Spike shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy mattress and frowned up at Buffy.  “Where’s the Little Bit?” he asked for the third time since sunset.

“At home with Willow,” responded Buffy patiently.

“I don’t think you should leave Dawn without more protection than a witch on a Twelve Step program.  There must be some new big bad in Sunnydale.  I need to find out what it is, and I can’t do the rounds of the demon bars until I can get out of this bloody crypt under my own steam.  Did you check by the old high school?  That’s where the rumpus was kicked up last time there was an earthquake.  Near the hellmouth.  On second thought, don’t go there until I can go with you—”

        “I’ve checked the high school,” said Buffy calmly.  “I know all about riot and rumpus on the hellmouth, remember?  And Tara has been casting all kinds of spells to locate any unusual disturbances.  All she’s found are the usual collection of Sunnydale demons.”

        Spike shifted his shoulders again.  His eyes were filled with pain.  Temporarily unable to fight or, as he put it, to shag, he was spending most of his waking moments fretting about Buffy and Dawn.  “Doesn’t make sense,” he muttered.  “Why all the earth-shaking if there’s nothing earth-shaking happening?”

        Buffy had listened to more of Spike’s conversation over the past two days than she had over the past several months.  She had been surprised and relieved to discover that, except for occasional minor lapses, his thoughts and opinions didn’t reflect his old, amoral nature any more.  However, she was rapidly coming to the realization that the fact that Spike was motivated by good intentions did not make him any less irritating.  She got up and went to the table by his bed.  It had taken her half a day to restore some kind of order to the crypt so that he could lie on a mattress instead of a sarcophagus.  The space was still far from neat, but at least she could move through it without tripping over broken furniture.  She poured a dose of medicine into a glass.  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the tectonic plates happened to shift?  Maybe it wasn’t a portent after all.”  She came back to sit down next to him.  “I think it’s time you had some more of this.”

        He grimaced at the painkiller that Tara had made.  “Tastes bloody awful.”  He saw Buffy’s baleful gaze on him and tossed it down anyway.  “Now I need a chaser.”

        “No booze,” said Buffy.  “I’ll get you some blood.”

        “Never mind,” he said.  “How about a kiss to take away the bad taste?”

        She smiled and bent over him, trying to brush his lips gently and avoid chafing the healing scars on his face.  But he reached up and pulled her down towards him, grimacing in pain from the pressure on his burns even as he sighed in pleasure at the touch of her.

        Buffy pulled away, her face pale.  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered.

        “It’s worth it,” he said hoarsely.

        She shook her head, wondering how it could be worth it to him.  He had made an amazing recovery over the past two nights, but the marks where he had been burned while saving Dawn were still harsh and visible.  She turned away from the bed and went to the refrigerator to pour him some blood.  When she came back, she saw that he was starting to fade into unconsciousness again, thanks to the pain potion she had made him drink.  This was as she had planned.  Buffy had discovered that Spike was now embarrassed to touch blood in front of her.  It was easiest to force him to take the sustenance he needed at times like this, when his mind was clouded.  She knew that he required the nourishment; every time he drank, she would see a marked improvement in him a few hours later.

        She held out the glass full of viscous red liquid.  “Drink,” she said.

        “Like Alice,” he murmured.  He seemed to perceive her confusion, and added, “Finding the bottle that says ‘Drink Me’ in Wonderland, you know.  She checked to see if it was poison before she drank.  I wish I had.”

        Buffy propped him up as gently as she could and pressed the glass to his lips.  Choking a little, he forced the blood down.  Her eyes were full of concern as she laid him back on the mattress and watched him slip off to sleep.

        “Always check for a label that says ‘poison,’” he murmured.  “Don’t take candy from strangers or talk to pretty girls in dark alleys .  . . ”

        Now his body was completely still.  It was always fearful to her to watch him sleep.  He was so motionless, and the tension that normally pulsed through every muscle in his body disappeared.  As his features smoothed, he seemed almost peaceful, in spite of the scars.  His face bore an expression that she had never seen while he was awake.  He looked like an innocent now.  An innocent sacrifice.  He sleeps like the dead, she thought with a shiver.

        “I love you,” she whispered to his still form.  It was still astonishingly difficult to say the words.

        Buffy left the crypt at dawn and walked home slowly.  She peeked into Dawn’s bedroom and saw that her sister was sleeping peacefully.  Then she checked on her mother’s old room.  Willow was asleep as well.

        The Slayer crawled into the bed she had slept in since before she and her mother had moved to Sunnydale.  Sunlight slanted in the window and struck her face.  She winced in annoyance and went to pull the curtains before slipping between the sheets again.  If I’m lucky, I’m too tired to dream, she thought as she drifted off to a much less peaceful sleep than Spike’s.

        “You know, Slayer, you should always check before you drink,” Spike was saying.  “To make sure it isn’t poison.”  He was sitting on the sarcophagus in his crypt, completely healed except for one red scar on his throat.

        Buffy moved close to him, staring at the scar, which was livid under his red shirt.  “I checked,” she said.  “It isn’t poison.  It’s hot and sweet and it will keep me alive.”

        “Then you should do it,” he said.

        “Do you trust me enough?”

        His face altered, and she stared into his yellow vampire eyes.  Instead of fear or disgust, she felt a rush of desire.  She took his face in her hands and bent her head, but did not touch her lips to his.  She twisted his head to the side and sank her teeth into the red mark along his neck. 

        His blood was hot and sweet, and it tasted of ecstasy.  She felt his body spasm under her hands and knew that she would destroy him if she didn’t pull away in time.  But the taste of him made her dizzy, almost delirious.

        She found the strength to lift her head and stare into his eyes.  His face was human again, and alive with desire.  He pushed her back, and she dropped to the floor of the crypt, feeling his hands disarrange her clothes and push up the folds of her skirt.  She willed him to enter her and sate the mindless passion that possessed her. 

        Then Spike was again in vampire face and she moaned encouragement as his fangs bit into the flesh of her bare breasts.  She felt him drink, and this pleasure was even greater than when she had fed off him. 

Then Buffy realized that they were draining each other’s essences, and sudden fear took hold of her gut.  She reached behind her and grabbed hold of something reflexively.  Her body was desperate to seek some way to channel this incredible hunger without destroying them both. 

Buffy shuddered and woke, covered in sweat, wondering if there had been another earthquake.  The world seemed askew.

She heard someone knocking on the door.  “Buffy, are you all right?”  Dawn threw open the door.  “What happened?”

