Chapter Twenty-Four

Willow had the room to herself when they returned to the hotel. She decided to make the most of the time, flipping the hook on the safety lock on the hallway door. The connecting door didn’t have an obvious locking mechanism, which was puzzling, until she opened it and realized that it was a double door arrangement and there was a sliding bolt on the other door. It was just a thin piece of metal sliding into a slot, nothing that would really slow a determined vampire down, but she bolted it anyway after pressing her ear up against the door to see if she could hear anything.

She jumped back, heart pounding when a hand slapped the door, and then she hastily stepped back and shut the connecting door on her side, wondering who had heard her at the door.

She waited to see if anyone would bother to investigate, kicking off her shoes and checking the re-stocked mini refrigerator. Housekeeping had been in the room while they were out and the bed was remade. The refrigerator had been refilled with diet soft drinks in a wider selection. She found a can of Fresca amidst the diet Coke and diet Sprite, and diet Mountain Dew.

Concluding that her eavesdropping attempt was not going to be explored further as a few more minutes ticked by, Willow decided to risk logging back into the hotel’s TV Internet service. She got herself settled into a chair at the table with the wireless keyboard and the remote control and logged back in. The keyboard was frustratingly sticky, and she worked out the remote’s point and click utility, using the keyboard only when she had to type the URL, user name, and password to access her email account remotely.

There was no new mail from Buffy. Digging into her remote access options she looked for something that would allow her to change her email set up to notify her when her mail was read. She reset the option when the Internet connection died, taking her back to the main log in screen. She took a deep breath, fighting for calm. It was a crappy, unstable, Internet TV connection. She kept getting an Internet Service Not Available message as she tried to reactivate the connection. On the third try, she was back on line at the home page, and she tapped out the URL for her remote access again.

Finding Buffy’s last email in her in-box, she hit reply and started a new note, focusing on her observations of the lobby, elevators, and the area outside the hotel that she had seen. With that note sent, she opened Sara Engstrom’s last email and started a new message asking her to call Buffy and tell her to open her email.

Before she could hit send, she heard the lock on the door disengage and her hand moved to the direction keys on the keyboard to scroll through the buttons on the screen at a crawl while her heart pounded in her chest. Belatedly she remembered that the remote was faster, and switched to it, scrolling the cursor to the send button and hitting the select button in the center of the remote. As tempting as it was to just turn the television off, she made herself scroll through more navigation to log out even as the safety lock caught, preventing the door from opening more than a few inches.

“Red!” Spike drawled, “Open the door.”

Crap! She shoved the keyboard under the bed, where it hit something solid, a platform. The bed skirt hid it though. “I’m not dressed,” she answered, stalling.

Fumbling with the zipper, she yanked it down and it stuck, forcing her to squirm out of the dress, the half-slip and the hated thong panties, while scratching her hip with her thumbnail.

He rattled the door. “C’mon, Red. Open the damn door,” he sounded impatient.

She left the bra on and darted into the bathroom to look for a robe, yanking the robe off the back of the bathroom door. She was holding it around her as she hurried to the door to release the safety lock.

Spike watched her pull the robe tighter around her as he walked in. The belt had been threaded through the loops and was dangling unheeded down her back where the robe was bunched. She didn’t seem to be aware of it as she went to the table to pick up a can of soda, drinking from it, and her heart was racing. His eyes raked the room, looking for clues, finding nothing but a pile of discarded clothing on the floor between the entertainment center armoire and the bathroom. Her shoes were near the table. He would have let the door shut behind him, but Georgia was there, pushing it open before it closed.

It was an unwelcome distraction.

Dropping her clothing on the floor like that was off. She was unthinkingly tidy. When they were on their trek through northern California he had bought her a cheese burger and fries at a McDonalds, and after she had finished both she had stuffed the wrapper and soiled paper napkins into the empty French fry container, tucking it all away in the bag before adding an empty, crumbled pack of his cigarettes he had left on the seat to her garbage collection.

Georgia wasn’t picking up on any of this; she was too intent on the argument that he considered over. “What they want is not that big of a deal,” she was saying in a tone that was probably meant to mollify him.

