There was a monster in her bedroom.
        Dawn lay in bed, watching him through her eyelashes.  The monster had been sitting in a straight-backed chair, reading The Maltese Falcon in the dark, but at some point in the night he'd fallen asleep and slumped over sideways onto the foot of her bed.  Pearly predawn light washed over the curve of his shoulder and spilled into his pale hair--another half-hour and he'd be in big trouble if he didn't wake up.  His mouth was open slightly and the wire-rimmed reading glasses he fondly imagined he'd kept hidden from her over the summer were askew on his nose.
        Monsters drooled in their sleep.
        She felt like crap.  Someone had vacuumed out her insides, and there was a weird crawly feeling in her stomach when she looked at Spike.  It took her awhile to pin it down.  It wasn't fear.  It wasn't disgust.  It wasn't shock or horror or any of the things she really ought to have been feeling while looking at a monster.  It was just... the knowledge that he was a monster, a hot, embarrassed how-could-I-be-so-stupid feeling akin to the day she'd realized that Santa Claus really was just Dad in a funny suit, except with massacres.  If this was adulthood, it sucked.
        The door to her room eased open a few inches and Buffy's right eye appeared in the crack, followed shortly by the rest of her, slim golden hands clutching a burqa of white terrycloth tightly around her torso.  Her eyes, even sans eyeshadow and mascara, were huge hazel pools in her small, sharp-chinned face, her posture drawn in brushstrokes of apprehension.  When she saw that Dawn was awake, she let out a small sigh and with it some of the tension.  She slipped inside, caught Dawn's eye and held a finger to her lips: Don't wake him, walked over to the window and pulled the drapes shut.
       "Why?" Dawn whispered.
        Buffy gave her a duh look. "Not looking forward to explaining the burnt vampire smell to the insurance adjuster when I try to claim the charred carpet on our homeowner's policy?"
        "Not that."  Dawn struggled upright against the pillows.  Her limbs were leaden, like she had bowling balls strapped to her ankles.  "I mean... OK, today you love him.  But you didn't used to.  Why didn't you ever kill him?"
        Her sister stopped beside Spike's chair and reached down to straighten out his glasses, smoothing his hair back from his high forehead.  "I don't know," she said.  "I tried.  Just like he tried to kill me."  Buffy tugged one wavy lock free, gel crackling as she wound it around her forefinger and let it spring back into its natural curl.  "I guess our hearts weren't in it."
       Buffy's heart hadn't been in killing Angelus, but she'd done it.  "Did you ever see anyone he killed?"
        Slim golden fingers, playing through hair the color of bleached bones.  Buffy sighed.  "You want a catalog?  Dell and Dwayne Robichaud, throats torn out.  Sherri Addison's dad, broken neck.  Steve Laughton's dad, broken... everything.  Sheila Martini--technically Dru killed her,  but Spike's the one who brought home take-out.  That was Week One."  The  moving fingers paused.  "Dawn...is something--?"
        "I was just curious."  Dawn sank back down into the bed and burrowed down under the quilt, poking Spike in the nose as her feet shifted beneath the covers.
        Spike woke with a snort, losing his glasses entirely as he jerked himself upright.  He stared wildly around the room for a moment, yellow-eyed with surprise, then broke into a huge grin when he saw she'd woken up.  "Dawn!  How're you feeling, Pidge?"
        "I'm OK."  This was where she should reach out and hug him, because she knew Spike loved getting hugged but was too much ultra-cool vampire guy to ever admit it.  Her arms just lay there like slugs on the patchwork squares of the quilt.  Dawn pasted a return smile onto her face, but she didn't know what to say to him any longer, and a second later his smile faltered.
        He knew.  Predator's senses or just reasonably perceptive guy, he could see the wariness in her eyes and feel the new distance stretching between them.  Spike swallowed, picked up his book and got to his feet, not even bothering to get embarrassed about the glasses.  "I'll just be off, then, let you get some more sleep."
        A pang lanced her heart as she watched him leave, leaving a hollow ache behind.  She and Spike had possessed something between them that he didn't have even with Buffy, and now it was gone.  Should she call him back, tease him about the glasses and try to pretend everything was the same as it had been?  Only yesterday she'd have known exactly what words to use.
        "I'll bring you some breakfast later," Buffy said, pausing in the doorway with one hand on the frame.  "And I'll call in sick for you at school.  Assuming they're open again after the whole cafeteria demon thingy.  Giles says you should just try to rest as much as possible today."  A small vertical line appeared between her brows as she looked from Dawn to Spike and back again, aware that something was out of kilter but unable to ascertain what.  Dawn rolled over and pulled her quilt up over her ears, and after a second of lip-biting, Buffy left.
        Spike remained in the doorway a moment longer, a sweet wistful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  "G'bye, Niblet."
        "Goodbye, Spike," she whispered as he followed Buffy down the hall.  Did she want to cry?  She wasn't sure.  In the end she just lay there, empty, too tired to feel anything at all.  She should have asked about Willow, but maybe Buffy didn't know.
        It took her longer than she wanted to get back to sleep.
 

        Three drops of ink squeezed from the eyedropper, one after the other, drip, drip, drip into the pie-plate full of Evian.  Willow sat cross-legged on her old bed in her old room at her parents' house, gazing intently at the makeshift scrying bowl balanced on the coverlet before her.  She passed a hand over the water.  "Reveal," she whispered.  The ink swirled, forming a fractal whirlpool of indigo on the surface of the water.  The Summers house emerged from the coiling lines of ink, with Spike's motorcycle parked in the driveway, in the middle of the oil spot left by the DeSoto.  She made another pass over the water, and the image wavered, but she couldn't bring up the interior of the house.
        "Are you sure you don't want any breakfast, dear?"
        Willow chewed on her lower lip.  "No, Mom," she hollered through the closed door.  "I'm not hungry.  I'll fix some cereal before I go to class."
        There was a pause.  "You know, Willow, if you and your...um...friend had a fight, then opening an honest dialogue is paramount to--"
        Willow ground the heel of her hand into the bridge of her nose and tuned her mother's voice out.  She'd spent half of last night in a frantic casting of spells of obscuration and concealment around herself, and twice already this morning she'd felt the feeble scratchings of someone trying to penetrate them--Giles, maybe, or Anya; it hadn't been Tara's familiar touch.  She'd had five hours of sleep, had a pounding headache, and the more she thought about last night the worse things got.  She couldn't be a bad guy, could she?  No bad guy was so lame as to have to run home to Mommy and Daddy with some cheeseball story about a fight with Tara, begging for a place to spend the night.  No, she just needed time to sort things out, that was all.