Buffy jumped out of bed.  She turned and saw the mattress was sagging to the floor at one corner.  The ornate bars of the headboard had been twisted and mutilated to such an extent that they had pulled away from the rest of the bed’s frame. 

“You’ve really got to learn to be less hard on the furniture,” said her sister.

“I’ve got to learn to be less hard on more than that,” said Buffy.  She was staring at the bed in dismay.

“How did it happen?” asked Dawn.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” said Buffy uncertainly.  Then she sat down on the edge of the mattress, clinging to its wobbly edges as she burst into tears.

The bed shook even more as Dawn rushed to put her arms around her sister.  “Buffy, talk to me.  What’s wrong?”

“Dawn, I don’t know what to do.  I keep having these dreams about hurting.  About hurting Spike.  But I don’t want to hurt him, not any more.  At least I don’t think I do.”

“I didn’t think you did either,” said Dawn.  “In fact, I kind of thought you might be falling in love with him, especially since he saved me from that dragon.”

Buffy was silent for long moment.  She couldn’t bring herself to confess everything to her little sister, but she certainly owed Dawn at least a partial explanation.  “I kind of thought I was falling in love too.  But, Dawn, how can I possibly get seriously involved with another vampire?  And how will I bear it if I can’t control these other crazy feelings?  What if I give way and I do something evil?  I don’t know if I can make you understand.”  Buffy suddenly felt that in her need to talk to someone, she had gone too far.  “I shouldn’t even be saying these things to you.  You must be so disgusted by me.”

        “Never.  Why do you think I would want you to pretend you’re not thinking these things?” said Dawn.  “Everyone has been telling me for months to deny my feelings, so I know how awful that is.  Being told you’re not allowed to feel bad is worse than feeling bad.  And I do understand what it’s like to think you’re crazy and evil.  I’m the Key, remember?  I was created to destroy reality.  How can you get more evil than that?”

        Buffy shook her head.  “But you’re not evil, Dawn.  It’s horrible to me that you could think you are.”

        “And how horrible do you think it is to me that you could imagine there was something wrong with you, Buffy?  Do you have any idea how much good you do and how many people depend on you?”

        “Do you have any idea how much harm I could do if I gave into some of the impulses I’ve been having?”

        “You won’t,” said Dawn almost desperately.  “Feeling something is different from acting on those feelings.  Buffy, I know you, and I trust you.  You have to trust yourself.”

        Buffy dropped her head on Dawn’s shoulder.  “I want to be able to do that, Dawn.  I want to make everything right again.”  She sighed.  “Thank you.  Talking to you has helped.  I was so afraid you would be terrified if I told you.”

        Dawn’s arms tightened around her sister.  She had grown much taller than Buffy over the last year or so, and her shoulders seemed ready to bear the burden of her sister’s distress.  “It hurt a lot more when you didn’t talk to me.  That’s what almost destroyed us, I think.”

        “You’re right,” said Buffy.  “I can’t keep these things all to myself anymore.”  She looked at the open bedroom door.  “Speaking of sharing with friends and family, where’s Willow?”

        “She said Xander was going to the magic shop to talk to Anya, and she wanted to help,” said Dawn doubtfully.  “It didn’t seem like the best idea to me, but Willow knows Xander better than anyone else.”

        Buffy reached for the doorknob of the magic shop, but before she could grasp it, the door flew open, and Anya stalked out.  “You can just watch the shop for me,” she yelled back over her shoulder into the shop.  “I’m too angry to even count money.”  Anya glanced at Buffy with a look so distracted that the Slayer wasn’t even sure she had been recognized.  Anya stalked off down the street.

        Buffy stepped into the shop and looked at Xander.  “Another attempt at reconciliation didn’t go so well?” she asked.

        Willow, who was sitting at the table near the back of the big room, nodded.  “Anya didn’t want to listen.”

        “Maybe you should have let me do the talking,” said Xander.  “I was trying to apologize, Willow.”

        “I know,” said Willow.  Her tone was contrite but the look she fixed on Xander’s face was oddly serene.  “But a lot of what happened was her fault too, Xander.  She has to realize that.”

        “Xander did leave her standing at the altar,” said Buffy uncertainly.  “That requires some apology, don’t you think?”

        “Please,” said Xander, casting Buffy an anguished look, “can we talk about something else?”

        Buffy dropped her gym bag on the floor and looked at her two oldest friends.  “Actually, there’s something I want to talk to you two about.”  They looked at her interrogatively.  “Spike,” she said.

        “Not much of an improvement in topic,” said Xander.

        “I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Buffy.  “Because I don’t.  In fact, I think he’s quite a lot improved.”

        “Yeah, for an undead blood sucking fiend,” said Xander.  “I know that you’ve let that freak hang around in spite of the ridiculous crush he has on you because he can’t hurt anyone, but—”

        “That’s not true, Xander.”

        “What?  What isn’t true?”

        “None of it, I guess.  I haven’t just let him hang around.  I’ve wanted him around.  A lot.  And he can hurt someone.  He can hurt me.”

        “What?”  Willow’s face contorted with fear.  “Buffy, what do you mean?  He can’t hurt humans.”

        “He can hurt me since I came back.  Tara explained it to me.  Something about the spell you used.  But don’t worry, just because he can hurt me doesn’t mean that he will.”  She tried to explain what had happened in the tunnels just two days before and how he had risked himself again for Dawn, but they didn’t seem to be able to hear her.

        “Buffy, you have to get rid of him,” said Xander urgently.  “If he’s a danger to you—”

        “You’re not listening, Xander,” said Buffy.  “He won’t hurt me.  He doesn’t want to hurt me.  If he wanted to kill me, he could have done it, dozens of times.  He’s had every opportunity.”

        “Yeah, well, maybe he doesn’t think he can take you in a fight.”

        “Not in a fight, maybe,” said Buffy.  Having finally made up her mind to reveal her secret, she found herself growing impatient with the Scoobies’ obtuseness.

        “What other way—”  Xander stopped. “You don’t mean that.  It just came out that way.  You didn’t mean what you just said.”

        “Yes, I do,” said Buffy.

        Things got very noisy then.  Buffy listened to Xander and Willow as if they were discussing some stranger’s problems.  Their concerns seemed off-balance, somehow, and oddly disconnected from any true worries about Buffy’s emotions.  They seemed to be talking about some abstract Buffy who should feel certain things and look at the world in a certain way.  Buffy didn’t think that girl existed any more.  Instead of the horror and shame she thought that she would feel at this moment, she seemed to be sinking into the deadness again.  She hadn’t left that ghastly lack of sensation behind her forever, after all. 

