Chapter Twenty-Two

She felt like she was swimming in dense layers of sleep without any idea of what direction would allow her to break the surface. She could hear William, but she really didn't want to talk to him. She couldn't remember why, and decided to go with general principles. Vampire. Bad. Sleep. Good.

“Wake up,” he insisted going to a tone of voice she recognized.

With a groan, she opened her eyes, half expecting to have to cover her eyes with her hand to block out the light before she realized that she had no idea what time it was and strong light wasn't likely to be a problem with William in the room. He disliked the gaslights and usually turned them down at night.

“Rise and shine, Duchess,” he said, callously cheerful.

Duchess? That was new, and sounded like something that would be shortened to Dutch. Eeeew. Fun facts about social etiquette drilled into her head by Angelus surfaced. “I think the proper form of address is Your Grace,” she said woozily. “I don't feel . . . right.”

Before she could think about what the wrongness was, William was throwing back the blanket and scooping her up. The top of her head felt funny and she put one hand on it to feel it gingerly. It didn't hurt. It just felt odd. He moved around the foot of the bed to the other side where several pillows had been stacked. He pushed the hem of a nightgown she didn't remember putting on up over her hip and started unwrapping a bandage around her thigh.

It was starting to come back.

She stared at his bent head as he checked the bite mark on her thigh, and nodded. “Not bleeding anymore, so you can go without this,” he held up the bandage.

“What happened?” she asked, pushing the hem of her nightgown back down, somewhat relieved that it probably didn't involve a procedure that removed parts of her brain.

“Nicked an artery,” he was matter of fact. “Hell of a mess, blood spraying everywhere. I had Lucius scrubbing the ceiling half the night.”

He drew a blanket up over her lap and went to get a breakfast tray for her. Willow stared at him feeling like she had dropped into another unreal life. There could be more of them. Infinite versions, and in this one, she was having a strange waking moment with a domestic and cuddlely vampire who was currently unfolding a linen napkin for her.

“This isn't real,” she told herself.

He stroked her cheek, his hand startlingly warm. When she got started on things not being real it wasn't a good sign. “None of that,” he scolded.

The unexpected, unreal warmth of his hand made her heart twist in her chest.

“You're a vampire,” she blurted out.

He tilted his head to the side, peering at her. “What's wrong?”

She stared at him, baffled. “You're all warm.”

“Ah,” he nodded, “Carried your tea pot up,” he explained, moving back around the bed to the side that she had vacated. “What did you think it was?”

That was part of the problem. She couldn't think. Her head felt so thick and fuzzy.

“What's going on? Why are you being . . . nice? Why do I feel so slow and—“ she figured it out. Laudanum. “You drugged me?” she was incredulous.

“You needed a rest, pet.” He made himself comfortable where she had been sleeping, laying on his side.

Maybe she did, but she still resented it on behalf of her fogged mind. There was something that she was almost remembering that was nagging at her, and she wondered if it was something he had done deliberately, to keep her off balance, though she didn't have any reason to think that it was anything but what he claimed.

She applied herself to eating her breakfast without helpful interference. It was an English-y breakfast minus the more revolting food groups. There was oatmeal with bits of fruit in it and a pear, cut in half and poached. There were times when she longed for a large bowl of sugary cereal with ice-cold milk, the kind of cereal that was after school snack fare at Xander's house. His Mother shopped at Sam's Club Warehouse and bought things like the triple package of Quisp. She and Xander had collected the prizes—glow in the dark stars, moons, and phallic looking space ships that they had added to an old shoe box with the vague notion that someday they would paint a ceiling black and stick the decals on so at night the ceiling would be glow.

Willow had once had a wistful idea that when that day came they would be sharing that room, though at the time, she hadn't the least notion of how to bring that about. A wealth of experience in the unreal world later, she had ideas that in conjunction with Xander, made her feel a little queasy on top of the disorienting feeling that her head was still swimming around in a half asleep haze of disjointed and inappropriate thoughts.

It made her stop eating for a moment, the spoon resting on the side of the bowl as she closed her eyes.

“Eat a bit more, baby,” William admonished. He had folded her pillow in half and was using it to prop his head up. His eyes were heavy lidded, and she had an impression of him, like a reptile, absorbing the lingering heat on the side of the mattress that she had slept on, lulled into lassitude by warmth. “Then you can go back to sleep.”

She had a brief recollection of him waking her up earlier and forcing her to eat soup. He hadn't been soft spoken and cajoling then. Her eyes opened. “You were mad at me,” she recalled.

“Was I?” he looked mildly interested. “When was that? I loose track.”

Willow shook her head. She wasn't that out of it. “Before. You were mad at me about something, and I thought that you had been mad at me all day, but I didn't know why.”

