Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’m dreaming,” Willow reminded herself.

For the longest time her sleep had been dreamless.

“I wasn’t tired enough,” she realized.

That was only true in part. She was tired in the way you could be tired and yet never really sleep. Something about kidnapping and the occasional apocalypse energized her. In a crisis she could function on amazingly little sleep and she could sleep, like a soldier, anywhere, anytime.

She was in the eiderdown depth of sleep that was made for dreaming. In her dream, they were coming. Buffy and Xander and Giles and Angel. They were coming.

She almost felt sorry for Spike. Well, she actually did feel sorry for Spike, and a little scared for him. It would have been easier if he had been a little more cartoon character evil bad guy. She tried to will a thin mustache and an evil laugh onto the dream version of Spike who was smoking, again and watching talk shows, unaware of what was coming, to no avail. Wasn’t his non-stop cigarette smoking enough of an evil guy prop for her? In a demony kind of way, he really wasn’t that bad.

“Yes, he is,” Willow argued with herself. “He’s that bad and a bag of chips, sister,” she snorted, not liking this part of her dream. The guilt part. Free floating guilt was deeply embedded in her psyche if she could feel bad for Spike.

She watched herself drift across the room in a dress that looked like something out of Swan Lake. Oh, no, it was pink. Not the tasteful pale pink of ballet leotards but a livid bubble gum pink with a giant W across her chest in glitter. Her hand moved through his hair, messing up the combed back orderliness of it, making him look cute and tousled. He caught her hand, holding her palm to his cheek for a moment before looking up at her with a smile that held no trace of spite, or temper, or humor at her expense. It was verging on affectionate. He kissed the palm of her hand.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Willow critiqued. “This is all wrong.”

She watched herself do a twirl, miles of tulle billowing around her. Reaching the door, she watched herself turn and ask if there was anything she could get for him, and then, before he could answer, she walked out the door.

This was more like it, Willow decided.



Joyce woke up at five in the morning and discovered that she couldn’t go back to sleep. When she was married she would make the most of mornings like these and slip out of bed before anyone was awake to enjoy being alone. It felt different now, and not just because Hank was a part of her past. Lying awake alone in the early morning hours meant that she was alone with her thoughts. She got up, slipped on her robe and walked down the hall, pausing outside of her daughter’s room.

“Be there,” she whispered before she pushed the door open.

“Mom?”

Joyce’s hand went to her throat. Buffy was standing behind her in her pajamas with a slightly smart-alecky, knowing grin on her face that quickly faded. “I couldn’t sleep,” Buffy admitted.

“Me either,” Joyce said.

They stared at each other, and Buffy bounced on the balls of her feet. “Well, we are awake and unperky, so coffee?”

They went down to the kitchen together and Joyce started making coffee as Buffy went to the refrigerator to examine the contents. With the overhead light off, standing in the wash of light from the refrigerator in her pajamas, Joyce had a glimpse of a younger Buffy.

“Do you want me to make something for breakfast?” she asked as she filled the coffee maker water tank.

“Nope,” Buffy got the eggs and milk out. “I’m making you something,” she announced. “Something egg-y,” she brandished the eggs, setting them on the counter with the milk. She moved around the island to peer into the breadbox. “Raisin bread French toast?” she suggested.

Joyce smiled. “That sounds wonderful,” she agreed, noticing for the first time the bandage Buffy had wrapped around her hand. “What’s that?” she asked, gesturing to Buffy’s hand.

She flexed her fingers around the bandage. “Blisters,” she said, and then shrugged. “No big. They’ll be gone in no time, all a part of the nifty Slayer package,” she pointed out as Joyce reached for her hand. “Really, Mom. It’s no big deal,” she reminded her, skipping the ‘had worse’ catalog of injuries that her mother actually knew about and the longer and heavily edited list of what she sort of knew about.

She cast a sideways glance at her mother. “Eggs, milk, bread,” she cataloged. “Um . . . how do you make French toast?”

It became more of a joint project and a half an hour later they were eating raisin bread French toast over coffee at the breakfast bar while Joyce explained how she once enjoyed early mornings alone until she realized how it sounded, which she blamed on not having enough sleep. Buffy was sitting with her cheek in the cup of her hand, staring out the window, nodding along, even after Joyce stopped talking, and then she nodded once too hard and snapped out of her half awake doze with a startled yelp.

They looked at each other and started laughing. “You want to watch morning TV?” Joyce asked.

Buffy nodded, yawning, and they rinsed the dishes, refilled their coffee and went into the living room to half recline on the couch and argue over the Today Show versus the Cartoon Network. They ended up watching black and white re-runs of the Munsters for a quarter of an hour before agreeing that it was just bad, and then settling on Bryant and Katie on NBC’s Today.

Buffy finished her coffee and went upstairs to take a shower. Her blistered hand was almost completely healed, but still sore. She wanted to get back to work on the tunnel early. She was getting out of the shower when she heard the phone ring downstairs. After a moment, her mother called up to her. “Honey? Phone. It’s Angel.”

“I’ll take it in my room,” she yelled back, grabbing a tube of bacitracin before shuffling down the hall in her bathrobe and the oversized duck slippers that Xander had given her for Christmas last year. Flinging herself across the bed with an unflattering groan from the metal bed frame, she picked up the receiver, hearing her mother and Angel talking.

“I’m here,” she announced. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” he greeted, his voice softening. “Joyce told me that you aren’t sleeping,” he said.

