Chapter Twenty-Three

Dreamless sleep eluded her. As if to catch up with the hours lost to laudanum Willow's mind busily supplied images to her. She woke up with a vague impression of having a long and mostly amiable argument with Spike, who had been invading her dreams more and more of late. Sometimes they were in the old Sunnydale High library, pre-Mayor roasting. He was almost always in motion, pacing in front of the bookshelves, swinging down the stairs to challenge her to snoop in Giles' office. Today they were in the bathroom, the one with the beige and institutional green decorating scheme, and he was sitting on one sink, his booted foot propped on the other as he smoked and picked at the label on a Snapple bottle labeled passion fruit that looked full of blood while she dyed her hair back to the nearly uniform darker auburn that she had favored going back to high school.

Oh, yeah. Her's was a subtle mind at work.

The first time she had dyed her hair had been the night before she started her sophomore year at Sunnydale High School. She had the academic success down cold, so this year was going to be about other kinds of success and they required a new look. She made an extensive study of hair color products before settling on a product with henna that would, according to the package, give her not quite red hair a richer, more lustrous color.

The results were exactly what the package suggested, though the only people who had noticed were Xander and Jesse. They knew their stuff and told her it was a great color. Her parents noticed, but pretended that they didn't, providing no opportunity for her ‘it's my hair' speech.

Her hair in the bathroom rinsed red and dried black, and Spike told her it was because it was a more rebellious color. Same as his, but less cool.

Dream Spike was very weird tonight. She kept waiting for him to do something that William would do, like comb her hair or touch her like she was a point of reference, or call her by one of a half dozen pet names, but dream Spike just followed her through empty halls commenting on everything and nothing.

She woke up to the two dolls staring at her. The bedroom door from the hallway was open, the gaslights from the hall spilling light into the room, making the dolls' glass eyes glisten. Miss Georgina had been rescued from a house in Ghent. Her petticoats had been yellow with age and brittle with dry rot. She had a tiny silk purse dangling from her arm on a cord and inside the silk purse had been a child's baby tooth, probably forgotten long ago by whomever once had her. She was an expensive doll with a bisque head and arms, human hair, beautifully crafted glass eyes the color of whiskey with sunlight coming through it and a slight overbite.

From what Dru said about her Miss Georgina was more assertive than the other dolls. She had been left alone too long and tended to be bossy and talkative. It was a description that reminded Willow of Buffy and a familiar pang of loss made her close her eyes and try to recapture the sense of long, rambling, pointless conversations that they had had.

“I miss you all,” she included Xander and Giles, her parents, and Oz in her list. Angel had been dropped off a long time ago when she lost the capacity to entirely separate him from Angelus.

Darla was sitting in the arm chair, looking out the window. At the sound of Willow's voice, she turned her head. For a moment she tried to think of anyone she missed, but drew a blank. “Who do you miss?”

Willow sat up then, clearly startled that she was not alone. “People I used to know,” she stammered. “A long time ago.”

“It's just you and me,” Darla told her, a malicious smile curving her lips. She knew Matilde was in the hall, listening, and she knew that she would register how utterly she was dismissed.

Willow remembered William saying something about going out for the evening. The smile made her feel uneasy. Darla rose, walking over to her wardrobe, taking out a dress that she held up to the spare light. “This will do, “ she announced. “You and I are going to find out what we haven't been told about Zlata Ulicka.”

Willow got up and started getting dressed. She shared William's skepticism about their guests and Darla's curiosity about what they might be hiding. “How?” she asked.

“You are a witch,” Darla pushed her hands away and helped her button the dress, smoothing her hands over Willow's corsetless waist.

Angelus had taken the coach, so they were left with the smaller Brougham. Willow had a purse stuffed with notes and coin. She was finishing a hastily prepared sandwich as they crossed the river. Looking out the window, she saw the Palencho Bridge in the distance. She was set down within sight of Zlata Ulicka, and for a moment she hesitated. The sandwich had left her thirsty and a hard spasm of anxiety made her feel like she needed to pee, the two seemingly contradictory messages her body was sending her made her take a deep breath to steady herself.

Zlata Ulicka lacked nothing for atmosphere. She had seen it in daylight on her tour of Hradcany. You saw places like it all over Europe. It was an addition made hastily, and left, like an afterthought, but it had charm in daylight. At night, with a strange fog that seemed to flow up from the cobblestones, it was creepy. The sound of her own sturdy walking boots on the cobblestones made her feel more conspicuous. She was wearing one of Darla's hooded cloaks, with a fringe of fur and fox tails that hung on the shoulders. The fur served a purpose of sorts. It was meant to compete with her scent, an insight that William had casually dropped once. The evening was too warm for such a heavy garment.

She started to pass a lamp post and then stopped as something cool and fine, a knife edge of sensation, passed through her and she saw not an empty alley but one teeming with shadowy figures that turned towards her with indifferent eyes, and amongst them the more solid forms of people. She had the distinct impression as the knife point rested inside her that if she took one step forward it would all disappear, so she waited until a boy uncurled himself from a seat he had taken on a stoop. He was tall and thin, sharp featured, reminding her of Templeton the Rat from Charlotte's Web as he slinked towards her in a bad imitation of a vampire's loose jointed grace.

For a moment she felt dizzy and closed her eyes. When she opened them, a wizened old man stood before her, stroking one of the foxtails in a blatantly lascivious way, begging for a coin, and the knife edge that hovered at her midsection reminded her of Jane's lessons on the subject of beggars. Never open a purse to them. Never feed anything that won't work as hard as you did for a coin.