The argument that they were about to have was entirely for Willow’s benefit, and he had a feeling that it was entirely unnecessary. Colin would deal with the fall out from what he was calling ‘the incident’ in San Francisco. It wasn’t on Spike’s radar, even as an annoyance. He shot Georgia a warning look, and walked over to Willow, who was still standing with her back to them, like if she wasn’t looking at them she could make herself disappear.

She flinched when he straightened the back of the robe and brought the ends of the belt around to tie them at her waist. He left his arms around her, loosely.

Georgia watched them with a puzzled expression. This wasn’t part of the plan, so she was at a loss.

He could feel the tension in her neck when he kissed her there. “Haven’t had your bath, yet?” he asked, as if there was nothing else to notice.

The soda can in her hand gave a tinny burp as her fingers tightened and loosened on it, compressing the soft metal and then releasing it. The sound made her aware that she was holding the can and she set it down on the table. Her hand, wet with condensation from the can, brushed his arm. “I was just about to,” she lied. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t in the bathtub,” she tried again, “with the door and the lock, and,” her voice was wavering a little.

He kissed her throat again. “Right,” he said, smiling a little. “You should go have your bath, then,” he said, not letting go of her.

She had no idea what to do. She knew that she needed to calm down and act normal, except that there was nothing normal about any of this. She made herself push at his arms. “I will as soon as you let go.”

His hands tightened briefly on her waist, and then they were gone, and he stepped back. Relief made her legs shake a little and she put her hand down on the edge of the table to steady herself, noticing for the first time the leather folio resting there. It looked like a mate to the room service menu. She stared at it, certain that it hadn’t been there before they had gone out, which meant that it had been placed there recently.

She made herself leave the room for the bathroom, wondering if she could get away with not quite closing the door. Not that it would matter. With the water on, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything in the other room. Filling the tub for a bath would take too long, and she had already taken a shower earlier in the day. She took off the stockings and sat on the side of the tub, rinsing them in the water as her feet soaked. She had gotten a look at the clock before she had gone into the bathroom. It was almost three in the morning. Sara would be at work by eight in the morning. If she called Buffy right away, then her email messages would be read by nine.

She squeezed the water out of the hosiery and laid it over the side of the tub to dry, resting her head in the palms of her hand, unselfconsciously rocking herself as she tried to figure out how to keep Spike from suspecting anything for the next twelve hours. It couldn’t take much longer than that for Buffy to come up with a plan to rescue her and get it underway. Or could it?



“What was that all about?” Georgia asked while Spike walked across the room to pick up Willow’s discarded dress. He stuffed the filmy scarf into one of his pockets.

Georgia walked over and took the dress from him, shaking it out to hang it up before going back to pick up the half slip and panties. “Talk to me, sugar,” she coaxed, folding the half-slip and tucking it into a drawer with the underwear.

Spike was looking around the room, still trying to figure it out. There was no phone. His cell phone was in his pocket. Just to be sure, he checked, and it was where he left it. He found his cigarettes and took one out, rolling it between his fingers as he studied the room. “She’s up to something,” he told Georgia. “It’s something in this room,” he went on, eyes narrowing as he sifted through her reactions.

Georgia looked around, and then grinned. “Bet she’s whittling a stake,” she said in a tone creamy with malice. “You’ll be a asleep and she’ll stake your ass.”

He had made a fairly thorough pass at the room to make sure that anything that could be used as a weapon was removed, but housekeeping had been in, so that was a distinct possibility. He went to the desk to check the drawers for pencils, or cutlery. Georgia went to the bed, flipping back the bedspread to run her hands under the edge of the mattress. She went through the drawers in the bedside table while Spike copied her on the opposite side of the bed before going to the closet and methodically checking the clothing hanging there for anything that might have been concealed in a pocket.

Georgia sat on the end of the bed for a moment and then started going through the drawers in the armoire and the dresser.

“Does this change anything?” she asked him.

