Chapter Eleven

Willow’s day/night clock was out of whack. She wasn’t sure what time it was when she had breakfast, so she ate the contents of half the box of chocolate with a diet Coke and brushed her teeth. Georgia showed up to give her a French manicure, reporting that Harmony was whining about not having a blow drier. Spike told her to brush her hair dry since she had nothing better to do. Now Harmony was trying to organize the minions into supporting her request for beauty supplies and a move to a more interesting and comfortable lair. Preferably in France.

Willow giggled. It sounded exactly like something Harmony would do. Cordelia could be mean, but she wasn’t stupid or oblivious like Harmony. “Won’t Spike be mad?”

“When I left he was offering to help her pack,” Georgia said. “I think even Pete is getting tired of her. He found her in San Diego and couldn’t believe his luck—“Georgia shrugged. “She is beautiful, anyone can see that. Too bad she opens her mouth and spoils it.”

“One of my boyfriend’s friends went out with her when we were still in high school,” Willow said. “I think he thought she was kind of putting on a big front. Except she wasn’t. I’ve known her since kindergarten. She’s just Harmony.”

“She’s a little ray of sunshine,” Georgia commented.

Willow thought about that and decided that it was an effective vampire put down. “It's interesting how perspective can change the way things sound. Ordinarily I’d think that was a compliment, but vampires, sunshine, they don’t go together, so I guess it's not.”

Georgia flicked a lock of her long honey blonde hair over her shoulder. “No, that was just good old fashioned sarcasm, sweet pea. Ever heard of a southern put down? It’s when you say something nice about someone in a way that manages to be insulting,” she explained.

“Where are you from?” Willow asked.

“Savannah,” Georgia drawled. “Beautiful city.” A tiny ripple of a frown marred her high forehead even as she smiled.

“Is that where you, uh, met Colin?” Willow wondered, examining her fingernails. “That’s really pretty,” she admired the neat white tips of her fingernails.

“Give me your foot. I’ll do your toes too,” Georgia offered. “You don’t mind do you?”

“Uh-uh. Thanks for the books and stuff. Do you want a chocolate?”

“Maybe later,” Georgia said, balancing Willow’s foot on her knee. They were sitting on the floor. It was cooler near the ground. The back-up generator did not provide enough juice to keep the air conditioning running. Willow’s legs were damp with sweat. “I met Colin at Spoleto, in Charleston,” she said, looking thoughtful. “Going on twenty one years,” she realized.

Did vampires celebrate anniversaries or birthdays? For that matter, what about the major holidays? “Are you going to do anything?” Willow asked.

Georgia glanced over her shoulder at her, looking puzzled. “Like, have ourselves a big ol’ party?” she drawled.

Willow wondered if the innuendo was real or imagined. What was a vampire party like? Her parents had had a twentieth anniversary party last year. It had been a rather stilted cocktail party with a buffet in the dinning room and a lot of their colleagues and a few relatives, and presents. Willow had ordered a copy of the New York Times from their wedding day as a present. Her dad had enjoyed that. “Twenty-one years? You should get good presents,” she said. Her Nana Rosenberg had given her parents eight more place settings of china for their twentieth anniversary.

Impressed by that reasoning, Georgia nodded. “Never thought of it that way,” she admitted. “We should have ourselves a little anniversary party. A good ol’ fashioned night out—with presents,” she included Willow’s contribution.

Willow craned her head to admire her toes. French manicured toes sounded silly, but they were starting to look good. “Pretty,” she commented.

“You need a toe ring and a couple of tattoos,” Georgia told her.

Willow smiled at the idea of coming home with tattoos. “My Dad would love that,” she said. “Maybe henna tattoos,” she substituted.

“There you go,” Georgia nodded. “Wash it off and start all over when you get bored,”. She ran her hand over Willow’s shin. “Want me to wax your legs?” she asked.

Willow hesitated. “Won’t it hurt?”

“A little,” Georgia allowed. “Maybe a lot,” she said. “We could get some ice to numb your skin.” She exchanged the foot she had been working on for the other one. “Sit still. They’re still drying,” she pointed out as Willow reached for her can of diet Coke. “Tell me about your boyfriend,” she invited.

Happy to comply, Willow said, “His name is Oz. He’s a musician.”

“How did you meet?” Georgia prompted.

Willow thought back. “Um . . . career day was the first time I talked to him. I saw him around. He was a senior. We started talking,” she tilted her head to one side trying to remember the first thing he said to her. Was it canapé?