        "...so if you're questioning your ego definition on this level, honey, maybe it's time to..."
        "I'll think about it, Mom.  Aren't you late for work?"
        There were spells of ward and protection laid about the Summers house, too--nothing too fancy, just the old standards.  They coccooned the house in an intricate cat's-cradle of rose and saffron threads.  Tara had cast them when the two of them moved in; Willow had been too weakened in the aftermath of Buffy's Raising to help.  Now she could rip right through them, but the idea of wantonly destroying Tara's work made her ache.  Willow reached out with something that wasn't her hand and began picking the spell apart, thread by thread by thread, slowly insinuating herself into the weave and allowing her own power to flow through unhindered.  "Reveal."
        The ink swirls, and she is drawn into the world it inscribes upon the quicksilver surface of the water.
        Willow walks.  It is not she who is the ghost, but the world around her; walls part like smoke, and misty wisps of brick and stucco cling to her skirt as she passes them by.  Here is Dawn's room with its teen-aged clutter of posters and books and clothes.  The hidden corners are still drifted with toys, too childish to play with and too beloved to give away.  Dawn lies on the bed, the human shell of her tossing in the restless slumber of innocence lost, the ageless heart of her being pulsing raw green power for any who dares grasp it.
        The part of Willow still sitting on the bed drew a sob of relief.  Dawn was alive.  She hadn't burnt all her bridges yet. She'd lost her way in the woods, and though the slick black voice in her head was no Virgil, maybe Tara would still be willing to play Beatrice.  She could honestly claim she'd had no idea that the spell would harm Dawn.  Of course, then she'd have to explain where she'd gotten the part of the spell which tapped into Dawn's power...and worse, why she'd tapped into Dawn's power in the first place.  She couldn't just go traipsing back, not without knowing more about Buffy's mood and what the others thought had happened.  Another pass.  "Reveal."
        Swirl.
       Buffy's room is empty.  The window is open and the morning breeze lifts the curtains, carrying away the musk of sex and blood.  The scents are old, and the walls carry no echo of soft cries and sharp pleas--the bed is rumpled, but there was no sporting in this room last night, nor any room.  The top drawer of the dresser is open slightly, and there are a few pairs of newly-washed black t-shirts visible through the crack.  In the bathroom across the hall, there is a third toothbrush in the holder.
        The vampire stares blearily at the nothingness in the mirror (his sleep schedule has been shot to hell) and draws the razor carefully along the line of his jaw; when he flicks the shaving cream off into the sink, it abruptly pops into visibility.  Being a monster, he cannot truly understand why the fact of his being so troubles the girl in the room down the hall.  Yet her withdrawal pains him terribly, in a manner no monster should feel.
        In the master bedroom, Tara lies sleeping, curled around the empty space where her absent love should be.  Her beautiful face has none of its usual serenity.  She moans and cries out as she feels Willow walk unseen through the secret places of the house, reaching out with her round soft arms, and Willow shies away, fearful of waking her, fearful of breaking the spell.
        Buffy is downstairs.  Worry and fear coil around her, a grey miasma, but she denies them power--she is cooking breakfast; waffles enough to feed a small army, and eggs and toast (there are no strawberries, and this is a source of vast unease, because there should, there should be strawberries with waffles, but they are out of season and they have no money and the lack means she is a bad sister, a bad friend and a terrible Slayer).
       There is the ritual of breakfast for sick people: Buffy brings waffles on trays, and Dawn and Tara wake and stir and pick fretfully at their food, and demand newspapers or milk or whatever Buffy has forgotten to bring.  Spike comes downstairs and he and Buffy eat the rest of the waffles, syrup on hers, pig's blood on his.  They talk about last night in low voices; Buffy has grasped that the removal of the chip was not something he sought, but she suspects nothing of Willow's involvement, and the cobalt bonds of the geas still hold Spike mute.  They move gradually closer as they talk, their auras sparking, red-gold and crimson-lit ebony--
        A burst of unfocused tantric energy shattered the image into wild ink-squiggles and Willow fell back, almost kicking over the pie plate with one rabbit-slippered foot.  "Whoa."  She shook her head and sat up.  She shouldn't have been surprised; two supernatural creatures of diametrically opposed natures making whoopie was bound to produce a few mystic aftershocks, especially when supernatural creatures in question acted like they'd spontaneously combust if they went for more than twelve hours without an orgasm.
        Willow slumped a little and rubbed her eyes.  Should she try the Magic Box?  The shop had far more effective wards, though, and she wasn't sure if she could hack them without alerting Giles.  Besides, she had a mission: find out when Tara was recovered enough to talk.  The squicky fascination of spying on your friends was just bonus material.  She attempted to visualize the kitchen again and got one fleeting glimpse of Buffy licking syrup off Spike's chest before another wild surge of static kicked her out again. It was impossible to spy effectively when she was constantly forced to pan to fireplace.  I'm never, ever going to eat off the dining room table again.
       Periodic checks in the scrying bowl over the remainder of the morning revealed that when Buffy and Spike were alone, they were groping each other 75.3% of time.  Spike made another attempt to give Buffy grocery money, and the fifteen-minute argument over same culminated in the wig-inducing spectacle of Buffy taking the money and roaring off in the Cherokee.  No wonder Spike used to get so disgusted when we foiled his plans.  Possibly insane, power-mad witch on loose, Slayer on major shopping spree at Albertson's.  When Buffy returned, Spike had thoughtfully cleaned and oiled her various implements of destruction, and was on the phone with Clem, having a mysterious conversation about customers and the fact that someone named Teeth wasn't going to like it, whatever it was.  The two of them spent the rest of the morning doing exciting things like dishes, laundry, and each other on top of the dryer, which shorted out the scrying spell again (and a good thing too).  Even Slayers and vampires had to spend ninty percent of their lives doing everyday ordinary stuff, or at best supervising minions who did it for them, but watching them at it was boring beyond belief.