She stirred the oatmeal. It was congealing around the spoon in a sticky mess. She couldn't make herself eat another bite. “I don't want this,” she said, nose wrinkling in disgust. “I hate oatmeal. I've always hated oatmeal.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Drink your tea, then,” he prompted.

She looked at him warily. “I don't get to know why you were mad at me?”

He nudged the teacup. “It's not complicated, pet. You're up to something, and I know it,” he told her, “So, drink your tea.”

His idea of up to something and hers were mutually incompatible subjects. “I don't know what you mean,” she said. “I don't think I'm up to something.”

That made him smile. “That native to your way of thinking, is it?” he mocked, affecting a thoughtful air. “Well, I think it may be a focal point of dark magic,” he raised an eyebrow. “Does that sound familiar?”

She just looked puzzled. “It's a theory.”

“You never mentioned it before,” he pointed out, in hint of coolness creeping into his voice.

“You never asked,” she frowned at him. “And,” she warmed to the topic, “I didn't think you were all that interested either.”

He looked at her like she had said something remarkably stupid.

He had managed to get some sleep around the schedule he had established for feeding her. She kept waking him up, mumbling in her sleep. That was the reason for the laudanum, to force her into a deeper, less disturbed sleep. The drug slowed her heartbeat and respiration to a point that left him lying awake, listening to her. She was going to die. She was dying a little bit every day, and when she was dead, by whatever causes, there would be parts of her that would never come back.

“I'm interested,” he assured her. “I'm interested in everything that has to do with you,” he watched her expression change in degrees. She had secrets and no intention of sharing them with him, possibly ever.

He regretted the laudanum. Drifting through restless dreams, her body caught between the relaxation of sleep and the tension of her dreaming, she felt more alive to him. He was used to her sleepy mumbling. It wasn't always understandable, but it was coherent. Odd names populated her sleep, names that sometimes appeared in her journals, usually as characters in little stories she told herself.

Once upon a time . . . a different time, in a less exotic place, there was a girl named Willow who loved everyone who ever loved her the least little bit and she was happy without ever understanding that it was mostly because she decided to be happy. That was her real gift, but she didn't know it. She thought magic was her real gift and that she was meant to make other people happy because magic made her feel her happiness like a drug, and that was what made her think she could change things that were not meant to be changed. She saw the one moment that was crucial to Buffy and Xander and Cordelia and Giles and Jenny and even to Spike, of all people, and she set out to change it.

She drank her tea, and he insisted on the second cup. She needed the fluids, and when she was done, he let her go back to sleep and went back to reading a two year old journal that she probably thought had been lost in Portugal. Angelus was pouring over books about Slayers, unaware that William had one in his hands. It wasn't Willow's first story about a Slayer, though it was the one that made him understand that her stories about Jane were stories about a Slayer.

How in the name of hell did a former prostitute from Bristol know anything about Slayers? What was she hiding from him? Why did he have the feeling that it was all there, right in front of him and he simply wasn't seeing it for what it really was?



He fell asleep on the chaise and when he woke up Willow's bed was empty and someone was knocking on the door. The bathroom door was closed. The diary he had been reading was half under the throw blanket Dru was still working on. He got up and walked to the door as Angelus was opening it.

He looked at the empty bed. “Where is she?”

“Having a bath,” William guessed. It seemed likely. “What do you want?”

“Dru's dog needs to be walked,” Angelus pointed out in a tone that was meant to sound unreasonable.

“Just let him out in the garden,” William pushed past Angelus to cross the hall to his own room. “We've done this before. Do you think it counts as banter?”

Angelus followed him, called on being nosy and bored enough to seek the two of them out. “You live to entertain me,” he told William, and it was said so dryly that it did constitute a joke, if not actual banter.

“Un-live,” William corrected. “There is a house full of vampires for you to play with Angelus, if you are bored, make more, but if we do this, you have to let me handle it.”

That bordered on insolence, which would have made Angelus angrier if he wasn't accustomed to it. “You are a rude little shit, you know that?”

He got nothing more than a slightly pleased smirk out of William.

“I thought it was a crazy idea?” Angelus drawled.

“It is a crazy idea,” William nodded, “I didn't say it couldn't be made to work.”

“There's a party tonight,” Angelus tone indicated that this was a reminder, and William looked at him curiously.

“We are all going. Do you think she's up to it?”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Probably not,” he thought about it for a moment. “No. Not tonight, tomorrow. Supper party with some middling royal,” Darla had reminded him about it at least a half dozen times.

“And tonight, at the Hamilton's. Willow was invited for both,” Angelus said.

He remembered the Hamiltons, and shrugged. “She's indisposed,” he offered up the excuse.

Angelus tilted his head to one side. “It's a small party. Just us and the Hamiltons,” his voice was silky. “Are you sure you don't want to bring Willow?”

