Title:  Adjustments

Author:  Miss Murchison

Rating:  "Chiaroscuro" is mostly R and PG.  However, some content may be considered NC-17.

Disclaimer:  All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc.  Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Thanks:  I would never have started writing this without the encouragement and beta of DorothyL. She introduced me to the concept of fanfic and discusses BtVS with me endlessly.  I owe a tremendous debt to her insights.

Notes:   This is a sequel to “What You Are."

        “Where is it?” yelled Xander.

        “It ran behind those trees,” said Willow, panting.  “Is everybody okay?”

        “I’m fine,” said Dawn. “I think we scared it off with the crosses.  But we were supposed to kill it.”

        “No,” said Xander.  “We were supposed to be going to the Bronze.  But a vampire jumped out at us, so we’re spending yet another balmy Sunnydale evening running through a graveyard.  Without Slayer assistance, all of a sudden.  Without ex-vampire assistance, either.  Where did those two go?”

        “They’re still around the other side of that mausoleum,” said Dawn.  “I heard them just before I found you two again.”

        “The vamp’s over here.  What are they doing over there?” asked Xander in frustration.

        “Guess,” said Dawn with a grimace.

        “Not arguing again?” asked Willow.

        “More ‘still’ than ‘again.’  It’s like it’s part of their mission statement or something,” said Dawn.

        As if to confirm this, a male voice emerged from the fog.  “I realize you’ve made a commitment to treat me like a brat too young to cross the street alone, but I did survive for over a century without your tender guidance, Slayer.”

        “You survived as a vampire.  Right now, I’m not sure you should be allowed to cross the street by yourself, Spike.  You keep forgetting that getting hit by a car will kill you permanently.  Like you forgot just now that being smashed in the head with a tombstone is no longer a temporary inconvenience!”

        “I didn’t forget.  He wouldn’t have hit me, even if you didn’t decide you had to come charging to my rescue like the bloody cavalry.  I had everything under control.”

        “And what kind of control is that, Spike?  The kind where you’re lying stunned on the ground while a monster holds a slab of granite over your head?”

        “You know,” said Xander, “if I wanted to spend an evening like this, I could just go visit my parents.”

        “It’s not that bad,” said Dawn.  “Buffy and Spike don’t hate each other, they’re just—just going through a period of adjustment.”

        Willow shrieked and pointed behind a tree.  Buffy and Spike suddenly emerged from the fog and rushed the vampire that Willow had spotted.  It was easy to believe that the creature could pick up a tombstone and toss it around. The vampire was muscular and extremely tall.

        “Say,” muttered Xander, peering at the vamp’s face. “Didn’t he used to play for the UC Sunnydale basketball team?”  He leaned forward to get a better look, but was pulled back and away by Dawn as the fight became wilder.

        Buffy and Spike flew at the vampire, trying to kick it hard enough to knock it down, but they seemed to bounce off the tall figure.  At one point the vamp grabbed Buffy’s leg and threw her across the graveyard.  She jumped to her feet and shouted to Spike, “Start traveling!  Get him moving!”

        Spike began to dodge back and forth in front of the large figure, just out of reach of the long arms trying to grab him.  Buffy did the same, harassing the vamp from behind with quick blows from hands and feet.  The creature began to look confused with the effort of keeping track of Buffy, Spike, and the myriad of tombstones in its way.  Now Spike was also getting in a punch here and there. 

        Dawn stepped forward, “Hey, we can help with this,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket.  She pulled out a vial of holy water, loosened the stopper, and tossed it at the vampire’s face.

        “Good pitch!” said Xander.

        The vial hit the creature in the nose.  It staggered back, hands to its face, as Spike jumped forward, stake in hand.  Buffy was immediately behind the creature, and she also raised her stake as the vamp fell back under Spike’s weight.  All three of them fell to the ground, smashed into a bush, and rolled down an incline, with the vampire sandwiched between Buffy and Spike.  By the time they reached the bottom, one or both of the stakes had been driven home, and only two figures were left to land in a muddle.  The left hand of each was grasping the other’s right wrist to stop the stakes from doing more damage than intended.

        Buffy crouched over Spike, glaring at his muddied face. “Why did you jump him?  I had him!”

        “Yeah, Slayer, you had him falling on top of you like a ton of bloody bricks.”

        “You should have let me stake him!  I could have killed you!”  They both uttered the same words simultaneously, eyes widened in horror.  The stakes were dropped from their fingers, and reaction set in, with its inevitable result.