        Finally, Willow said, “Buffy, how can you be with him and not worry that he’ll lose control?”

Buffy stared at her friend blankly.  “It’s never him that I worry about,” she said.  She picked up her gym bag and walked towards the back door.  “I need to work out,” she said, and left them.

        In the training room, Buffy tried to concentrate on her exercise drill, but she knew she was off balance both mentally and physically.  Added effort didn’t help.  She slammed her fist as hard as she could into the punching bag, but it didn’t connect properly and the bag wobbled erratically.  She almost fell off the exercise horse, and her muscles stiffened and groaned when she tried something as simple as jumping rope.

        Her mind kept reeling back to that night when she had beaten Spike in the alley by the police station.  Now, the memory of her fists slamming into his face made her feel nauseous.  At the time, she had been suffused with anger.  But how could she ever confess to anyone that it had not been Spike’s face that she saw beneath her as she struck, but her own?  It had been like the time she had been trapped in Faith’s body and had to fight the other Slayer.  Except, that time, it had been Faith who struck her own face over and over again while screaming out her rage and hatred.  I’m even crazier than Faith.  I don’t need a body-switching spell to see myself in someone else’s body.  And I hated what I saw.  Hated it enough to want to destroy it utterly.   No, she couldn’t tell anyone what had gone through her mind that night.  No one but Spike would ever understand.  And she feared that Spike would understand too well.  Who was I fighting?  Who am I?  What am I?

        She tried to concentrate on a martial arts kata.  The form required a precision she was incapable of right now, but she hoped the slow, predictable movement would calm her mind.  However, she had trouble just remembering the sequence of kicks, punches, and blocks, even though she had practiced them so many times that they should have been as natural as breathing.  Now, even her breathing was off, ragged and drawn as if she were running from something.

“You’re getting sloppy, Slayer,” drawled a voice from the back of the room.

“Where did you come from, Spike?” she asked calmly.  Somehow, the senses that were failing her in every other way had already noted his presence.

“The back.  I was going to come up through the cellar, but there’s a bloody row going on in the shop.  I backtracked down the sewers, waited a few minutes for nightfall, and came in through the alley.”  When she had last seen him just before daybreak, he had still been covered with blisters from the burns he had suffered when saving Dawn.  Now, he was almost completely healed.  She could see one long red scar on the left side of his neck.  The spot fixed her gaze.  There should be a throbbing artery below that mark, but if she were to place her mouth over that scar, she would feel no blood pulsing through him. 

Buffy shook her head, trying to think of something else.  She looked away from Spike and began the movements of the kata again.

Spike walked around her, eying her from head to heels, not with a lover’s gaze but with the calculating stare of an opponent.  Her movements stilled, and she stared back.  Suddenly, he whirled around, pulling off his long black leather coat and casting it across a chair.  “You fight like that, some vamp is going to have you within the week, love.  Come on and toss that roundhouse kick at me.”

“No.”  Her face was white.  “Spike, you don’t understand.  I can’t hit you.”

“Not much chance of that, judging by what I just saw.  You need someone to help you train, pet.  Has anyone even thought of that since Giles left?”

“No, I—”  Before she could finish, he aimed a blow at her face.  She stepped back, realizing as she did so that he had pulled his punch and would not have struck her in any case.

“Running away from a fight isn’t going to work for you, Slayer,” he said as he threw another punch. 

This time she blocked it and countered with one of her own.  He blocked it easily, and they moved warily around each other.  She struck again, half-heartedly, and he began to strike again, faster, but with no more real violence then his first punch. 

She countered the blows, breathing hard, feeling a kind of panic that had never possessed her even in the most desperate fights.  She flailed out again, and he grasped her arm, twisting it back.  He held her just tightly enough to keep her securely in his power, but not enough to cross the threshold of pain.  “If you keep on like this, you will die,” he hissed in her ear.  “Is that still what you want?  You told me you didn’t, not any more.”  She started to pull away, but he held her closer.  “You’ll hurt yourself doing that.  Is pain what you’re after, then?  Or are you ready to handle this like a big girl?”

He released her then and backed away a few steps.  Buffy took a deep breath and kicked high, aiming a strong blow a few inches in front of his face.

Spike blocked her kick with one of his own, then followed up with a rain of kicks and punches that she had to strain to block.  He stepped back, but before he could make his next move, she began an assault as vigorous as his own had been, forcing him to take several steps back toward the wall.  “That’s it,” he said, a grim smile settling over his face.  “Show me what you’ve still got.”

The battle intensified, as Buffy threw blow after blow, struggling to use her great strength without letting it out of control.  Once, her right hand shot out in a hook she was sure he could block, but he wasn’t quick enough and she had to pull back suddenly to avoid striking his face.  She would have stopped then, but he moved in, forcing her to block his blows in self-defense. 

They circled each other for ten minutes, and in that time neither landed a blow on the other’s face or torso.  The only physical contact was their arms and legs as they blocked each other’s kicks and punches.  For the first few minutes, Buffy had to force herself to make each move.  Then her Slayer instincts awakened with a roar and she thought her heart would explode with the fear of hurting him again.  “Control the monster,” she thought.  “I must control the monster.”  She looked at Spike, trying to read his expression.  He was intent and focused, but she there was a light in his eyes that had to come from sheer pleasure in the physical encounter.  The fighting wasn’t just about killing and pain for him, she realized.  He could take pleasure in the battle itself, enjoying each blow and parry for its own sake, as something separate from the causes and consequences of the fight.  She took a deep breath and locked on his gaze, trying to draw this knowledge from him, to accept the contest for what it was and no more. 

Then she reached a state almost of detachment, and there was nothing but her and Spike and the next movement of this strange dance.  They were truly sparring now, not fighting.  They were more like partners than opponents, each one testing the other’s prowess.  When he parried a blow, she took as much pleasure in his skill at blocking it as she would have in her own. 

They continued to spar until she felt herself tiring.  She should back away and stall for a few breaths, to try to get her second wind.  But she felt an unreasonable need to match him step for step, and of course Spike had no breath to catch.  So she pressed harder instead, lashing out with a blow calculated to make him duck and pull away, giving her the moment’s grace she needed.

He ducked, but instead of pulling away, he dropped to the floor, shot out one leg, and swept her feet out from under her.  She landed on her back, and in a second he was on top of her, holding her hands up above her head. “My game, I think,” he said smugly.  “You were too cocky with that move, Slayer, and you know it.”  She said nothing, and both his smile and his tone changed from bragging to caressing.  “You need to be careful, love.  If this had been a real fight, some vampire could be taking advantage of this lovely bare throat right now.”

