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Chapter 1.07
Thursday, May 16th, 2002
Spike's comments regarding the world's impending
doom didn't seem to receive what the vampire considered to be
due attention from the older of the two watchers. This was mainly
because he was somewhat preoccupied by what he could see through
the still open front door to the house.
He managed to last until Wes removed his helmet
before, aghast, he removed his glasses to clean them.
"Wesley?" He imbued the other watcher's name
with such utter incredulity that Spike couldn't control a smirk.
"Hey," the slayer teased. "If you could be a
closet mod jogger, what makes you think Wes wouldn't make a biker.
You had your secrets."
Spike snorted his amusement at a mental image
of Giles perched atop an over-laden Vespa wearing an olive drab
parka with The Who's logo on the back, but didn't say anything.
"That can't be Wesley Wyndam-Pryce!"
Giles replaced his glasses, only to confirm that his view was
unchanged, except that the object of his amazement was now making
his way through the doorway.
"Giles! I thought you were in England."
"Yes, well... Up until this morning, I was." The
watcher looked uncomfortable, almost as if he was looking round
the hallway for listening devices.
Buffy quickly came to the rescue. "Spike's been
busy stocking up the fridge with bottles of some beer or other
for him and Wesley. What say we relieve him of a few and go make
use of that garden furniture out back, for once?"
Spike gave another snort. "I think on your track
record you better stick to the Budweiser, pet. Newkie Brown's
for the grown ups, love. Just because Clint Eastwood imports it
by the crate, doesn't mean the rest of you Yanks are up to it."
"I am so tougher than Clint Eastwood!"
Buffy protested.
"Well seein' as how he makes Rupes here look
like a spring chicken, I've got no doubt that you could beat him
to a pulp, but I bet he could drink you under the table without
even trying, besides..." the vampire bent over to whisper in his
fiancée's ear.
"Ew, Spike! Gross." Buffy slapped the platinum
blond in the stomach hard enough to produce a startled exhalation
of air.
"Giles, come and provide me with some civilised
conversation." Buffy tugged her father-figure off towards the
back door.
Wesley hung back until Spike recovered from the
blow, hanging his jacket up in the meantime. "What on earth did
you say to her?"
Spike smirked. "I told her, if she tried to keep
up with us drinking that stuff, she'd have the shits for a week."
Wesley smiled. "A slight exaggeration."
"Well, if I'd said for a day she'd probably have
tried anyway, on principle, and I'm already sharin' out what I
bought for the two of us between three. If she was drinkin' it
as well, it wouldn't last no time. Not to mention it's kind of
hard to keep an eye on Bit, if I spend all night in the bathroom
holdin' Buffy's head while she throws her guts up."
Wes shook his head. "I guess I won't be taking
the Harley home tonight, then."
"Probably not. Well, we best go raid the fridge
and then see what brings the watcher all the way from the Georgian
terraces of historic Bath." He gave Wes an appraising look. "Not
to mention what happened to bring you clear across town." Spike
shifted through to the kitchen with Wes following. He cleared
up the broken pieces of a bowl, picked up a half-empty pint beer
bottle from the counter and extracted another two similar but
full ones from the fridge along with a bottle of Bud lite. He
pulled out a tray and placed the bottles and four half-pint glasses
on it.
"Yes, well I suspect that Giles' news may be
rather more urgent," Wes admitted, as they moved to join the slayer
and her former watcher, giving the older watcher his second shock
of the day.
"S—Spike!" Giles' eyes widened as he watched
the vampire approach across the lawn.
"Yeah?" the vampire pretended ignorance of what
was freaking the watcher out, even as he took a seat in the sun
next to his fiancée, passing out the full bottles of beer
and keeping the half-full one for himself.
"You—You're not burning!"
"Funnily enough, I was actually aware of that
little detail. Nice, isn't it? Kind of handy when social services
comes to visit tomorrow, too. I figure, once that's out the way,
I'll have to hand them back, though."
"You mean... The orbs? They..."
"Well, considerin' you were the first one to
start hollerin' about invulnerability you took a while to work
that out.
So, Rupert, you've got a beer. Give it half an
hour and you'll get some dinner. Let's skip the rest of the make
nice bollocks an' get to the point. What dire catastrophe brings
you rushing from the motherland?"
"There's actually a couple of things." Giles
addressed his answer not to the questioner but to Buffy. "Firstly,
and arguably most importantly, there's a coven based in Devon
that I've had dealings with since I returned home."
Even though they weren't physically touching,
Spike picked up on the disappointment and hurt that Buffy felt
when Giles described England as his home. Giles carried on oblivious.
"They haven't been able to come up with any detail,
but they have some gifted prognosticators and it would appear
that a dark power is about to rise in Sunnydale." Giles removed
his glasses, rubbing at them again with his handkerchief before
replacing them.
"Very Kendra," Buffy commented dryly. "And secondly?"