        The others were starting to follow them down the incline, but stopped at the sight of a passionate embrace.  Willow, Xander, and Dawn exchanged glances of resignation.  “Well, at least they stopped arguing,” said Dawn.

        “Wanna go to the Bronze?” said Willow.  “It’s where we were headed anyway.”

        “Yeah,” said Xander.  “You know, I have to admit they did use good strategy getting rid of the vamp.  That guy always did get confused on the court whenever they put two people on him.”

        As their voices faded away into the distance, Buffy raised her head to listen.  “Hey, they went ahead without us.”

        “Bloody rude of them,” said Spike. “Now, where were we, Slayer?”

        But Buffy insisted that they go to the Bronze to make sure the others arrived safely.  When they got there, they saw Xander and Dawn sitting at a table.  Willow waved to them from the bar.  Buffy smiled in relief.  “I’m going to go try and pick the leaves out of my hair,” she said, pointing towards the rest room.  “And you should probably wash your face, unless you’re trying to make mud a fashion statement.”

        “And I’ll wash my hands and scrub behind my ears,” muttered Spike resentfully, but he went to the men’s room.  He had almost finished washing up when he remembered there was no need to avert his eyes from the mirror.  Blinking at his clean face, he almost regretted this new ability to see his own reflection.  Now that most of the blond streaks had grown out of his hair, the visage that looked back at him seemed bizarrely unchanged from the man he had been over a hundred years ago.  He had an eerie sensation of sliding backwards in time.

        By the time Spike reappeared at the table, Buffy was sitting down with a drink in front of her.  “I’d have gotten you a beer, but you’re so picky and I can never remember which kind you’ll drink,” she said.  Then she realized how this sounded and winced at her own words.  “I only meant that I didn’t want to get you something you wouldn’t like,” she said apologetically.

        “Never mind, love,” he said, “I’ll get my own.  Most of what they have here is love in a canoe beer anyway.”

        “Huh?” said Buffy as he walked off.

Dawn explained.  “He means that it’s fucking close to water.”

        The others looked shocked and even Dawn seemed a little startled by her own words.

        “Spike told you that joke?” demanded Xander indignantly. 

        “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm,” said Willow quickly.

        “It wasn’t him anyway.  I heard it watching Monty Python with Tara.  And I do know I shouldn’t have repeated it,” said Dawn meekly. 

Spike came back.  He put his drink on the table as the music started.  Instead of sitting down, he brushed his hand along the back of Buffy’s neck.  “What do you say, love?” he asked.

        “Huh!”  She stared up at him, every nerve in her body suddenly alert in reaction to the touch of his hand. 

        “Do you want to dance?” he said.

        “Oh!”  She looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed, as if she had anticipated another suggestion.  She started to stand up, then hesitated.  She imagined standing in his arms on the dance floor while her sister and her friends observed their expressions and their body language.  The way she felt right now, touching him in public would lead to a naked display of emotion that she was unwilling to risk.  “Maybe later,” she said, sinking back down.

        His glance was frustrated and confused as he sat down.

        At home later that night, Buffy came downstairs to find Spike in the kitchen.  “Are you coming to bed?” she asked.

        “In a bit,” he said absently. “Are there any hard boiled eggs?”

        “Does the concept of high cholesterol mean anything to you?” she responded, eying the enormous sandwich he had been building.

        “I spent the last century on an all-protein diet, love.  I haven’t got the new rules down yet.”  He smiled at her.  “You look very fetching.”

        “Oh,” she said, looking down at the skimpy nightgown she wore.  “Do you like it?”

        “Absolutely, pet,” he said, putting one arm around her waist and giving her an almost absent-minded kiss.  “Now I have two kinds of hunger to satisfy instead of one.  After I have this bite to eat, will you help me with my other appetites?”

        “So sorry to distract you from your late-night nosh,” she said in a surprisingly harsh tone.  She pulled away from his embrace.

        “What’s the matter now?” he asked.  “It’s not because I made a stupid joke about biting?”

“No, of course not.  It’s just--”  She stared into his eyes, as if looking for something she couldn’t find.  “Never mind.”

He was now very concerned.  “Why so uneasy, love?  That stick thing hasn’t turned blue or whatever it does, has it?  You’re not pregnant?”

        “No, I’m not.  You know I’m taking those pills.”