The tone was the tip off. The Hamilton's were destined to be the main course at their dinner party. Angelus would have something creative in mind for both of them. He had been cultivating Claire Hamilton, stringing her along. William felt that slightly itchy feeling that he had when he was in the mood for something violent. It wouldn't just be the brother and sister, either. There would be servants. There were always servants.

“Positive,” he confirmed, without a shred of properly demony shame over his reluctance to expose her to an evening of murder and mayhem. “I keep telling you that we are working out what is amusing and what's not,” he said, his tone mildly complaining.

He found a fresh packet of cigarettes, the last of them, in the pocket of a coat. The inference was clear. Willow had sensibilities, feelings and opinions that he didn't share, and as far as he was willing to let it, they counted.

When he looked up, expecting condescension, what he got was something a bit more thoughtful. Angelus looked like he wasn't surprised by the reciprocity. Mostly he seemed unwillingly intrigued. “How do you do that?”

“Badly, most of the time,” William admitted. “Are we sorted? Yes, I'm going. No, Willow isn't. She'll go to the other thing tomorrow night. I want Cook, Paulus and Andreas left here with her. Our new friends have an invite, and I won't have her left with a token guard. Does that sound about right to you?”

Angelus nodded. “We weren't planning to leave her without protection.”

William cocked his head to one side. “Is Darla giving this a pass?” he asked.

“Some one has to stay with our ailing cousin,” Angelus pointed out. “Dru isn't a plausible nursemaid.”

William smiled at that. “Fine, then,” he agreed.




He didn't have long to wonder how Drusilla fared. When he went back across the hall to look for Willow he found the two of them in their bathroom. Dru was sitting on the side of the bathtub while Willow smeared an ointment on her back. She reeked of blood, sex, and arousal. Whatever Willow was putting on her back, it was causing her pain, and she wanted more. Willow was being too gentle. It was like teasing without the malice.

Willow looked like a water sprite. Ethereal, too pale, her wet hair falling in coils that clung to her back and shoulders. A bit of sudsy soap stuck to her jaw, unnoticed, a smudge of cleanness. He sat on the hamper, ignoring the slight sound of the wicker crackling with his weight. Dru's nose wrinkled. He was smoking in their bathroom, their little sanctum of sweet smelling soaps and fresh water. Angelus had been careful to leave her arms, chest, neck, and face untouched, otherwise she was a mess. He didn't like seeing her in this condition. Knowing Angelus, he had probably told her that she wasn't to bathe, and nothing on earth would persuade Dru to defy him.

“We are going out tonight,” he told her.

Willow looked at him, and he gave a spare shake of his head. “Not you, pet. You'll stay in.”

“With Grandmummy,” Dru's eyelids slid down. Her hands clutched the lip of the tub, her thighs quivering.

Willow paused in what she was doing. “Am I hurting you?” she asked.

Dru turned to her, her face in profile to both of them, smiling beatifically. “Not nearly enough,” she said, and then she laughed and laughed at the startled expression on Willow's face.

William was smiling too, seeing the humor in it. Willow didn't. She managed to get to her feet, yanking the chain that held the drain to empty the tub, staggering a little as she reached for a towel left hanging on a rod near the bathtub. Watching her through a haze of smoke, cigarette clenched between his lips, he felt himself not tensing precisely, but ready to move if she fell, even though Dru was closer and probably wouldn't let her fall.

Dru plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, crushing it out between her fingertips. “No smoking in the bathroom you bad thing,” she censured.

He slouched against the wall, head tilted back, eyes narrowing as his lips pursed in an unwitting pout of annoyance. Against the white wall behind his head, his hair was honeyed brown with a hint of blond. Spike had looked dangerous. No one could accuse him of false advertising. William still had an almost babyish softness that made Willow wonder if Spike chose to look a certain way for a reason. Was it to impress the other vampires or was it some kind of warning that he chose to wear?

Drusilla dropped the remains of the crushed cigarette on the tile floor, whipping her head around so that the trailing ends of her hair caught him across the face as she stood, stretching, her hands running over her body, pressing into the worst of the bruises. For her to be showing so much damage nine or ten hours after Angelus had finished with her she had to be starving, and yet there wasn't a flicker of fang in his direction or Willow's. He had plenty and would have given it gladly, but she wouldn't ask, and tonight she would be ravenous.

He took a deep breath, annoyance fading, replaced by anticipation.

After Willow's bath they had a tea party on her bed joined by Miss Edith, Miss Anne, and Miss Georgina a haughty little regency miss with a fringe. Willow brushed her wet hair until William got exasperated with her technique, which was to start at the roots of her hair and tug the brush through it. She fell asleep with her head against his thigh after he took the brush away from her and brushed her hair until it was dry and shining. Dru left the dolls, save for Miss Edith and beckoned to him to follow her into her room.