Chapter
2.04
Friday, May 17th, 2002
Willow stared at her face in the mirror. If she
didn't know better, she'd say that some of those lines seemed
to be etched just a trace deeper than a few hours ago, but that
had to be her imagination.
Just the same, it looked like she was going to
have to head for home, at least until the start of the fall term
and that meant she had to do something about how she looked before
she met her parents.
A general reversal spell should do it. She could
wait, endure Anya being patronising and get the necessary ingredients
to do it the easy way. Components and the like might help. Nevertheless,
if you had enough raw power, then most of the time, for the simple
stuff you could just bulldoze your way through. Of course, that
way of doing things had the no waiting, no Anya, no money to spend
bonus going for it, now that Giles seemed to be getting snippy
about her using things from the shop. It fleetingly crossed her
mind to wonder who had actually paid for that Urn of Osiris.
She shifted into lotus position on the bed, albeit
with a little more difficulty than was normal, trying to ignore
the protesting squeaks that the mattress made with her every move.
She focused on her reflection in the mirror and began to chant.
She tried the simplest spells first, telling
herself that it was just her imagination that the grey in her
hair seemed to be getting denser and her skin drier as she continued.
As to her nightshirt getting tighter, that was preposterous. It
was four sizes too big, designed to incorporate an array of shoulder
pads. There was still plenty of room in there.
Then, when these simple hexes failed to have
the required effect she moved on to bigger and more complex magics,
or at least normally, using all the correct components they would
be more complex. After a couple of these she could no longer deny
the cumulative ageing effect. Obviously, this wasn't going to
be quite so easy as she had thought.
Switching tactics, she tried a simple glamour.
Her relief, when the spell appeared to work, was tempered by what
she was now sure were half a dozen additional grey hairs when
she allowed the illusion to drop.
Oh God! She was going to be stuck like this forever.
Or not. It seemed like every time she used magic she was worsening
the effect. Maybe she'd eventually just shrivel up and die. Maybe
if she called a Scooby meeting they could... But that was right.
She wasn't a Scooby any more. No doubt she wouldn't even be invited
to the next meeting and if she tried to call one they would probably
all be busy having sex and playing with puppy dogs and wouldn't
be able to come.
It wasn't like she had wanted to sacrifice
the dog, but that had been what it said in the book... And it had
been to help Dawn, even if Giles had denied it. She had heard
her and Buffy that morning. Spike had left the bedroom door ajar
when he headed out back. She'd heard both of them say that they
wished it had just never happened. Then, they had turned on her
as if she were a criminal when she tried to make their wishes
come true. It really wasn't fair to put the blame on her for doing
what they had wanted.
And Tara. What was she going to do without Tara?
Suddenly, what she looked like, what her parents
were going to say and what her friends thought, didn't seem so
important.
How did everything get to be so screwed up all
at the same time? Relaxing from her upright position she curled
into a foetal ball and cried herself to sleep.
Dawn was looking rather pleased with herself
by the time the pizza arrived without an appearance from either
her sister or their live-in vamp. When the couple did arrive,
her sister looking just as freshly scrubbed as the vampire who
had professed his wish to clean up, it was only the serious expressions
on both their faces that prevented her from taunting them openly.
Instead, she stuck to the safe topic of food.
"There's a couple of slices of the hot and spicy
and a couple of the pineapple in the oven keeping warm, and there's
a pint of Phish Food in the freezer."
Spike ruffled her hair as he passed en route
to the oven. "Thanks, Bit." Buffy took a seat on the sofa next
to where her younger sister was loading up on Chunky Monkey straight
from the carton. She pulled up her tanned legs toward her chest
hugging them against the black satin of her pyjama top. Her eyes
rarely left Spike, except when the kitchen counters obscured her
view of the jean-clad, shirtless vampire.
"Is something up?" Tara just beat Wes to the
question.
Buffy managed a half-hearted smile. "Just the
fact that me and Spike seem to be giving the old slayer dreams
package a whole new twist. It'll keep. We can do the whole Scooby
meeting thing when you and Wes get back from LA."
"Are you sure?" Wes asked. "If this really is
a slayer dream then perhaps we should be working on it straight
away."
Spike came back into the living room at this
point, a plate laden with pizza in one hand and a couple of spoons
and an ice-cream carton in the other.
"Feel free. Why don't you ring up and have a
word with any of your ex-brethren that might just be lurking in
Istanbul? See if they've got any news," he suggested as he took
a seat on the arm of the sofa next to Buffy, one arm wrapping
around her shoulders once his burdens had been safely deposited
on the coffee table in front of the couch.
"We don't know..." Buffy interrupted and then tailed
off. "Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it hasn't happened."
"'F you say so, pet. I guess you've been having
these things long enough to know." His tone, however, held none
of the hope contained within his words. Spike knew that the girl
they had seen was already dead. What he didn't know, yet, was
why Buffy was more than normally freaked by what had killed her.