        “Well, yeah, but we haven’t been using the other things, and I wondered—“

        “The point of the pills is that you don’t need to do that any more.  We’ve been over this.  How can anyone be over 140 years old and not understand these things?”

        He gave her the hurt look of a man who has tried to be understanding, only to find himself unexpectedly under attack.  “Excuse me, but there are certain topics I never had to pay attention to when I was a vampire.  Contraception, SPF factors, daily recommended doses of vitamins, cholesterol levels—”

        “Well, you need to start paying attention.”

        “I’m trying, Slayer, but there’s so bloody much to pay attention to.”

        “What could be more important than this?  Especially after that bombshell Giles dropped before going back to England.”

        “Is that what has you so anxious, love?  Because you know that you can’t trust a prophecy to tell you anything useful.”

        “That’s easy for you to say.  You’re not the one looking at the possibility of stretch marks and labor.”  She went upstairs without looking back to see if he was following.  The bedroom door slammed.

        He contemplated the now unappetizing remains of his sandwich.  “My poor Buffy,” he said to himself in a low voice.  “But whatever happens, love, you’ll cope.  We’ll cope.  Even if Giles is right, it might just be another adventure, you know.”  He sounded unconvinced, even to himself.

        A half hour later, he emerged from the bathroom into the darkened bedroom.  He slipped into bed and laid a tentative hand on Buffy’s shoulder.  She turned into his embrace.  The moment they touched, all the misunderstandings and quarrels of the evening vanished into distant memories.  Buffy felt herself escape into a strange, wild place where no coherent thought could interfere with desire.  She could not have said whether it was minutes or hours later that she felt him collapse against her in shuddering climax.  She refused to think, allowing herself to accept that final moment of ecstasy and then slide into sleepy oblivion.

        Buffy woke up slowly, blinking her eyes against the light filtering through the blinds.  She rolled over and stared at the indentation on the pillow next to hers.  She sat up with a resigned sigh.

        A few minutes later, she stepped out on to the back porch holding two cups of coffee.  She sat down on the top step and handed one cup to Spike.  “I see the sun came up safely again,” she commented in an aggressively cheerful tone.

        “I just like watching it,” he said apologetically.  “I still get restless just before dawn, and I start to feel like maybe it’s not real.  Like I’m not real.  So I come out here.  Did I wake you?  I tried to be quiet.”

        “You were stealthy as always.”

        He reached out to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes and cup her chin in his hand.  “Have I mentioned how beautiful you are in the sunlight?” he said.

        “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said, smiling with an effort.

        “Even a lame compliment shouldn’t make you that depressed,” he said.  “Are you still upset about--”

        “No, no, it’s just early.  And not the best time to get romantic.  You’re going to work with Xander this morning, remember?”

        “And Xander is just congratulating himself on his luck,” said Xander himself, walking around the side of the house.

        “No need to be sarcastic, mate,” said Spike, dropping his hand from Buffy’s cheek and picking up his coffee.

        “Yes,” said Buffy.  “Didn’t you say he did a good job the last time he worked for you?”

        “No,” said Xander.  “I said he did a lot of work.  He pissed the other guys off by doing three times as much as they could in half the time and then lounging around the rest of the day.”

        Spike saw Buffy’s expression and said, “I just hadn’t got the rhythm down.  I’ll do better today, love.”

        Dawn stuck her head out of the kitchen and said, “Morning, Xander.  Want some coffee?”

        He accepted, and Dawn came out and handed him a cup.  She looked at Buffy.  “Do you have the money I need for that class trip?” she asked cautiously.

        “Can it wait until Friday?  I should get a check for that temporary job then.”

        “Today’s the deadline,” said Dawn.  “But that’s okay.  I don’t have to go on the trip.”

        “Wait,” said Spike, standing up.  “I just remembered.”  He started to feel in the pockets of his jeans and pulled out some bills.  “I hustled some guys in a dominoes game yesterday.  Probably won’t be able to do it again, since they’ve got my number now, but I made a few dollars.”  He dropped the bills in Dawn’s hands.

        “Hey, this is enough for the water bill and the class trip,” said Dawn, looking more cheerful.  “And a few groceries.  Way to go, Spike.”  She went back in the house.

        “Yeah, I’m a great provider,” said Spike sourly.

        “It’s okay,” said Buffy.  “Xander found you this thing, and I have that job interview today.  Things will get better.”