The rat boy was gone. Everyone was gone. She stared at the beggar, refusing to move off the focal point. It was a threshold, or a kind of magical trigger to something. She stared at him as he repeated his request in the same tone.

She breathed in to steady herself and smelled the damp night air and a spicy stew of burning herbs. It was the smell that tipped the scales. In every other detail it was complete down to the buckled, filthy fingernails and skinny fingers, gray with dry, dead skin, except for the scent. Beggars didn't smell of incense.

Glamour, her mind classified, and the cool, sharp sensation became thinner and finer, feathering under the skin over her breastbone in a way that made her want to shudder.

The rat faced boy was at her side, sketching an elaborate bow. “You've got more power than any idea of how to use it of any witch I've seen in a long time,” he said conversationally. It sounded like solid, American English, though she knew that was impossible.

He patted a leather pouch on a cord around his neck. “It's just a charm, and useful,” he told her. “Are you here to buy or sell?”

“Buy,” she said.

He nodded and gestured for her to walk with him. “I'm Gripe,” he said. “If you don't have a man and you are looking for one, the house numbered 23 comes to me when my old man passes and we wouldn't have to share a room with anyone else.”

Willow looked at him to decide if he was being outrageous or if he was serious.

He looked at her hopefully, and then sighed. “There's a man,” he guessed. “Well, you look about a decade too old for me, but it never hurts to ask.”

The part of her that was stuck in remembering who she was at sixteen was shocked into awareness. A decade too old. Eight years gone. They walked past 23 and he stopped at 25. The door was painted blue, with woad. “Don't bother haggling. The prices are fair and the quality isn't what you'd find out there,” he gestured to the world beyond the barrier.

He left her there, ambling back to the corner, and she raised her hand to knock on the door, but before the gesture was completed, it was opened and a woman, heavily pregnant with a fringed shawl that Drusilla would have approved of draped over her shoulders smiled at her, gesturing to her, offering what Willow recognized vaguely as a blessing.

“Come in, come in,” she urged, stepping back a little to make more space in the narrow doorway.

Willow found herself in a small room could only be appreciated in layers. “Arik!” the woman called out. “We have a guest!” She nudged Willow towards a couch shaped piece of furniture nearly buried in what appeared to be fresh laundry. “Just push it out of the way. I can't seem to keep up these days,” the woman told her with an eye-rolling gesture to her rounded stomach.

“Ari—“ before she could finish shouting a short man with curly blond hair appeared. He was wearing a leather apron and gloves and from the lingering pressure marks on his face, Willow guessed that he had taken off some kind of mask to protect his nose and mouth. “Oh! There you are,” the woman beamed at him. “Look what the boy brought us,” she said, gesturing to Willow who started to stand.

Arik waved her back. “I see,” he said, sounding amused. “You'll be wanting tea, then?”

The woman cocked her head to one side, her shrewd gray eyes appraising Willow. “Don't stint on the rose hips,” she told him, settling into a rocking chair near Willow. She reached out and took her hand, unceremoniously stripping off her glove. “You are much too warm,” she scolded, waving to the cloak. “Take that off. You can tell Arik what you are here for when he comes back,” she said. “It was starting off as a slow night, and I was hoping for someone to come by, and here you are.”

“Here I am,” Willow agreed, starting to wonder where here was. “How do you know why I'm here?”

“The boy brought you, didn't he? He wouldn't have brought just anyone, even if he is a nuisance,” she gave Willow an amused look.

“I think he asked me to come live with him,” she found herself saying.

“Not at all. He probably asked you to marry him. He does that,” she smiled again. “It's a modern world. Scary, isn't it? I think it must have been easier when your parents just told you whom you'd marry. If it was a mistake, at least it wasn't yours.”

Willow undid the silk frogs holding the cloak together and unwound let it slip over her shoulders.

The woman released her hand and Willow removed the other glove. She had a crazy urge to ask if she could help fold the laundry that she was trying not to lean into.

Arik returned with the tea in a round glazed pot with two mugs and a plate of bread and butter. He pushed a small table closer with his foot and set the tray on it before pouring for both of them. He had removed the gloves if not the apron and squatted down a little until he was below eye level. “What will you be needing?” he asked.

Willow opened her purse and took out her list, aware of the couple exchanging pleased looks at the glimpse of crisp banknotes. She handed it to him and he scanned it, nodding to himself. It was a supply list that she had started in anticipation of the trip to London. There was nothing on it that would have set off alarm bells, though some of the crystals she was looking for were very expensive and difficult to come by. They were last minute additions to the list when she realized that Darla wasn't being close fisted with the money.

“We've got most of this lying about save for the red jade sticks. I've got a set, but they are brittle, and you don't want them breaking on you. I can get something better if you can wait a few days. Most of this we can give you tonight.”

She agreed to come back and the woman clapped. “Wonderful!” she chirped. “Try the tea, won't you?”

Willow found herself smiling back. “My name is Willow,” she said.

“Oh, dear! Manners,” the woman shook her head. “This is my husband, Arik, and I am Terese, and this,” she patted her stomach, “Is my sadly unnamed first child,” she shot a laughing look at her husband. “He wants to name it Baby Bunny. Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous?”

Arik gave a good-natured sigh. “If you'd agree to winnow the list down to something that doesn't rival the Book of Saints, I'd be willing to compromise,” he told his wife and then excused himself.