"Secondly, news of your engagement has, somehow,
reached the ears of Quentin Travers. A friend, who still works
for the council, says he's determined that the wedding won't go
ahead. I have no idea what form his intervention may take. He
may try sending a special ops squad. He may simply have Spike
deported, or he may arrive on your doorstep with another of his
delegations."
"He can't do that. No one and no thing is going
to stop this wedding. This is going to be my special day." Spike
reached an arm around Buffy to gently stroke her back, trying to
soothe her, as she became more irate. "What gives him the right
to be arbiter of our lives? Who does he think he is to interfere
with our wedding? What have we done to him?"
"Actually." Wesley interrupted, "I think you
may find that Spike, at least, has actually given him some
provocation."
"I've never even met the old bugger," Spike denied.
"No," agreed Wesley. "So far as I'm aware you
never have. Nevertheless, you did briefly make the acquaintance
of his grandfather, one Harold Travers. It was admittedly a rather
brief meeting. You remember visiting London, 1940?"
"Spike, what's he talking about?" Buffy asked.
"He's saying that Travers' grandpa was one of
a bunch of Watchers that me and Dru killed one time when we paid
a visit to Wanker Central."
"Of course!" Giles muttered. "I'd heard the stories,
but it was so long ago, I never put it together that it was you."
Wesley shrugged. "There was a girl training as
a watcher the same time I was. She wrote—"
"Wrote her thesis on me," Spike finished for
him in an almost bored tone of voice.
"Well, when I was first assigned here, in light
of your time here the year before, I checked out a copy. It was
quite fascinating, as a matter of fact."
"Hey, don't I get a copy?" Buffy asked. "No fair
with the Council knowing more about my husband than I will. And
how come you knew about this?" she asked as she turned to her
fiancé.
"Well, it was you that sent the dizzy
bint and her crossbow-wielding cronies to the crypt to bat her
eyelashes at me an' get her tweed knickers all wet."
"Spike!" Buffy administered a swift but not particularly
forceful elbow.
"What? 'S not like I encouraged her." He gave
a smirk. "If I'd been interested, I doubt I'd've had to."
Giles gave an impatient sigh. "I think we're
getting side-tracked here. I think the more immediate threat is
that represented by whatever the coven predicted. As Spike pointed
out earlier, while he is in possession of the orbs he is invulnerable,
so, whatever Quentin may try, his life is under no immediate threat."
"Okay, watcher, we'll take this 'dark power'
seriously when you tell us what you're hiding?"
"Who says I'm hiding anything?"
"You did. No sooner did you spit out the little
line than the glasses were off and you were tryin' to wear a hole
in them. A convenient little trick for when you don't want to
look people in the eye, isn't it? So spill, Rupes. What do you
know?"
"I don't know anything," Giles stated
firmly. "I'm merely concerned as to one of the possibilities."
Spike's thoughts flicked back to an argument
that he and Buffy had overheard one night when they were on the
back porch.
"I see. I guess we'll need to watch our step,
then."
"What?" asked Buffy. "What's he getting at? I
don't get it."
"He's trying to avoid saying that this is the
sort of thing that might be the result of a lot of magic." Spike
answered.
Giles' beer suddenly seemed to demand a lot of
his attention. "It is simply one possibility, Buffy."
"You think Willow's this 'dark power'?" she asked,
apparently dumbfounded.
"Or she may inadvertently raise it," Giles admitted.
"But it's no more than a hunch. Not even that really, more like
a bad feeling. It's probably just paranoia."
"Or you could view it as the answer to the questions,
'Who has enough power to do something like this?' and 'Who's arrogant
enough to play with those sort of forces?'" Spike suggested. "I
think the world is safe for tonight, though. She's meant to be
meeting Glinda in the library.
So, I'm guessing that we've got time for Wes's
news before dinner."
"I'm afraid my news isn't anything like so dramatic.
Just that I think I've found somewhere to live and in all probability
run the agency from, though there's a bit more paperwork to do
on that."
"So you're definitely staying in Sunnyhell, then?"
Spike asked with a grin.
"I should be able to sign the lease tomorrow
morning, but I wanted to make sure none of you would object to
a new neighbour."
"Neighbour? Where neighbour?" Buffy asked.
"Across the road. The old Kalish place." Spike
looked blank. "The house where you smashed in the window last
night."
"Wes, that's great. You'll be right across the
street if we need you... and vice versa. And we'll be so close by,
any time you feel like company, you can just pop over."
"Not to mention giving me a bolt hole for when
the oestrogen levels over here get too much to bear," Spike joked.
"Hey," exclaimed the slayer. "You love it 'round
here. You know you do. You think you're Hugh Hefner."
"Hugh Hefner, am I? Then where are we going to—"
"Have you guys all gone deaf?" called a voice
from the porch and Dawn appeared around the corner of the house
carrying the handset for the cordless phone. "I'm supposed to
be the invalid here, not the servant."