        An hour later, Willow sat in the back of the darkened Art History 302 lecture hall, watching the slides of Rosso's "Descent From the Cross" melt into Parmigiano's "Madonna With The Long Neck" on the screen and listening to Professor Alpert drone on about the philosophical underpinnings of the Mannerist school of painting.  She scribbled out 'Mannerism -- 1525-1600.  Artist's inner vision supercedes twin authorities of nature & the ancients.  Deliberate physical & spatial distortions employed to make aesthetic point.'  She could relate to that.  She felt distorted out of all recognition.  She could look back over all the things she'd done over the past two weeks and see that each individual decision made sense as she made it, but when she put it all together, the picture was subtlely off.  Pretty sure that begging Spike to kill me isn't normal behavior.  Her fingers tightened on her pen, and Willow added, 'Kid in painting looks dead.  Gross' to her notes.
        Except...she'd wanted it.  Even as she'd listened in horror to the  words pouring from her mouth, something within her had exulted when Spike's fangs grazed her neck, and wailed in abandoned fury when he pulled  away.   You didn't want to bite me, I just happened to be around.  But  ugh, ick, blech, that couldn't be her!  She didn't want to die!
        Of course not.
        The girl in the seat in front of her turned around and smiled at Willow with her own face gone ridged and fangy.  "But you're sure he wouldn't have left you dead.  I work with what I'm given, oh Willow-titwillow-titwillow," she said with a pout.  "Some little part of you wonders what it would be like to be immortal and invulnerable--is that my fault?"
        Willow bent over her notes, and whispered, "One: Shut up.  Two: Leave."
        The ebony voice purled through her skull, closer than her skin to her flesh.  Leave?  As well tell your shadow to walk away.  I am within you, I am of you, as you are of me.  We are one now, of your own free choice.  A choice that cannot be unmade.  I have given you everything you desired, have I not?
        It had.  She could still feel it, a La Brea Tar Pit of dark power bubbling away beneath the surface of her soul.  But she couldn't use it.   She buried her face in her hands, grateful for the darkness of the auditorium.  At least she'd completed her three tasks, and the bargain wasn't hanging over her head any longer.
        An amused chuckle reverberated through her mind.  Isn't it?  There remain eleven of Tanner's people who are still quite mad.  Until you have used the Key's power to cleanse their minds, your bargain remains unfulfilled and your power is only on loan.
        "I don't want your stupid power anymore!" Willow hissed, attracting stares from her classmates on either side.  Cheeks flaming, she oozed down into her seat.
        "Does that matter any longer?  You have it.  And it cries out for use."  Willow swallowed a shocked yip; Professor Alpert had been replaced by Jenny Calendar.  None one else seemed to notice anything peculiar; the rest of the students were dutifully scribbling notes about the stylistic contrasts between Mannerist and late Renaissance art.  Jenny leaned  forward, arms folded against the podium, and smiled.  "But let's not get hung up on details.  What I want, Willow, is to restore the Balance.  Have you forgotten that it's still in danger?"
        Well, boo big flipping hoo,  Willow shot back.  I may be special needs girl for not figuring this out sooner, but the whole 'let's kill your best friend's sister for the good of mankind and if that doesn't work attempt suicide by vampire' thing kind of gave it away.  You're not working for the same side Whistler was, and if you think I'm going to kill Dawn or Buffy or even Spike to fix your precious Balance, you're crazier than Tanner!
        The illusion of her high school Comp. Sci. teacher sauntered over to the AV screen and tapped it with her pointer; the cool formalism of the long-necked Madonna was instantly replaced with an overhead view of Sunnydale.  Jenny indicated the wreckage of the old high school.  "The side I represent is irrelevant at this point.  If the Balance isn't restored, then the Hellmouth will turn itself inside out in a matter of weeks.  The forces of Light will over-run Sunnydale and slaughter the forces of Darkness, and anyone they see as having aided the forces of Darkness."  She smiled, delighted by the prospect.  "Do you have any idea how many demons live in this town, or how many people they deal with every day, all unawares?"
        Willow gripped the arms of her seat and said nothing.  Faux-Jenny continued, "Now, I'm not going to ask you to interfere on my behalf.  Oh, no--that wasn't part of our bargain, and I always keep the letter of my promises.  I don't even object to the slaughter.  There are always more demons to be had.  I'm just pointing out that our bargain is not complete, and at the moment, my advantage is your advantage.  Unless you want to see your town laid waste... for its own good."
        Luminous shapes with wings of light and swords of flame mow down students like wheat.  The wind carries screams and the charcoal stench of burnt skin.  She stands knee-deep in blood as arcane energies bath the skies overhead and bodies boil and explode from within like turkey giblets in a microwave.  The campus is a demonic Arlington, an endless field of corpses human and otherwise, bloated and rotting in the pale winter sunlight.  Flocks of ravens fight seagulls for the eyes of the fallen...    She was hyperventilating and everyone was looking at her funny.  You're lying.
        "No.  I may not tell the whole truth, but I've never needed to lie  to you."
        Oh, right.  Like 'Dawn won't be harmed if you use her power to cast this spell,' which is totally true, except for the part about Dawn not being harmed?
        Jenny sighed and tossed her dark curls over one shoulder.  "Harm is such a relative word.  The Key cannot be destroyed, only transformed.  By all means let's wait and do nothing, Willow.  Buffy waited, and that worked so well for me, didn't it?"  Jenny's eyes bugged out and her smile split into a hideous death's-head grin, drooling blood as her head lolled broken-necked to one side.  Willow jerked backwards, scrambling half-way over the back of her seat with a shriek.
        "Hey!" yelled the boy beside her.  "Take a pill, will you?"
        "Silence!" Willow snarled, fingers crooking in menace, and the boy's words choked off.  He clutched his throat in panic as she gathered up her books and ran out of the auditorium.
 

        It was late afternoon when Tara descended the stairs, feeling as shattered as Picasso's nude.  She'd slept off and on all day, rousing groggily when Buffy brought her sandwiches, but her brain was still floating several feet above the top of her head.  Disjointed scenes from last night were starting to bubble one by one out of the foggy pit of her skull, brightly-colored blobs in a mental lava-lamp.
        Buffy cradling Dawn in her arms, tawny blonde hair spilling across chestnut brown.  The girl's body was frail and hollow as the shed husk of a cicada.