He bent his head, and his lips moved down her throat, but with no hint of menace.  They were feather-light and teasing.  Buffy closed her eyes, and let all the energy she had been expending on sparring with him change and refocus into desire.  She was already hyper-aware of his body and his every movement, and now she could feel his arousal as he pressed against her, his still heart close to her frantically beating one.

Then she remembered the others in the next room.  What if they should walk in on this scene?  She began to twist her hands out of his grip and to push him away.  He was not holding her tightly, and his hands gave way easily, but slowly, communicating reluctance without any hint of coercion.  He raised his head and looked into her eyes, as if asking what disturbed her. 

Spike’s eyes darkened suddenly with shock, and Buffy gasped as his body was tossed across the room as if he had been a puppet pulled by an invisible string. Horrified, she leapt up, wondering how she had caused this new catastrophe, just as she had been starting to trust herself again.  Then the impossibility of her own guilt struck her, and she gazed wildly around the room.

Willow was standing at the door to the magic shop, her eyes dark.  Her gaze was fixed on Spike, who was groaning and trying to pick himself up off the floor on the opposite side of the room.  The anger and hate she saw in Willow’s face propelled Buffy into action.  She flew to the doorway grabbing the witch’s shoulders and shaking her.  “What did you do?  Willow, what did you do?  Stop it!”

Willow slowly turned to face Buffy, her expression returning to something more human.  “Buffy, let go of me,” she cried in distress.  “You’re hurting me!”

Buffy released her.  “What did you do to Spike?”

“Nothing,” Willow winced and rubbed one shoulder. “I stopped him.  I was helping you.  Why did you grab me?”

Buffy turned to stare at Spike, who was slowly standing up.  “I’m all right, love,” he said.  She started toward him, then stopped.  Nothing short of fire, a stake in the heart, or decapitation could really hurt him physically, after all.  She turned back to Willow.

“He wasn’t hurting me,” Buffy said evenly.  “He was letting me go.  You must have seen that he was letting me go.”

“No,” Willow shook her head vigorously.  “No, I saw him knock you down, I saw him on top of you, and I panicked.  Buffy, you know I wouldn’t do magic unless I was really upset.  I’ve been so good for so long, but seeing you like that—“ She started to shake and cry.  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do magic again.”

Buffy knew she should feel the old instinct to move forward and help Willow, but instead, she stepped back, away from her friend’s beseeching hand. 

The door opened again behind her and the others walked in.  “What’s happening out here?” asked Xander. 

“Willow did a spell and someone got hurt,” said Buffy evenly.  “Does that sound familiar?”

Willow was staring at her in real shock and panic now.  “Buffy, Spike was on top of you.  I pushed him away.   I shouldn’t have used magic but—”

“Spike and I were sparring,” said Buffy.  “And then we were kissing.  That was all that was happening.”

“What happened is that you are making a big mistake with Spike and I tried to stop you!”

Buffy stood silently, working this out in her mind.  No matter which way she looked at it, there was only one meaning she could put on Willow’s words.  “Then you did know what you saw, and you didn’t think Spike was hurting me.  You did it because I let him kiss me.”

Willow started to speak then, but Buffy suddenly erupted into rage.  “How dare you, Will?  How dare you make my decisions for me?  That’s what this has been about since the beginning!  You brought me back without asking if that was what I would want, and then you played with all our minds like they were your toys.” 

There was deathly silence for several seconds as Willow and Xander stared at Buffy.  Before anyone else spoke, a phone rang shrilly.  Buffy turned on her heel and went to answer it.  She spoke briefly into the receiver, and they watched her body tense.  Spike moved towards her instinctively.  She turned to face him.  “Spike, I need you,” she said.  “Come on.”

The Slayer strode out of the room without a word to her friends.  Spike followed her unquestioningly. 

Willow slowly sank down onto the couch on one side of the training room.  “How could Buffy talk to me like that?” she asked.  She stared up at Xander with wide, hurt eyes.  “How could she say those things to me?”

Xander’s eyes were slewing back and forth between Willow and the door where Buffy had exited.  “I don’t know, Will.  But where do you think they’re going?”

Willow very palpably no longer cared.  “She was angry at me for hurting Spike.  Spike!  How many times has she thrown him against a wall and beaten him up?”

“Maybe it’s like with good friends or siblings.  Buffy feels like he’s her private punching bag, and she doesn’t like anyone else getting into the act?”

Willow’s expression showed nothing but scorn for this.  “She was angry at me for hurting Spike,” she repeated.

“Willow, I don’t think that was the only thing.  She—I don’t think she’s ever really said it to our faces before, but she does blame you—us for bringing her back.”

Willow ignored his words.  “We have to figure out how to snap her out of this.  We’re going to get her away from Spike.” 

Xander felt a new uneasiness beginning to creep in, adding to his already gut-churning emotions.  The look on Willow’s face was becoming too familiar and too worrisome.  He had seen it often when they were with Anya or talking about Anya.  And it was beginning to occur to him that shortly after Willow donned that expression, the troubles between Xander and Anya would increase.  He swallowed hard.  “Just how are you going to do that, Willow?”

She looked up at him blankly.  “Huh?”

“Buffy is the Slayer, and last time I checked she was an adult.  If she wants to be with Spike, how can we stop her?  I’m not even sure stopping her is a good idea; at least, not right now.”

“Xander, how can you say that?  How can you accept this?”

“I don’t like it, Will.  In fact, I hate it with a fiery passion.  But I will go along with anything that makes Buffy want to live.  And if you’ve seen her as passionately concerned about anything as she was about Spike’s safety just now, I don’t know what it is.  I know you don’t want to hear what I’m about to say, but I’m going to put up with this for as long as it takes to get back the Buffy we used to know.”

Buffy grabbed an axe on her way out of the Magic Box.  She gave Spike only the briefest of explanations before leading him towards a scruffy-looking street on the edges of the Sunnydale business district.  They rounded the corner cautiously.  A block or so away, a few young men clustered under a streetlamp, smoking and muttering to each other.  The Slayer and her companion edged along in the shadow of the buildings until a voice hissed at them from an alley.

“Dawn, what are you doing?” demanded Buffy.

“Shadowing suspects,” said her sister.  She saw who was standing behind Buffy.  “Spike, you’re all better!”  Dawn smiled happily at him.

“I don’t know about better or any other variation of good,” he said.  “But I’m back to usual, Little Bit.”