        “Ready to go?” Xander asked Spike.  He was clearly uncomfortable overhearing this discussion of their financial woes.

        Buffy watched them go.  “Spike?” she called, just before he walked around the side of the house.  He turned to give her an interrogative glance.  She walked quickly to where he stood, put her arms around him and gave him a quick but emphatic kiss before turning away again.  “Have a good day,” she said as hopefully as she could.

        “This is a pretty crappy job that I took because there’s nothing much else available right now.  But it should be a natural for you,” said Xander.  He pointed to where several men were standing around in back of the old house.  “This entire place is going to be demolished so they can put up an office building.  Basically, you need to help tear things down.  But they want to salvage what they can.”

        “Ripping things apart,” said Spike.  He sounded more cheerful.  “Yeah, I can do that.”

        “You start with the crew in the back yard,” said Xander.  “I’m going to help them pull out the fixtures inside the house.  Mike’s the guy you should take orders from.  The rest of them are your basic idiots, so keep an eye out and try not to get into a fight.”  He turned and walked into the building.

        Spike bit back a retort and headed for the back of the house.  It was more a wilderness than a back yard.  There were several outbuildings and a lot of overgrown vegetation.

        Buffy entered the small office and looked around without much enthusiasm.  The place was neat and appeared to be busy, but it didn’t look overly prosperous.  The middle-aged man behind the desk stood up to shake her hand.  He didn’t look very enthusiastic about her either.

        “Hello, Miss Summers.  My name’s Tom,” he said.  He had a round, pleasant face that was reflected in the images of the children whose photos stood on his desk. “I was just looking at your application.  You’re here about the process serving job?”  He made it a question.

        “Yes,” said Buffy.  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be?”

        “Not really.  But I do want to warn you that sometimes people try to avoid these subpoenas and other notices.  And some of them could get a little rough.”

        “I can handle rough,” said Buffy confidently.

        He looked at her disbelievingly.  “Suppose someone punched you or tried to toss you out of the door?” he said.  “What would you do?"

        Buffy smiled pleasantly and stuck out her right hand.  He looked surprised but took it, perhaps thinking that she had decided to leave already and wanted to shake hands again before going.  But she twisted his arm behind him and dropped him to the floor in a smooth motion, being careful not to hurt him. 

        “Point taken,” he said into the carpet. “You’re hired.”

        “I’ll need flexible hours,” said Buffy.

        “If I say that’s not a problem, will you let me get up?”

        Mike was a big man whose idea of supervision seemed to be making sure that someone else did all the worst parts of the job.  This leadership style was not much appreciated by the rest of the crew, which consisted of three more or less interchangeable hulks named Jeff, Roger, and Frank.  Spike said little, even when he was given the assignment of hauling garbage and dropping it into a huge dumpster.  It wasn’t an interesting task, but he was too strong to find it onerous.  With Xander’s words from earlier this morning still echoing in his mind, he tried to remember not to work too fast and wondered how he was going to fight off boredom without engaging in actively anti-social behavior.

After an hour or so, Xander came outside, obviously with the express intention of checking up on Spike.  Spike was standing a little apart from where the rest of the crew had huddled together, and he bristled in immediate umbrage at Xander’s expression, which was that of a preschool teacher who observes one child not playing well with the others.

“So, man, how’s it going?” asked Xander with forced cheerfulness.

“Not bad,” said Spike.  “I’m getting a little restless, though.  It’s hard, dealing with the cravings.”

“Cravings?” Xander looked as if the hairs on the back of his neck had just stood up to attention.

“Yeah,” said Spike.  “After all those years, it’s not like you can just stop.  I keep getting the urge, you know.  Feels like if I don’t taste it I’ll go crazy.”

“Really?” Xander inched away.

“Yeah, and hanging about with those blokes isn’t likely to help.”

“Oh?” Xander looked at the unprepossessing crowd in bewilderment.

“No, but I suppose I made my choice.  I mean, it’s not just that Buffy and Dawn don’t like the smell, but now that I have to breathe, the smokes slow me down.  It’s hard enough trying to keep up with the Slayer without gasping for breath all the time.”

“Smokes?” said Xander, almost gasping with relief himself.  “You’re having a hard time giving up smoking?”  He noticed for the first time that the other workers all had cigarettes dangling from their fingers.

“Well, yeah.  Don’t you ever watch the public service announcements?  It’s more addictive than cocaine, mate.”