Willow picked up her mug. The tea smelled of chamomile and she sipped it. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be getting an impression of the occupants of Zlata Ulicka. Her first impression was that she liked them in a way that made her chest feel tight.

Terese touched her hand again, to bring her attention back to her, and Willow realized that she had missed something that she had said. “I'm sorry,” she began, embarrassed.

Terese shook her head. “I was just asking how long you've been practicing,” she explained.

“Only a few years,” Willow said, looking down at the bread. William had been shoving food at her for the last day. She didn't want to seem rude, but she didn't think she could eat another bite.

“Do you, that is, are you a witch?” Willow asked.

Terese let her head fall back against the back of the rocking chair, setting it into motion with her foot. “My mother,” she said with a fond smile. “That's how I met Arik. We come to Prague every few years. Mother swears by his mugwort.”

To pass the time while Willow waited, Terese gave her the abridged version of the list of baby names that she had settled on. Willow was finishing her second cup of tea when Arik emerged from the back room with her parcels, wrapped in brown paper and twine. He squatted down beside her and went over her list with her, reminding her to wear gloves while handling the more poisonous herbs on her list. She thanked him and opened her purse. He named a figure, and Willow understood the rat faced boy's injunction not to haggle. She could have had the lot of it shipped from England for less, but she didn't hesitate, counting out the notes and handing them over.

“Come back in a week for the rest,” he told her, handing the money to Terese, who tucked in inside her blouse.

“I will,” Willow agreed, hoping that she would be allowed to return.

“Stay and have another cup of tea,” Terese invited even though she looked sleepy.

Willow smiled, “Thank you, but I should go,” she said, rising from the couch. Arik went to the door to open it for her as Terese called out a blessing and Willow stepped back into the narrow alley. Mist swirled at her feet, making her feel like she was walking in a cloud. She turned back to the door and Arik was standing there, holding her cloak and her packages. He handed her the packages and settled the cloak around her shoulders. “Remember what I said about the henbane,” he cautioned.

She nodded. “I will, and thank you,” she added.

His hand came to rest on her shoulder for a moment as his eyes scanned the alley. “Maybe you should come back in,” he said quietly.

“Mica, mica, parva stella,” a thin, high voice mocked.

Willow turned slowly to see the small vampire from the attack on the house drifting through the mist toward her. Now that she knew that she wasn't a child at all but a very old vampire, Willow was amazed that she missed it. Not the vampire part, but the fact that she was not a child when she died.

The rat boy was loping down the alley with a stake in hand. The small vampire looked at him with delight and contempt. He came to a halt a few feet from her. “Don't you look like a little darling tonight,” he crooned to her. He looked over his shoulder at Willow. “The offer stands, even if you're a bit old, so off with you,” he gestured to the opposite end of the alley.

“But—“

Arik gave her a nudge. “You should go, quickly,” he advised. “Come back in daylight. It's safer,” he told her.

“She's safe if she wants to be,” Sian said. “She killed seven of us with nothing but a pair of minions to help her.”

Arik frowned at that. “All the more reason for you to go,” he told Willow.




The numbers at the dinner table were always guaranteed to be uneven. If Willow and Darla had come they would have been seven instead of five. Claire announced that the uneven numbers meant that they should sit anywhere they liked. Her brother looked at her as if he thought this was silly, and he took his place at the head of the table after seating Drusilla to his right. Flustered by the lack of enthusiasm for this idea, Claire allowed her to be seated at the foot of the table and William, following the two paired off couples took the place across from Drusilla.

Bored by the dinner table conversation which was largely a breathless flirtation between Claire Hamilton and Angelus while her brother ineptly tried to engage Dru in conversation while obviously finding his sister's behavior distracting, William prodded a gray green asparagus spear with the tines of the fork he was pretending to eat with. Mushy. Overcooked, mushy asparagus, yet another reason to thank Dru that he was no longer human and polite. He entertained himself with ideas about what Darla would do to anyone who spoiled one of her soirees with over cooked asparagus.

There was, in addition to the Hamiltons, a houseful of servants. Lucius had their numbers sorted out. Containment was an issue since they were planning to remain in Prague.

He tried one of the beef medallions in a cloying mushroom sauce. The beef was also undercooked, which made it palatable. He scraped the sauce off with the edge of his fork, smiling blandly when George Hamilton caught him at it, and then looked at Drusilla only to notice that she wasn't eating at all.

“It isn't to your liking?” he ventured hesitantly.

Dru flashed him a dazzling smile, the kind that could make you feel like you were amazingly perceptive, even as she was confirming his guess.

He smiled back, shyly. William watched all of this with a smirk.

“Would you like something else?” George asked.

Angelus' head was tilted towards Claire, and now he lifted it just a bit to look at Drusilla. She was wearing a blue silk gown that was as severe as a nun's habit. He smiled, recalling the first time he had ever seen her, with that pinched look around her mouth, great dark haunted eyes finding him. Despite the severity of the dress, she looked like a little girl with a wonderful secret that she was eager to share. He smiled at her, feeling indulgent. “Do tell Mr. Hamilton what you would prefer, Princess,” he invited.

In a move too fast to follow, William picked up the blunt knife that rested by the edge of his plate and brought it down hard, through the back of George Hamilton's hand, pinning it to the table.

Drusilla clapped. “Naughty, naughty. Hands aren't meant to be on the table,” she told their host, whose mouth had fallen open on a gurgling gasp of pain.