        Dizzy kaleidoscope of buildings and streetlights flashing by outside the SUV's windows.  Hands, warm and cold, hauling her out of the car and upstairs.
        Spike limping up scorched and shaken, his pale skin flecked with ash and the diamond-sharp angles of his cheekbones blunted with soot, a charcoal sketch of defeat.
        Power surging through her, far more power than Willow should have been capable of summoning up.  Power recoiling as she realized to her horror that Dawn had been standing on Kether from the beginning of the spell.
        Xander flying at Spike, demanding to know what he'd done to Willow, and Spike turning on him with a wild-eyed snarl.  Giles separating the two of them with a sharp word.
        A hundred desperate repetitions of  Where is she?  I have to find her! which no one would answer.
        Voices drifted up to meet her, tone poems without meaning, Buffy's clarinet-crisp and light, Anya's staccato brass, Spike and Giles's tenor and alto sax... what was Xander?  An accordion?  A trombone?  Tara repressed a giggle, afraid that if she started to laugh she'd never stop.
        "...should've noticed sooner.  Kept thinking there was something missing, and it turns out to be Dawn.  What's the bloody good of..."
        "None of us noticed."  That was Giles. "Willow's an extraordinarily powerful witch, more than capable of tailoring the spell to affect you as well as the rest of us.  It's difficult to cloud a vampire's mind, but not impossible.  Especially one as, er, lacking in mental discipline as you are."  Spike growled, but said nothing.  "Dawn's young and healthy; she should recover, physically at least."
        "At least?"  There was a worried edge to Buffy's voice.  "There's an other than physical?"  There was a rustle and a creak, as of bodies rearranging themselves on furniture, and a soft indrawing of breath from Spike.  "Does that still hurt?"
        "Not so's it matters.  She hadn't much juice left to hit me with, thank God for small favors."
        She?  What she?  Couldn't be Willow.  Not possibly, not Willow who donated to Amnesty International and had frog fear and wouldn't shop at WalMart and hadn't wanted to shoot the horsies.  Willow didn't hurt things.  No, no, no...  "Second bloody shirt I've done for in as many days."
        Tara rounded the corner into the living room.  Giles was leaning up against the mantelpiece in a brown study, glasses in hand, studying them as if they were the last artefact of a ancient demonic civilization.  Xander and Anya were scrunched up together at one end of the couch, and Spike was scrunched up next to Buffy at the other end.  The no-man's-land in the middle was divided by a Maginot Line of half-folded laundry, stacks of black jeans, black t-shirts, and not-quite-so-black button-down shirts.  The charred remains of Spike's striped sweater were stuffed haphazardly into the nearest wastebasket, and he was matching up pairs from a tangle of identical black socks.  Every eye was on her, and Tara wanted to sink into the floor.  Unfortunately she couldn't muster the magic to sink a toothpick into cream cheese right now.
        "Tara!" Buffy leaped to her feet with desperate cheer.  "You made it down!"  Before she could protest, Tara found herself the target of a whirlwind of overwhelming Slayerly concern--Buffy wasn't exactly good at the whole nurturing thing, but she really, really tried.  Five minutes later, she was ensconced in the armchair with Xander tucking one of Aunt Caroline's afghans tucked around her. "Here you go!"  Buffy plunked a glass of warm milk (microwaved) a bowl of soup (Campbell's tomato, woefully lumpy) and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich down on the nearby end table with a bright smile.
        "You shouldn't--" Tara started, but Buffy waved her objections away.
        "No big.  Your girlfriend's gone postal; the least I can do is provide comfort food.  Is peanut butter OK?  Do you need anything else?  Green vegetables?  I went shopping this morning, and I think some of the stuff I bought had leaves attached.  Would you rather have chicken soup? We have cans; I can do cans--"
        "And if you need a nip or two to set you up--" Spike indicated his hip flask and his heroic willingness to sacrifice the contents to her well-being.
        "Um... thanks, but I already feel like I have a hangover."  Tara picked up her sandwich and took a dutiful bite.  If she didn't eat now she'd regret it tomorrow.  Everyone was being extra-nice, even Spike, which always heralded badness.
        After several minutes of furtive looks and strangled 'You!' 'No, you!' noises, Giles lost the battle for non-dominance and cleared his throat.  "Tara, I'm sorry to press you on this so quickly, but is there a chance that you can cast a location spell to help us track down Willow?"
        Tara held her sandwich in both hands and stared at the blob of grape jelly oozing slowly out from between the crusts of bread.  Sugar and starch and protein, just what she needed, however unappealing the thought of chewing and swallowing was right now.  "I... probably not for another day or so.  I'm pretty much drained.  You can't--?"
       But Giles was shaking his head.  "Anya and I made the attempt this morning.  To make a long story short, we failed.  All else being equal, Tara, you have a far more personal connection with Willow than I."
        Once.  Not anymore.  Did she look as wretched as she felt?  She had no idea who Willow was anymore.  Had she ever known?  And if she no longer knew Willow, who on earth was Tara McClay?  "I--I'm not even sure what... I know the spell went bad.  I don't know if Willow's..."
        "She's fine," Xander said.  Everything but his voice was screamed that Willow was anything but.  "Fine."  Anya squeezed his hand and for a second Tara hated them both, because they were all coupley and together and Willow was gone. "She was just... startled.  By the end of the spell.  She needs space.  Spike went after her.  Which is totally wrong.  I should have gone.  I--"
        "I blame myself," Giles said, rubbing his eyes.  He hadn't taken the kind of hit that Dawn or Tara had, but he did possess a modicum of magical talent and hadn't escaped the spell's backlash unscathed.  "I should have supervised her more closely after--"  He glanced across the Summers' dining room in the direction of the kitchen, where Buffy was attacking another loaf of bread as if it were all the fiends of hell.  "The first... incident."
        "You shouldn't," Tara protested.  She shifted in the armchair, pulling the afghan closer around her shoulders against a sudden chill.  "If anyone should have realized what was happening, it's me.  I knew how hard she took losing her magic, I knew it was suspicious that she got her powers back all of a sudden--"  A sob gathered in her throat and Tara forced it down with peanut butter.
        "Ah, kitten, we all cocked up,"  Spike said.
        "Some of us more than others," Xander muttered.  "Captain Wrong-Way Peachfuzz here seems to have confused 'bring her back' with 'scare her off.'