        Spike smiled as he returned to work.  Baiting Xander was almost too easy to be fun, but indulging in such simple pleasures helped control his boredom. 

To his own surprise, he was roused to mild interest a few minutes later when the crew began to discuss the best method for tearing down a small outbuilding.  “Can’t we just smash it up?” asked Frank. 

        “We got to see if there’s anything worth saving inside,” said Mike.

        Spike’s residual vampire senses suddenly kicked in, and he began to feel a vague uneasiness.  “I can look,” he said.  As usual, it was his first instinct to walk toward trouble instead of away from it.

        No one else offered, so he approached the door to the shed, noticing from the state of the ground that someone had been walking around the area recently.  That wasn’t surprising, since the property was shortly to become a construction site, but before his hand touched the battered door, he knew that something evil had happened here.  He stopped, his hand stretched out to touch the wooden panels.  “There’s something dead inside,” he said.

        “Hope it’s not a skunk,” said Roger.

        “You volunteered,” said Mike.  “Check it out.”

        There wasn’t much point, since Spike already knew what was there, but he had to put on a show for this audience.  The newly human part of his brain was suddenly very glad he was wearing thick gloves.  He eased the door open, looked inside, and shut it again.  He turned around.  “Leave it.  We need to call the police.”

        “Cause some animal crawled in there and died?”  Mike was incredulous.

        “It’s not an animal.”

        “Yeah, sure.  How could you even see?  You barely looked.”  Mike reached for the door.

        Spike grabbed his arm and held him still.  “You should leave this for the police,” he said.        

        Mike tried to pull his arm away.  His eyes widened when he was unable to do so, but after a moment Spike released him.

        “Leave it,” repeated Spike, although he knew he would be ignored.

        Mike laughed uneasily, turned, opened the door, and looked inside.  Then he turned back again and vomited up his breakfast on the grass.

        Spike sat in a booth with Jeff, Roger, and Frank.  All three of them were busy making fun of Mike’s little “stomach upset” at seeing the body.  They were able to laugh loudly because none of them had taken a look and none of them were haunted by the image of what lay in the outbuilding.  Spike sipped his beer and threw in an occasional remark, but mostly listened for any bits of gossip they dropped.

        The bar compared unfavorably with several of the demon dives in town. After one look at the floor and tables, Spike had been careful to order bottled beer.  A few glances told him that his companions were representative of the level of culture and breeding of the other clientele.  He decided that he would not return in the future unless he felt a desperate need to pump one of its patrons for information or start a bar fight.

        Roger was describing several other gruesome incidents that had occurred on work sites.  Since most of these involved accidents resulting in unscheduled amputations of fingers or toes, they were of little help in solving the current mystery.  Spike tried to steer the conversation towards a discussion of any suspicious behavior on the part of the work crew for the current job, but he was getting nowhere.

        All talk of gore ended when the door opened and Buffy walked into the bar.  She was one of only three or four women present, none of whom could compare to her.  To Spike, it was as if the sun had decided to shine at midnight.  He leaned back in his seat, smiling with pleasure until he heard the reactions of his companions.

        Buffy must have heard their lewd and graphic comments as well, but she ignored them, walking up to the bar and asking for a soft drink in a can.  She turned and looked around the bar, as if scanning faces absently.  She ignored Spike.  He bit his lip, refusing to react any more than she did to the foul suggestions made by the other men.

        Frank had had the most to drink and was the most vocal.  “Now that is the sweetest piece of tail I have seen in a long time,” he said.  “I’m gonna get me some of that.”  He stood up and staggered over to the bar.  “You look a bit lost,” he said to Buffy.  “How’d you like a guide to paradise?”

        “And that would be you?”  She was incredulous.  “And here I thought you looked like a guide to the nearest gutter for a sweet spell of vomiting and passing out.”

        “Hey!”  He reached out to grab her arm, but his wrist was caught and his arm twisted behind him.  A moment later, he was pushed back towards his seat.  He fell into the booth, cradling one hand and glaring at Buffy.  “Frigid bitch,” he muttered.

        Two other men in the bar tried to pick her up, with equally poor results.  Finally, Spike set down his beer and said, “You Yanks just don’t know how to talk to women.”

        “Oh, yeah,” said Frank.  “And I suppose you British pansies do?”