“Thanks, Mom,” Buffy muttered as her mother hung up the extension downstairs. “I’m not sleeping. Giles isn’t sleeping. Xander looks—‘

“He’s sleeping,” Angel told her. “Oz got home and found him crashed in the back of the van,” he told her. “Giles is here. He’s got Devon and Chris. Dan is coming back later with Oz. I think we are getting close, Buffy.”

“Yeah?” she perked up. “Close is good,” she enthused, holding the phone between her shoulder and chin as she uncapped the bacitracin and squeezed out an oily glob onto her blistered palm. She started working the ointment in, wondering if it was possible to actually see the wound heal the way superficial wounds closed with vamps.

“Yeah,” Angel was more cautious. “I’d feel better about close if there was a plan,” he told her.

“Right. Got to get a plan. It’s on my list of things to do today. Are you going back to Giles?”

“I’m good for a few more hours,” he told her, “look, can you make a blood run? We need enough for me and Harmony, though, I’m still for staking her.”

Buffy frowned. “I know. It’s Harmony,” now that she was done applying the ointment, she used her index finger to push her cuticles back. Her fingernails were a mess. “Okay, blood run, and make a plan, and think about staking Harmony,” she ticked off. “Do-able. Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll be there.”

After she got off the phone she made her way down to the basement and found that the jeans and t-shirts that she had thrown in the washing machine last night had not magically migrated to the dryer, so she heaved them into the dryer and got it started before going back upstairs. There appeared to be one cup of coffee left in the coffee maker and she debated whether she should drink it while she phoned the butcher shop to place a blood order.

Joyce walked into the kitchen in the middle of that call and cast a sideways glance at Buffy. She had changed into slacks and a softly draping white blouse for work. She glanced at the coffee pot, guessed that there was one cup left, and decided to take it. Buffy pouted. “I would have asked if you wanted it,” she hissed.

Joyce smiled at her. “It’ll stunt your growth,” she said sweetly.

“No short jokes!’ Buffy protested as the butcher came back on the line and asked her if she was bringing a cooler.

After she got off the phone she went looking for her mother, finding her in her bedroom putting on her make-up. “Can you take me to the butcher before you leave for work and then drop me off at Giles?”

“Sure, honey,” Joyce agreed. “Do you think you’ll be home for dinner?”

Buffy looked like she didn’t have an answer, and Joyce shook her head. “You have to eat. You all have to eat. Bring over who ever you want. I’ll make Lasagna,” she offered.

“I’ll call you and let you know,” Buffy promised. “I will,” she insisted when Joyce looked unconvinced.

The phone rang again and Joyce glanced at her clock. Everyone was up early this morning.



Sara Engstrom made a habit of getting to work by seven-thirty. She didn’t have a reserved parking space, and all the good parking was gone by eight. She made her way to her cubicle and found that her phone was already ringing. She answered it and found that it was her sister, calling to read a letter to her from the ‘unreasonable bitch’ that declined her student loan deferment request. Actually, it was a pretty funny letter. Apparently when her sister had filled out her deferment form she had listed among her monthly expenses $200 for hair care and $300 for her investment portfolio.

“You have an investment portfolio?” Sara asked.

“That’s not the point,” her sister interrupted. “Get this,” she read from the letter, “while we certainly appreciate your interest in your long term solvency, we are more concerned with your failure to meet your obligation to repay your loan which is not abrogated by your request for a deferment.”

Sara could hear the offending letter being wadded up over the phone line. “Abrogated? Who uses a word like that?”

“I don’t know, Jules,” Sara said, trying not to grin. “How much is the monthly payment?”

“That’s not the point, either,” her sister argued. “Why did they give me two deferments and then all the sudden I can’t have one?”

Sara opened her email client. “I don’t know,” she said again. Really, she didn’t know. Was a student loan deferment a divine right? Did you use the ‘can’t afford it’ excuse and the federal government gasped at your embarrassing confession of financial distress? There was a girl in accounting that used that one to cadge a free lunch on a pretty regular basis. Scanning her unopened email. She saw Willow Rosenberg’s personal email address in her unopened email and went to it, opening it up and reading the message.

“Oh, this is weird,” she said. “Remember my intern that just didn’t come back to work?”

“The one who had the guy with the Australian accent calling in for her?” her sister identified.

“No my other intern that disappeared,” Sara retorted. “English accent, but yeah. Willow. She sent me an email at 2:43 a.m. and is asking me to call someone named Buffy and tell her to open her email. That’s her response to my I had to fire you note. What the hell?”

“Let’s pretend it’s Australian,” Julie suggested. “Who is really hot and English these days? Name one man or woman.”

“Julie!” Sara sighed, knowing her sister wouldn’t give it up.

“Hah, you can’t!” she said triumphantly. “Because there aren’t any. None!”

“Jude Law,” she tossed out.

A short silence hummed. “Possibly counts as both,” was the best her sister could come up with for a comeback.

“Me-ow,” Sara grinned.

“Okay, mysterious missing intern, that’s different,” her sister flashed back to the subject of Willow. “Are you going to call her?”

Sara thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I am. I’m really . . . I don’t know. I really liked her. She did good work. She wasn’t here long, but she seemed . . . not insane-o. I told you her boyfriend came by a couple of days ago, and no English accent.”

“Uh-oh,” her sister clucked. “You think she met someone and, maybe there’s like a deal with the ex-boyfriend who doesn’t know he’s an ex, or maybe does know and is stalkerish? Did he seem stalkerish?”

“I don’t know. He seemed what you’d expect. Nice, a little odd, but real, as opposed to half the internet dating people around here with not so real significant others,” Sara said, lowering her voice a little. She had to work with these people, after all.