The plan had been to use the conversation with the lawyers as a pretext for a dispute with Colin. Spike wasn’t sure if Colin was subscribing to this plan because he was going along for now, or because it presented an opportunity to split up. He was prepared to deal with either contingency. Colin, Pete and Georgia had their parts to play, all useful, but not critical in the long run. The critical piece was trading Willow for the Gem of Amara, and he was keeping that for himself. All Colin and Georgia knew at this point was that he was planning to trade her for something very, very valuable, and that their cut in this was pretty much whatever they wanted.

Before Colin could test that theory, Georgia named Willow as their price, and the beauty of it was that after he traded her for the Gem of Amara, that worked for him. He wouldn’t be breaking his word to Red in any way that counted, and he didn’t have to come up with something that would satisfy Colin and Georgia. He could enjoy the benefit of having her around on what would no doubt be a long term, un-dead basis without the annoying responsibility attached to the care and feeding of a baby vampire. It was almost too perfect. He’d agreed with only a show of irritation, knowing that Georgia wouldn’t care if he found her demand more than acceptable but that Colin would feel like they had been had if he didn’t appear to be a little put out.

He thought about it for a moment. “A bit,” he allowed. “I don’t want her to know why we are splitting up,” he said. “It might distract her.”

Georgia looked at him. “Do you really think she’s up to something? Maybe she just set the locks to annoy you and then realized that annoying you is stupid.”

It was the simplest, most obvious explanation for her behavior. He thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “I’m not counting her out,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You sure that you want her? She’s going to be a handful,” he warned her.

Georgia grinned. “Jealous?” she teased.

“Hardly,” he scoffed.

“Just a tiny bit?” she pushed.

Spike stuck the cigarette he had been holding in his mouth and searched for his lighter. “I give it a decade,” he said. “By then she might become something I might regret giving up,” he told her with a smirk, “and hope I don’t, pet, because your little family will last about five minutes if I decide I want her back.”

Georgia frowned at him. “That’s not funny,” she complained.

“Not meant to be,” he retorted. “Don’t taunt. It gets you in trouble,” he advised, aware that it was supremely hypocritical coming from him.

“I’ll take the decade as a part of the deal,” Georgia told him, “and we’ll make her into something that you’d crawl to have.”

He took a drag on his cigarette, hearing the water in the bathroom cut off. He nodded to the bathroom door in case Georgia wasn’t paying attention. “I don’t doubt it, petal,” he said, feeling almost fond of her. “If I had any sense at all, I’d crawl to have you.”

Georgia winked at him. “At least you know where to begin when you decide to stop being an idiot,” she tossed back. She was tempted to tell him that he had made a bad trade all around. In the last two weeks he had been completely focused. There had been no sullen, drunken moodiness associated with the loss of Drusilla or any restlessness about what he was going to do with himself until he got her back. The mysterious thing that he was trading for Willow couldn’t possibly measure up to the sheer value the girl represented as a distraction from his obsession with his looney sire. What he really needed was to put the past behind him, keep the girl, make her his childe, and start the next part of his unlife.

She was almost positive that he hadn’t had a Drusilla oriented thought in days, and she wasn’t going to invite him down that path now.

The toilet flushed in the bathroom and she could hear the sound of the tap in the sink turned on. “Otherwise, same schedule?” she got back to business, figuring that Willow was down to brushing her teeth and would be out soon.

He went looking for an ashtray, finding one on the table. “Yeah,” he agreed, flicking ash into it.

The tap was shut off and Georgia straightened the bedspread before sitting down on the bed, and lying half across it at the foot of the bed. She waggled her fingers at Spike. “Remote?”

He found it where Willow left it in the seat of a chair and tossed it to her, before repositioning the chair for easy access to the ashtray before he sat in it, throwing one leg over the padded arm, and stretching the other in front of him. The leather coat between his body and the chair reshaped itself to accommodate the position, settling around him. The coat was looking a bit shop worn, but every time he started to replace it he decided that it had a few more miles in it. He slid one hand inside the hip pocket, finding the scarf he had stowed there, sinking his fingers into it as Georgia turned the television on and started flicking through channels.