        Spike bristled.  "Oh, sod off, Harris.  Teleporting's not among my many talents.  We'd better find her fast, though.  Something nastier'n I am's got its hooks in her."
        Tara ventured a timid interruption.  "What happened to Mr. Tanner and the others?"
        Xander glared, rubbing his temples.  "They got away while I was helping Giles get you and Dawn into the SUV."
        "Highly effective lot we are," Spike said with a derisive snort.
        Xander honed his glare on the back of the vampire's skull for a few minutes, then accepted the lack of a direct attack as tacit truce.  "Yeah. Finely tuned machine."
        Buffy returned with more sandwiches, which she started passing around like rations.  "So, to sum up--Willow may or may not be under the control of something yicky which may or may not be providing her with her nifty new powers, but she absolutely for sure involved Dawn in a way dangerous spell which almost killed her.  This after yanking me back to life without a permission slip, and nearly dusting Spike in the process."  Her lips thinned.  "I think I need to have a little talk with Will."
        Giles replaced his glasses.  "Spike, perhaps you'd better fill Tara in on the details of your final encounter."
        The vampire's jaw clenched.  His eyes never left the pile of socks as he ran through a brief description of his conversation with Willow, or whatever was wearing Willow at the moment.  Tara listened with mounting horror.  "You... you mean your chip's not...?"
        "Gone the way of the dodo," Spike said.
        "And you almost killed Willow."  Tara found she was shaking, alternating waves of fear and anger racking her shoulders.  "My Willow."
        Spike finally looked up, his eyes bleak as Arctic ice.  "Yeh.  That  about covers it."
        "So excuse me," Tara said, her voice cracking with the effort to hold it steady, "Can someone explain why all of you are so worried about what Willow might do?  OK, putting Dawn in that spell was bad.  Really bad.  But I know she didn't mean for Dawn to get hurt!"  She flung off the afghan and swayed to her feet.  "Willow's got problems, but she's a good person!  She cares about people!  She wants to help them, she wants to fix things, and sometimes she goes too far--" A beseeching look at Buffy, who was sitting stone-faced on the couch, her folded arms a barrier across her heart.  "She does bad things sometimes, but she's good!  And Spike--I'm sorry, I like you, you've helped us a lot, but--but--you're not.  Willow almost killed one person last night--you almost killed two.  So--"
        "You know, she's got a really good point there, Buff," Xander said. "We got any guarantee the Peroxide Wonder here isn't planning out the week's menu with us as the main course as we speak?"
        The iron bars of no argument slammed down in Buffy's voice.  "That's enough, both of you!  In case it's escaped your notice, Spike's the one here, helping--"
       Spike rose from the couch, all lithe black-clad grace: ...black as the Pit, and terrible as a demon, was Bagheera ...   He faced her, a terrible demon indeed for all that his face was as human as her own.  He reached up and stroked her trembling cheek, his nostrils dilating as he drank in her fear-drenched scent.  His fingers were cool and dry.  He smiled, and the expression managed to be horrifying and heartbreaking at the same time.  "No, pet," he said, and though his eyes never left Tara's he was speaking only to Buffy.  "She's right.  Just like Will was right.  Clever birds, the both of them."
        And he was gone, just like that, between one breath and the next. "Spike!" Buffy cried.  She grabbed an armful of afghan from the back of the couch and was gone too, almost as quickly, and Tara was falling backwards into the armchair and Giles's and Xander's arms, sobbing as if her heart had not already broken.
 

        Spike's motorcycle was still in the driveway, crouched in the shadow of the Cherokee, but he was nowhere in sight.  Buffy ran down the front walk, her eyes going automatically to the oak tree where she'd so often caught him standing in the past, but there was no trace of him, not even a trampled cigarette butt in the grass.  The last molten sliver of the sun was still visible above the horizon, but it would soon be gone, and the shadows were already plenty long enough for a vampire as indifferent to his own flammability as Spike was.  Maybe she wouldn't need the afghan after all, but she wasn't taking any chances.
        He couldn't have gotten far.  The whole blurry-vampire-speed thing was only good for a block, tops.  Had he taken to the sewers?    Which way would he have gone--back to the crypt, or--?  She didn't have to guess. Buffy closed her eyes and concentrated, and a thrill ran down her spine, out through every nerve and back again: not just vampire nearby but Spike, right there, magnetic north to the lodestone of her soul.
        She found him beneath an olive tree at the edge of the little park on Cavenaugh, lazing against the treetrunk with hands in pockets, his head tilted to meet the gnarled bole.  He was still as only the dead can be still, an unliving shadow among the silver-grey sprays of olive leaves, and though he was standing in plain sight, eight people in ten would have walked right past him.  A cigarette smouldered between his lips, half an inch of ash undisturbed at the tip.  A thin tendril of smoke curled upwards to wreath his head like some infernal halo.
        Half a dozen children were racing around on the other side of the park, playing some complicated game of tag through the monkey bars.  Their distant shrieks of laughter cut the air like the cries of tropical birds, a sound far more exotic to Buffy's ears than the roars of demons or the wailing of the damned.  Spike watched them across the straw-colored expanse of dead Bermuda grass, and a shudder ran over his body, ravenous yearning and revulsion entwined too closely to distinguish.  He didn't move, didn't speak as Buffy approached, but she was certain that he sensed her presence as surely as she'd sensed his.  After a moment one languid white hand rose to his mouth, and she saw his cheeks hollow and his chest expand as he took a drag on the cigarette.
        "I could walk over there," he said very softly.  "I could walk over there, and I could kill them all before the last one had time to scream.  Not going to.  But I could."
        All her senses were focused on the tremor in his voice, the glitter in his eye, the tension in his every muscle--once more Spike was the only real thing in a universe of shadows.  Buffy folded her arms across her chest and regarded him, unafraid, but... watchful. "Spike, haven't we had this conversation?"
        He turned to look at her, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards.  "We will never stop having this conversation, Slayer."  He peeled himself off the tree trunk and set off in an aimless zig-zag across the park, stalking along with his head down.  Buffy followed, speeding up to keep pace with his longer stride.  The few stars visible overhead were hard brilliant points of light, and the waning moon now rising over the rooftops to the east was still bright enough to paint long black shadows on the grass to vie with those drawn by the nearby streetlights.