In the moment between understanding what she was seeing and seeing it, Claire was simply puzzled by what she had seen. Angelus had turned back to her, unconcerned. “It's a game,” he said.

The startled footman waiting to serve the next course had stepped toward the table, still holding a wine bottle to refill glasses. William left his chair and feinted left. The footman saw not a man but a man shaped thing wearing a monsters face. He swung the wine bottle like a bludgeon, and was blocked. Absorbing a punch that snapped his head back, he tried to shake it off with no thought of fighting. Turning away from that face was instinctive, and he had a moment to realize that it was also foolish as impossibly strong arms pinned his to his sides seconds before his throat was ripped out.

Claire Hamilton's hysteria edged scream was all the signal Lucius, in the kitchen needed. He had been whiling away the time in a chat with the servants who were not occupied with the meal that was being served in the dining room. He watched the reactions of the servants, who froze, and then started moving. The English butler who had been with the Hamiltons for over twenty years, rushed to the dining room followed more slowly by the lady's maid. The cook was a locally hired servant and had not been with the Hamilton's long enough to have any notion of whether this behavior was odd or alarming.

“Probably a mouse,” the footman standing by the door said.

“It's not a mouse,” Lucius told him. “Listen,” he nodded to the hall. Claire Hamilton's undulating scream had been abruptly cut off. A brief moment of silence before the maid screamed.

“That's not surprise, or anger. That's terror you are hearing,” he explained to the two men left in the kitchen. He finished the bottle of beer.

The cook picked up a long, sturdy looking butcher knife.

Lucius let his face change. He was across the table and on the footman in a matter of seconds, taking his face in his hands and then snapping his neck with a ruthless twist that he had seen Angelus and William use.

He advanced on the cook holding the knife in front of him like he knew how to use it. For a fat man, he was unexpectedly agile, darting around a work bench to grab a poker from the cold kitchen hearth.

“Bad choice,” he observed. “I didn't run when I had the chance, either.”

William strolled through the door, blood splattered. He wiped his mouth. He paused to nudged the dead body at his feet, and then looked at Lucius. “Ah, a happy trip down memory lane?” he said snidely. His attention switched to the cook, “Just kill him, will you? Nothing worse than juvenile vampires waxing philosophical.”

Armed with the poker, knife, and an arm accustomed to hefting heavy sacks of wheat and cutting meat, the cook was proving to be more of a challenge than Lucius anticipated. William hoped up on a counter drinking from an opened bottle of wine offering suggestions, mostly to the cook, who was sweating heavily, but still fighting.

The poker from the fireplace hurt, but it wasn't anything that would slow him down, or so Lucius thought until William's helpful suggestions started to sink in with the cook, and the tide started to turn. “Eyes, throat, groin, and work on his legs,” William called out. “He's faster than you. Slow him down,” he added, turning at the waist to open a cabinet door to check out it's contents.

Changing tactics, the cook dropped his head and charged at Lucius, hitting him squarely in the chest while using the knife to stab him in the side. He slid the blade in and twisted it, wrenching an angry howl out of the vampire.

“Hurt him with that one,” William announced as the cook used the poker, beating Lucius' head with it until he let go of him. The cook staggered back, hunched over, panting as he stared at Lucius, clearly waiting for something.

“You hurt him. Ouch. He's a vampire. Hurting won't stop him,” William coached. “Now,” he hopped down from the counter and strolled over. “Vampires? Heard of ‘em, I expect? Fast, strong, bloodsuckers,” he chuckled a little, “though some of us do eat. The asparagus was awful, you know,” he chided the cook.

Lucius started to approach the cook again, but William held up one hand. “Don't interrupt. I had to eat the mushy asparagus. The beef, very rare, not bad, but the mushroom sauce?”

“I'm a pastry chef,” the cook huffed.

“Oh, well then. Something edible for dessert?”

“Bittersweet chocolate tarts with spiced almonds,” the cook nervously shifted his grip on the knife.

William glanced at Lucius to see if he was watching for him to attack. “There are three ways to kill a vampire: Immolation by exposure to fire or direct sunlight. Decapitation. And stabbing them directly in the heart,” he told the cook in a hushed voice.

Holding the poker like a sword, the cook charged, and Lucius waited for him, pivoting at the last moment and propelling him forward into the brick surround of the fireplace. His head hit with a sound like a ripe melon exploding.

William strolled over, removing the poker from a hand that was twitching. He looked at the poker, smiling to himself, and before Lucius could figure it out, the tip of the poker was punching through the wall of his chest with enough force to drive him back against the wall. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

“That won't kill me,” he said.

“You are already dead,” William reminded him, pushing the poker in deeper, making the younger vampire moan.

“But, no. It won't kill you. It just hurts,” he said, pushing the poker in deeper. Lucius could feel it scraping against his spine and went utterly still.

Cold blue eyes bored in. “Last chance,” William told him. “Listen carefully. She's mine. Menace her, touch her, make her worry, even for a second, neglect her, and it's me you answer to. In thought as well as deed. You don't think Angelus kept Dru because she was eccentric, do you? That goes for you and the rest of the minions, and you are the one that is going to make that stick, aren't you, Lucius?”

He found himself nodding, and then screaming as William jerked the poker out of his chest.