“And so is Dawn, apparently, since she’s busy getting into trouble,” said Buffy.

“I am not!  I’m standing right here watching those guys and waiting for my backup to arrive.”

“Your backup?” asked Spike, laughing.

“That would be you guys.  And don’t make so much noise.  Those vamps will hear you.  This is a stake-out, get it?”

“How do you know they’re vamps?” asked Buffy. 

“Actually, I sense vamps,” said Spike.

“I knew it,” said Dawn, who was almost bouncing up and down with excitement.  “I saw them when I was heading for the magic shop.  They turned up right after sunset and started nosing around a bunch of girls in a hungry kind of way.  When the girls went into a busy restaurant, they headed over here.  Then one of them walked by a shop window, and I couldn’t see any reflection under the streetlights.  That’s when I called you.”

“And suppose they had attacked you while you were waiting for your backup to arrive?” asked Buffy.

Triumphantly, Dawn pulled a cross and a stake out of her pocket.

Spike didn’t flinch, but he did take hold of Dawn’s wrist to push the hand brandishing the cross away from his face.  “Better than nothing, Niblet, but not much use against four of them.”

“Which is why I called you,” said Dawn.  Her expression became mulish.  “And what else should I have done?  Let them wander off who knows where to eat someone?”

Buffy and Spike exchanged glances.  Buffy handed the axe to her sister and took the stake instead.  “That is a defensive weapon,” she said sternly.  “You stay back in this fight.”

Dawn sulked a little, and demanded, “How do we go after them?”

“We are not going after them.  Besides, I don’t think that will be an issue.”

The four dark figures had crossed the street and were approaching them with an air of practiced menace.  They were all over six feet tall, and they loomed over the two girls and Spike’s slender form.  One of them seemed to sniff the air.  “Two pretty little snacks,” it said.  “But the guy—”  It stared at Spike.  “You don’t smell right.  What are you?”

“The last thing that you’ll ever see,” said Dawn.  Spike turned to stare at her.  “I always wanted to say that,” she said.  “Like Ivanova on Babylon 5.”

“Why do I think,” said Buffy to Dawn as she pulled out a stake and dusted the vamp standing next to her, “that you’re not taking this terribly seriously?”

Spike launched himself at the vamp that had spoken to him.  The creature had been warier than the others and was able to block Spike’s first blow.  However, a moment later, Spike caught it in the chest with a kick that made it stagger sideways and knock over one of its companions.

Buffy took off after the fourth demon, which had suddenly realized it was fighting something much scarier than expected.  She caught up with it at the end of the street, grabbed it by an arm, and swung it around into the gutter.

Dawn stepped aside as Spike and the other vampire dodged each others’ blows.  The heavy axe slipped from her hands, and she bent to pick it up again.  As she did so, she thrust out her left hand, holding the cross towards the fallen attacker, which was staggering to its feet.  It stared at the cross and gave a hollow laugh, moving towards her.

There was a muffled exclamation, and the vampire that Spike was fighting shattered into a cloud of dust.  Spike turned, saw the figure menacing Dawn, and threw himself between the two of them.

“Ow!”  Spike stumbled back, clutching his head.  The creature he had attacked reeled and fell to its knees, then started to recover.  Spike looked up and announced indignantly, “That pissant is human!”

“My turn, then,” said Dawn.  She stepped forward and soundly rapped the man who had activated Spike’s chip over the head with the axe handle.  He collapsed to the ground just as Spike struggled to his feet.

Buffy dusted the vampire she had been fighting and ran over to them.  “What happened?”  She stared at the man on the ground.  “Why didn’t you dust him?”

“He’s non-dustible,” said Dawn.  “He’s human.”

Buffy looked at Spike.  “How did you knock him out?”

“I didn’t,” said Spike, rubbing the side of his head.  “I may have managed to break his arm before he awarded me a migraine, but the Bit here is responsible for the concussion.”

Dawn frowned at the body on the ground.  “Why was he fighting on the side of those vamps if he’s human?”

Spike shrugged.  “They probably had a deal.  They kept him around to do things for them in the daylight and they reciprocated by stealing the things he wanted.”

Buffy nudged the man’s body with her foot.  “Throwing away his soul,” she muttered.  She looked at Spike, but didn’t expand on the theme.  “What do we do with him?  We can’t just leave him here.”

“Why not?” said Dawn harshly.

“Your sister won’t leave any human to die, and this wanker needs a doctor,” said Spike.  He bent down and picked up the man.  He strode off, carrying the big body as if it were a child’s, and dumped it on the ground again near the back entrance to a bar.  He looked back at Buffy and Dawn and jerked his head to one side.

Buffy pulled Dawn out of the alley and back into the deserted street.  The two girls peered around the corner at Spike, who looked first to make sure they were concealed, then rang the doorbell of the bar.  Buffy and Dawn started to giggle as Spike sprinted towards them and ducked around the corner. 

“Someone’s coming,” he said.  “They’ll take him to hospital, love.”

Instead of looking concerned over the human’s fate, Buffy was still laughing. “I always knew you were the kind of guy who rang doorbells and ran off,” she said.  “Trouble, that’s what you are.”

“Yeah, I’m just a bad boy,” he said grinning back at her.

“I’m hungry,” announced Dawn impatiently. “Let’s get some food and go home.”

“Okay,” said Buffy.  “I’m hungry too.”

Spike stood uncertainly.  “I’d best be going, then,” he said.

Dawn frowned at him.  “Oh, no, you don’t.  You should still be convalescing, and you’re obviously not taking it as easy as you should.  And I’ll bet you’re hungry too.  Do you have enough blood back in your crypt?”

He was so astonished he didn’t reply but started to follow them back towards the main street.

“That’s what I thought,” said Dawn, taking his silence for a negative response.  They were approaching an all-night market.  “I’ll go in there and pick up some frozen pizzas.  Why don’t you two go to the butcher’s for some blood and meet me back here in a few minutes?  Then we can go home and enjoy a post-slayage pig-out.  Buffy likes that.”

Spike stared at her retreating back.

“She’s been worried about you the past few days,” said Buffy.  “And she’s right.  You are still recuperating.”  She slipped her hand through his arm and walked him towards the butcher’s shop.  “I can go in and ask.  They’d probably give it to me for free.  My secret identity isn’t completely secret in some circles.”

“I’ll do it,” said Spike.  “They don’t charge me either, since I dusted a couple of vamps that were hanging about the place.  They had a bad habit of feeding on the butchers as well as the merchandise.”  He was about to go in when Buffy spoke again.