"Sorry, pet. I was going to head back in in five
minutes to finish off in the kitchen."
"Yeah? Well, you've got quarter of an hour to
get it all under control before you go to pick up Brandon." She
passed the phone to Buffy. "It's Anya, something to do with Tara
and Willow. She asked if I knew where Wes was as well, but since
I didn't realise we were having an English embassy tea-party on
the back lawn, I told her I didn't know."
"Anya, hi! How's Xander?"
"Drunk, affectionate and currently unconscious,
but he's not our problem."
"What's up?"
"Willow never showed up to meet Tara. She called
me to see if Willow had taken anything from the magic shop. She
thinks she's going to try to use that forgetting spell to make
us forget that she sent the email to Sam, and to make Dawn forget
what happened to her."
"Surely she wouldn't try that again after the
last time?" Buffy argued.
"You mean, she wouldn't mess with people's brains
again without their permission after her delusting spell and her
will be done spell and her making Tara forget about them arguing
and then making us all forget who we were and then conjuring demons
and grand theft auto by magic. No, of course she wouldn't. What
was I thinking? Willow's your friend. Of course, she wouldn't
endanger us all... Again."
"What do you want us to do?"
"Well, not that it's much of a hope, but, if we
split up, someone may be able to find her and try to talk her out
of it. Of course, if we're all over the place when our memories
go, then it's even more dangerous, but Tara's got no hope of getting
back here to get the ingredients she'd need to do a locator spell
in time, so, for now, she's checking some of the buildings on campus."
"Wes is here. So is Giles. If they met you at
The Magic Box they could do it, couldn't they?"
"Either one, I think."
"Anya, hold the line a minute. I just want to
check something." Buffy turned to the two Englishmen. "Giles? Wes? Anya and Tara say Willow never showed
up to meet Tara this evening. They think she's going to try to
make us all forget about last night and that, in a way, it's her
fault."
"What do you mean it's her fault?" Dawn asked
in a suspicious tone of voice.
"Later, Dawn. Please," Buffy pleaded. "But that wouldn't be a dark power, would it?"
"No, there has to be something else. Ask if she
got any components?" Giles suggested.
"And there's no way she'd be able to make everybody
forget," Spike argued. "We're talking troops, doctors, nurses... and then you'd have
to get rid of all the physical records. X-rays, notes, bills.
Red's little trick wouldn't cut it. 'Sides, twice in one week
is too much to expect anybody to put up with." Spike gave his
opinion while Buffy questioned Anya.
"Just a big quartz. That's why they thought it
was the memory spell. They figured she probably took some Lethe's
bramble while Anya was busy with something else."
"Quartz? As in common ingredient between magic
and watches?" Spike asked before Buffy could finish relaying what
Anya had said to the two watchers. "Big as in big enough to use
as an offering to some demon demi-god you might want to conjure
up if, say, you wanted them to take back time. There's your dark
bloody power. She's not trying to make everybody forget. The stupid
bint! She's trying to make it never have happened."
Spike winced suddenly as Buffy's arm impacted
once more with his stomach. "You had to go and jinx
us by saying we'd be safe for the night, didn't you, Einstein?"
Up in the clock tower where Buffy and Riley had
once fought The Gentlemen and their minions, Willow sat cross-legged
with a ceremonial circle in front of her. Its design was complex
and looked like a Celtic knot pattern, so that the single line
in cobalt blue edged finely in the gold of yellow sandstone, circled
the area which it bound, seven times over. It had taken her over
an hour to draw, for the areas that represented where the line
crossed under itself had to be represented precisely. The blue
of the line's centre had to meet the gold at the edge of the line
it travelled under or the circle would be broken. Overlap too
far, so the blue in one strand met the blue of the next, and the
circle's potency would be reduced. The whole design was traced
in sand. The same sand as would once have filled hourglasses. In
the very centre of the circle sat the huge quartz crystal, so
translucent you could almost see through it, about the size of
a catcher's mitt.
Between the witch and the circle were placed
the spell book from which she had taken the design, several crystals
and a freshly-sharpened, silver letter-opener. The star garnets
were for empowerment and productivity. They also represented glory,
but Willow wouldn't admit even to herself that she might use them
thus, as that would be contrary to the workings of white magic.
The sulphur crystals were for wish empowerment, white stones with
pale yellow pieces all through them, almost as if someone had
taken a bag of sherbet lemons and crushed them before trying to
glue the end product back together. The letter opener? Well...
Everything was ready. Willow simply meditated
to clear her mind. She needed to dismiss the thought of the look
on Tara's face when she had first suggested that she take back
time. She tried to forget the look of disappointment on her face
when she told her about the email and the hurt, lost look on Dawn's
face when Spike and Buffy brought her back from the hospital.
Most of all, she tried to ignore the whining
and the scrabbling that came from the now urine-stained cardboard
box in the corner of the tower. After all, once the spell was
cast, she would be totally blameless, because she literally wouldn't
have done anything. |