“Well, call now, and then call me back and tell me the scoop,” Julie urged.

“You don’t even know her,” Sara argued.

“Oh, come on. Even I know that your missing intern is more interesting than my student loan deferment letter,” her sister said. “Call now, and then call me back.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll call you back,” she hung up and dialed the number on her screen.



Buffy answered on the third ring, and a woman asked for her. A name like Buffy had inherent advantages. There was a tone of voice that could be read as slightly skeptical, the ‘is your name really Buffy?’ voice. No one that actually knew her used it, so when she heard it, it was a tip off.

“Buffy’s not home right now,” she said, reaching for a note pad. “Can I take a message for her?” she asked.

“Uh,” there was a pause, “Is there another time when I can reach her?”

“She’ll be in and out all day,” Buffy said, doodling. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Who would be calling her before eight that didn’t know her?

“No,” she replied, “There’s no message. It’s probably just a stupid prank,” the woman on the other end of the phone said.

Shrugging, Buffy hung up the phone and went upstairs to detangle her hair before it completely dried. She rummaged through her closet and found a pair of overalls that she hadn’t worn since her junior year of high school. Perfect for tunnel digging. She was still getting dressed when Joyce stuck her head in the door. “Almost ready?” she asked.

“Almost,” Buffy agreed, slipping her socks on, and looking up at her mother admiringly. “You look nice,” she told her.

Joyce smiled. “Thanks, honey,” she started to step back into the hallway, “Oh, who was on the phone?” she asked.

Buffy grimaced. “I don’t know,” she shook her head. “It was one of those people who say ‘Buffy’ like they are sure it’s not a real name,” she pouted. “Buffy’s a real name. It’s my name. It’s a perfectly good name.”

Joyce smiled at her. “I like it,” she agreed. “If you were a boy we were going to get a dog and name it Buffy,” she teased.

“Hey! Why didn’t I get to have a dog?” Buffy yelled after her.

When she finished dressing, Buffy went down to the basement in search of a cooler and found her mother in the hallway waiting for her. She followed her out to the SUV parked in the driveway. The old guy across the street, who would have constituted the crazy neighbor in any place other than Sunnydale, was out, shirtless, mowing the lawn in all of his blindingly white, large, hairy, flabby man breasted glory.

“Now, I’m scarred for life,” Buffy hissed as Joyce choked back a laugh and waved at the crazy neighbor.

Who waved back. Buffy looked away. “Eeeew. There was definite independent chest movement going on there,” she muttered as she walked over to the passenger side of the car.

“Hush,” Joyce scolded.

“Who gets up at eight o’clock in the morning to mow the lawn?” Buffy grumbled.

“Speaking of which,” Joyce gave their overgrown lawn a pointed look, and then retreated from the position. “Never mind. We both have more important things to worry about right now,” she said.

She drove Buffy to the butcher shop and waited with the engine running, listening to the traffic report as Buffy hurried inside carrying the cooler. It was going to be a hot day. She made a mental note to remind Buffy to drink lots of water.

Ten minutes later Buffy emerged carrying the cooler and Joyce got out to open the passenger side door for her. She stopped at the gas station to fill up and gave Buffy her credit card with instructions to pay for the gas and bottled water. Buffy came back with the bottled water and a box of donuts. “Okay, we’ve got the supplies,” she said.

Joyce drove her to the dig site. It never ceased to amaze her how it was possible for a middle aged librarian, a vampire and a bunch of teenagers managed to go about demon hunting and slaying in plain view, unnoticed by the rest of Sunnydale. Buffy kissed her on the cheek after she got out of the car with her purchases neatly stacked at the entrance of the sewer tunnel that led to the beginning of the tunnel they were digging.

“I’ll call about dinner,” Buffy promised, waving, as Joyce put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road.



Willow was back in the gas station, back to the first time she almost escaped, but it was daylight, and she was trying on sunglasses, trying to find something that would go with her dress.

“Elton John doesn’t have sunglasses that go with that dress,” Spike told her.

“You’re dating yourself, and worse. I’ll bet Giles didn’t like Elton John when he was my age.”

He sat on the counter and started singing ‘Levon’ which was all kinds of weird, because she could imagine Giles singing that. When Spike stopped abruptly, looking out the window, Willow half expected Giles to be there, maybe behind a white grand piano wearing a duck suit because she remembered watching an Elton John concert with her parents on cable and he had a duck suit. Spike turned back to her, picking up a pair of round pink sunglasses, carefully tucking them over her ears before letting them settle on the bridge of her nose.

“Do they make me look smart?” she asked, diverted by the sunglasses. Glasses did that for people. Everyone said it.

He shook his head, and started to say something but the door opened and Oz walked through it. He didn’t look at Spike. He just held out his hand, chipped black fingernail polish streaking fingernails that were thick and calcified and curving into claws. She looked at his hand. It looked different to her, and the same. Short, stubby fingers. Not the same as—she frowned at the unfinished and disloyal thought, banishing it.

“It’s time to go, Willow,” he said.

She didn’t look back at Spike, but she couldn’t stop herself from seeking out his reflection in the glass door, but he wasn’t there. And neither was she.




She woke up with the sense of having dreamt something that had no purchase in wakefulness, and by the time she was awake, it was already gone.

She thought Spike was too, but when she rolled over she found that he was there, lying beside her, utterly still and she couldn’t stop the recoil. Whatever she had dreamt, waking up next to a corpse hadn’t been part of the conclusion.