"It's the First Evil, or at least it was one
of its minions who attacked the girl. A bringer, harbinger, something
like that," Buffy told the watcher.
"And that was all you saw. A girl attacked by
one of these harbingers? And how did you know it was Istanbul?"
Spike simply gave the watcher a look that said
as clearly as if he had spoken that he hadn't spent his entire
unlife in London and California. Then, he elaborated on what they
had seen. "Just that and some freaky goat head pentagram thing,
looked like it belonged in an Alchemy catalogue."
"Wasn't there something like that in that old
Dan Ackroyd movie, with the satanic cult or something," Dawn asked.
"Hardly a stellar point of reference, pet."
"And what makes you think this has anything to
do with the Council?"
"Can you think of any other reason why Buffy
would be dreaming, 'bout a girl that age? 'Sides, she had the
look."
"But why?" Wes asked. "There will always be more
girls to take her place. There's no guarantee that the girl would
ever have even become a slayer."
Spike shrugged. "Demon I knew thought he could
end the line, or even just weaken it. Get a run of untrained eight-year-olds
and your slayer brand is going to suffer significantly. Might
even get themselves a slayer they can control, keep prisoner,
whatever."
"So you're saying they're going to kill all the
girls who could become slayers?" Dawn asked.
"We're guessin', pet, but I think they're goin'
to try."
"And then? What happens then? These eight year-olds
you're talking about are only going to be called if the slayer
dies... Right? They're going to come after Buffy, aren't they?"
Dawn sounded panicked.
"No, love. They're not. No reason why they should,
unless Wes's old lot's been keepin' secrets and they've got another
slayer stashed away in Cleveland or somewhere."
"Not that I'm aware of," Wes admitted. "Though
it's not outside the realms of possibility."
"Then, Buffy is irrelevant to the continuity
of the line. Soon as Miss Trinidad & Tobago got her calling,
any extra that Buffy did was just icing on the cake. When she
died last year, no new slayer. That means it's our little jailbird
who's at the end of the line." Spike defied anyone to refute his
logic and, of course, Dawn did.
"But how do we know there isn't another slayer?
She could just be in the middle of communist China, or one of
those places in Africa where there's some sort of civil war going
on all the time. We didn't know Faith existed until she just turned
up, or Kendra. We don't know."
"His lot knew." Spike nodded toward Wes. "And
the demons knew. I should've picked up on it before slayer number
two showed her face in Sunnyhell that first time, but all that
'There can be only one' stuff didn't exactly encourage me to listen
to any rumours. I mean, so you hear there's some slayer down in
the Caribbean. If you know for a fact that there's one
in California, you tend to just think someone somewhere's tellin'
porky pies. 'Course I didn't realise that Buffy had actually died.
You Scoobies just never thought to ask. I trailed my butt round
every demon haunt within half a night's drive last summer. No
one knew anything about a third slayer."
"Either way, it would seem wise to alert Faith
and the Council to our suspicions. I'll speak to Angel tomorrow.
I believe he has kept in contact with her." Wes volunteered to
pass on the news.
"Are you sure you want to do that? We could call
him just as easily," Buffy offered.
"It's okay. I need to fetch some of my books,
anyway. Somehow when they packed up my things for me, they failed
to take into account that most of their reference materials were
actually my reference materials."
"That was rather remiss of them," Spike observed
with a sly grin.
"But not entirely unexpected, given Angel's past
actions," countered Wes, remembering how he had marched into
their interim LA office to claim some book. "He never did
grasp the finer points of ownership, though I doubt he'll make
the trip all the way to Sunnydale when he needs a book."
At this point Spike just happened to glance across
at the plate he had, mere minutes earlier, stacked with pizza.
Only the pineapple slices remained, but he knew that Buffy had
been too preoccupied to bother eating any. He bent over and craned
his neck to look beneath the table.
"Bloody hell!" he swore at the sight of the puppy
crunching the last of the crust from his hot and spicy. "Angel's
not the only one, neither. Bit, your damned mutt's just eaten
my bloody dinner... again!"
Dawn just smirked. "Well, I guess that settles
it. Rogue, it is."
"She's your dog, Niblet. That means it's your
job to train her, which also means you're the one that gets to
smack her or blow up her nose or whatever you do when she pulls
a stunt like that."
"You can't smack her," Dawn protested. "And what's
with the blowing up her nose?"
"I'm not going to smack her. Just told you that's
your job, and the blowing up its nose, can't remember really if
that's for dogs or horses but if it works don't knock it. So?"
The vampire stared down the teenager until she finally conceded
defeat.
"I'll shut her in the bathroom, okay? Does that
class as punishment enough?"
"No. It's not. The mutt's going to be sleeping
in there at night until she's housetrained. You start using that
as a punishment, and she's going to think she's done something
wrong when she hasn't."
The vampire seemed to give up on getting the
teenager to discipline the pup. Instead, he pulled the dog out
from under the table, pointed her head toward the half-empty plate,
hoping she would understand what she was being reprimanded for.
