.

Research mode was a good, solid mode. Not the tip-top mode, but a respectable second. Magic was the best mode, of course, when you could open yourself up to the universe and feel it flow right through you like juice through a novelty straw, all twisty and bright. Fighting mode--not so much fun, what with the hitting and the falling and the cranial trauma. But research Willow could do, and do well. And it was comfortable. It made the supernatural seem safer and more accessible, like a school course where you just had to learn a language and crack a few books, and everything would fall into place, without blood and death and pain--assuming your teacher wasn't a bug woman or some strange spinal-tapping parasite.

Plus, it was cozy. Even working alone, you could have the companionship of a fellow scholar, and the smell of candle wax and cookies.

"I got something," Willow said, bringing up one of the archive's historical documents on her computer screen. "It says here that Celia Graydon committed suicide by leaping off the roof of her house, after her entire family died in a bizarre series of accidents and murders."

"That fits with what I've read so far," Tara said, looking up from the diary's pages. "Her brother Stephen was killed first, when a freak storm broke a window and flung a shard of glass into his neck--" Willow grimaced. "--and her cousin Ada died of strange burns blamed on a grease fire while she was cooking breakfast."

"Huh. Death by bacon is usually slower,"  Willow said, gaze still fixed to the screen. "And more, you know, arterial."

"The inquests certainly sound creative."

A smile passed over Willow's face before it was reabsorbed in an absent frown. She scrolled down the page she was on, rapt in her reading. "Oh, man." At Tara's inquisitive look, she slowly pieced out words. "The records say that when the family didn't come into town for a few days, the police went out to the manor and found bodies everywhere. All the adults and kids, even the handymen."

She met Tara's concerned eyes over the top of her monitor screen. "It's like they family-feuded their way to multiple homicides." She thought about Giles's sketchy description of the attack on him. "And now the injured spirits are restless and acting out." The realization that her friends were out on a murder site entertaining angry ghosts while she sat here larking about on the computer sharpened her need for answers and made her antsy.

"Maybe...except, there's some stuff here that doesn't add up." Tara sifted through a few pages. "Before all this started, they'd been digging up the basement and they found 'a trunk with odd bands and markings, of curiously wrought design.' There was nothing inside, though."

"Nothing they could see anyway," Willow guessed, mind working through possibilities. "You think something demony was trapped in there?"

"Stephen died the next day," Tara said by way of answer. "And a few days after that, Celia had a vision: 'An angel of great height and beauty came to me tonight, riding on a wolf and carrying a sword so luminous I could hardly bear to look on it, his face that of a raven, feathered and dark....'"

"A wolf and a raven? Wait, that actually sounds familiar." She switched screens and tapped keys quickly. "Let me cross-reference it in the demons database."

In Willow's peripheral vision, Tara blinked and raised her brows. "There's a database?"

Taking a brief moment to look up and smile, Willow said diffidently, "It's just this kinda side project I've been working on with Cordy and Wes."

"Your friends from L.A."

"Well, 'friends' is stretching it, but yeah. We swap monster sightings and vamp trivia--did you know there's a vampire church in Encino where they worship Catherine Deneuve?"

"Who wouldn't?"

"Oh my god," Willow said.

"I'm s-sorry, I didn't mean to--"

"It's Andras, demon of discord." Willow shifted and turned the screen so that Tara could see the image provided: a creature with a bird's head and an angel's wings, sitting astride a wolf and holding a sword over the heads of miniaturized minions. "The sixty-third spirit of the Goetia--he sows 'strife' among those who invoke him." She looked at Tara, anxiety ratcheting up. "Giles and the others are in a lot of danger, and they don't know it. A demon is way more serious than your average haunting."

"Except that he wasn't invoked," Tara said. "And demons don't usually hang around empty houses, waiting for visitors...do they?"

"I don't know. Hold on, Wes has some notes. Um. Okay. Possibly apocryphal historical accounts...sightings in Canada and the western territories...blah blah, thirty legions, blah blah, long-winded watchers..." Her voice trailed off into a mutter.

"Gist?" Tara said hopefully.

"Basically? I think he was trapped in a kind of demon lock-box and is trying to get out. But once he gets out, he needs a host. It says he can pour his spirit into 'vessels' but that to truly manifest, he needs to be invited through magical ritual."

"He must have tried with the Graydons," Tara said, face wrinkling as she worked it out, "but for some reason he couldn't manifest before they killed each other off."

Willow closed her laptop. "It was a different time--if they were religious, they might have been resistant to his influence, hard to control."

"Plus, they probably didn't know what to do. Your average person isn't equipped to call forth a spirit of unholy darkness."

Their eyes met as Willow spoke. "But certain watchers are."

A overlapping babble of arguments had broken out over nothing in particular, and the library was heating with angry words that threatened to boil over into violence.

"Okay, enough!" A double whammy from Buffy's hands froze all the men for several moments, mid-clash, and then she put hands on hips, a cheerleader surveying a fractious squad. "We're all on the same side for at least another fifteen minutes here. Our Dark Marquesse needs form, and if you're all broken and sticky, he's," she groped for