He was so still. No breathing. No moving. Inert? She found herself sticking a tentative finger out to test the theory. Would he feel dead at the basic level? Lack of muscle tension, or rigor mortis? She hesitated, trying to remember what he had felt like against her. Not dead, because she was pretty sure that she would have noticed that. She had touched him before while he was asleep, though at the time she hadn’t been thinking about it. What did he feel like when he was asleep?

If everything went well today, she would never have another chance to find out.

“Hit me, I hit back,” he spoke. “Poke me,” he caught her finger, opening one eye to peer at her. “I poke back.”

There was no mystery to what sort of poking he was referring to, but there was no intent, malice, or humor either. He held onto her finger when she would have pulled it back, turning his head toward her slightly.

His lip curled. “You smell like maple syrup scented vomit,” he told her. “Do something about it, will you?”

She smiled, her disgusting but highly effective billing statement disposal triumph fresh in her mind. Yanking her finger out of his grasp, she got out of bed in the t-shirt and panties that she had put on to sleep in and went to the bathroom.

After she brushed her teeth and decided that imminent rescue deserved all out personal grooming attention, she went through the drawers below the sink as well as the tasteful basket of sample-sized products that were on the vanity. On the inside of the basket lid was a hand printed note that said that the basket was a product of Peru and that it was traded for a fair market price. “Well, would you look at that,” Willow murmured. “A demon hotel with social consciousness.”

There was no one there to appreciate the observation. In the basket she found a clay based facial mask, toner, moisturizer, a foot scrub and leave in conditioner. While the bathtub filled she read the directions on the facial mask and toner. The facial mask seemed to be the product that was supposed to go on first. She washed her face and then leaned over the sink until she was a few inches from the mirror to study her complexion, smoothing her fingertips over her damp skin. There was a pimple forming near her left eyebrow, almost hidden there.

Squeezing cool grayish green goop on her fingers, she painted it over her nose and forehead, then over her cheeks. Squeezing out more she dabbed it on her chin, smoothing it over her jaw, painting a grayish green circle around her mouth. For a moment she was tempted to run her fingers through her hair and turn herself into something primitive and feral.

She emptied a small bottle of bath oil into the water and rummaged around until she found Spike’s razor and a nearly empty package of razor blades. Ejecting the used blade, she snapped a fresh one into place to shave her legs and under her arms, keeping one eye on the rising water level of the bathtub.

Before she got into the tub, she washed her hair over the side of the tub and rinsed the now dry and flaking facial mask off, letting out some of the water in the tub, which was almost too full now. She took off her t-shirt and panties and got into the tub with the conditioner and moisturizer, working the former into her hair as she soaked, and smoothing the later over her now almost unpleasantly tight skin. The only thing missing was a cup of coffee she decided as she let the heat sink into her, yawning hugely.

She closed her eyes, wishing that the lights were off altogether. She felt like she could sleep for a million years. Now that her ordeal was coming to an end, she was starting to get an idea of how tired she was, mentally and physically. It would take the gang the better part of the day to work out a plan and get to Sacramento. If they decided to recon the hotel, it might take longer. She had to be ready to react, but not appear to be waiting for something to happen. Spike wasn’t stupid. If she was too obvious, he would figure out that something was up.

She made herself go through the motions of bathing, wanting nothing more than to sleep a few more hours. She was examining her torn toenail when Spike came in.

“You’ve been in here for an hour,” he noted, leaning against the sink, eying her shiny face and conditioner-slicked hair.

“Kidnapped by vampires, weird sex, sleeping, Denny’s . . . is there something really exciting that I’m missing out on?” she asked. Beneath the upper half of her toe nail the nail bed was blue black. “Of all the gross things that have and could happen to me, the idea that my toenail might fall off is really freaking me out,” She made a face, shuddering at the idea, squeaky sounds of distress punctuating the freak out.

She missed a slightly offended look that crossed his face as he realized that he was probably on the list and loosing to a toenail.




There was a pan of monkey bread on the kitchen counter when Oz came through the back door, having left the van, with Xander crashed in the back, under the overhang on the side of the house. He called Angel’s cell phone to tell him that he had found Xander sleeping in the back of the van after he got home and that he was going to get a few hours of sleep himself.

When they lived on Maroneck Drive in Louisville, he and his mother made monkey bread, rolling balls of dough in sugared cinnamon and placing them in a baking dish. His favorite had been the fluted bundt pan that made a monkey bread castle, drizzled with sticky glaze. The pan was enamel coated in classic sunset gold. He closed his eyes for a second and let his mind sift through the lingering impressions of that kitchen. It had had an oven set into the wall and he remembered clipping the top of his head on the open oven door when he came in the back door and charged up the two stairs into the kitchen.

He touched the sides of the pan and found that it was still warm, and then he found a tea towel to cover it with and carried it out to the van, waking Xander up.

There were times when Oz was moderately surprised at his lack of animosity towards Xander. Cordelia had held Willow equally responsible for their little flirtation last year, but Oz had seen it differently. He had always known how Willow felt about Xander and had forced her to confront it before anything happened with them, so it was Willow that he was angry with, and Willow that he came to terms with. Xander’s part in whatever had happened between them had been, at least in his mind, less than important.

Or maybe he had simply been reassured by how quickly and completely Xander had forgotten about Willow after Cordelia had fallen on the rebar.

“Wake up, Xander,” he said, nudging his foot.

Xander’s eyes opened and he stared at Oz in a puzzled, half asleep way. “Wake up,” Oz repeated, patiently. One of the things Xander and Willow had in common was an ability to sleep almost anywhere. Willow was much more alert when she woke up, though. It usually took Xander a few minutes to wake up and while he was in this half-asleep state, you could get him to talk about almost anything. He had seen Willow do that too.