Bloody QVC, again. “Oooh! It’s Lisa. She’d make a hot vampire,” Georgia observed. “No one can sell Diamonique like Kathy Levine, but Lisa is hot.”

The temptation to ask what Diamonique was died before Spike could form the words to his intense relief. Willow came out of the bathroom, hesitating in the doorway. Georgia sat up a little, gesturing for her to join her. “Come here, sweetie. I want to get a look at your feet,” she said.

“I soaked them. They’re fine,” Willow told her.

“I doubt that,” Georgia commented. “It’s been at least three days since I did your pedicure.”

Willow gave her a long, frowning look. “Has anyone ever mentioned that you are weirdly obsessed with nail care?”

Spike smiled. “And clothing,” he added.

“Make-up,” Willow tossed in.

“Oooh!” Georgia pointed at the television. “When we get your fingernails just right, I’ll get that for you,” she said.

Spike looked over his shoulder at the television to see a marquise diamond stuck in what looked like a glob of clear glue rotating under studio lights. It was a triple shank ring with round diamonds in the shank. “A bit much, don’t you think?” he critiqued.

Willow skirted his leg and went around to the opposite side of the table, retrieving her soda can on the way. She took a sip and grimaced. Apparently refreshing citrus and toothpaste didn’t mix well.

“No!” Georgia frowned at him. “It’s pretty,” she defended her choice. “Don’t you think it’s pretty, Willow?”

“It’s too old for her,” Spike argued.

“It’s pretty and it’s too old for me,” Willow contributed, reaching for the folio on the table and opening it. She took a deep breath. It was the room charges. “I’m hungry,” she said, closing the folio and setting it on the table, reaching for the matching folio that held the room service menu.

“You picked at your dinner,” Georgia pointed out. “I don’t think they deliver this late.”

“I don’t like chicken in peanut sauce, not that anyone asked,” Willow said. She wasn’t actually hungry until she read the description of the Belgian waffles in the menu and then her stomach cooperated with an authentic rumble.

“There’s a Denny’s off the interstate,” Georgia remembered. “I used to love Denny’s.”

It beat listening to Georgia and watching QVC. “Put some clothes on, pet,” Spike said. “We’ll find you something to eat.”

Not as good as them just leaving to get her something to eat but she wasn’t going to quibble. Willow went to the closet and took out the sweater and Capri pants outfit of earlier in the day and went into the bathroom to change into it.

There was a pair of flat sandals to wear with it, and she slipped them on. The door to the connecting room was open and Georgia was telling Colin that they were going out to find something for Willow to eat.

She had to get the statement out of the folio. Spike was still sitting in the same chair and when she started to walk around his extended leg, he pulled it back, leaning forward in his chair his hands landing on her waist. “Come here,” he said, holding her steady when she stumbled a bit. “You missed a tag,” he told her, nudging her arm to get her to lift it. Grasping the sweater under her armpit and the tag, he snapped the thin plastic tethering them, careful to get the bit caught in the sweater loose. He tossed the tag on the table and turned her to face him, shaking his head at the giant blue flower over her chest.

“They didn’t have anything that came with sparkles,” he told her, flicking the tuft of yarn that formed the yellow center of the flower.

Aware that he was making fun of her taste in clothing, Willow looked down at him and realized that she would be able to answer a question that she and Buffy had pondered over the years. “What color is the flower?” she asked.

He hoisted an eyebrow. “Blue,” he answer.

Georgia had returned. “What color is Georgia’s top?”

Spike glanced at her. “Green,” he answered. “What’s this about?”

“Buffy and I wondered if you wore the same thing all the time because you were color blind,” she told him. “Guess that’s not it.”

Georgia laughed, “I guess not, but it would have explained a lot,” she said. “Daddy says you have to have me home before dawn,” she told Spike with a grin.

“I heard that, Georgia,” Colin called out.

“He doesn’t like it when I call him Daddy,” she confided. “He thinks it’s creepy.”

Willow was inclined to agree. “You’re vampires. Where’s the bad in creepy?”