        "I keep thinking I've got the answer, you know?"  Spike flung his  cigarette at the nearest Requiescat in Pace.  "And every bloody time I think I've got it pinned to the wall, the question gets more complicated.   I didn't kill anyone last night!  Supposed to be a good thing, right?   What we're aiming for here, keep old Spike on the straight and narrow?   But the Bit's looking at me like I'm something a dog wouldn't roll in, Glinda's set to give me a mystic bitchslapping, and let's not forget Xander 'Stake 'Em All And Let God Sort 'Em Out' Harris--"
        They'd left the park behind and were walking along the berm next to an irrigation canal.  A five-foot wrought-iron fence ran along the bottom of the embankment, and ranks of stately junipers marched off across the manicured grass beyond, dividing the rows of headstones--no elaborate  carvings or monuments here, just discrete flat rectangles of bronze or  polished granite.  She didn't have the disguise spell on, but as long as they were out, they ought to make themselves useful.  She tugged Spike after her and slid down the embankment, and a moment later they were over  the fence and strolling through the cemetery, alert for movement, though  chances were that Spike's continuing tirade would scare off anything with  ears.
       "Yeh, if it'd been anyone besides Will last night, there's a chance  I'd've killed them!"  The vampire aimed a wild sweep of his arm and a  belligerent glare at the nearest juniper, daring it to make a move.  "You  know how that makes me feel?  Like dog's dinner, that's what, because it  would tear you and Dawn to shreds if I had!  But part of me's screaming  'Only a chance?  What happened to rock solid certain?' and another part's  off blubbing in a corner because it was Will and I almost did kill  her--" His voice held a rising note of panic.  "There's nothing I do feels  right anymore!  I know I've buggered things up with Dawn, but I don't  understand why!  It was so simple with the chip.  Didn't matter what I  felt, what I want, try anything with a human and I'm flat on my arse with  a migraine, and now I have to bloody think   about every sodding move I  make!"
        Spike strode over to the hummock of new turf which signified a recent grave, bent down and plunged a fist through the grass, halfway to his elbow into the soft earth below. He hauled the dazed fledgling who'd been in the process of clawing her way free up in a shower of damp clods.  "I'm doing the best I bloody well can here!" Spike bellowed to the graveyard at large.  "In fact, better!  I've twisted my insides into a sodding pretzel, and it isn't good enough!  Did it right, didn't I?  Didn't do anything evil.  Didn't kill either of 'em, and I wanted to--it's the wanting to, isn't it?" he snarled at the newborn vampire, who nodded her head in desperate agreement seconds before Spike ripped it off with a roar of frustration and tossed her disintegrating body aside like a rag doll.  "Bloody buggering hell, I can't  change that!"
        "Damn it, Spike!" someone said in an aggrieved whine.  "That was our minion!  It took us a year to find a good one!"
        A matching pair of older vampires materialized from the shadow of the largest juniper, looking more nervous than menacing.  They were dressed in a patchwork of worn shirts and out-at-the- knees jeans, and one of them was wearing a knit green wool cap that made him look like an undead Michael Nesmith.  Buffy choked back a squeak of totally inappropriate laughter--it was the same timid, scruffy pair of vamps Spike had dragged her after last winter, on the ill-fated 'date' preceding the whole Drusilla-and-chains incident.  Damn it, she should have sensed them.  There were disadvantages to having Spike's electric presence thrumming through her system twenty-four seven; other vampires were starting to pale in comparison unless they were right on top of her--definitely not a position she wanted to encourage.  Buffy whipped her stake out of her coat pocket and dropped into a fighting stance.
        "Oh, fuck, it's the Slayer!" Scruffy #1 took to his heels, and after a gape-mouthed moment Scruffy #2 followed his example.
        "Right, I've had about enough of you pair of limp-dicked would-be wankers!"  Spike howled.  "You're for it, the both of you!"  He tore off after them.
        Buffy beseeched the heavens for patience or the ability to fake it, and dashed after, the red and blue pinwheels on the afghan flapping behind her.  The chase led into an older part of the cemetery--the Scruffy Twins were heading towards the moonlit limestone bulk of an open mausoleum. Buffy leaped over a tombstone, plunged her stake between Scruffy #1's shoulderblades, and spat out a mouthful of vamp dust in time to see Scruffy #2 dive for the marble lid of the sarcophagus in the center of the mausoleum.  Spike grabbed him by the collar, yanked him back and slammed a fist into his jaw.  The other vampire made a wild swing at Spike which Spike didn't even bother to block.  Lips skinned back over his teeth in an insanely joyful grin, Spike delivered three swift vicious blows to Scruffy's gut, grabbed him by both ears as he doubled over, and bashed him face-first into the sarcophagus.  There was a wet crunch; teeth flew and a spray of dark crimson splattered across the pristine marble.  Scruffy slid bonelessly to the ground in a smear of blood and mucus, moans of pain bubbling out of his ruined mouth.  Spike licked his lips and stepped back, breathing hard, to survey his work.  He looked up at Buffy and smiled, a heavy-lidded look of satiety.  "Now this," he purred, "this is more like.  I don't bloody think.  I bloody fight and fuck and feed and beat the shit out of things."
        As he met her eyes and saw the shock on her face, the smile vanished, replaced with sick self-loathing, and all of a sudden Buffy knew with complete and equally sickening certainty exactly what was coming next.  Lips compressed to near-invisibility, she walked up the mausoleum steps, knelt beside Scruffy and drove the stake into his heart, ignoring the sudden wrenching emptiness in her own.  She stood and faced Spike, fists planted on hips.  "Really," she said, then realized she was still clutching the afghan--the Linus Van Pelt vibe had to go.  She tossed it away and smashed a hard right into Spike's nose with force enough to rock him back on his heels.  "'Cause I think we can do better than that."
        "OW!"  Spike reeled back and clapped a hand to his nose.  "What the bloody hell was that for?"
        "Got your attention, didn't it?"  Buffy danced back on her toes, crooking a finger in a come-hither gesture.  "I'm just a little bit pissed off right now, Spikey.  Just a tad."  She lunged forward and Spike leaped to the top of the sarcophagus, staring at her all wide blue-eyed shock, as if she'd lost her mind.  She leaped after him.  Spike blocked the right to his jaw, dodged the left to his solar plexus and fell for the kick which swept his legs from under him.  He fell on his ass, hard, and immediately kicked out to sweep her own feet out from under her.  Buffy leapt over his  shins.  Spike jackknifed up in one of those flashy moves everyone thought  was a vampire thing but was more likely attributable to those two hundred  crunches a day, caught her ankles in mid-leap and flipped her backwards.