“Do you have keys to Will’s house?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Xander said, his eyes drifting shut.

“Let’s go there,” Oz suggested.

“Go to Will’s?” Xander nodded. “Yeah. Good idea.”

“Are the keys with you?”

Xander patted at his pocket. “Yep,” he said. “Go there every day to pick up the mail,” he confided. “Put it away,” he mumbled.

For some reason that bothered Oz. He wasn’t that surprised, and it made sense that Xander would have been enlisted to pick up mail for the Rosenbergs, but he had had keys to Willow’s house and had never mentioned it before. Oz frowned at him. “I’m going to get Willow’s laptop and then we’ll leave.”



Devon’s enthusiasm for the dig was a little surprising to Chris and Dan. Oz hadn’t noticed it yet, but that was understandable. Devon was quite possibly the laziest person on earth. He was perpetually tired and a little bit of a hypochondriac about it. He had read about Epstein-Barr syndrome, and for a while he was convinced that he had it. He was completely into the dig. He had gone out to an army surplus place and gotten a bunch of crap for it, like the hardhat with a light attached to it that he was currently wearing as he worked with a shovel behind Angel who was breaking up the tunnel face with a pick axe. Chris was in charge of the wheelbarrow that carried the dirt away to be displaced on the floor of the sewer access tunnel.

Under the hardhat, Devon had a headset on and was listening to the Rolling Stones, and singing ‘Salt of the Earth’. Yesterday it was the Who's, Who’s Next album. Chris was holding out for Queen because Devon doing Freddie Mercury was just funny. Mr. Giles interrupted his dirt shifting to enlist him in taking some measurements, which pulled Devon out of the tunnel they were digging into the sewer access tunnel that was their entrance to the new tunnel and staging area to get the latest update on the progress they had made.

The idea of it, the treasure hunt quality of the dig, had captured Devon’s attention, and despite the hard work involved, Chris found himself able to relate to it. He felt bad for Oz, and guilty about how worried Willow’s friends were, but on some level he could savor the sheer adventure of what they were doing. They were digging a big tunnel under Sunnydale to find something buried, according to Mr. Giles, hundreds of years ago. How cool was that?

Mr. Giles’ friend from UC-Sunnydale, Dr. Holbrook, was expected to come by later that day to help.

Buffy showed up while they were looking over the map and as if he knew that she was there, Angel emerged from the tunnel, shaking dirt out of his hair. He grabbed a quart sized Styrofoam container from the cooler Buffy had carried down and walked a few yards away from them, his back to them as he popped the lid and drank the contents.

Devon was momentarily distracted from the map, realizing that the container probably held blood. He looked over at Buffy, wondering how weird it had to be to have all this knowledge about the feeding habits of the undead, especially when you were dating the undead. But she wasn’t paying any attention to Angel. She was listening to Giles explain how much progress they had made. He was certain that they were within a few feet of the floor of the chamber they were seeking. Dr. Holbrook would be arriving later with heavy equipment and a generator that they were ‘borrowing’ from the University.

Buffy was going to feed Harmony and then come back and help with the digging. By then Angel had finished his breakfast or dinner, or whatever meal it was to him, and joined them around a makeshift table of sawhorses and uncut lumber. It was his contention that when it came to the work with heavy equipment that he should take that, alone, pointing out that if there was a cave in he didn’t have the same need for oxygen that they did.

With the plan for the next few hours established, they went back to work.





For someone who had spent a brief but unpleasant portion of the evening hugging the toilet, Willow didn’t appear to be sick, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t willing to get as much mileage as possible out of her potential illness.

“I think I have the flu,” she announced, pressing her hand to her stomach.

Spike, who never considered himself a genius at acting, let himself look disgusted. “The flu?” he repeated. “Well, that’s just wonderful.”

Gleeful triumph gleamed in her eyes as she faked a cough, waving a tissue at his stream of cigarette smoke. The sniff that followed was almost convincing. “Maybe it was something I ate,” she allowed. “I’ve read that an immediate and violent reaction to food is a sign of food poisoning, “she said in the rote manner of one retrieving an obscure fact.

She was up to something. He had sensed it last night and set it aside while she was throwing up. He was reminded the moment he had woken up. There was a current of nervous energy that she was floating in. After her bathing extravaganza she dressed herself in a pair of black walking shorts paired with a creamy off white sleeveless blouse. Despite her supposed stomachache, she slugged down another Fresca and looked like she was hungry, but resigned to skipping a meal to further her illness pretense.

It was moderately entertaining, watching her try to contain her restlessness. He hadn’t a clue as to what she was so keyed up about, and he really didn’t think it was going to change the outcome. The simplest solution was to change their current location, and he planned to do that tonight, anyway. If that didn’t throw her off, then he would start to worry about what she was up to.



A departmental meeting kept Sara from getting back to her sister about the strangeness that was her call, at Willow’s request, to her friend. Once she got back to her desk, the email was still there and she re-read it a couple of times, wondering what it really was all about. Clicking the reply button she wrote a note back saying that she had tried to call, but Buffy wasn’t home and she had not left a message. That begged a question that made her hesitate before sending. Should she try to call again?

She thought about it for a few minutes, staring at the screen, and then picked up the phone and called the technical services bullpen, getting Kevin on the second ring. Kevin was a huge Star Wars freak and he bore an ever growing resemblance to Jabba the Hut, but he was one of the sharpest techs and he could be relied on not to blab. She told him about the odd email from Willow and he said that he would look into the origination point and get back to her.

