Chapter Fourteen

“Hello, Joyce.”

Sometimes it was hard to remember that Angel was as old as he was. He had a way of ducking his head when he addressed her, like now, standing on the threshold of the front door, hovering there, uncertain of his welcome, that made him seem younger.

He had come back to Sunnydale to help find Willow, she reminded herself. “Hi, Angel. Please come in,” she invited. “Buffy is in the kitchen. We are making dinner.”

“Thank you,” he said.

It was probably a vampire thing, but he never took his welcome into her home for granted, and there was a certain relentless charm in his acknowledgement. Poor Buffy. She never stood a chance against this amazing creature.

He followed her back to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe, preferring to hang back and watch. Buffy was cutting things for a salad, using the sharp knife she wielded with dexterity and speed. She had a remote look on her face. The task required no concentration, so she was off in a land of contemplation, removed to the part of her brain that broke down facts into a series of moves. Willow and Giles had similar skills, but they were more related to chess, full of if and then speculations. Buffy’s mind was clear of speculation, remaining firmly in the here and now of action that she could take.

To Angel, watching her, unnoticed for the moment, she personified a clarity so pure that it made him ache inside with longing and a tiny amount of resentment. Too be that young and that sure of himself . . . when he was her age and mortal, he had been a mess. With the soul to guide him, it had still taken eighty years, some conscious quaking backsliding, and a benign demon to give him a purpose in the world. Buffy had had all that bestowed upon her. The purpose, at least. The rest of it, the restraint she had learned over the years, came from the remarkable support cast assembled around her that kept her grounded.

She looked up from the tomato she was slicing and returned to the kitchen with a smile that acknowledged that she had been lost in thought. “Hi,” she said softly.

He nodded, gesturing to the cutting board. “Can I help with anything?”

Joyce gestured to the refrigerator. “I was going to have a glass of wine,” she said. “Would you mind opening the bottle? Buffy tends to pulverize the cork.”

He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Riesling that was chilling next to a quart of milk. Joyce handed him the corkscrew and went to get glasses. “Angel?” She held up a second wine glass.

“Yes, thanks,” he said, gently extracting the wine cork.

Buffy rolled her eyes at him. “Eddie Haskell,” she hissed at him with a smirk.

It took him a minute to sort through two centuries of cultural references to figure out that he had been called a suck up. He couldn’t help it. Joyce brought it out in him. She had this way about her that made him want her approval. Hell, even Spike responded to it, he thought, recalling the night he had found him in the Summers’ kitchen having a cup of hot chocolate with Buffy’s mother. Drunk off his ass and seething with rage at them because Dru had left him with an opportunity for unholy vengeance staring him in the face, and he had, according to Joyce, done nothing more than unburden himself to her about his breakup with Dru and ask for marshmallows for his cocoa.

He had the impression that Joyce found Spike charming in a child-like way that seemed massively out of proportion to reality, except that he knew Spike, maybe better than anyone else, and there was a kernel of truth to that conclusion. When he wasn’t being the swaggering bad ass that Angelus had taught him to be, Spike’s impulses were dictated by mischief, curiosity, an under appreciated and undisciplined intellect, and a craving for acceptance that made him truly dangerous. He tended to go off the rails in a big way in the face of rejection, and nothing made him crazier than being on the outs with Dru.

Unlike Giles, he had no doubt whatsoever that Spike and Dru were no longer together. The fact that Willow had been alive to speak to Giles underscored the point. If Spike’s impulse control was poor, Dru’s was nonexistent. If she was with Spike, Willow wouldn’t have lasted seventy-two hours, and Spike wouldn’t have done anything to stop Dru. What Princess wanted, Princess got, and damn the consequences.

“Don’t bother to ask me if I want a glass of wine,” Buffy sniffed, bringing him back to the moment.

Joyce smiled, “I wasn’t going to.”

Dinner was a stir-fry dish vegetarian dish with the salad and freshly baked multigrain bread that smelled wonderful. Bakery scents had changed very little over the centuries since he was human, and they still held the implications of comfort and warmth in his sense memory. They stayed in the kitchen for dinner, with Buffy and Joyce eating at the breakfast bar while he worked his way through a second glass of wine.

“Eventually Shelia and Ira have to be told about Willow being missing,” Joyce said.

Buffy snorted. “Why? They don’t appear to notice minor things like that,” she said.

“Buffy,” Joyce’s tone was scolding. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what it is like to be a parent.”