“Next time I'll poke a few holes in you and fill them with holy water,” William told him, stepping over the cook. “He's still breathing. Deal with it,” he ordered as he walked over to the countertop by the oven, opening the oven doors. As he suspected the chocolate tarts were left in the oven to keep them warm. “Box this when your done,” he added, grabbing the half empty wine bottle on his way out of the kitchen.

In the dining room, George Hamilton was still alive, and still pinned to the table by the butter knife. A pool of blood was congealing under his hand. Dru had used one of the tiebacks from the drapes to improvise a gag. The butler was dead, and his heart was on a plate in front of George. The maid was still alive but barely breathing, and slumped over the butler's lap.

Claire Hamilton was on the table, naked, on her hands and knees. She wasn't a bad looking chit under normal circumstances but no one looked their best when they were crying like that. Mucus ran from her nose over her lips. Dru picked up a napkin and made her blow her nose.

George was being treated to a version of Claire's relationship with Angelus, and it was probably all true, but Angelus knew just how to make it sound. It was probably never more than a flirtation, stolen kisses in gardens and empty hallways, a little excitement for a girl who hadn't found anyone interesting enough to marry, but in Angelus' hands it was an indictment.

William found himself checking his pocket watch. He was fed, he'd given Lucius something to think about and now he was eager to get on with the torture and death portions of the evening. He had a girl to get home to. The thought made him shake his head.

Leaving Angelus enumerating Claire's sins, William went to walk through the first floor, eventually finding what appeared to be a more masculine room with books. His nose led him to a humidor and he smiled to himself. He had not had a chance to visit the tobacco shop he was patronizing and was nearly out of cigarettes. Cigars would do in a pinch. He had more or less decided to give up the cheroots.

Stuffing an handful in the inside pocket of his coat, he lit a cigar and sat down at George's desk, going through the drawers without looking for anything in particular. He heard Claire shriek and Drusilla say something about her being a very bad girl, and rolled his eyes. Predictable.

He thumbed through George's diary, which was full of appointments, mostly evening. The Hamilton's had been invited to the same party they were going to tomorrow night. He considered for a moment whether the news of their death would be generally known by then. Probably not. George's diary was unrevealing, so he moved on to George's correspondence.

It was mostly garbage. Letters from friends in London full of gossip. The Hamiltons were nearly twenty years his junior, there really wasn't anyone that they might gossip about that might interest him. There was a letter from his bank, very polite, thanking him for the large deposit that cleared an overdraft. William frowned. What were the Hamilton's doing in Prague if their finances were that tenuous? He waded through a few more letters without finding an answer an decided that in less than four hours it would all be academic anyway.

It also occurred to him that he was starting to act like Angelus, snooping through desk drawers while Angelus and Dru entertained themselves. He frowned at the idea, fairly horrifying, and yet undeniably funny, that he had switched places with Angelus tonight. Checking his pocket watch again, he folded his hands over his chest. “If I was a pompous, arrogant, sadistic bastard, what would I be doing?” he asked himself aloud, doing what he considered a credible imitation of Angelus' brogue.

It took him less than a full minute to figure it out and then he was out of the room and taking the stairs two at a time in search of Claire's room. Her diary was lying out on a bedside table next to her bed. He picked it up and went down to rejoin Angelus and Dru.



Despite her well earned reputation within the family for impatience, waiting was something that Darla endured patiently. She let her head rest against the upholstered seat cushion and stared straight ahead until her eyes lost focus in the middle distance. She could have had Paulus light the lamps inside of the Brougham, but she didn't need the light to see even if Willow did. Angelus was thinking in the short term about Prague. Darla was not. She liked the city and the house, and it had already occurred to her that it could be home before attack on the house, and before they met the Zlata Ulicka vampires.

Angelus was content with a mutual non-aggression pact, but Darla was looking past the immediate problem of the Stare Mesto vampires. Eliminate the older vampires in the city, and they could rule it. Angelus would see to the day to day details while she kept her eye on the horizon. As tempting as it was to write Drusilla out of that picture, her timely warning about the Order of St. Ubaldus had proven again that no matter how difficult her madness made her to deal with, she was worth the effort. William had impressed her today, and Willow . . . well, it remained to be seen what would be made of her, but Darla was cautiously optimistic.

She let her mind wander. One part of it was quietly going over a mental list of things that needed to be done. Dru was hard on clothing, and she was almost constantly in need of new dresses. She sewed her own small clothes which were also frequently in need of replacement. Willow's oyster satin was ruined, and she needed at least one more evening dress and a day dress. She made a mental note to schedule an appointment with a dressmaker for both of them.

Another part of her mind was planning for tomorrow night, sifting through her own wardrobe, though she knew exactly what she would wear and had decided on it as soon as she had received the invitation. In some ways William was a better judge of social situations than Angelus. He was handicapped by an utter lack of concern, but she had absorbed a quick impression that in relative terms Princess Stavarsky, their hostess for tomorrow night's supper party, was of no greater or lesser consequence than an English Countess. Angelus wasn't always clear on the nuances of their social interactions, but William had been raised with the hope that he would participate in what he once referred to sneeringly as ‘elevated company'.

Darla had the most vague impression of him when he was still human. For years she puzzled over Dru picking him out, literally plucking him out of no where. It was the kind of thing Dru would normally have forgotten, but the boy was hardly in the ground when she began her vigil at his grave, waiting like a child on Christmas morning for him to claw his way out.