        “Let me try my hand at it,” said Spike, standing up.  His lips twitching only slightly, he moved over to the bar by Buffy and ordered another beer.  He leaned backwards against the bar, assuming the same stance she used.  When his beer came, he took a long swallow, licked his lips, and looked her up and down suggestively.  “So, cutie, are you a natural blonde?”

        “What do you think?” she asked.

        “I think I’d like to find out.”

        “And how would you go about doing that?”

        “Well, we could go somewhere and shag, but it turns out I’m a bit short of change for my bar bill here.  If you could pay it for me, that would solve the problem.”

        Buffy turned and dropped a bill on the counter.  “That cover it?” she asked.

        “Should do it,” he said, putting his beer back on the counter and slinging an arm over her shoulders.  “Let’s go to it, then.”  He grinned at his erstwhile companions.  They were gaping in astonishment.

        Buffy and Spike waited until they were halfway down the street to burst into laughter.  “Do you think they’ve figured it out yet?” she said.

        “Not a chance.  Not much in the way of intellectual attainment among those wankers,” he said.  “No real sense of humor, either.”

        “So, why did you drag me down here, other than to make me play that ridiculous game with those troglodytes?”

        “You didn’t have to play if you didn’t want to, love.  Tell the truth, you enjoyed it.”

        She stuck her nose in the air and said nothing, but she couldn’t keep from smiling.

        “Thought so.  Anyway, I wanted you to get a look at that sorry crowd, just in case.”

        “In case of what?  The message I got from Xander telling me to pick you up there wasn’t exactly clear about anything except that he’s annoyed with you.  And why do you smell like something dead?  You didn’t smell dead even when you were dead.”

        “Xander is annoyed with me because they had to shut down the site.  I found a body.”

        She stopped and turned to him.  “A body?”

        “Don’t look so appalled, love.  All I did was find it.  It had been there for days.”

        “Human?”

        “Yes.  A girl, Buffy.  About the same age as the Little Bit.  Something killed her.”

        “What did it?”

        “I don’t know.  I do know what it did to her, though.  Torture.  Bad.”  His expression was grim.  “I didn’t hold with that kind of thing even when I was evil, Slayer.  Someone or something is going down for this.”

        When Xander stopped by for dinner that night, he had little to add to Spike’s account.  He had only spent a few minutes in the back yard, and that was before the body was found.  The entire site had been cordoned off by the police, so there was no point in trying to go there that evening. 

        After dinner, they watched the news.  The dead girl was a teenager who had been missing for several days.  Few other details were released.  The police confidently expected to solve the crime.  “Yeah, right,” said Spike.  “Just as soon as they find Jimmy Hoffa.”

        “Who?” asked Xander.

        “It is kind of hard to have much confidence in the Sunnydale police,” said Willow.  “Especially if this was a demon thing.”

        “Was it?” asked Dawn.

        Spike shrugged.  “My guess is yes.  Maybe a ritual of some kind, but most likely just something that enjoys doing that sort of thing.”

        “Ick,” said Buffy.  She stood up.  “We should patrol and look out for whatever this might be at the same time.”  She looked at Willow hesitantly.  “And I’ll ask Tara to see if she can find out anything.”

        Willow looked stricken for a moment, then took a deep breath and smiled.  “Thanks, Buffy.  I’m not quite up to that yet.” 

        Xander took Willow’s hand.  “You’re a trooper, Will,” he said.  He looked up at Buffy.  “Do you want me to help patrol?”

        “No, thanks,” said Buffy.  She added quickly, “I’d rather you were here tonight.  I mean, if there’s something out there attacking young women, you can take care of Willow and Dawn.”

        Dawn looked less than grateful for this consideration, but Willow announced that she would like the company.

        That night’s patrol unearthed one vampire and a scaly demon that had gotten lost on its way back from a shopping expedition in town.  Buffy killed the vamp and Spike gave the demon directions on how to use the sewers to get back to its lair.

        Spike was gloomy and quiet, and Buffy was depressed.  Usually a kill made him amorous, but tonight not even helping her stake a vampire aroused his interest.  Instead, he insisted on making the rounds twice, and was reluctant to go home even after they had thoroughly investigated all the usual hot spots.

        Buffy woke up to near total darkness.  She moved restlessly, and reached out for Spike.  But she was alone in the big bed.

