Luba opened up a couple of bottles of beer and passed one to her neighbour, Cherie, as they looked over the work that had recently been completed by the real builders. The guttering on the roof had been fixed and all the water damage caused by the leak had been repaired and repainted but the scaffolding still remained.

"So, they take the scaffolding down on Monday and your mom comes home on Tuesday?"

"Yeah and then everything's back to normal."

"Looks pretty good," Cherie acknowledged.

"Yeah, I guess once they-."

"Not the house."

Luba turned to see what was distracting her friend. She noted the figure bending over to pull something from the trunk of his car, which looked suspiciously like the exact same rental that Spike had arrived in. The action tightened the black dress pants the man wore, displaying his butt to good advantage.

"It's alright, I guess..." Luba paused, shielding her eyes against the afternoon sun as the man pulled what looked like a wrapped picture from the trunk and twisted to rest it against the side of the car. She took in the slightly rumpled white shirt, the sleeves rolled up a few turns, the loosened black tie and the cigarette that had been pursed between his lips until he was able to free a hand to take it. His dark hair was just beginning to show signs of grey. That and his expression were the only things that seemed different from his image on her study wall. The years had moved on, but they'd been far kinder to him than that future vision in Excalibur, where he ended up bald and wheelchair-bound.

The man smiled around his cigarette as he hoisted his parcel under one arm and approached the two women. Finally, the necessity to speak forced him to remove the cigarette from his mouth. "Pete Wisdom. Don't suppose either of you birds would be Luba Kmetyk?"

Cherie nodded toward her still slightly shell-shocked friend. "I'll just head home and let you two have some privacy," she offered. "I'll phone later." Luba knew that from her friend's house on the other side of the street she would probably keep watch so long as they were outside. Then, if they went in, she would ring to see if Luba wanted the same regular calls she had had her make when Spike first arrived.

"H-how?"

"Some things aren't quite as fictional as people would have you believe. Maybe prettied up a little and a year or two knocked off, but I'm as real as you are." His gaze brought a flush to Luba's cheeks as he looked her down and back up, a teasing light in his eyes showing that he had no objection to what he saw.

"Look, I'll get straight to the point. We heard there was some sort of message hidden away too small to be seen in the printed copies of that picture you bought. We need to either borrow or buy it. I've got the original of the cover from Pryde & Wisdom #1 by Terry Dodson here. If you want we can make a straight swap?"

"I might be prepared to come to some sort of arrangement... if you throw in dinner at my favourite restaurant."

Wisdom looked up at the sky, gauging the angle of the sun. "Got an hour or two to kill yet before they'll be servin' up dinners."

Luba shrugged and pulled another bottle from the cooler next to the porch swing, where she made herself comfortable. "Beer?" she asked, opening the bottle before passing it over.

The Brit gave a wicked grin as he joined her. "It'll do for a start."

The End!