She sent her note to Willow, deciding that she would wait to see if she had any further requests to make before she called Buffy again.



Xander was in the passenger side front seat eating the monkey bread when Oz came back with Willow’s laptop. Oz got in, stowed the laptop between the seats and started the van, backing out of the drive.

Xander asked him to stop at a drive thru to order a soda and, realizing that the Rosenberg’s refrigerator would be empty, Oz ordered one too.

“Why are we going to Will’s?” Xander asked.

He could have connected to the Internet using one of the phone lines in the house, but Willow had a docking station to which he would connect the laptop, and he had an idea that it might be easier to figure out what she might think would be useful if he was at her desk. She had a tendency to leave little notes lying around. Mostly, though, he just wanted to be near her things.

Xander interpreted the delay in the answer as a kind of answer. Oz wanted to go to Willow’s for reasons that were too complex or inexplicable to verbalize. He shook his head. “Never mind. The why isn’t important,” he said.

They parked in the empty driveway and Xander pulled out the keys to let them in the front door, automatically stopping to empty the mailbox before he went in and disarmed the burglar alarm. Carrying the pan of monkey bread with the mail tucked under his arm, he went down the hall to the kitchen, nodding to the stairs. “Why don’t you go ahead and go up,” he suggested to Oz. “I’ll put this stuff away.”

Oz went up the stairs. He had been in Willow’s room before, though he had always felt a little self-conscious about being in there. Her room was a little on the conventionally frilly side. It always struck him as a room that she had grown out of but hadn’t noticed that she had grown out of.

His mother had adopted Amy, the rat, while Willow was out of town, having no idea why Willow was so adamant about her care and feeding. The place on top of Willow’s dresser where Amy’s cage normally rested was the only bare surface in the room. Her books and neglected stuffed animals were scattered around. Her Sunnydale High School yearbook was lying on her bed where she had left it before she had gone to San Jose.

He slid the laptop into the dock and powered it up, turning the monitor on as he got comfortable sitting at her desk. There was a brown envelope, one end torn open, on her desk and after a moment’s hesitation, he picked it up and looked inside.

It was proofs from their prom pictures, back from the photographer with an order sheet that she had started filling out. He would have passed on prom if he could have without ruining it for Willow. He looked at the pictures of them, posed in front of a backdrop of potted plants, looking like kids playing dress up. Objectively, he decided that he didn’t look that bad. Short guy in a tux was flirting with an ‘aw cute’. Willow looked endearingly awful. She had pulled her hair up too tight in a knot that was all wrong for her and the dark red cleavage baring dress was a bad color for her. He traced the outline of her heart shaped face. She hated having her picture taken and the photographer had said something that had made her laugh, and he caught her with a wonderful, Willowy smile that lit her eyes up.

He looked up at the pictures glued inside the back of the shelves that toped her desk like a collage at about the same time that Xander wandered in, sitting on the end of her bed. He picked up the yearbook and started leafing through it. “What’s that?” he asked, nodding to the envelope Oz was holding.

“Prom pictures,” he replied, returning them to the envelope. “Do you want to look at them?” he asked.

“Nah,” Xander declined. “I was there. We were looking pretty spiffy,” he said, laying back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling. He didn’t say it, but he thought Willow looked prettier in the dress that she had tried on for homecoming. The one that had led to illicit kissing and badness. He wondered if she had deliberately chosen a dress that she didn’t look as good in for prom, or if it was because they had been so busy that she hadn’t had time to find something that she did look good in.

Oz redirected his attention to Willow’s computer. He opened her browser and clicked on history to get a look at the web sites she had visited most recently. Scanning the list, he didn’t see anything that really jumped out at him. It was a mix of technical sites related to work, and a few demony research references with some browsing mixed in.

She had several instant messaging programs loaded on her computer that had started as soon as the machine had booted and dialed into her internet service. Feeling like he was potentially invading her privacy he started clicking through the messages. She must have been using her AOL messenger for work, because most of those messages were about work, from people looking for her. Her ICQ account was older and packed with alerts and messages from on-line acquaintances. Little references in these notes sometimes required scrolling through the message history to eliminate anything that sounded promising. There were two notes from a guy named Mange about research on an artifact that turned out to be something that he was asking Willow about related to witchcraft.

An hour later, he was still working his way through the backlog of ICQ messages when a message popped up on the AOL Messenger.

“Where the hell are you? I tried calling your friend, Buffy, but she wasn’t home. What’s going on?”

He frowned at the message. He was pretty sure that impersonating Willow on her IM program was considered a breach of net etiquette, but he was deeply tempted to do it anyway.

“When did you try her?” he typed back, quashing his ethical dilemma.

“Right after I opened your email this morning.”

Oz felt the hair on his arms lift as a wave of gooseflesh swept over him. Email! That was the answer. Willow had found a way to get online and she had sent email to someone.

He double clicked on her email program and waited for it to load as another message flashed on the screen.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?”

He frowned at the screen. Xander had fallen asleep on Willow’s bed, clutching her yearbook to his chest.

His hands hovered over the keyboard as he stared at the screen name on the AOL messenger. Who would Willow have written to? He took a deep breath and started typing, figuring that it was time to come clean. “Willow is not okay. She’s been missing for two weeks. This is Oz. She got a message to us and made me think that there is something on her computer she wants us to see.”

He hit send and held his breath, and then shook his head at how stupid he was and started typing again. “Can you forward a copy of her email to her email address?”

He drummed his fingers on the desktop, waiting to see if an answer would be forthcoming.

In the meantime, he opened her in box. There was a ton of unread mail that was still loading.