Buffy looked across the breakfast bar at her mother. “Okay. What should we tell them? Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg, your daughter has been kidnapped by vampires. They don’t want money, so don’t bother to mortgage the house. They want an ancient artifact that may or may not exist. Oh, and even if we find it, they are completely untrustworthy . . .” she raised her eyebrows.

“You made a deal with Spike before,” Joyce reminded her, distracted by the implications of untrustworthiness. That couldn’t be good. “He kept his end of it, didn’t he?”

“This is different,” Angel asserted. “Buffy’s right. He can’t be trusted. The last time was different, because he had to follow through to get what he wanted. This time, getting what he wants is part of the big picture. Spike doesn’t want the Gem of Amara because it's rare or a neat trinket. He wants it because it will give him an edge over any other vampire, any demon, any Slayer.”

“And he knows that we know that,” Buffy added, the awkward phrasing making her frown.

Angel felt a smile coming on. “We’re very knowledgeable people,” he said, almost playfully.

Joyce glanced up, realizing that he was paraphrasing a quote from The Lion in Winter. She smiled at that. “What if they call?” she asked, getting back on topic.

Buffy frowned. She knew Angel and Giles had debated the pros and cons of getting the police more involved. The San Jose police hadn’t been very concerned about Willow going missing. Giles thought kidnapping would bring in the FBI, but again, what could they contribute? It wasn’t like they would share what they found out or understand how to deal with Spike.

“We lie?” Buffy said weakly. She winced, warding her mother off with her hands. “I know, I know, Mom. Bad answer,” she said.

“They have a right to know what is going on with their daughter, Buffy,” Joyce said.



Willow tried to explain about how the bag over her head made her feel, to no avail. Spike didn’t look even remotely interested. They were on the move again, only this time it was a much shorter trip and the destination was what appeared to be an abandoned office building. She was handcuffed to a metal chair covered with dark green naugahyde—Spike, the thoughtful kidnapper, left the duct tape on her wrist before snapping the cuff loosely around her wrist. She was provided with a bag of tacos and a soda. After days of packaged food, it was nice to eat something Lukewarm.

Harmony came in and threw herself down on the couch, glaring at her before she picked up an old issue of Vogue. “This sucks,” she pouted.

Willow gave her a brief, incredulous look. The suckage was all on her part. She frowned at the thought, which didn’t come out right in her head. Her stomach churned a little at Harmony’s presence and she wondered if contact with vampires wasn’t giving her a bit of Buffy’s slayer sense. Then she remembered that Harmony had always made her feel this way. On the other hand, it could have come from the tacos. She rolled her eyes, forbearing comment.

Harmony saw it and glared at her. “I saw that.”

Willow’s gaze shot to the door. Where were the terrifying vamps when you needed them?

Harmony saw that too. She made a sound of disgust. “They are talking,” she spat with loathing. “I’m not needed. I’m not good enough to be in on the talking stuff. No one really talks to me.”

Willow sipped her soda. It was Coke. The syrupy texture and the sugary aftertaste made her feel a little sick. She never drank sodas with sugar in them. She grimaced at the taste.

Harmony flipped another page. “Georgia’s always hanging out with you,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. It was the same thing with Cordy. You look all innocent and nice, but I know what you are really like. You just do it to make people like you,” she sneered. “We were best friends before you and Buffy came along and ruined everything.”

“Don’t forget about Xander,” Willow put in. She wasn’t taking the rap for Cordy. Their hate-hate relationship had advanced to acceptance and casual dislike. Xander was the one who had effectively separated Cordy from her in-crowd reign of teen terror.

Harmony’s lip curled. “Xander Harris. Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

Willow’s eyes filled. She missed Xander so bad it hurt. She wadded up the paper wrappers in her lap.

“This place sucks,” Harmony went on. “We’re the undead, you know? Like, we can have anything we want. Take anything,” she snapped her fingers, “and where are we? Are we someplace really cool that all my friends would be green with envy over? No. In fact, if they could see me now, they would laugh at me. Me! Hanging out with Willow Rosenberg in a . . . icky place that humans don’t even want to hang out in. What did I ever do to deserve this?” her voice trembled a little.

Willow frowned, looking down. She didn’t like Harmony, and that was more or less the well reinforced habit of a lifetime, and she also didn’t think Harmony as she was now would get it, but the truth was that she didn’t deserve what had happened to her. No one did.