        Buffy landed on her back, twisted sideways to avoid Spike's grab at her wrists, and was on her feet again with a roll.  Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a shape in the graveyard beyond, a vast half-translucent figure like the shadow of Ghede which had followed Tara before possessing her fully.  The woman stretched, her dark limbs gaunt and muscular against the sky.  She rose from her bed of bones, her hair a wild veil across her face--was it slashed across with white clay?  Behind her a male figure strode out of the night, pale as death and bearing at his side a drum.  His footfalls and the slap of his palm on the drum-head were the sounds of cities falling to ruin.  The woman held aloft the severed head of a slain demon in her left hand, and in her right the knife which still dripped with its blood.  She threw back her head and laughed, red tongue lolling from her sharp-toothed maw.  The necklace of skulls which was all she wore rattled like dead leaves, and the smell of burning flesh was on the wind as she danced to the pounding beat of her ash-white consort's drum.
    "What the hell is wrong with you, Slayer?" Spike yelled.  He was on his feet again, skirting one of the corner columns of the mausoleum, and  Buffy forgot the nebulous shapes in a fresh wave of fury.  It was only another god sighting, and they never did anything but hang around looking portentous, so who cared?
    "What's wrong with me?" She feinted right and aimed a devastating  wheel kick at his head.  "Listen to yourself!  Pot insulting kettle's color scheme much?"
    Spike rolled with the kick, blocked a follow-up punch and got a nasty  jab to her stomach through her guard.  "Better talk to myself than you,"  he said between clenched teeth, "I'm the only one in this bleeding  conversation making any sense!"  Buffy kicked him in the kneecap and dodged his two-handed blow to her jaw--not quite fast enough.  She staggered backwards, faked a stumble, and flipped him head over heels.  Spike dragged her down after him, slammed one size-12 Doc Marten into her belly and flung her halfway across the mausoleum.  Buffy sprang to her feet, scarcely feeling the impact, and dove at Spike.  He met her with an exultant snarl.
        The fight developed a rhythm sensuous in its complexity, thrusting and blocking, striking and feinting.  Buffy gave herself up to it.  It was good to be pushed this hard and fast, good to watch the yellow light flicker in his eyes as they circled, good to watch the bunch and slide of muscles in his arms and chest.  Either Slayer's blood was some kind of vampire steroids, or she wasn't the only one who'd put on a little extra muscle in the last month, because when he landed a blow, damn, it hurt. And that was good too, in the weirdest possible way.  Sick as it was, she'd missed this.  It had been years since she'd fought him, really fought him, and she'd forgotten how swift and deadly he was, forgotten that the only thing better than fighting with Spike was fighting with Spike, and the only thing better than fighting  with Spike was... OK, hadn't forgotten that part, but oh, that was lost forever now because--because--
        Vast inhuman shapes, light and dark, danced behind them, slashing  patterns of horrible beauty across the night sky.  For a second they broke  apart, panting, and the divine shadows which mimicked them did likewise.  "Is this about anything in particular?"  Spike asked.  "Or have you just gone off your nut?"
       "Like you don't know!" Buffy gasped.  "I have this one by heart, Spike!  I can sing all twelve verses from memory!  'It's too haaaaard!  I can't do it without the chip, or with a curse, or when I'm not super-soldier!'"  She vaulted over the sarcophagus and drove both bootheels solidly into Spike's midsection; he went down with a strangled 'Oof!' grabbed her calf and yanked her after him.  "So which is it going to--ung!-- be, the 'Guess I'll go evil' speech or the 'I'm no good for you' speech?  Or hey, why not combine both?  Then you ride off into the stupid sunset on your stupid Harley for my own stupid good, and I h-hope it fries you, you stupid, stupid... GUY!"
        Spike caught Buffy's wrist, flipped her around, wrenched her arm up behind her back, and pinned her down on the lid of the sarcophagus, his whole weight thrown into keeping her off-balance.  "Bloody right it's too hard," he hissed, and it was obvious he wasn't talking about life in general.  "And for the mercy of Christ, it's not a Harley, it's a sodding Triumph Bonneville!  Where'd you get the fuckwitted idea I'm going anywhere?  Or giving up?  What was the first thing Angelus told you about me, love?"
        Buffy rammed an elbow into his gut and twisted free, glaring at him. "That once you started something, you..."  She gulped, and Spike's whole expression softened at once into that terrifying killer's tenderness as he took in the pain in her eyes.  If her churning insides were any indication, a similar merry-go-round of emotion was whirling across her own face.  "...you don't stop until everything in your way is dead."
        "Yeh, well..." His voice had gone husky.  "He was right, if you  replace 'dead' with 'sorted,' and add in 'unless he gets bored or  something good comes on telly.'" They stood there, eyes locked, frozen in place.  Spike's hands slid from her upper arm, over one breast and down her stomach, fingers brushing lightly over her aching nipple, sending little jolts of fire through her. Spike watched the progress of his hand with hungry eyes, the tip of his tongue running slowly along his upper teeth.  Her whole body throbbed under his gaze.  She could scarcely breathe.  Spike licked the trickle of blood off his upper lip and grinned.  He tapped her playfully on the shoulder.  "Don't feature you boring me ever, and there's bugger all on Tuesday nights.  Tag, pet, you're it."
        And he was off again, laughing, shadow-boxing round behind her.  He spun into her reach and threw a right to her jaw--playful, now.  She blocked the blow and aimed a roundhouse kick at him.  Spike absorbed the impact and launched himself at her again, barreling into her like a guided missile and slamming her up against the nearest column.  Somewhere inside Good Buffy was carping that there wasn't time for this, that they should go home and make responsible Willow-finding plans.  Good Buffy could stuff it.
