Chapter Five

Briefed on the situation with Willow not answering her calls, over the pizza and a two liter of soda, by Devon, the Dingoes agreed en masse that a road trip to San Jose was in order even if it did mean giving up the sweet deal on the rooms at the Claremont Inn. They finished dinner and got organized to check out. Devon, claiming a family emergency, got the charges for both rooms refunded, so they were set for gas money.

Oz appointed Dan navigator, though once they got on I-5 it was pretty much a clear shot up the coast. He drove a lot faster than his usual five miles over the speed limit, keeping the accelerator on the floor. They spent a lot of their time talking, with Dan hanging in the open space between the two front seats, occasionally offering a comment on the time they were shaving off the eight and a half hour driving time. Devon claimed the front seat, and Chris was sacked out on the floor of the van, wedged in tight between equipment and sleeping bags.

They would talk, but the subject kept circling around to Willow, and how there probably was a perfectly good explanation for her failure to answer the phone. Their good-natured insistence was growing strained as they reached San Jose, and Oz started to feel a degree of dread.

Willow. She was a very conscientious girl, and Oz knew it was true though it did not begin to sum her up. He could not imagine her not answering calls. It wasn’t like her. She took such quiet pleasure in having messages to answer. He had worried that she wouldn’t get out and do things while she was in San Jose. She was still basically shy, though she had started to come out of her shell in the time since he had known her.

It was unfair. If you lived in Sunnydale long enough, you learned to expect bad things to happen, especially if your girlfriend was a witch and her best friend was the almighty Chosen One designated to slay bad things. Oz had seen some amazing and terrifying things since he had come to Sunnydale, and all too often, Willow was at the off center of them, backing up Buffy. She was such a quiet girl, outwardly meek, but inside, she was a lot tougher than that.

It was almost ten in the evening before they reached San Jose. Dan had the in town directions mapped out, and soon they were turning onto Morton. They almost missed St. Catherine Court, but Oz recognized the neighborhood from his trip to San Jose three weeks ago, and he found a place to parallel park on the curb. Oz and Devon piled out and led the way back a half a block to the court, Chris and Dan trailed, checking out the neighborhood stores. The porch light was on at the address of the house where Willow was staying. They knocked and rang the bell to no answer.

“Now what?” Devon asked. Man, it was after midnight. Willow Rosenberg out after midnight in Sunnydale was not so odd, though it was probably more dangerous given the weird shit that went down in Sunnydale, but Willow out after midnight in a strange town was just wrong on too many levels.

Oz was sniffing, trying not to be too obvious about it. Even during the parts of the month when the wolf was dormant, he retained some of the heightened senses. Willow’s scent was faint, almost undetectable. She was not here. He looked around on the small porch. At her parent’s house Willow kept an emergency key near the door in case she needed to get in the house fast. There were four rolled up newspapers on the porch, a mat, a wicker settee, and a small table with a lantern. He checked under the lantern and found the key.

Devon was impressed. “Good guess,” he said as Oz unlocked the front door.

There was a pile of mail on the floor where it had been pushed through the mail slot. The sight of the untidy pile of mail reached each of them. Willow had not come through the front door in . . . days, or she was real messy. Devon thought about that. “Dude, I’m thinking this would be a good time to call the police,” he said.

Oz turned on a light and found the phone. The answering machine next to it had a read out of the number of messages stored. It read seventeen. His heart sank. He picked up the phone and dialed the Summer’s home.



Willow’s Email (Unopened)

To: Rosenw@clangeek.com

From: drswooffices@aol.com

Re: fwd: Vacation Pictures & News

Had to take the pictures out! My email bounced back with one of those impenetrable messages from AOL. File size too large, perhaps?

We miss you!