“Spike?  It was a good fight.”

        He turned to look at her.  “Yeah, I suppose so. We all got out of it alive, at least.”

        “More than that.”

        “Oh?”

        “We weren’t fighting each other this time,” she said.  “It was good to be on the same side.”

He nodded and entered the butcher’s shop.

They met up with Dawn without incident and went back to the house.  Dawn was bubbly and excited.  “That was so great,” she said.  “I even got to hit someone.  Of course, it turned out not to be a vamp, but I helped.  And I found out something bad was happening and warned you, and I didn’t even get kidnapped.  What a great night!” 

She popped the pizzas into the oven and started to pour Spike’s blood out for him.  He insisted on performing this task himself, and went outside to drink it in solitude while the pizzas cooked. 

While Dawn was fussing in the kitchen, Buffy listened to the messages on her answering machine.  Willow had called to say she would be very late.  The witch’s voice sounded sulky.  The message went on for some time, but Buffy cut it off before it finished.

When the Slayer went back to the kitchen, Spike was helping Dawn cut the pizzas.  He also helped eat them, devouring half of one himself.  They spent the next few hours in the living room, channel surfing and arguing about the options on TV, never agreeing enough to settle on one show to watch.

Finally, Dawn yawned prodigiously and Buffy strongly suggested that it was bedtime.  The teenager shuffled off to the kitchen with some empty dishes while her sister, who had suddenly remembered a half-finished load of laundry, went down to the basement.

When Buffy came back upstairs, Dawn had finished loading the dishwasher and announced that she was going to sleep.  “Where’s Spike?” asked Buffy, peering into the living room.

“Dunno,” said Dawn, who could barely keep her eyes open.  “I haven’t seen him since I told him to take the garbage out.  Maybe he went back to his crypt.”

“You told a vampire to take out the garbage?”

“Sure.  He used to do it all the time when you were dead.  He certainly wasn’t going to let me go out after dark.”  Dawn yawned again and headed for the stairs.

After checking that everything was in order in the kitchen, Buffy followed her sister.  Unreasonably, she felt that Spike had abandoned her.  Surely he must realize that she couldn’t follow him to his crypt until Willow came home to watch over Dawn? 

        But when she opened the door to her bedroom, she found Spike standing by the head of her battered bed. 

“Dawn told me you’d gone.  What are you doing?” asked Buffy.  In spite of her relief that he hadn’t left without a word, she was slightly offended that he hadn’t asked permission to come into her personal space.  When it comes to him, I just move from one unreasonable emotion to the next, she thought.  I wonder what the next one will be?  Then she looked into his blue eyes and shivered.  She knew exactly how he would next move her beyond reason.

“I was about to leave, but I thought I’d try to fix this first,” said Spike.  “The Little Bit told me that you’d had a problem here, and since your usual carpenter seemed on the outs with you this evening, I thought I’d have a go.”

“Oh,” she said.  “How’s it coming?”

“I think I could get it if one of my arms were ten feet long.”

“That’s a scary thought.  What if I help you instead?”

He nodded at the other end of the bed, and she helped him lift the metal supports.  He leaned over and grunted as he forced the frame into slightly better alignment.  “I won’t say it’s good as new,” he said at last.  “But it should hold.”

She looked at the twisted bars of the headboard.  “I don’t know if that can be fixed.  I’m kind of sorry about that.  I’ve had this bed since I was a kid.”

“Time to put away childish things, perhaps,” he murmured.

She picked up the sheets that had been lying folded across a chair and started putting them on the bed.  He took one end and helped.  She looked up suddenly and shivered.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, clearly unable to read her mood.  “I mean, I wasn’t expecting you to—I know how you feel about it with your sister sleeping next door.”

“What?” she looked up at him, her face white.  “No, that’s not it.”  She sat down on the bed.  “I just remembered a dream I had a long time ago, when I was making a bed with someone.”

“Yeah?”  He sat down next to her and waited.

“I’d hurt her.  She bled all over the sheets.  And I was thinking about her a lot today.”

He reached up a hand to stroke her hair.  “Buffy, what is it you’re afraid of?”

She met his eyes frankly.  “Becoming a monster,” she said simply.

He looked astonished.  “Impossible,” he said, without emphasis.  It was a simple statement of fact, and it reassured her as the most strident tone could not have done.

She dropped her head onto his chest, and he put his arms around her, waiting patiently.  She closed her eyes, listening painfully, but there was no sound of a heart beating beneath her cheek.  My poor William, she thought. You don’t complain, but I know that you are tormented by the knowledge of what you are.  I would do anything to take that agony away from you.

She lifted her head and kissed the side of his throat.  The red scar had healed noticeably since they had sparred in the magic shop just a few hours earlier.  His skin was soft and warm under her lips, but it did not pulse with life.  She shivered again.

He pulled her closer, as if to warm her.  His touch may have been intended for consolation, but it suffused her with passion, and her lips met his with a near-growl of pleasure.  It was all that was needed to unleash his desire, which seemed all the greater after the past few weeks of separation and longing.  He pushed her back on the white sheets, one hand reaching up under her skirt as the other tore her blouse.  Her hand was impatient as she tugged at the zipper on his jeans.  A moment later, he was inside of her, showering kisses over her face, her throat, and her breasts as he thrust.  He moaned as he felt her powerful muscles squeeze him.

Buffy felt her whole body shiver with immense power, and, for a moment, her horrible fears took hold of her again.  The energy pulsing within her was enough to destroy him if she let it spin from desire to violence.  Then she remembered how it had felt earlier when they had sparred, how the power had flowed from one to the other, making both stronger instead of weaker.  She gasped and grasped the pillow behind as her thigh muscles clenched, and she felt him shudder in climax.  Her own orgasm was almost overwhelming, but suddenly the world seemed to shift again.  Spike collapsed against her in total release and trust.  She too felt a sudden release that was more than just the sating of desire.  It was as if she had passed some test or learned some lesson.  She let her body relax against his and exhaled a sigh of satisfaction and relief.  For a moment, she thought he had done the same, but she realized that it must have been only an echo of her own breath.

She nestled her body against his, wondering that he could feel so warm when he was not really alive.  He pulled her close, his lips feather-light as he kissed her forehead and her eyelids.  She should have been ready to sink into sleep in his arms, but instead she felt herself becoming aroused again by the very gentleness of his touch.  She ran her hands over his arms and along his chest, and reached her mouth up to his. 