The antagonism Darla felt towards him was most habitual. In his early years he had wavered between a need to please that had earned her contempt to a violent, rebellious attitude that had threatened their ability to pass unnoticed. Then Willow came along, and he started settling down. He kept her because it pleased Dru and irritated Angelus, and ultimately because it suited him, and they allowed it because it suited them all, completing them in a wholly unexpected way.

He had been on edge for days. Going out for the evening with Angelus and Dru was just what he needed to remind him of what he was. He had been spending so much time with Willow lately, and he didn't understand what had been obvious to her, and to Angelus when since Lisbon. His instinct was to save her, and he might not recognize the moment when she was beyond saving. It made sense to Darla. She wasn't sure what love was, or that she had ever felt it, but she knew what it felt like to know that someone was utterly yours, even if it only came in moments.

She could be patient. It would all work out in the end, and it didn't, they could spend the fall in London and bide there until a better idea came along.






Cutting someone's throat with a dull butter knife just wasn't as fun as it used to be, William reflected. George Hamilton had gotten off easy. After William had brought Claire's journal down and read a few amusing passages aloud, Angelus claimed the volume and was chortling over Claire's wistful entries.

That left William with nothing to do but toy with George. Lucius had finished off the cook and footman, draining both. The extra blood helped close the wound in his chest, though he still moved like it hurt.

Drusilla and Angelus were busy with the girl. He had seen it all before and done most of it himself, though he tended to get bored and move on to the killing faster, before the begging started. Not the please, no begging, but the please kill me begging. Stupid girl had gotten there too early. She was no where near dead, and Angelus was inclined to draw it out if they got there too fast. It was annoying. He was inclined to tell her to stuff a sock in it. A short list of some of the things Willow had survived made him want to tell her that a little pain and humiliation was the least of it.

Except that she wasn't going to survive. Darla would have Angelus' balls on a platter if he brought this one home.

He held her gaze while her brother died in front of her, finding it interesting that she wasn't looking at George. William had taken off the soiled gag and he was making a wet, gurgling sound as air passed through his crushed windpipe around the butter knife. She was still on her hands and knees and her arms were shaking. Her journal was open, resting on the small of her back as Angelus turned pages with one hand and worked his fingers into her with the other.

She was looking at him, almost hopefully, and he smiled at her, leaning down to listen to her whisper, “Please, I want to die.”

It reminded him of Willow, except that she had never sounded so abject, and she had more reason to. When Willow said she wanted to die there was enough determination in it that he knew that she didn't want to be killed. Killing herself was quite another thing.

He shook his head. “We don't always get what we want,” he told her.

He straightened and Drusilla came to him, winding herself about him. “Not staying?” she guessed.

He cupped her cheek, wiping away a bit of blood from the corner of her mouth. “There's not enough to go around anymore,” he pointed out. “And, I'm full.”

Drusilla raised her hand to rap her knuckles on his forehead. “It's too early,” she pouted, and then tucked her head against his shoulder, smoothing her hand over his lapel. “Stay?”

It took it a moment to sink in. Drusilla, who was always best content playing with Angelus, was asking him to stay. It didn't happen very often. He kissed the top of her head. “If you like,” he agreed.

They left Angelus and Lucius in the dining room with Claire and went off to explore the house.



While William and Dru went on their tour of the house—Dru could distract herself for hours searching for something only she would recognize as being a perfect memento for the evening, Angelus changed tactics with Claire, removing his fingers from her cunt, wiping his hand clean on a napkin. He removed the open journal that had rested against her lower back and helped her down, off the table, wetting the napkin in a water glass that had not been spilled with the tableware and food that littered the floor, he wiped her face off.

“I'm sorry,” he said, sounding like he meant it, “but you've seen what they are,” he said, sorrowfully.

It wasn't enough for trust or forgiveness, but it awoke something in her eyes that he recognized as hope mingled with shame. Her brother was dead. The butler, a long time family servant, was dead, her maid was dying, and she was discovering that she really didn't want to die herself. Angelus wished William was here to see the idea reach her, because he thought that the younger vampire put too much stock in Willow's periodic suicide dramas. Even in their worst moments, people wanted to live.

She slapped him. It wasn't a ladylike slap. She put her arm into it and slapped him hard, and might have slapped him again, if he hadn't stepped back, taken his suit coat off, and wrapped her up in it, effectively trapping her arms.

“They are monsters,” Claire spat at him. “And you . . . you are a monster, too,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I was a man once,” he told her. “I wasn't a very good man, but I was a man once, and then Darla came. I'd never seen anything like her before. She offered me the world, and I don't know if I would have said no even if I knew what she meant to do.”

Sitting on the edge of the table, her back to her dead brother, Claire stared at him. “Are you going to kill me?”

His smile was tender. “Of course,” he assured her. “But, you won't mind so much. Being dead. Waking up again. It will be dark. It's always dark, but there will be a string, touching your face. Remember that. A string, and you'll pull on it. A string attached to a bell that will ring for you, and I'll be there, because you will leave that grave and you'll be like us.”

She didn't know what to say, distracted by the soreness between her legs where he had forced his fingers into her, not for his pleasure or hers, but to hurt her, to humiliate her with the crudest possible interpretation of what she desired, her mind was blank. “Why me?”

“Because you aren't good either,” he told her without malice. “Not like Drusilla and William once were. They were good and well meaning if flawed people wallowing in the pain of being good and well meaning people in a world that never prizes those qualities.”

She reminded him of Darla, despite her darker blond hair and the upper crust accent that came so easily to her. It was the slight hint of calculation in her gaze.