        She let her hands slide down his pectorals, mimicking his earlier caress, felt him take a deep, ragged breath as her thumbs swirled over his nipples and felt him let it go with a high-pitched whimper as her teeth closed on one firm little nub through the fabric of his shirt.  There was a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead in the moonlight, but he wasn't at all hot after all that exertion.  Holding him was like embracing a piece of the night made flesh.  He kept on whimpering as her fingers undid his belt buckle and began working the zipper of his jeans, stroking their languorous way downwards.  His cock thrust eagerly against her palm, yearning towards the wellspring of slick warmth between her thighs, pulsing--not to the beat of his silent heart, but her own.  "How the heck do you manage to fight like this?" she asked, running a fingernail along the straining inseam of his jeans.
       "Lots of practice," Spike gasped, fumbling with her zipper in turn.  A shudder ran through him as his hand slipped into her jeans and caressed her warm flesh, and she realized his cheek was wet where it pressed against her neck, and not with sweat.  "Love, I'll try till I'm dust, though it's you that makes me so, but I just can't care the way they want me to!  I try.  I try so hard.  I look at some chit on the street and I think--I think 'There, she's Dawn's age, someone loves her like you do the Bit,' and it's all right in my head but there's nothing in my heart, nothing!"
       Buffy ran the tip of her tongue along the acute angle of his cheekbone, tasting salt.  "This is nothing?" she whispered.  She kissed his eyelids, lipping tears from the long dark lashes--so unfair that lashes like that got issued to a man. "It doesn't taste like nothing.  It doesn't feel like nothing."
        "It's not enough!" he moaned, burying his face between her breasts. "Not enough for Niblet, not enough for Tara--how can it possibly be enough for you?"
        When had what anyone besides her thought of him become something to agonize over, and should she be throwing a party?  "I guess you know, then."  Spike lifted swimming blue eyes to stare at her.  "How you act.  When they stop treating you like a man."  She held his head in both hands, her fingers lost in the bleach-roughened curls, and let her own head fall to meet it, forehead pressed to forehead.  She was dizzy, aching for him in every sense of the words, and far, far out of her depth.  Words--Spike lived by words, great glorious piles of them.  He needed words, and words were what she sucked at so very, very much.  Couldn't she somehow make her hands and eyes speak for her, tell him what he needed to hear?  Could he tell that the fact she was here, with him, and not with Xander and Tara, was an essay in itself?  "Spike... you said once that I treated you like a man, but you're wrong--it would be an insult to treat you like a man.  You work harder at being human than any man I know.  I treat you like a vampire, a vampire who's...who's reaching for something.  Something you shouldn't even be able to see, something most of the people who're supposed to have it take completely for granted.  You make me see how precious being human is, Spike, every day, and I need that to go on doing what I have to do.  Even if you haven't touched it, even if you can't, I love that you keep reaching.  I love you."
       He laughed, a wild, awful, half-sobbing sound, and leaned forwards, winter-sky eyes devouring her.  His hand was on her cheek, stroking it-- not with the impartial gentleness he'd used with Tara, but with feverish intensity; she could feel his fingers trembling.  "Help me touch it, Buffy.  Help me feel it.  Make me feel it.  Beat it into me if you have to!  When I'm inside you I can almost touch it--make me--"
        "I can't," she gasped, "I can't ever make you anything."  His mouth was on hers, teeth scraping teeth with the ferocity of his kiss, tongues sliding past and twisting together in sleek velvet caresses as he drank warmth from her mouth like blood.  She moaned as he slid in and out of game face, fangs pricking her lips like rose-thorns.  Her fingers tore the buttons of his shirt free of their holes.
        Marble beneath her, hard, cold, smooth, and dry.  Bas-relief olive wreaths cut into her shoulderblades through the scratchy warmth of the afghan; fifty years of weathering blurred the once-sharp edges of the carvings.  Spike above her, firm, cool, smoother, hair escaping in sweat-dampened ringlets from its comb-and-gel-imposed order.  Even she was not strong enough to dig her fingers right into the stone, though she tried, she tried, as his fangs nipped at her collarbone and up the swan-curve of her throat, pinpricks of ice and fire.  The lean hard length of his body was molded to hers, belly to belly, and she lay back, trying to wriggle out of jeans and underwear (and she'd thought ahead for once--pads, this time) without losing an inch of contact with his skin.  She kicked the clothing free, and dipped her fingers between her own thighs.  She brought them to his lips, glistening with milky fluid shot with crimson.  "Think it's ripe?"
        Spike's growl vibrated through her body so violently that she bucked and gasped and almost came without another touch.  He sucked her fingers deep into his mouth, the wet-velvet-and-steel of his tongue swirling around the pad of each one,  His hands were on her shoulders, her body bounded by the rock-solid pillars of his arms, hips flexing together in relentless rhythm.  Starbursts went off inside her with every stroke, building to nova intensity--oh God, he had been made to fill her, she'd been made to enfold him.  Before the afterimages could fade she was atop him with one quick lunge and roll, his narrow hips captured between her thighs.  Tonight she was going to push that non-existant vampire refractory period to the limit.
        She spread both hands gloatingly across the muscled expanse of his chest, raking her fingers across the sharply defined pectorals, down the sheer planes of his abdomen while he arched and shuddered beneath her.  Her nails traced the sparse line of hair leading from his navel to the dark nest of curls below, eliciting ticklish shivers.  He was slick and warm still from her heat and moisture, and she took him in one hand, stroking lightly, then with greater firmness, playing with the foreskin and the sensitive flesh beneath.  His body came to life again immediately, swelling beneath her hand--so soft, so hard, satin over granite.  His eyes held hers captive, so dark a blue they seemed black.  "'Thou art my life, my love, my heart,'" he breathed.  "'The very eyes of me; And hast command of every part, to live and die for thee...'  Make me live, Buffy.  Make me..."
        "I can't make you anything," she repeated.  "Except this."  She bent and breathed on the head, her tongue flicking out to taste another kind of salt tears.  Every slightest touch and movement of hers elicited some fascinating twitch or quiver from that beautiful pale body, some new expression of lust-drowned rapture on that expressive face.  "I can make you come.  All.  Night.  Long."
        The wheel of the heavens turned above them, the earth groaned beneath them, and in the graveyard beyond, their dance was mirrored by the Black Mother, impaled in rapture upon the lingam of the Lord of Destruction.  And in the labyrinth of passages deep below Sunnydale, Willow Rosenberg walked into an echoing cavern, took a deep breath, and announced to the assemblage of eyeless men, "OK.  From now on, we're doing this my way."

Part 28                                                  Part 30