“He wasn’t that interested in computers, he’s just smart,” she elaborated. “Oh, and he saved me from being shot by the Order of Taraka—they were trying to kill Buffy, and there was a stray shot, but he knocked me down and got shot instead.”

The Order of Taraka? Good lord. Buffy? Good grief. The Slayer’s name was Buffy. That just beat Jannen Leigh all to hell in the bad name sweepstakes, Georgia decided. When she was Willow’s age she had been known as Jannen Leigh Dougherty.

“That tends to make an impression. Why was the Order of Taraka trying to kill the Slayer? Why is the Slayer still alive?” she asked.

“Spike hired them,” Willow said, as if that explained everything. “He kind of got his ass kicked when an organ fell on him. It’s a long story. But, yeah, it made an impression,” she agreed. “Oz isn’t like anyone else,” literally. “Well, for one thing, he’s a werewolf.”

“Oh, damn,” Georgia muttered. The little half moon swipe she had been applying to Willow’s third toe was crooked. “A werewolf, huh? He hasn’t bit you or scratched you has he?” she asked worriedly.

“No,” Willow sounded shocked. “Oz would never do anything to hurt me,” she said. “At least not when he’s Oz. When he isn’t? Tranquilizer gun,” she said matter-of-factly. “He did sort of almost eat me once when he was just getting adjusted to the werewolf thing.”

“Hmm,” Georgia smiled to herself. “Of course he did. You’d make a yummy snack.”

Willow’s nose wrinkled, forcefully reminded that she was a food group to Georgia. “Uh, thanks, I think.”

Georgia patted her leg. “Don’t worry, baby girl. Spike’s not going to let anyone nibble on you,” Georgia thought he might be saving that for himself. “No more picking fights with the big bad master vampire, sugar. Colin is old and smart. Spike is older and ruthless, and smart,” she warned. “He’s wound pretty tight. You don’t want to be in his path if he really gets pissed off.”

“Duh,” Willow said. “He’s kidnapped me before.”

Diverted, Georgia turned to look at her. “No way!”

“Way,” Willow was glum. “I thought he was going to kill us. He beat Xander up pretty bad in under thirty seconds of not trying really hard while three sheets to the wind,” she looked at Georgia cautiously, wondering if she should say anything more and decided not too. The things that Spike had said that night had been painful, for him, and personal. While she had been the more or less unwilling recipient of his confidences, she still felt the weight of keeping them to herself.

Georgia capped the nail polish bottles and reminded Willow not to move around before leaving the room. “I’ll be right back.” Willow leaned against the foot of the bed and picked up her book. She had started with Patricia Cornwell and was working her way through the second chapter.

Georgia came back with a waxing kit and an evil smile.



The leg waxing had hurt. A lot. Georgia kept telling her not to be a baby about it, but by the time she was done, Willow’s eyes were running and her legs were splotchy. She had a cold shower and moisturized within an inch of her life, stealing one of Spike’s razor’s to shave under her arms before Georgia got any more diabolical ideas about depilation. Georgia was waiting for her with clothes when she came out of the bathroom. She had what looked like a short skirt, but was actually a pair of shorts that looked like a skirt, a mint green tank top, and a pair of black sandals that were a little big, but they fit. After Willow was dressed, Georgia insisted that they go downstairs where it was cooler.

It had to be a form of torture, Willow decided. She had been liberated from the Gideon Bible with fresh reading material and was denied the opportunity to read it in a sweltering, airless room, forced to join the other vampires in the cooler lower level of the motel. She crossed the threshold of the barely remembered lounge. The light in there was low. She spotted Harmony at once, sitting on the bar, eyes closed, with a Walkman on. The minions, as if on cue, their strings pulled by an invisible puppeteer, turned to her with glowing eyes from their positions in the room. A growl erupted from an enormous vampire with a thick black ponytail.

The girl who had stayed in with Willow the night before slapped him on the back of the head. “Knock it off,” she said sharply.

“Brown noser,” Georgia whispered, and Willow watched as the girl in question looked to Spike for approval.

Not that he noticed. He was studying what appeared to be a hand of cards, lounging in a banquet with Colin and Pete. Georgia nudged Willow along until they were standing by the table where the card game was playing out. She ran an affectionate hand over Colin’s bald head. Willow had seen her do this before. She thought it was probably a version of her Dad’s habit of pinching her mother’s elbow and rolling the loose skin through his fingers, a kind of non-verbal hello.