Leaving the alley, Willow crossed the avenue and considered, briefly, her options. She had a purse that was lighter, but filled with notes and coin. Enough for a carriage, enough for a train ticket, though she suspected that it would not take her far. She had no papers. The spell ingredients she had purchased were worth something, and there was enough in there to cast a spell, similar to the tongues charm the boy in the alley had used. She had read about such charms. They could be used to enhance the wearer's charisma to the point that they became highly persuasive.


A little lost in these thoughts, she didn't notice the vampire who had quietly fallen in step beside her until he spoke, startling her badly.

He apologized at once, and not just for the fright he had just given her. “Sian isn't used to loosing,” he explained. “But, she wouldn't have hurt you.”

She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “How old are you?”

Rather than take offense, he laughed, seemingly charmed by the blunt question. “I don't know,” he admitted. “I was born in a time when what year it was was a great debate that took place in hearts and minds caught between the death of one world of ideas and another. I was born in a place whose name is lost,” he sounded like he was savoring the idea, “I make up stories about it,” he admitted. “When you live so long, you do that, but after a while, it's hard to remember what is true. I saw MacBeth on the stage, and they got it wrong. He wasn't a monster or even a bad king.”

“It's a good play,” she ventured.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “Your carriage is over there,” he gestured to it. Paulus was on the box, standing, watching them, clearly unsure about what to do.

“It will keep a moment,” he told her. “While you think about what you've seen. I thought you might have questions,” he smiled. “Thomazine would not have answered them, so it was inevitable that you would come here. Did you enjoy the visit?”

She had. “Yes.”

“No questions?” he seemed surprised by that, studying her face, and then he took her parcels from her. “These are too heavy for you,” he said. “You look like you need to sit down for a moment,” he took her arm in a light grip, meant to do nothing more than guide her. They crossed the street like that and he handed the parcels up to Paulus before opening the carriage door for her, looking at it in a puzzled way as it dawned on him that it sat up too high for her to climb into, and there was something like a chair in the way. He smiled when he figured it out and he put the stair down for her and held out his hand to steady her as she climbed in.

She sat, straightening her skirt as he put the step back up and then rested his arms on the padded surface that could be used for a seat for a third passenger. Darla did not seem startled to see him again. She made a brief mental note at how he used his hands, careful to conceal the long, talon-like fingernails that had been clipped and filed as much as they ever could. She thought it was amazingly stupid that he gave such an obvious sign of his discomfort about how he was changing.

“You are welcome to return, day or night,” he told Willow, and grinned at Darla. “Not you,” he said without rancor. “Even if you got past the wards, crossbows, from the second story windows,” he explained.

“Why do they let you stay?” Willow asked.

“We were there at the beginning,” he told her. “When they were brought here from every corner of Europe and the East. It's a long story,” he said, “and I like long stories too much to stint on it, but dawn will come before I could finish the beginning,” he looked at Darla. “Tell your childer that nothing would persuade Ekaterina to return to Zlata Ulicka. She lost that battle two centuries ago.”

He stepped back and closed the door carefully. Willow automatically leaned forward, despite the dark and secured the latch on the inside of the carriage door before sitting back against the upholstered seat back, feeling tired and energized at the same time. The complexity of the ward that she had passed through went beyond anything she had imagined and made her own seem crude even if it was effective.

“Did you find out anything useful?” Darla began, only to be interrupted by Paulus who wanted to know if they were leaving.

“Home,” she said, and he snapped the small window between the driver's box and the interior of the carriage shut. A moment later, the carriage lurched into motion, and Willow banged her knee against the jump seat while Darla hissed in annoyance.

“Andreas is a better driver,” Willow noted, rubbing her bruised knee.

Andreas wasn't as sharp as Paulus or Cook, but he was steadier, which is why Darla left him behind with Cook and Matilde. For a moment Darla wished that Angelus was there. He was better at asking questions. “Just tell me what happened,” she said, returning to the topic at hand.

On the drive home, Willow went over it. She had a tendency to babble that Darla found irritating. Her voice warmed with enthusiasm and unspoken admiration of the wards that protected Zlata Ulicka. The general impressions she gathered were that the wards were sophisticated and interesting to Willow, that the occupants of Zlata Ulicka were prepared to defend themselves, and that Willow liked them, in a wistful way that was a little interesting to Darla. Ever since Angelus had decided that Willow's presence would be more or less acknowledged as a part of the public face of their family, Darla had opportunities to observe her interacting with other humans.

The supper party a few nights ago was a good example of this. She was polite and a little reserved, if not standoffish with the people she came into contact with. She was the person at a party who was talked to, but not talked about. An excessive amount of interest in her made her visibly nervous, probably because she was afraid of what conclusions were being drawn about her and possibly because she had learned not to consider attention as being flattering or benign in intent.

The hint of wistfulness was new. There was something about these people that she was attracted to, though what it might be eluded Darla. Willow was still talking when they returned to the house. Paulus drove up the alley behind the house without bothering to bring them around to the front door to be let down. They went through the carriage house and stable into the garden. The flagstone path had been weeded and swept recently, and Darla wondered what made Willow bother. The only sign of life in the garden were the overgrown tulips around the sundial in the center.

Darla sat on the bench under the slight overhang that provided cover for the coal bin beside the house. Willow sat next to her after a slight hesitation. Andreas opened the kitchen door for them and after giving them an incurious look, went to the stable to help Paulus unhitch the horses. Matilde hovered in the doorway.