        She sat up and turned on the light, blinking at the alarm clock she almost never needed any more, thanks to Spike’s habit of early rising.  It was still hours before dawn.  She listened carefully.  There was no sound anywhere in the house.  She hopped out of bed and started going through the dresser drawers.  “As if this tells me anything,” she muttered.  “He wears black jeans and black t-shirts.  How can I possibly tell if any one of them is missing?  But at least all of them aren’t gone!”  She opened the closet door and tried to remember how many shirts he owned.  Two, or was it three?  “That damned leather coat!”  She was about to run for the stairs to see if the coat was hanging on its peg in the hallway, when she heard the sound of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway.  A few moments later, she heard the click of the kitchen door opening.  It swung shut softly, and footsteps moved toward the stairs.  She shut off the light and dove back into bed.

        The bedroom door was opened by a cautious hand.  Her eyes hadn’t adjusted since shutting off the light, and she had to follow his movements by sound instead of sight.  He crept towards the bed slowly, until she sat up again and turned the light on his face.

        Spike was bending over, struggling with something that was caught in the folds of his long black coat.  His face was a comical mask of guilt.  “Uh, hi, love.”

        Her gaze was level.  “Out for a walk?”

        “Uh, not exactly.  I needed to check on something.”

        “Something you couldn’t mention to me.”

        “Well, you see, I didn’t think you’d approve, and I didn’t want to argue so—“

        “So you just went?  To do what?  What is so bad that you couldn’t even tell me about it, and what, Spike, what the hell is under your coat?”

        Sheepishly, he opened it, and a small furry object plummeted onto the bed covers.

        Buffy leaned forward and looked into a pair of yellow eyes.  The eyes looked back.  “Meow,” their owner said.

        Buffy looked up at Spike.  “You were playing kitten poker.”

        His eyes darted around the room, looking at everything except her.  “Yeah, well, I needed information, and I thought one of those guys might know something, and I know how much it annoys you, so—but I couldn’t just leave this fellow behind.  Someone would have eaten him, and that just doesn’t seem right any more.”

        Buffy cuddled the marmalade kitten.   It was clean and adorable.  She bit back a smile.  “You should have told me, Spike.  I would have understood.  All right, there would have been a definite element of sarcasm involved, but I would have understood.  Anyway, you know that I have no right to tell you not to play kitten poker.”

        “I—I just needed to know if there was any gossip about that girl.”

        “I do understand,” she repeated.  “Did you find anything out?”

“No.  Not even a rumor, which is unusual.  Those blokes know how to keep their ears to the ground.”

“Spike, some of them have ears that drag on the ground.”  She picked a hair ribbon up off the bedside table and twitched it, much to the cat’s delight.  “Have you fed this poor thing yet?”

        “Uh, no.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.”

        “We’ll give it some milk.  And I think there’s some sand down in the basement left over from when Xander patched the front walk for me.  We’ll need to put that out in a box until we can go to the pet store.”

        “Uh, sure, I’ll get right on that.”  He headed for the stairs as if unable to believe he had escaped her wrath so easily.

        Dawn came downstairs the next morning to find a small kitten on the kitchen floor lapping a bowl of milk.  “Where did that come from?” she asked Buffy.

        “Gift from Spike,” said Buffy. 

        “He’s cute,” said Dawn.  “Does he have a name?”

        “Chip,” said Buffy.

        “Who picked that out?”  Dawn was on the floor, petting the cat.

        “It just seemed appropriate.  He was a stray, so I’m going to drop him at the vet’s for shots and, and the other stuff today.  Do you mind if we keep him?”

        “No, I think it’s great,” said Dawn.  “And I think Willow likes cats.  Kinda weird for Spike to bring home a pet, though, isn’t it?”

        “Who knows what’s weird and what’s normal for Spike now?”

        “Yeah, I never thought he’d get so tied up in knots about a body.  I mean, after all the deaths he’s seen and caused—” Dawn saw Buffy’s expression and stopped.  “Sorry.”

        “He’s different now,” said Buffy coldly.  “You know that as well as anyone.”  She dropped the dishtowel she had been holding on to the table and left the room just as Willow came in.

        “What’s wrong with Buffy?” said Willow.  “Oh, look at the kitty!”

        “His name is Chip,” said Dawn.  “Don’t ask me why.  I think Buffy’s upset because Spike’s past is coming back to haunt her.”

        “Oh,” said Willow, stooping to join Dawn in fussing over the cat.  She seemed uncertain what to say.  “She shouldn’t let that happen, you know.  I mean, she shouldn’t worry about what he used to be.  He really is okay now.”