A new message flashed.

“If you are really on Willow’s computer, why don’t you look in her sent mail?”

He started to say that it was obvious. Willow didn’t have her computer and hadn’t sent mail from it, but he clicked on sent mail anyway and scrolled down to the bottom. There were three emails from Willow within the last day, addressed to Buffy and to her boss.




With nothing to read and nothing to do but wait and wonder what was happening in Sunnydale, Willow found it hard to sit still. Spike had taken an all too brief shower after she had let him have the bathroom, and she hadn’t been able to do much more while he was in the shower than check to see if her internet account was still active using the remote. She was going to run out of time in a few hours, but she could order another 24 hours of service and deal with the bill when it arrived.

When she heard the shower shut off she went back to channel surfing. Spike emerged from the bathroom, barefoot, in jeans, but no shirt and he claimed the remote, switching the channel to the hotel’s main menu channel with its four viewing options, the in-house cable, the pay per view movie channel, Game Station, or Internet access.

He went to the pay per view and started scrolling through titles with the remote while she stared at the television screen in a fixed sort of way, hardly daring to breath. The breathing issue might have resolved itself when he didn’t appear to notice anything about the internet connection option, but her brain took that moment to remember that the keyboard was beneath her, hidden only by the bedskirt.

“Oh, crap,” she muttered.

Spike tore his attention away from the television to look at her. “Problem?”

“I—“ Willow shook her head, “Um, I forgot to put in my request for dormitory housing, for college, and if I put it in late, I’ll get a late person for a roommate. I’m really more an on-time person or a fifteen minutes early person,” she rambled on. It was a good pick up, because it was true. She had forgotten about mailing her request for dormitory housing. “And all the best dorms will be full,” she added.

He gave a spare shake of his head. “Yeah, I can see how that would weigh heavily on your mind,” he said dryly.

She frowned at him. “You asked,” she muttered, not having to put any energy into sounding cranky.

“Speak up if you see anything you like, pet,” Spike said, sounding mild. “Stomach still bothering you?”

“Uh . . . yeah,” she nodded slowly, watching the movie titles go past.

“See anything that jumps out at you?” he asked, tilting his head back to look at her. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, pulled away from the table. She was sitting on the end of the bed.

She shook her head, avoiding his eyes, scooting back towards the headboard. “We could go out to see a movie, tonight,” he suggested, just tossing it out there to see what she would do with it. “Seen Gladiator yet?”

She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, “movie theater, popcorn and syrup odors,” she gave a spare shake of her head. “I’m not sure I’d be up to it, though if you want to go, you should.”

It was impossible to keep a straight face through this diffident little performance. He smiled, “I wouldn’t dream of going with out if you aren’t feeling well,” he replied, making no effort to hide his amusement.

The corners of her lips turned down and she looked up at the ceiling, one hand pressing down on her stomach, which was starting to get rumbles. “Vampires. No snot issues. I bet you don’t ever get sick,” she complained, and then warmed to the theme. “It’s not fair.”

He turned the television off, leaving the chair, and walking around to what had become his side of the bed to lay down beside her. Braced on one arm he loomed over her, but only to shut off the light on her side of the bed. “I didn’t design the world, I just un-live in it. Lay down, Red,” he rearranged her pillows behind her.

Warily, she scooted down, resting her head on the pillow.

“That’s a good girl,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Close your eyes and try to get a bit more sleep, now,” he suggested, tucking her hair behind her ear, the backs of his fingers rubbing her cheek before following the shape of her jaw down to her throat. If she wanted playacting, he would give her playacting. He smiled lazily as his fingers skimmed the pulse pounding in her throat. “Want me to order something for you? What sounds good?”

Her treacherous stomach growled, and she blurted out the first thing she could think of, “Jello.”

He nodded. “Jello? How about a bit of toast, too? And some juice?”

She nodded, feeling him trace the v-neck of her top. For someone who ate food as a hobby, Spike had pretty good food for sick people instincts. The last time she had the flu and her parents were out of town, Xander brought her pizza and chocolate milk for dinner. She made herself look at him. The only lamp left in the room that was lit was the one on the table, and it was over his right shoulder, leaving most of his face in shadow, but there was just enough light for her to see the cool gleam of pure calculation in his eyes before he ducked his head and peeled her top back to place a kiss on the upper inside of her breast, and . . . how dumb did he think she was anyway?

His hand moved down to rest lightly on her stomach, rubbing it in small circles as he placed neat, relatively dry kisses in a line that made the most of her unimpressive cleavage. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his overly neat hair, dried in furrows. The scent of the conditioner that she had used reached her, which explained why his hair didn’t feel more straw-like given his hair-coloring penchant.

What was that look about? It wasn’t actually an ‘ah-hah’ or a smug ‘gotcha’, but it wasn’t matching up to the solicitous act either. Or she was reading into it. She was looking for things that weren’t actually there. It was possible.

“Sure you wouldn’t rather have a cheeseburger?” he asked, lifting his head and propping it up on his bent arm in time to see the question register. Her stomach answered for her and he gave her a quizzical look. “Cheeseburger?”

“Probably not a good idea, with the grease and everything,” she said.

“You’re up to something, aren’t you, Willow?” His eyebrows lifted and his gaze drifted to her mouth. “I’ll figure it out,” he told her. As he saw it, he was still holding the best hand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, making herself look him in the eye.

He didn’t look impressed with the eye contact aspect of her strategy. “Right,” he drawled. “Jello or a cheeseburger?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Cheeseburger, with fries,” she said, pushing his hand off her abdomen. “If I end up throwing it all back up, that works for me too.”