He looked up at Georgia. Then at Willow. “Playing dress up?” he guessed.

Spike smiled slowly, glancing over at the girl. Red was a vampire Barbie doll. Some vampires had an atavistic grooming instinct. Georgia swung that way, he thought with a smirk.

Colin knew his part. “You’re a miracle worker. A few days ago she looked like death warmed over and now she’s all . . . adorable, Georgia,” he complimented.

“Thank you,” Georgia accepted the credit. “She is adorable.”

Conflicting emotions played over Willow’s face. Discomfort at being scrutinized. Distaste at being objectified. Disbelief and uncertainty at the positive reaction, which she instinctively analyzed for sarcasm. Embarrassment at the pleasure she felt in being admired, even in what she recognized as a crass and non-involved appreciation. All of this ladled on top of her discomfort in being in a room full of vampires with Spike and Georgia as the only people she could rely on to keep her from being turned into a meal. Her stomach churned. She was tired of it. She was tired of being afraid all of the time.

“I think we should have an anniversary party,” Georgia told Colin. She grinned at Spike. “With presents,” she added pointedly. “And I want to bring our baby girl along.”

Spike shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” he said. It coincided with his plans to move. “Where?”

Spike had a watch set on the address of the house Willow was supposed to be staying in. For seven days it had been dark. No one had picked up the growing pile of newspapers. Now it was occupied according to Pete. He checked it out himself that night, lurking on the roof of the coffee shop until the occupants showed up around three in the morning. Four guys, all young, including one he vaguely recognized from the evening of his nearly fatal encounter with an organ.

Oz. The werewolf. Prowling around San Jose looking for his mate, no doubt. He figured that the Watcher and the Slayer would invest some effort in trying to find him, so he wasn’t entirely surprised by this development. He watched as the boy’s head snapped up, suddenly alert and wary. Probably catching his scent on the wind. Spike stroked his jaw and considered his options. Four humans versus one vampire? He could take them. The wolf was the only one who was truly dangerous, and even if he knew he was coming, he was just one, and out of phase for his transformation, which made him relatively helpless.

Killing him, however, might bring the Slayer, and he wanted her in Sunnydale, working diligently on the search for the Gem of Amara. They would move. Tonight, he decided. Anyone caught straggling in around sunrise would be left behind.

Georgia pretended to think. “The Temple,” she said after a moment.

The Temple was in San Francisco. It was a Greek Revival church built at the turn of the century and sold when a more modern and conventional church was dedicated. It had been turned into a private club by a pair of enterprising vampires. The old sanctuary had been converted into a stage for shows. It was the only public part of the Temple. There were two subterranean levels that were strictly demon.

San Francisco was an hour away, and there were plenty of places that they could run to ground.

“What are we waiting for?” Pete asked. The Temple was well known up and down the coast.

Colin rolled his eyes. “Please!” he snorted. “They have to go shopping and get all tarted up,” he frowned at Pete. Stupid American.

Georgia nodded, “And, don’t forget, presents? Anniversary presents. Colin and me have been together for twenty-one years,” she winked at Colin.

“A party!” Harmony had decided to take off her headset and join the conversation.

Georgia’s lip curled and Pete grinned at her. “Can I give you Harmony?” he asked, sotto voce.

“I heard that!” she said, jumping down from the bar and stomping her foot. Willow watched her slink her way over to Pete. “I told you. No three way unless it’s boy-boy-girl, or Charlise Theron,”
Wow. Way too much information. With her unerring instinct for sussing out the weakest person in the room, Harmony frowned at Willow. “Why do we have to take her? She’s no fun,” she insisted.

Willow tended to agree. “That’s okay. I don’t do tarted up, thanks. You go have fun. I don’t want anyone to miss out on my account.”

Spike laughed at that. “Right, Red. We’ll leave you here, all by yourself, safe as houses. I’ll just tuck you up in bed while you read improving literature like a good little girl,” he teased.

That little girl crap was wearing on her nerves, but she confined herself to glaring at him. “Geek,” she heard Harmony dismiss her.

“Vapid whore,” Willow shot back before breaking eye contact with her kidnapper in chief. “I’ve been kidnapped. I’ve probably lost any chance of going back to my internship, which was for credit, and I’m way behind on my summer reading list,” she said, sounding matter of fact to her own ears. “Yeah, that makes me a geek. What? Am I supposed to be insulted?”