Georgia cocked her head to one side, thinking about it. Spike sighed. “It’s in the un-creepy usage,” he posited. “You have to give it some incestuous innuendo for it to really work. Georgia just says it like she’s hanging off the front porch with her feet in the mud.”

Willow only looked more confused. “Huh?”

“Spike’s just giving me shit about being a redneck,” Georgia explained. “Let’s go! It’s past three in the morning. We are losing good night time,” she said, threading her arm through Willow’s as Spike let go of her and stood up. “When I was a fledge, I couldn’t stand losing any night. It drove me crazy,” she confided.

It was the kind of observation that Willow couldn’t help but be interested in. “Really? Was it a sensory kind of thing, or just wanting to get out?”

Georgia steered her away from the elevator. “A little of both. You can tell when daybreak is coming. It’s like a tingle in your spine, but days are just so long, and daytime television? Sucks!”

Willow couldn’t argue with that. “I could see how that could get boring.”

“I have my stories, and QVC helps pass the time, and Colin loves the History Channel,” she shook her head at that. “I figure I could make a fortune as a contestant on some of the game shows—seen enough of them.”

Half paying attention to what Georgia was saying, Willow was trying to keep track of where they were on the floor. There was a left and another left, then a short ramp down past a room with an ice machine, then another left into a stairwell. They went up a flight and then out a pair of double doors. No key lock there. They opened at a touch, and they were outside, on a skyway into an attached garage. Spike moved around them, leading the way to a gunmetal late model Mercedes-Benz. He got in the driver’s side and unlocked the doors for them.

Willow volunteered to sit in the back, and Georgia gave her a push towards the front seat and opened the rear passenger side door.

Following Georgia’s directions, which started from San Francisco and had to be detangled from that point of reference, Spike found the Denny’s and the three of them piled out of the car. He wondered if he should remind Willow of the rules of behavior in public places, and decided he was more curious to see what she would do without the reminder. Georgia was holding her hand as they went into the restaurant. The combined scents of coffee, bacon, and disinfectant making him grimace while Georgia rambled on about late night visits to Denny’s before Willow was even born.

A middle-aged waitress in orthopedic shoes showed them to a booth near the front windows. Georgia slid in beside Willow and he sat across from them. Willow opened the menu. She decided to go with pancakes and gave her order to the waitress when she returned, adding a large orange juice as an afterthought. Spike ordered coffee, and Willow hastily added coffee to her order. Georgia indicated that she wasn’t ordering, and the waitress left to put their orders in.

Spike let his gaze drift over the dining room. There were varieties of people after dark. The pre-ten o’clock after dark crowd was probably fairly representative of the population, though a bit lighter on children. Very small children were underrepresented after dark, though he had noticed over the last decade that people tended to take their children with them more. Between ten and two you found an increasing percentage of younger adults. After two? The herd thinned.

At the table in the corner there was a large group of men in their mid-twenties talking about a war with something called the Many. There was a sidebar discussion going on about training rates for scum. Someone else got a cell phone out and suggested that they call Penny, which got everyone at the table’s attention while they worked out time differences and the possibility that Penny would kill them if they called to ask her a game related question at seven in the morning, her time.

He glanced over at Willow and saw that she was following this exchange too, with a slightly wistful expression on her face.

There were two girls at a table opposite them, their goth chic aesthetic clashing with the Denny’s green and gold décor. Checking him out, of course. He returned the favor, running the tip of his tongue over his lower lip and allowing himself a slow smile that he had down to a science. He was so intent on it that he didn’t see Georgia lean across the table and she smacked the side of his head. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Georgia hissed at him. ‘You’re with us,” she reminded him.

“I don’t mind,” Willow muttered.

They ignored her. Spike looked amused. “Didn’t know you cared, Georgia,” he purred.

Willow watched them for a moment. This was a less alcohol-fogged version of their pre-mating ritual at The Temple. Georgia was half leaning across the table. Spike had grabbed her wrist when she hit him and he was slowly reeling her in closer. She looked out the window when they kissed. No reflection, just passing streaks of light on the interstate that marked the passage of cars. Georgia threaded her fingers through her hair. “Feeling left out?” she asked.