They explored each other’s bodies as they shed their disarranged clothing.  She stroked his cock until he was fully erect again, but this time, they were in no hurry to consummate their passion.  Buffy gasped and even giggled at his teasing touch, and they found themselves murmuring loving words.  If it had not all seemed so natural and right, Buffy would have been astonished by a sudden rush of poetry from Spike’s lips.  “Kiss me with kisses of thy mouth,” he muttered between kisses.  “For thy love is better than wine. . . thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes . . . and the roof of thy mouth is like the best wine . . . I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. . .set me as a seal upon thine heart . . . for love is strong as death.”

“Who said that?” she demanded.

“Supposedly, a man who had more than a thousand wives.  Poor sod.  None of them could have been a patch on you, love, or he would only have needed one.”

        “Tell me more,” she demanded.

        He raised his head, and now there was an impish look in his eyes.  “How fair and pleasant art thou, O love for delights!” he said.  “This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.  I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof.”

        Buffy giggled wildly at this, then gasped in pleasure as he made good his poetic threat by stroking and caressing her breasts.

        They climaxed amid laughter instead of the tears that Buffy had feared when their lovemaking began.

When Buffy woke the next morning, her first thought was that no dreams had disturbed her night’s rest.  Then she felt the weight of Spike’s head on her shoulder, and she remembered the reality that had apparently superceded her mind’s need for fantastic imaginings.  She stroked his tousled blond hair and smiled as she recalled the previous evening.  They had mated in passion many times before, but this was the first time their love had been consummated with that divine hint of laughter. 

She felt him move very slightly and realized that he was awake. “Good morning,” she said, almost shyly.

“Not a phrase I’m much accustomed to using, but for once I have to agree.”  He raised his head to smile into her eyes. 

That look set to flight any remaining fears that the lover of last night would have retreated into the sullen vampire that had stalked her for the past few weeks.  “Stay with me,” she whispered softly.  “Please.”

“Whatever you say, love.  We made your bed, and now we’re lying on it.  It’s too bright out for me to skulk off quietly anyway.”

She had been referring to more than just the next few hours, but she didn’t say so.  “Pretty soon, it will be too bright for you to skulk in here if I don’t do something about it.”  She got up and closed the blinds carefully.  He propped himself up on his elbows, admiring her naked figure. 

“Skulking wasn’t what I had in mind if you let me stay.”

“Oh?”  She smiled wickedly, climbing onto the bed on all fours and pacing over him like a hungry animal sniffing its prey.  She bent her head over his.  Just as she was about to kiss him, she pulled back and said, “I love you.”

It wasn’t the first time she had said it, but, still, he stared up at her in awe.  In turn, the happiness in his face struck her dumb for a moment.

“’Morning, Buffy,” called Dawn from the hall, before they roused from their sudden trance.  “Was there another earthquake last night?  I was too tired to get up, but I swear I felt the floor shake for a while.”  Buffy finally reacted, grabbing a sheet and barely managing to pull it over her and Spike as the door opened.  “Willow didn’t come home again last night, but she called to leave a message that she—”  Dawn stopped, staring at the two figures on the bed. 

“Oh, my gosh,” said Dawn.  “Oh, my gosh.”  She turned and fled down the hall. 

        “Bloody hell,” said Spike.  He and Buffy both tried to get up too fast, became entangled in the sheet and each other’s limbs, and slid to the floor.

        “This must be the part where everything repeats itself as farce,” he muttered.  “I’m sorry, love.  I’ll go.”

        “No, wait,” she said, jumping up and reaching for a bathrobe.  “Don’t leave this room.”

Buffy tore down the stairs and found Dawn in the kitchen, making coffee with shaking hands. 

“I’m sorry,” said Buffy.

“I’m sorry,” said Dawn at exactly the same moment.

Buffy was surprised.  “Why are you sorry?”

Dawn looked equally flabbergasted.  “Because I walked in on you two!  I was never so embarrassed!”

“Only embarrassed?  You weren’t upset that I was with him?”

Dawn’s expression became severe.  “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what this means.  Does it mean you’re really in love with him?  Not just ‘kinda, sorta, maybe I’m going to change my mind tomorrow love,’ but really in love?”

Buffy swallowed hard.  “I’m really in love with him, Dawn.  Scary, irrevocable, and gut-wrenching love.”

“I see.  And does it mean he’s going to be coming around here all the time?”

“I—I would like that.  But if you—”

Before Buffy could say another word, Dawn hugged her enthusiastically.  “I’m so glad!”

“You are?”

        “Of course.  Why did you think I wouldn’t be?  Don’t you know how much I hate losing the people in my life?”

        “He isn’t exactly a person, Dawn.  Most people would still say he’s a monster.”

        Dawn shook her head.  “I’ve never seen him that way.  I’m not sure why.  And it’s been even harder to see him that way since he tried to save me from Glory.”

        “I know you must be grateful to him.”

        “That isn’t it, Buffy.  Not entirely.  When I was on that scaffold and I was becoming the Key instead of just your little sister, my senses changed.  I saw people and things differently.  It was like I could see through time.  You—you were amazing, something I’d never imagined.  And Spike was something more horrible and more wonderful than the guy I knew.  I think he’s changing.”

        “I think so too.  I’m just not sure how.”

        “Are you okay with being in love with him?  I—I know it seems strange for me to be asking you that, but I also know it wigs you out to feel that way about him if you think he’s a monster.”

        “At least part of him is a monster, Dawn.  But that’s not the part I love.  I’m in love with the man who can control the monster.  I just hope that man really exists.”

        “He does, Buffy.  He was here when you were dead.  He looked after me, and helped the others.  He’s seemed to slip away the past few months, but he was back again when he saved me the other night.”

        “I have to try to make sure he doesn’t slip away again,” said Buffy.

Dawn smiled.  “If anyone can keep him here, you can.”

Buffy was halfway up the stairs when Spike came out of her bedroom.  He was fully dressed.  “I told you to wait,” she said, coming up the rest of the stairs and pushing him back inside.  She began pulling clothes out of the closet and dressing herself.

“Is the Little Bit all right?” he asked anxiously.

She looked at him in surprise.  “I expected you to find this funny,” she said.

“I do.  But it’s how Dawn finds it that worries me.” 

“Needlessly, as it turns out.  She was embarrassed, but that’s all.  It turns out that she likes the idea of you hanging around here.”

He looked astonished.  “I know she thinks I have some entertainment value, but she used to whine like blazes when I babysat her while you were dead.  And I didn’t think she’d be able to stomach the idea of us being together.”