Dad

----- Original Message -----

To: Rosenw@clangeek.com

From: drswooffices@aol.com

Re: Vacation Pictures & News

Quick note with pictures attached from the Parthenon. Your mother and I leave for Budapest in the morning. We’ve been hop scotching all over Europe, and it has been an interesting experience persuading your mother to play things by ear. We are compromising. When we start a ‘what do you want to do’ go round, your mother can get her itinerary out. Best of both worlds.

Your mother is very excited about the prospect of visiting the village where her great-grandfather was born. She’s looking forward to trying out her Hungarian. She has been going to sleep listening to the Foreign Service Institute tapes. I’m looking forward to seeing Budapest. If you would like to learn more about Budapest, follow this link: http://www.fsz.bme.hu/hungary/budapest/ there are some fantastic pictures on the web site.

We plan to be in Budapest for seven days. We are staying at the Danubius Hotel Gellert. I’ll be delivering the paper I presented at the Berkeley symposium at a small conference for mental health professionals on crisis intervention. I hope it isn’t too naïve. Some of the attendees are coming from war zones. My paper focuses on aftercare for refugees. BTW, I’m using the Powerpoint presentation you helped me with during your holiday break. Thanks again for the assist!

I hope that you are enjoying your summer. Your mother and I are so proud of you for taking the opportunity to get some experience in a field that you are interested in. If you need anything and you can’t reach us, remember that you can call on your aunt and uncle in Scottsdale.

Love,

Dad



This was an all too familiar place to be in, Giles thought. He was sitting at the breakfast bar in the Summer’s kitchen. Xander was in the hallway, pacing restlessly. Buffy was on the porch, sharpening a stake. Joyce Summers was sitting across from him looking tired. The poor woman had a business to run in addition to the occasional late night crisis. She had made tea for him, pulling out the good china, largely, he suspected, to give herself something to do.

Buffy and Xander could think of no good reason why Willow had been out of touch with everyone for what appeared to be at least four, possibly five, days. Neither could Giles. The usual rules of teenage living simply did not apply to Willow. It was inconceivable to him that she would have ignored so many calls, not to mention Buffy’s emails.

The phone rang shortly after two in the morning. He found himself reaching the phone first, and hesitating simply because it was not his phone to answer.

“Please answer it,” Joyce urged as Buffy came through the back door and Xander rushed down the hallway. He nodded and answered the phone.

It was Oz, of course. No one else calling so late, except perhaps Willow had he found her at home with some perfectly plausible reason for her failure to get in touch with anyone. “It’s Rupert Giles, Oz.”

“Uh, yeah,” Oz acknowledged. “I guess you’re there because Buffy’s worried,” he said.

“We are all concerned,” Giles told him.

“She’s not here,” Oz told him. “I’m calling the police,” he added. “The mail is piled up and there’s newspapers on the porch since Saturday,” he sounded worried.



When they made a stop at a quickie mart on their third night, circling back toward San Jose Willow stuck close to Spike’s side, trembling. It was not the first stop of the evening. They had stopped at one of those mail boxes places, though Spike had left her in the car while he . . . checked his mail? Did vampires get mail? Then they had gone shopping at Fred Myers. He had purchased a case of bottled water and food that she assumed was for her, though he had not consulted her on his selections.

She looked like hell. She had barely slept, and being confined to the chair all day long, forced to sleep through endless hours of daytime television and her growing hunger, thirst and desperate need to use the bathroom, had left her with a crick in her neck that had advanced through the day and early evening into a vicious headache.

The people in the store were more scared of her, the filthy, shaking, crazy looking girl. People were strange that way. Danger was sexy and suffering was scary, and Willow was definitely suffering. Spike watched an older woman glare at the girl when she inadvertently made eye contact.

She stumbled against him and he cupped the back of her head, holding her against him. “Sssh,” he soothed. “We need to get you something to eat,” he said to distract her, switching gears to solicitous with terrifying ease. “What do you want, Red? Want some ice cream?” he steered her to the freezer case.

“Go on, you pick, pet,” he urged. He glared at the older woman on principal. Stupid bitch. Humans. Idiots, most of them.