Then, with a curl of his lip and a flash of fang he gave a growl
that had the pup whimpering and dashing to the safety of Dawn's
shadow when he released her.
The vampire's attention returned to Buffy. She
still hadn't touched any of her food. "Come on, pet. Why don't
you head for bed? Me an' Bit'll get the watcher and the mutt settled.
I'll stick your ice cream back in the freezer an' you can get
it another time. Okay?"
"I guess. I put us in mom's room. I figured that
way, since I don't need so much sleep, I could get an early start
on the packing."
"That's fine, love." The vampire picked up the
remains of the pizza, and the ice cream, dumping the former in
the trash and the latter in the freezer. He returned to the main
room to extend a hand to the slayer, pulling to her feet. His arm
wrapped around her shoulders and he walked her up to her mother's
room and tucked her up in the freshly-made bed like a little girl.
"Won't be long, precious." He placed a gentle
kiss on her forehead.
A dim smile flickered across her lips for an
instant. "I'll be right here. Gollum."
The vampire immediately dropped into a hunch-shouldered,
semi-upright stance as he made his way to the door. "Yesss, masster"
he replied in passable impersonation of Tolkein's unfortunate,
only to run into Dawn on the landing.
"Okay, I knew you guys were weird, but Quasimodo
and Esmerelda. That's just warped. And shouldn't you have the
bumpies for that?"
Spike raised his eyes heavenward. "Wasn't— Never
mind... Let's just get everybody to bed, right?"
Soon, Wes had phoned Giles at his hotel to inform
him of the latest developments and everyone except Spike was settled
in their respective rooms, but the vampire had one last task in
mind before he retired for the night. He knocked softly on the
door to Buffy's room.
"Come in," Tara answered equally quietly.
Spike opened the door, leaning against the frame
as he spoke. "Hey, love. Just me. How are you doin'?"
The Wicca gave a brave smile. "Better than if
I was in a dorm all on my own. It's not like you get the chance
to dwell on things, with everything that's going on."
"Yeah, well, from experience, the dwelling'll
probably start round about when that damp patch on the ceiling
loses its fascination. An' if it does, remember we're always there.
The door's always open." He flashed her a lascivious grin. "Just
make sure you knock before you come in.
Seriously, though, any time you want to talk,
or just some company watching the telly, or a hug, whatever... you
know you've got an open invitation, day or night, right?"
"I'll bear it in mind."
With what he hoped was a comforting smile and
a nod, Spike pulled the door closed as he left.
He slipped quietly into the darkened room where
his girl was waiting for him. Before he pulled his jeans off and
changed into the pyjama bottoms Buffy had brought through for
him when she organised the sleeping arrangements, he checked that
all the curtains were firmly closed. A dark lump at the bottom
of the bed caught his attention and he realised that the connecting
door to the bathroom was open.
"We have to have the mutt?" he asked.
"She was whining. At least now she's quiet."
With a sigh the vampire slipped into bed, pushing
the dog out of his way with his feet, his arms wrapping Buffy
round from behind, with all the strength and comfort he could
give her.
"So, love, what's the big deal with this First
guy. Seems to me, if you know him, that means you already sent
him off once with his tail between his legs. You'll do it again."
"The deal." Buffy turned in his arms her eyes
searching for his in the darkness. "The deal is that last time,
it went after someone I loved, and if it wasn't for some freak
weather, they would have killed themselves.
The deal is. I can't lose you. Not now. Not ever.
I need you."
"No, Buffy, you don't. You're strong. If
something happens to me, you'll do just fine. I'm bettin' you
would kick the ass of whatever was to blame from here to hell
and back.
But so long as I have any say in the matter,
I won't be goin' anywhere. Like I said earlier, I'm yours, body,
spirit and mind, and so long as I have any choice at all, I won't
ever leave you. Unless this thing or its guys come and stick a
stake through my chest, I won't be leaving. I'll never just quit
on you. I'm not planning on any daylight walks without those orbs
around, or at least a good thick blanket."
"It can't be killed... So long as there's evil
inside any of us, it will exist."
"But it can be beaten," Spike insisted. "You've
done it before. And these harbingers, they can be killed, and
whatever the deal is with the goat thing, we can deal with that."
"You make it sound so simple."
"Because, as long as I have you, then everything
else is simple."
His lips met hers in a tender caress that swiftly
became more passionate as Buffy returned the kiss. As always,
the bond between them relayed their feelings and in the depths
of their hearts they were each a little afraid, but more importantly
they had a confidence built on their mutual faith and love and
a determination to see this through. Spike was right. At the end
of the day one or both of them might fail, but neither of them
were about to quit. So, the First Evil was going to have a real
fight on its hands this time.
Soon, all thoughts of anything other than each
other were banished from their minds, even the thought that they
had a canine voyeur sharing the bed with them.
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