Spike would have said it differently. Georgia sounded sympathetic, her thumb brushing Willow’s cheek, making her aware of the fact that she was blushing. She ducked her head so quickly that she almost put her eye out on Georgia’s thumbnail.

Georgia dropped back down on the seat beside her with an exclamation of concern. “Did I poke you in the eye, sweetie? Let me see,” she insisted.

“No, no,” Willow said hastily, mortified. She wanted to blame them. She wasn’t jealous. That wasn’t it at all. It was just disconcerting. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t used to it by now. There were times when she was out with Buffy and Angel or Xander and Cordelia when they were still dating, and they did things like that, and she felt awkward. That was all it was. “Don’t mind me,” she insisted, rearing back a little as Georgia tried to hold her head to look at her eye. “Go back to whatever you were—“

Georgia kissed her. Her shushing sound was weirdly throaty as she nipped at Willow’s upper lip. Willow tried to twist one way and then the other, reaching out with her foot to kick Spike who was watching them with a grin. He felt Willow kick him and heard her yelp when her bruised toe connected. Georgia took advantage of that by deepening the kiss.

She felt it again, the strange shock of being kissed by someone with soft, soft lips, moist, slightly sticky with lipstick, now recognizable as not unpleasant or unwelcome, and slightly unnerving because of that. Women's lips just felt different, but not bad different. In fact, it was a nice difference.

Willow’s pancakes hit the table with a cutlery-rattling thud delivered by a deeply disapproving waitress. Spike pushed the pancakes towards Willow. “Georgia, be a love and get your tongue out of my girl’s mouth, will you?”

The waitress rapidly finished unloading her tray, while Georgia broke off the kiss, smoothing Willow’s hair and kissing her forehead while she shrank in the corner and pointedly glared at Spike.

The waitress had left a carafe of coffee for them and Spike poured a cup of coffee for her. “Eat your pancakes, Red,” he reminded her as Georgia straightened and gave Spike a sly grin of her own.

His eyes turned cool. They were going to talk, later.

Willow picked up her fork and started methodically stabbing her pancakes. She picked up the syrup pitcher and doused them liberally while Spike pushed her orange juice and coffee across the table within easy reach. “Thanks,” she said, automatically.

Bearing in mind Spike’s advice to stick with something short and to the point, Willow pointed her fork at him. “I’m not your girl,” she told him. She jabbed her fork in Georgia’s general direction. “You’re a good kisser, okay? Happy now? Quit trying to freak me out. I’ve been kidnapped by vampires. Weird sex just doesn’t rate that high anymore. Oh, and your lipstick?” Willow blotted her own lips with her napkin. “It smells like crayons. Kind of ick.”

Spike toasted her with his coffee cup as Georgia sat back with a grudgingly amused look on her face.



They were working in the tunnel in three shifts, though Angel and Buffy tended to exceed the eight-hour schedule. They could work longer and harder without a break. Xander half expected them to coordinate their efforts so that they were working together, but it didn’t happen that way at all. There was a cautious distance that they were careful to maintain. He caught Angel watching her from time to time, and he caught Buffy not watching Angel. There was just too much baggage for him as far as Angel was concerned—vampire, Angelus, Ms. Calendar, menacing Willow, Buffy, and Joyce. He was never going to get comfortable or cozy with the dark and brooding one.

Angel was digging. He had what Xander thought of as his ‘thinking deep Buffy thoughts’ expression on, which didn’t vary so much from his ‘thinking deep thoughts’ expression, but there was a definite vibe, or Xander was projecting his own deep Buffy thoughts on Angel. Not that he was remotely interested in sharing.

So he didn’t talk at all. Oz was sharing part of the shift, and was being Oz. Normally the sheer pressure of the silence would have bothered him. He wasn’t all talked out. He just didn’t have anything to say. It was the kind of feeling that he could share with Willow. Sometimes when they were on the phone at odd hours, watching the same late night television show or movie, nothing would be said. They’d just listen to each other falling asleep.