“I’m really sorry,” Willow began. “About you being dead, that is,” it was a surprisingly awkward admission.

Harmony looked suspicious. She sniffed. “You didn’t even know that I was dead,” she accused. “No one noticed?” her china blue eyes were filling with tears.

Willow wondered if there was a way to excuse that lapse. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I guess we all thought that you had gone off for the summer to someplace . . .”

“Fabulous?” Harmony supplied hopefully. “I guess that’s alright. I really was going to go to France.”

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “Cordy went to Los Angeles,” she told her.

Harmony looked over at her. “Really?”

Willow nodded. “She wants to be an actress.”

Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t just saying that? I figured that she would, like, go to college and hang out with you guys and not even bother with Rush Week.”

Willow snorted rudely. “Yeah, right. Cordy, stay in Sunnydale, with us. I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “She thought we were losers.”

“You are losers,” Harmony told her, but the snipping was merely habit. She was starting to feel better. “At least I’m not spending the summer in Sunnydale, hanging out at the Bronze.”

“Cause that would suck,” Willow muttered, thinking that it sounded like exactly where she wanted to be.

Harmony’s lips pursed. “Yeah . . . though, I guess I had some good times there,” she said slowly. “But, now, its so high school.”

Willow unwrapped another taco. Now that they were going to college, assuming that she was going to college rather than continue being kidnapped into the fall semester, would the Bronze just be a former high school hang out? Would they find a new campus hang out? Oz played enough gigs around UC—Sunnydale that she had an idea that campus life would offer its own attractions, but she wasn’t sure if Xander would feel welcome hanging out with them on campus.

She frowned at the somewhat soggy taco. “What were you going to do . . . you know, before you were—uh, before you . . .”

“Became a vampire?” Harmony eyed her suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I was just curious. We wrote all that stuff for the yearbook around Christmas, and I wonder how much it has changed already,” she said. “Like, I was going to go away for college, but I changed my mind. I’m going to go to UC—Sunnydale,” she elaborated.

Harmony thought about that for a moment. She really hadn’t had a plan per se. Her parents had insisted that she had to go to college, and she had narrowed her choice down to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing. The application required submission of ten illustrations of various types of clothing, which seemed kind of stupid to Harmony. If she knew how to design clothing, then why go to college in the first place? Her parents had kept asking if she had finished the application, which she hadn’t, so in a way, the whole being dead thing had worked out for her.

“I was going to go to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing,” she told Willow, since she might have done that.

That made sense to Willow. Whether you liked her or not you really couldn’t fault her taste in clothing. Harmony was very blend-y. Even now that she was a vampire, she hadn’t gone all leather, which was pretty clichéd. Willow nodded, “I can see that,” she said. “Fashion design, that is. You’d be good at that.”

Harmony leveled a semi-skeptical look at her. “I thought so,” she agreed. “I mean, I have ideas, about clothes, and shoes, and handbags.”

“People have to have clothes,” Willow pointed out, turning her head sideways to take a bite out of her taco. It was kind of drippy, but managing the taco and a napkin while handcuffed was beyond her.

Harmony picked up one of the napkins and stuck it in Willow’s chair tethered hand. The two girls exchanged a wary look. “Thanks,” Willow said, blotting her hand on the napkin.

“You're welcome,” Harmony sounded slightly less begrudging.

“So, what kind of ideas do you have about handbags?” Willow asked. “I’m a roomy, toss it over my shoulder sort of gal, but I’ve noticed that every purse I’ve ever had is missing something. Like, you have the little zipper compartment, which is a must, but it’s never big enough for all of your little things, so you’ve got stuff in the bottom all the time—like keys? Or they have the clippy thing inside the zipper for your keys and—“

“You break your nails trying to get the keys off!” Harmony finished. “I hate that!”

“Me, too,” Willow nodded.

“Magnet,” Harmony said. “Or, you know those leashes that you can get where you press a button and make the leash longer or shorter?”

“That would work,” Willow agreed.

Willow finished the taco and decided that she had had enough to eat. Harmony was preoccupied with her page turning exercise with Vogue, so Willow wiped her mouth off and decided to give the unlocking of the handcuff exercise another shot.