Darla interrupted Willow to ask if she wanted anything, gesturing to Matilde.

“No, thank you,” Willow answered.

Darla nodded. “We don't need anything,” she told Matilde pointedly, and she was forced to withdraw.

There was an odd moment of silence that lingered and then Darla nodded in the general direction of the ruined garden. “What do you think about when you sit out here?”

Willow followed her gaze. The garden was more desolate and beautiful at night. In full sunlight it was depressingly dead, but at night, the desiccated plant life had a stark, austere beauty, black against the radiant light in darkness from the stars, the streetlamps, the filtered light from the house.

“I think about . . .” she hesitated for a fraction of a second, an almost imperceptible pause, “what was, what might have been.”

“It doesn't change anything,” Darla observed.

“It reminds me of who I was,” Willow did not add, ‘who I might have been', but it was there, unsaid, hanging between the small, sharp thorns of a dead rose bush caught in the open space like the cobweb that was spun in the branches.

“It passes the time,” Darla acknowledged, casting her a sideways look.

Even in the worst moments, maybe more so in the worst moments, Willow found that it was possible to be glad for something. During the time in Bristol, she had been glad for Jane. Glad to be not left alone, even when she was numbly holding the mass of her skirts above her waist, her shoulders pressed hard into rough brick as the commercial property below her waist, her only commodity was filled and fucked and vacated to ensure that she wouldn't starve.

You think you'd rather starve, but she knew from experience that starvation was too slow.

She had been glad to not be alone. Glad to have someone to tell about herself and her friends, no matter how sick it made her feel inside to know how badly she had screwed up. Glad to promise, and mean it, that when she figured out a way to reverse the spell—and she had thought in those days that she would figure it out—that she would bring Jane with her. She would have the room across from Willow's in her parent's house and they would never talk about what had happened, only what could happen.

It helped to remember that she was once an ordinary girl with a small gift who saved people, especially when she could not save herself.

With that sideways look, Darla revealed that she knew the value of anything that helped pass the time.

Their gloved hands touched, the edge of Darla's pinkie nudging hers until Willow lifted her finger the slightest bit and Darla curled her finger around Willow's.

“And sometimes, you don't think of anything at all,” Willow said, her voice raw to her own ears.

Darla's finger tightened briefly. “Sometimes it's too much,” she agreed, sounding like she was talking about yesterday and a hundred years or more of living.

The weight of breathing against the pressure in her chest made Willow close her eyes and grit her teeth. The glimpse of a world that she was no longer part of left her painfully aware of how limited her options were, and how futile her efforts had been. She sought to change something small, and the only thing changed was her.

“Say the word, and I will make it go away,” Darla said.

She was tempted enough to want to lay conditions on it, to make it something simple and final. To have someone take her head in their hands, almost tenderly, and kiss her forehead before severing her spinal cord in one short, welcome burst of violence. Darla might be persuaded to do this for her, but her mind supplied another face, stark and pure. It flashed through her mind that she would have to remember to ask Spike the next time she dreamt him, if he would do that one thing for her.

She started to say ‘yes', with no conditions, in the fragile hope that Darla would understand what she was agreeing to, but William walked through the open kitchen door with a lit cigar in one hand and an open wine bottle in the other, and the moment was lost. He joined them, cool blue eyes picking out the tentative hand holding and registering surprise before his eyelids lowered and a smirk twisted his lips.

“I'm not interrupting anything, am I?” he wondered.

Willow and Darla answered at the same time. Willow's ‘no' was defensive. Darla's ‘yes' was curt.

He drank from the bottle, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Where did you go?” he asked.

“Zlata Ulicka,” Darla told him. “Where are the others?”

Their night of killing had not ended at the Hamilton's. They had gone from there to the cemetery abutting the Stare Mesto vampire's lair. Lucius had dug a grave and on the freshly tilled earth, they had taken turns raping Claire Hamilton. Angelus had pushed her semi-conscious body into the casket that Lucius had broken open and closed her up inside it. Sick fucker that Angelus was, he buried her alive. He had read about it in a volume of short stories. The vamps that frequented the cemetery would hear her.

What they would do about it was anyone's guess.

If he had come home early he would have missed the denouement. A part of him appreciated the artistry of it. They were vampires. All of them, except for Lucius, had clawed their way out of a grave. It had a special meaning for them. He was blood gorged and the need for violence was sated, and another part of him wanted to seal up the evening, call it complete and fall asleep between cool sheets inside of a warm body.

Thinking about why Darla had seen fit to take Willow on her fishing expedition or why she was flirting with her in a Darla-ish sort of way, was the last thing he wanted to do.

Lucius had brought the larger carriage around to the alley where it stood for the moment. Willow remembered her parcels and went to retrieve them, leaving Darla alone with William. He waited for her to volunteer something that would explain what was going on, but she rose from the bench, looking out at the garden. Drusilla drifted through the doorway, eager to tell Darla about their evening.

“Tell me upstairs,” Darla interrupted her, and Dru linked arms with her, pausing to run her hand over William's face.

He kissed her dirt caked fingertips. “Are you coming?” she asked.

“I'll wait for Willow,” he said.

Dru smiled. “Is she coming?”

“No,” Darla answered for him. “You would give her nightmares, Dru.”

Dru made a dismissive sound. “She has her own,” she said, as if this were a foregone conclusion.

Darla's brittle laugh rang out. Drusilla's gift for saying the most obvious and unwittingly funny things was almost endearing.