“If you aren’t insulted why are you calling me names?” Harmony demanded.

“I am a geek,” Willow repeated with weary patience. “I thought we were playing a version of call it as you see it.”

Too subtle for Harm, but not bad overall, Spike decided. Georgia clapped. “Kitten has claws,” she said, sounding amused. “What’s the point of waxing your legs if you don’t do tarted up?”

“Pain?” Willow took a wild stab at it.

Georgia grinned. “Oh, yeah. That was nice,” she admitted.



Willow wasn’t allowed to play in the sandbox. She stood a foot away, looking down at her feet, her fingers pleating folds into her t-shirt over her tummy. The end of her nose was red. Her hair was braided today, like yesterday. They had tried to put straws in it to make her braids more like Pippi Longstocking from the book Mrs. Gardner read at nap time, but it hadn’t worked. She just had braids with straws sticking out of them. A dog barked and she flinched, looking up warily.

“C’mon, Willow,” Xander called. He was building a fence with Popsicle sticks forming the pickets in the sand. He had several take out Chinese containers of various sizes waiting to be filled with sand to form the buildings inside his fort. He looked down at himself. He was full sized in his dream. Willow was five.

“Not supposed to,” she reminded him.

It was a stupid rule. Willow wasn’t allowed to play in the sandbox. It had something to do with her shoes. She wasn’t allowed to take them off either, which was another stupid rule. He could tell that she was thinking about it. Then he smiled. He was the grown up. He could change the rule.

“You can take off your shoes,” he told her. “I’m in charge and I say you can.”

She looked up from her shoes. They were brown oxfords, the scuff marks on the toes neatly covered with shoe polish. “They are double knotted,” she informed him, looking discouraged. He got up and climbed out of the sandbox, kneeling down to pick the laces apart and untie her shoes. The shoes came off, and he felt a moment of fear as it occurred to him to wonder if the reason she had to keep her shoes on had something to do with her feet. Maybe there was something wrong with them that was hidden by the shoes.

She sat down on the side of the sandbox. She was wearing purple jeans printed with flowers. She took her socks off and he was relieved to see that her small feet were normal. She got in the sandbox. For a moment, she stood there, squishing her toes into the sun warmed sand, then she sat down, Indian style, looking very serious. She looked up at him for direction. “What do I do now?” she asked.

“We are building a fort,” Xander told her.

She picked up one of the cartons and scooped sand into it, packing it down with the back of her fingers. He watched her play. It was no longer about him building a fort. It was about Willow playing. He would watch her play. He picked up her shoes and started filling them with sand.

She looked up at him. “I’m going to get in trouble,” she told him, even though he was the one filling her shoes with sand. She looked sad.


He woke up with a start. He had fallen asleep on Giles' couch.

Buffy peered at him. “Hi,” she said. She looked sleepy too.

Xander rubbed his face, wishing that he could go back to sleep and finish his dream. He wondered what made him think about Willow and the sandbox rule. He closed his eyes for a moment, yawning. “Had a dream,” he told her.

Buffy scooted down in the couch, propping the book she was reading against her raised thighs. She had her feet on Giles' coffee table. “Good dream or bad dream?”

“We were playing in the sandbox. Me ‘n Will. Except she was a little girl.” He smiled. “I never could get her in the sandbox.”

Buffy’s eyebrows rose and her forehead wrinkled. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

Xander shrugged. “Nah. No prophetic dreams here. It was this rule. Willow couldn’t play in the sandbox. She couldn’t take off her shoes,” he knew he wasn’t explaining it right. “She wore these shoes . . . like old lady shoes,” he said. “She wasn’t allowed to take them off, and she couldn’t play in the sandbox with them on, because they’d get sand in them, I guess. I don’t know what made me think of it.”

“But, in your dream, she did play in the sandbox,” Buffy concluded.

“Yeah. I was grown up. In charge. I changed the rule.” He picked up the book that had fallen to one side. “Do you think she’s okay?” he asked. “I keep thinking about how scared she must be.”

Buffy tried not to think about that. “Willow’s got the kidnapping thing down by now, don’t you think?” she tried to joke. “She’s been kidnapped by Spike, twice, and once by the Mayor and Faith, and there was demon robot guy,” she reminded Xander. “She could give Spike pointers.”

Xander got a mental image of Willow offering helpful suggestions on the finer points of kidnapping. They had been in tight spots before. They always managed to figure out a way to get through it. He was going to have to trust in that.