“She likes you, Spike.  And she doesn’t think that it’s strange that I do too.”  Buffy laughed at his look of astonishment.  “Why are you so surprised she’s fond of you?  You saved her life three days ago, remember?”

“Yeah, I knew I was coasting on the good will from that.  But I didn’t think it would extend to being caught shagging her sister.”

“You might want to try not referring to it in those terms.  You might want to avoid referring to it at all.”

“We shall be strange and well bred, as if we had never shagged at all,” misquoted Spike solemnly.

“Come on.  You have to face her, so it might as well be sooner than later.”

Dawn was jittery and red-faced in front of Spike until the vampire got into an argument with Buffy.  The normalcy of this behavior made Dawn forget some of her embarrassment.

“It’s mid-morning, and there’s not a cloud in the sky,” said the Slayer as she dropped the breakfast dishes into the sink.  “You should stay indoors.”

“Bollocks.  I’ve plenty of experience moving about in the daylight.  I want to check out the demon hangouts.  I want information.”

“Still worrying about that earthquake?” asked Dawn.  “I think Buffy’s right, it was just your basic Southern California tremor.  We even had an aftershock last night.”

 “The earth certainly moved for me,” murmured Buffy, quietly enough to reach only Spike’s ears.

He grinned, but did not acknowledge her words otherwise.  “Loan me a blanket, Slayer.  I’m going to make a dash for the sewers.  You can’t do your job properly without information, love, and bribing or beating it out of demons is something I can do for you.”

“All right,” said Buffy.  “But I’m going to go out and lift up the manhole cover for you.  I don’t want that blanket slipping while you’re trying to open it yourself.  You’ve just recovered from one nasty set of burns.”

“Gee,” said Dawn, “it’s sweet, these little things people in love do for each other.”  She left the room to give Buffy and Spike a chance to say their good-byes in private.

        Spike pulled Buffy towards him.  “Be careful, love,” he murmured.

        “Be careful yourself.   I’m not the one with the unfortunate tendency to burst into flames at inappropriate moments.”

        “Oh, I don’t know about that, pet,” he said, running his hand along her hip, to her waist, and up under her shirt.

        She pushed him away, firmly but gently.  “Unless you want my sister to walk in on us for the second time today, you had better grab a blanket and follow me out that door.”

Spike climbed back up through the sewer tunnels, reflecting on a profitless day spent trying to collect information about the recent earthquake.  As far as he could tell, all the seismic activity had done was to break a few valuables.  He entered the lower level of his crypt, and it occurred to him that no one else’s valuables could be in worse shape than the things he had stored down there before Buffy and Riley had blown the place up.  Of course, that disaster had resulted from Spike’s own stupidity.  He’d been so eager to earn some money to give to Buffy that he hadn’t bothered to find out how dangerous the merchandise he was trafficking in was.

Well, the downstairs was still a mess, but, thanks largely to Buffy, the upstairs was habitable, at least for the undead.  He grimaced, realizing just how far he had let his own admittedly lax housekeeping standards slip while he had been glooming over Buffy’s rejection of him.

Spike sensed the demon upstairs long before he reached ground level.  “’Evening, Clem,” he said, tossing his coat on top of a sarcophagus.

Clem looked up from the TV and wiggled his fingers at Spike.  “Want me to get up?” he asked.  “You were out, so I took the comfy chair.”

“No problem,” said Spike, in a tone so unusually mellow that even Clem appeared to notice.  “I’m going out as soon as it’s full dark.”  He grinned.  “I’ve got a date.”

Clem looked surprised.  “Who?” he said.  “That redheaded demon with the long tail that’s always asking you to buy her drinks?”

“Balls, no.  I have standards, man.”

“It’s not the Slayer?”

“Bloody right it is.”

“I never understood quite what you saw in her, but, well—way to go, Spike.  Except—”  The demon’s already remarkably wrinkly features furrowed even more.

Spike read these signs of confusion and demanded, “What is it?”  Clem might not be the brightest demon in Sunnydale, but almost everyone talked to him. It just wasn’t always clear how much Clem really understood of the stories he heard.

“You know Murlak’s gang?  Mostly noise, but like to think they’re big trouble?  They were at the roadhouse earlier, talking about those humans that have been dabbling around the edges of the dark magics for the past few months.  You know, the really annoying ones.”

“Yeah.”  Spike had heard tales of the Troika.  They had gained the animosity of several demon gangs because of their blatant use of magic, which threatened to attract the notice of even the incredibly stupid Sunnydale authorities.  However, no one had gone to the trouble of killing the Troika yet.  Spike had been vaguely surprised that Buffy hadn’t squashed them, but until a few days ago, she hadn’t been conversing with him very much about anything, so he hadn’t asked why.  When he thought about it at all, he had supposed that she considered the wankers not up to her weight class.  They were only human, after all.  And pretty pathetic humans, at that.  He remembered their terror when he had asked Warren to check on his chip.  It hadn’t even occurred to the poor sods that Spike couldn’t hurt humans.

“Well, Murlak said something about those human jerks having a date with the Slayer tonight.”  Clem looked concerned.  “You don’t think she’d stand you up for those guys, do you?  I mean, even with that tight skin and that ugly blonde hair, she can’t be that hard up.”

“A date with the Slayer,” repeated Spike, reading a very different message into Murlak’s words.  “Bloody hell.  Clem, do you know where those humans hang out?”

“Well, sure,” said Clem.

Buffy woke up slowly.  Her frame of mind was very different from that of the morning, when she had stirred to pleasant memories and Spike’s presence in her bed.  Now, she remembered leaving the house just before dusk with Willow and Dawn.  She had been arguing with Willow about Spike, and was too distracted to notice the men in the van until it was too late.  There had been a blast of some noxious gas that must have contained a knock-out drug, and she hadn’t even been able to land a punch before she fell unconscious.  Buffy’s head hurt, and she was shaking with fear and anger.  The fear was for Willow and Dawn, who lay beside her in a cage that looked strong enough to hold an elephant.  The anger was for the three men in the dark cellar that was crowded with mechanical devices and toys.  The Troika had not realized Buffy was awake, and they were discussing recent events.  She closed her eyes and listened.

“This is creepy,” said Andrew.  “I’m mean, she is the Slayer.  Who knows what she could do to us?  And what’s going to happen if she can’t protect Sunnydale?  All kinds of weird things have been happening.  What if that earthquake does mean something?”

“It does,” said Jonathan.  “This is really bad timing, Warren.  I cast some bones.  There’s going to be some kind of major realignment of powers in Sunnydale, and it started with that earthquake.”