Willow knew this was all wrong. Spike was the bad guy. He was being all soft soothing voice and pick out something you’d like guy, and if she stepped the least little bit out of line, he would start killing people. She was not supposed to feel safe or comforted the least little bit by the change in his demeanor. It was probably all for show, anyway. A dizzying bit of role reversal that made him appear to be the good guy, and her to be whatever made the older woman looking at the doughnut case with ill disguised longing recoil from her. However, she did feel something that felt alarmingly like safe, and made her eyes burn with tears because she had not felt safe in so long.

He got her a toothbrush, tooth paste, cereal, milk, bread, and peanut butter as well as beer and cigarettes for himself. When they were back in the car, he shook his head. “I don’t know, Red. Maybe next time you should ask someone to help you. I promise, I’ll kill anyone who tries to stay out of it first,” he joked.

She just looked more confused. “That was a joke,” he told her. “Never mind,” she was too out of it to get it.

He located the motel Colin had found for them. Way off the highway, a rundown, hastily constructed World War II vintage motel that had undergone a cheap renovation in the sixties. There was a moldering putting course with a dinosaur theme. Colin, Georgia, Pete, and Harm had taken up residence two days ago, routing the squatters and taking over the main building. They were waiting for him when he arrived, having taken over what had once been a cocktail lounge. He had given Colin specific instructions about minions. Only keep the ones that looked useful in a fight and get rid of the rest. Colin had taken him at his word, and he was pleased.

Georgia got up from where she was sitting behind a water-damaged piano and walked towards them. “Spike,” she shook her head at him. “What have you done to our baby girl?” she scolded. “She looks terrible,” she said.

Harmony laughed. “Smells terrible, too,” she said, waving her hand in front of her nose. She was cheered up by the opportunity to pick on Willow.

Willow clutched her pint of melting ice cream. She had not let go of it even for a second since she had pulled it out of the freezer. She had no spoon to eat it with, though she had not complained about that.

“No clothes,” Spike said. “She’ll clean up,” he pointed out.

Georgia went behind the bar and found a dusty spoon. She wiped it off. Spike pushed the girl into a chair and pried the container out of her hands. She had never quite believed she was going to be allowed to keep the ice cream. He ripped the top off and took the spoon from Georgia before giving it back to her. It was all squishy and it kind of made her feel sick, but she ate it anyway while Spike peppered the assembled vampires with questions and looked over the minions.

Pete and Colin were taking them out to hunt. “I’m hungry now,” one of the minions complained. “Why can’t we eat her?” he asked.

“Eeeew,” Harmony made a face. “She’s all smelly,” she said. “It’s enough to turn your stomach.”

Spike backhanded her. Time to remind everyone of who was in charge. “Shut your stupid mouth,” he said, without any particular venom as Harmony stared at him in shock, looking at Pete to see what he would do. He just smiled.

He pointed at the girl. “That is mine,” he said. “Touch her, and I’ll introduce you to a dimension of pain that will leave you begging for a stake,” he completed the thought.

The minions stared at him uneasily. He was not a big guy. In fact, he was kind of small and wiry, but they could sense power that confused them.

Spike watched them sorting it out in a bewildered way. That’s right children. I’m the big bad here.

Willow had stopped eating her ice cream to watch. She was not sure what was going on here either, and Spike looked outnumbered to her, but she could see the vampires nodding. Well, most of them were nodding. The vampire who wanted to eat her—yuck!—was not nodding with the rest of the class. He was looking skeptical and hungry, and gigantic as he shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. Willow guessed that he was well over six feet tall. He looked heavy through the middle, and his hair was long and bushy, drawn back in a partial ponytail. He was wearing heavy black boots and ripped jeans with a sleeveless sweatshirt.