Oz had noticed that Xander hadn’t said anything for hours. At first he had been grateful. He felt like his skin was stretched too tight. He wanted someone to voice one of the unacceptable thoughts that floated through his head so he could tell them and the thought to shut up. They had had a meeting earlier to discuss Spike’s latest call, and it killed him that he missed it. Giles had talked to Willow. Angel had listened in on the call. He saw the same thing on Buffy and Xander’s faces, the envy, and the anger that they hadn’t been there to talk to her, even for the shortest time. Giles had tried to be reassuring. He thought she sounded in good spirits and she wanted to help out.

Stupid, selfish questions prodded him. He wanted to know if she asked about him, asked for him. Had any message that she wanted passed on to him. He didn’t think Giles would forget about something like that, so the answer was probably no, but then he wondered if Giles was holding something back, something that would upset them more if he told them.

“If someone doesn’t say something, I think my head is going to explode,” Oz announced.

There was total silence for about thirty seconds, and then Angel shook some of the dirt out of his hair and said. “Dirt and hair gel are unmix-y,” in a dead on imitation of Buffy’s syntax that caught them all by surprise.

His expression turned rueful as he realized that his joke had fallen flat.

“Deadboy and humor are unmix-y,” Xander capped him, but it sounded a little lame, less the usual level of sarcasm and spite.

Oz looked at them and shook his head. “Well, I feel better, but mostly because I didn’t say any of that.”

Angel studied him for a moment. There were parallels that were obvious to him between his doomed relationship with Buffy and Oz’s relationship with Willow. He had been a bit skeptical about the notion that Oz would ever have anything approaching a normal life, but between the two of them, they had made it work in a way that he envied while acknowledging that the obstacles weren’t as great or as intractable. He and Buffy violated the conditions of each other’s existence.

“I would have liked to have heard her voice,” Oz said. “I keep thinking about that. What was I doing that was so important, that I had to miss that? And, before you say the obvious thing, I’m all over the illogic of it.”

Xander paused in his measuring of a two by four that he was getting ready to cut for one of the tunnel cross supports. “Me too,” he agreed. “I thought the same thing, along with, did she ask for me,” he made a face at that. “Hi, Giles, here I am, kidnapped by Spike, by the way, say hello to the Xan-man for me,” he mocked himself.

Angel started to say that the two conversations that he had participated in with Willow had mostly been about her getting away from Spike or about establishing that she was alive, but he didn’t think that contribution sounded particularly comforting. He wanted to tell them that they probably didn’t want to hear her voice, at least not the things in her voice that he had heard, but also, not comforting or reassuring.

“I think she’s okay,” he said. “She was trying to give research tips on using her computer when Spike cut her off,” he reminded them. It was such a Willow thing to do that Angel found it odd, but encouraging.

“That's so, Will,” Xander nodded.

Oz cocked his head to one side. “What could she have on her computer that would help us? Even if she does know what we are looking for, no one was looking for it before she was kidnapped, right?”

Xander bristled. “True, but she’s just trying to be research girl. Help out. Contribute,” he defended.

Oz looked startled. “Huh?”

Angel gestured to Oz to hand him one of the cut two by fours. “I actually understood that,” he admitted. “Sometimes Willow blurts out a few unworkable ideas when she’s excited about something.”

Oz thought about that for a second, and then realized that it was true. “Oh . . . then I am trying to read too much into it.”

Angel shrugged. “Did you bring her computer back with you? It can’t hurt to look.”



When they returned to the hotel, Willow wasted no time, grabbing the bill out of the folio, scanning it quickly for her Internet charges. They were unambiguously described as an Internet Access Charge nestled in between obscenely expensive pairs of shoes.

If only Spike had kidnapped Cordelia instead. Cordelia would have been thrilled with the shoes.

Georgia and Spike were conferring, probably in the hallway, possibly next door. When Spike had opened the door for her to let her in she had the distinct impression that he wasn’t planning on being gone for a long time. Folding the bill into quarters she tucked it in the waistband of her pants, torn between destroying the bill and staying put and testing the new escape route through the garage.