He was getting off the bed when she said that and he paused to look down at her. When he came back to the room last night after telling Georgia that her little games with Willow had better come to an end unless she wanted to make a fight of it, Willow had been scared, and he had been fairly sure that it had to do with the lame ice bucket escape attempt. Her careful attention to her surroundings had not gone unnoticed. He also thought she might have been replaying her remark about dog boy and worried that he would even the score.

She didn’t quite grasp the cut and thrust of slagging someone back. It didn’t necessarily mean that there was going to be follow through, though from her point of view, she had no reason to think that there wouldn’t. He had implied as much on general principles. It was sort of like telling Georgia to back off. He didn’t actually have a Willow problem with Georgia. He told Georgia what he had agreed to, and she was putting him in a position where he had to make it stick. It was a challenge, pure and simple. He really didn’t care if Willow wanted to pretend that she was shagging her boyfriend, but getting the last word in on the subject was unacceptable.

He reviewed that thought. He cared enough to enjoy the prospect of making her regret telling him something that could so easily be turned to his advantage, he allowed.

Is that what had tipped the scales in the upset stomach business? He’d left her alone last night because snuggling up to a vomit scented human didn’t appeal. Had she decided to take that as a hint and run with it?

He went to get his coat, throwing it across the foot of the bed as he sifted through his impressions. She had been nervous before they went out to get her something to eat, he recalled.

Willow watched him moving around the room, collecting his cigarettes and lighter, checking his wallet. He pulled something out of his coat pocket and she saw that it was the scarf she had on last night. He was going out, she realized.

She glanced at the closet, assessing the probability that there would be a repeat of the leaving her without clothes strategy. Probably not, though she could count on some combination of vampires at the door to the hallway. Yesterday, he said that he would get her something to read, but between forced vomiting and her celebratory bath, she hadn’t had time to make a list. She wasn’t planning to stick around to do the reading, but that was all the more reason to renew the demand.

“Spike?”

The tone of voice was cautious. He glanced over at her, wondering what was rolling around in her head now.

“Yesterday? You told me to make a list of books. I haven’t,” she noted, “but—“

“Sod the list. Give me a theme,” he countered, her bunched up scarf in his hand. “There’s a gift shop downstairs.”

“Mysteries,” she said. It sounded safe. The way he was sort of rubbing the scarf was making her nervous. “Oh! The Star,” she nodded to herself. “It has a huge crossword puzzle.”

“You read tabloids for the crossword puzzle.” It actually sounded just about right.

“It’s a big crossword puzzle,” she defended her choice.

He dropped the scarf on the bed and went to the armoire, taking something from one of the armoire drawers that was cupped in his hand when he returned to the bed. She caught the glint of metal and reacted on instinct, rolling to the right to elude him.

He grabbed her around the waist, throwing her back to the headboard hard enough that her head smacked against it, making her cry out as much in anger as in pain. He snapped one handcuff around her left wrist and threaded it through a metal bracket before wrestling with her for her other wrist. She tried a Buffy-esque head butt and got nothing for her troubles but mind numbing pain when her forehead smashed into his chin.

He snorted. “God, but you are stubborn,” he muttered. “You should have stuck to insults and brevity. You were starting to get good at that.”

Her response was to ram her left knee into his ribs, and she was almost positive that she heard and felt something give. Which was gross, and she grimaced, feeling slightly revolted and grimly pleased that she had managed to hurt him. A second later, his hand was at her throat, squeezing meaningfully as the back of her head was pressed painfully into the metal of the headboard.

She felt him dragging her free hand up and made herself use her knee again, only this time it was her right knee. He was sort of straddling her thigh, and she tried to get enough leverage to knee him somewhere it would really hurt. Alert to that trick, he dodged it by sliding up, and letting some of his weight press down on her leg above her knee.

“Try that again and you won’t be walking for a week,” he promised.

“What do I get if I actually knee you there?” she demanded.

He chuckled, his finger’s tightening ever so slightly on her throat. “That’s adorable,” his eyes bored in on hers. “A less than thirty second head start and a vast education on the recreational uses of handcuffs,” he said with a smirk.

He cocked his head to one side. “Tell me what you’ve done, and we don’t have to do this,” he offered, nodding to the handcuffs.

Not remotely tempted, Willow glared at him, wishing that she could produce a good lie.

Reading the scheming look that crept into her eyes, he gave a short laugh and took his hand off her throat long enough to clamp the other cuff around her left wrist. He sat back, pretending to admire his work. “Something we haven’t tried yet,” he smirked, catching her leg before she could try to knee him in the ribs again.

Her checked knee to the balls and knee to the ribs maneuvers had made her slide down a bit on the bed, increasing the pull on her shoulders, which was going to get painful. He slid his hands under her ass and lifted her up enough to push her back against the headboard and was rewarded with a little huff and a wiggle that made him press his leg between hers.

“Don’t stop,” he urged, “this is starting to have possibilities.”

Her nose wrinkled in an expression of patent disgust and for a moment he considered driving home a few pointed reminders that she wasn’t as immune to him as she liked to think.

He leaned forward, grasping her chin to force her to meet his gaze. “Unfortunately, my plans for today don’t include entertaining myself by fucking you into the wall. Maybe later,” he told her dismissively.

He climbed off of her and paused to feel his side. He was pretty sure that she had managed to crack a rib or two, not that it would slow him down. He went over the last day in his head, trying to figure out what she might have accomplished, unsupervised in an empty room without a phone or during their two outings. He came up blank. That was more annoying than the cracked ribs.