Where was her pencil when she needed it? She wiped her mouth off with the back of her hand. “Is this going to be a really gross, blood everywhere before he gets dusty thing, or a top ten most humiliating ways to get dusted thing,” she wanted to know. “Because on top of the ice-cream, if there is a lot of blood and screaming, and torture, I’ll probably get sick.”

She wondered if vampires were more sensitive to the smell of vomit than humans. Not that she had noticed Spike making gagging sounds when she had thrown up when they were on the road. Guess not, then.

Everyone except Spike looked at her in varying degrees of astonishment.

“I heard about that time you and Dru tortured Angel, with the holy water dripping,” she made a face, and then shuddered, “it made me pretty sick just hearing about it,” she muttered.

Spike turned his head to look at her, one scarred eyebrow raised. “Oh . . . being quiet now,” she said, interpreting the look.

Looking at Spike for permission, and getting a curt nod, Georgia approached Willow. “Come on, dumpling. Let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll find you some clothes to wear. We’ll let the boys sort themselves out.”

Willow looked uncertain. “You can keep your ice cream,” Georgia added.

“Put her in my room,” Spike said.

Willow sighed. He barely let her out of his sight even to go to the bathroom.

Georgia took her out of the lounge and down a hallway. All of the windows were covered with black spray paint, and the lingering smell made her feel sick to her stomach. They went up a wide set of stairs to a second story. The floor was covered with a faded carpet that smelled of mildew and dust.

“It’s not the Hilton,” Georgia announced, “but, we cleaned out a couple of rooms, so it's not as bad as it seems,” she wondered if the girl was going to throw up.

“We saved the honeymoon suite for Spike,” she said with a grin. It was the biggest room in the hotel and close to the lounge. Pete had gotten a back up generator running, so there was limited electricity and running water.

She got Willow into the bathroom and let her finish her ice cream as the water warmed up in the shower. The girl cried as Georgia made her take off her filthy clothes, which weren’t fit for anything at this point but a bonfire. Georgia peeled the filthy bandage off her neck and sniffed at the wound, satisfied that there was no tell tale odor of infection.

“In you go,” she directed Willow into the shower stall with a bar of soap and a small bottle of shampoo.

Spike wandered in with a paper bag that he dropped on the counter. “Do you mind staying in with her?” he asked, having already decided to leave Georgia to baby-sit while he went hunting with his minions.

Georgia sighed. “I guess not,” she conceded, looking in the bag. Tooth brush, toothpaste. It was a start. “She needs clothes,” she told him. “And—“

“Make a list,” Spike cut her off.

“Aspirin,” Willow said from the shower.

His eyebrows shot up. She had not said a single word in twenty-four hours, then the surprising outburst in the lounge. Fifteen minutes of Georgia fussing over her and she was helping with the list making, unfazed by them talking on the other side of the dense shower curtain. That was adorable.

“Anything else?” he asked over the shower. “Girly stuff? A pointy stake?” he quipped.

“Deodorant,” Harmony’s harping on how bad she smelled had made her cringe. “A hairbrush. And a stun gun,” she stammered back.

Georgia grinned. It was funny. The red head had a sense of humor. Spike rolled his eyes. “You washing behind your ears, Red?” he barked. “Between your toes?” He lowered his voice for Georgia. “There’s some food for her, too.”

She nodded. “I’ll take care of her,” she agreed. “Never had a pet before,” she observed, cocking her head to one side.

“Dru did,” Spike sighed. God, but he missed the loony bitch. “She’d dress ‘em up. Always forgot to feed them.”

Georgia had met Dru. Spike’s devotion to Dru had always struck Georgia as a character flaw. “I’m not Dru,” she dared to say. She was too smart to offer a more concrete criticism.

He did not take offense. For a moment, he just looked tired. “No one is,” he told her. That was the problem. No one could be Dru. Done with the brooding, though. Bigger and better things. Gem of Amara, and then rule any fucking corner of the world that took his fancy. In the back of his head, the idea that just maybe, his dark Goddess would be impressed enough to come crawling back to him.