She cast a cautious glance at Harmony, and was satisfied that Harmony wasn’t paying any attention to her. The chair Spike had handcuffed her to was pretty roomy. She adjusted her position until she was sitting more or less Indian style. It was a comfortable position that she could relax into, and relaxation was bound to improve her concentration. She made herself work on relaxing her hands. She had noticed that lately she had a tendency to clench her fists, a sure sign of tension. She rested her arms on the armrests of the chair and rotated her wrists a couple of times to work out the tension.

The next step in her exercise was to work on her breathing. Steady, deep, even breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She let her eyes drift shut. Sometimes it helped her get her focus.

“Are you praying?” Harmony asked.

She opened her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she went with it.

“You are praying after you ate?” Harmony raised an eyebrow.

Willow blinked at the imitation Spike expression. “I’m Jewish,” she explained.

Harmony looked embarrassed. “Oh . . . Jewish. Sorry,” she made a ‘carry on’ gesture.

“Thanks,” Willow said, trying not to laugh. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“So, are you going to like, pray in . . . . Hebrew?” Harmony interrupted.

Willow frowned, opening her eyes again. Hebrew, Latin, Swahili, ancient Sumerian, what were the chances that Harmony would know the difference? “No,” she said slowly, “but, my lips might move a little,” she conceded.

“Oh . . .” Harmony gave her one of her patented ‘you are so odd’ looks and shrugged.

Willow took another deep, cleansing breath, rolling her shoulders. Nothing to it. Just like floating a pencil, only slightly different and more difficult with the lack of visualization and . . . assuming that she got the handcuff off, then what? What was she going to do? She was inside an interior room of a building that she had not seen. There were vampires in the building, and their precise location was not known. Harmony was sitting less than two yards away from her, and while not so bright, would probably get that there was a problem with her simply getting up and strolling off.

Crap. She had no plan. She could go with trying to unlock the handcuff and taking it as a sign of divine providence governing the rest of her escape attempt.

Her shoulders slumped. That wasn’t a plan.

“All done?” Harmony asked, reading the slumping posture.

Willow sighed. “Yeah.”

“No ‘amen’?”

Willow stared at her for a moment. “No,” she shook her head.

Harmony nodded. “You need to go to the bathroom or anything?” she asked, holding up the key to the handcuffs, “Cause Spike said I could let you go to the bathroom if you had to.”

Willow stared at the key dangling from Harmony’s fingertip. Spike knew that Harmony had the key, which meant that at least on some level he was already thinking about the possibility of her being un-handcuffed and free to move around. “Just for the bathroom, but not to eat?” she observed. “What? Was I going to stun you with a taco missile and then make a break for it?”

Harmony stared back at her. And here she was thinking that Spike didn’t like her very much. She glanced down at her pink cashmere twin set with its triple row of pale pink sequins at the hem, spared the awful fate of being decorated with thrown food. Cheap thrown food, at that. When she looked up, she was in game face. “Mess up my clothes and you are so going to be dead,” she warned.

Willow rolled her eyes at that injunction. She held up her wrist rattling her handcuff. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind, please,” Harmony retorted, with the stress on the ‘please’.

She was just so irritating, and childish, and infuriating, and smug, and—Willow gritted her teeth. “Please?”

Harmony twirled the key on its small chain around her index finger, pretending to give the matter consideration. “I suppose so,” she agreed with a smirk, standing up to walk over to Willow’s chair to unlock the handcuff.

The bathroom was a two stall bathroom with a handicapped stall and no toilet paper. Suspecting something like that, Willow had kept a few of the unused napkins from lunch. Harmony followed her in and sat on the countertop while Willow went into the handicapped stall. With the door shut and latched behind her she took the time to take her jeans off to remove the bunched up sleep shorts that she had pulled her jeans up over when Spike told her to get ready to leave. After she used the bathroom, she gave her attention to the handcuffs, examining the locking mechanism as much as she could.

She heard the bathroom door open and jumped when a hand slammed into the door to her stall. “I’ll be right out,” she called.

Georgia laughed at the squeaky, startled sound of her voice. “Just messing with you, kitten,” she said. “You want to go shopping with us?”

Buttoning her jeans and flushing the toilet, Willow slid back the latch, giving the toilet an alarmed look as it made a weird noise.

“Air in the line,” Georgia told her. “The water’s been turned off for a while. We won’t be here long.”

“Shopping?” Willow repeated.

“We’re going out tonight,” Georgia reminded her. “Now, Spike says that I’m supposed to tell you that shop keepers and shoppers stay off the menu as long as you don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. It goes against everything I believe in to shop retail, but I have my orders.”