She grabbed the ice bucket and cautiously eased the door open, looking left, then right at the two vampires who were now watching her. She smiled weakly. “I thought I saw an ice machine,” she began.

Spike just shook his head, “Don’t lock the door, either,” he warned before she stepped back into the room.

Which left her back to square one with the billing statement and the pressing need to hide or destroy it, fast. She looked around the room for a place to hide it, or a method to destroy it. She was still working it out when Spike came in.

He put her racing heartbeat down to inner turmoil over a failed escape attempt and misgivings about taunting him about pretending he was Oz, which was possibly the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard, but if she wanted to believe it, he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. Much. She had a death grip on the ice bucket and a slightly panicked expression on her face with one hand pressed to her stomach. He frowned at her. The panic seemed a little over-developed in his opinion.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “All that sugary crap you ate disagreeing with you?”

She stared at him for a moment, and he could have sworn he saw something like an idea forming. “Uh-huh,” she agreed slowly.

It was a disgusting, but workable idea. “Excuse me,” she said, walking to the bathroom. Running might have been okay, but she made herself walk, and shut the door behind her. Dropping the ice bucket on the counter top with a mental smack for being dopey enough to carry it around, she pulled out the bill and started tearing it into small pieces, dropping it into the toilet.

The little pieces floated on the surface and she took a deep breath and then leaned over the toilet, breathing through her nose. How hard could it be? It was the dieting method of choice for hundreds of thousands of teenage girls? Aside from that, just thinking about what she was about to do was making her feel a little sick. She opened her mouth and cautiously slid one finger in, not really sure about the mechanics of making herself vomit.

On her third try she managed to gag convincingly, producing an authentically gasping, retching sound accompanied by nose stinging stomach acid hitting the back of her throat. She flushed the toilet and watched a third of the billing statement float back up.

Spike tapped on the door. “Are you okay in there?” he asked.

Willow’s head snapped up. She didn’t even have to summon the fake sick voice that she had down cold from three years of extracurricular demon research and slayage. “Uh . . . yeah,” she managed. Shuddering with disgust she stuck her finger down her throat, finding the back of her tongue and pressing down.

Pancakes, coffee and orange juice came back up in a stomach churning tide as the bathroom door opened. She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth, grimacing at the foul taste in her mouth. “Go away!” she managed to spit out, hugging herself with her free arm.

Her nose had started to drip from the stomach acid irritation and her eyes were watering. She pawed at the flush to void the contents of the toilet and the fresh blast of vomit scented air made her stomach heave.

Spike turned on the tap at the sink and filled a water glass for her before wetting a washcloth. He handed her the glass. “Rinse and spit,” he said.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a piece of the billing statement floating back up and wanted to scream. She rinsed and spit into the toilet, hugging it, waiting for the water pressure to equalize so she could flush it again.

Spike reached for her arm. “Let’s get you off the floor,” he said, sounding almost soothing, and she held onto the toilet.

“I’m sick. Leave me alone,” she gasped.

“I can see that,” he reached around her, sitting on the edge of the tub as he pulled her back, flushing the toilet again. She turned towards him awkwardly and he pulled his head back to avoid her vomit-scented breath. “Hold still, will you,” he said, picking her up under her armpits and giving her a push toward the sink. “Wipe your face off and brush your teeth,” he suggested. “You’ll feel better,” he grabbed the ice bucket. “I’m going to go get you some ice,” he told her, relatively sure that she wasn’t going to be making a break for it.

She looked like she might throw up again, so he beat a hasty retreat.


Settled on her side of the bed with a cup of ice chips and ginger ale, Georgia’s contribution to her upset stomach, Willow had to wait until Spike fell asleep before she could allow herself to gloat. She had managed to work out a good escape route, get two messages out to reveal her location, keep Spike from seeing the incriminating billing statement, and disgusting vomit-y girl was apparently not a big turn on. That was useful information.

Feeling inordinately pleased with herself she was actually looking forward to what tomorrow would bring.