        Dawn shrugged.  “If you think so, then so should everyone else.  But you know Buffy.  Sometimes I think worrying is her hobby.  And with a boyfriend like Spike, she doesn’t need to stop by the craft shop for supplies.”

        Spike wandered into the magic shop and stared at the sight of Jonathan sitting at the table near the register.  “What are you doing here?”

Jonathan looked very nervous.  “Uh, trying to help.”

“Trying to help what?”

“Well, I heard about that girl that was killed, and, well, I feel really bad about it, and so I thought I could try and help figure out what did it, and Tara said I could help her look through some of the books here.  I just wanted to make up for the stuff I did.”  He stared at Spike’s immobile features.  “But if you don’t want me here, I’ll just go.  You don’t have to hit me or anything.”

“No, stay.”  Spike turned on his heel. “Where’s Tara?”

“Down here.”  Tara’s voice came from the cellar.  She climbed up the steps and into the shop, carrying a large jar.  She blinked at him.  “What happened to your face?”

        “Oh.”  He put a hand to his chin.  “I cut myself shaving.  I was distracted by the sight of myself in the mirror.  And I keep forgetting about it all being backwards.”

        Tara bit her lip, but made no comment as she carried the jar over to the counter.  A customer came in the front door and started browsing near the window display.  Tara lowered her voice.  “If you want to know what we’ve found out about the murder, I’m afraid it’s nothing, Spike.  I’ve tried to find a locus of magical energy, but there isn’t one.  I don’t think that it was a demon at all.”

        “A human did it?” asked Spike.  “How could you be human and--“

        “Humans screw up,” said Jonathan.

        “Yeah, I guess I have noticed that.  But whatever did this, liked doing it.  I thought the whole point of being human was you didn’t have to like pain.”

        “Hey!” yelled Jonathan suddenly.  He was staring at the customer.   “That guy just stuck a bunch of amulets in his pocket!”

        The shoplifter opened the door and ran outside.  Spike ran for the door, stopped as he reached for the latch, stood immobile a moment, then cursed and ran outside.  He was back again in a few moments.

        “He got away?” asked Jonathan unnecessarily.

        “Yes, said Spike, throwing himself into a chair and dropping his head into his hands.

        “Spike, it was just a few cheap amulets that I make up for the amateurs,” said Tara.  “There’s almost no real magic in them and all they do is offer minimal protection against evil wishes.  It’s no big deal.”

        “I could have bloody well had him,” said Spike in a savage tone.  “But for a moment, I forgot I could go outside without bursting into flames!”

        Tara slipped into the chair next to his and smiled at him reassuringly.  “It will get easier,” she said.  “It took me a long time to stop thinking like a demon, too, and I never even really was one.”

        Before he could reply, the bell over the door rang and Buffy came into the shop.  Tara and Spike looked at her with concern, and Jonathan started to get nervous again.  “Hi, guys,” said Buffy.  She looked at Jonathan.  “What are you doing here?”

        “He wants to help,” said Tara.

        “Oh.”  Buffy had to think about this a moment, but her natural impulse to forgive won out.  “That’s okay, I guess.  But no altering reality without asking first.”

        “I promise,” said Jonathan.

        Tara finally worked up the courage to ask Buffy, “So h-how did it go?  The job?  You’re back early.”

        “It was fine,” said Buffy blithely.  Tara and Spike stared at her.  She realized how disbelieving they were.  “It really was.  All I had to do was give some guys papers telling them when to show up in court.  It was easy, especially after I caught the first jerk trying to climb over the back fence by his condo.  I finished early.”

        “Gee, Buffy the process server,” said Tara.  “It never would have occurred to me.”

        “Not the best use of your abilities, but at least some use,” admitted Spike.  “You watch out for those fellows, though, love.  Some of them may use guns and such.”

        “I’ll be careful,” said Buffy.  “So, how goes it with the mystery?”

        “Tara thinks the perpetrator is human,” said Jonathan.

        “‘The perpetrator?’  Who are you, Sergeant Friday?” asked Spike. 

        “So,” said Buffy.  “We need to check out humans.”

        “So you want me to work on this,” said Willow happily.  “No magic needed?”

        “Nope, just your good old hacker skills,” said Buffy.  “Can you find out about the girl who was killed?”

        “No problem.”  Willow reached for her laptop.  “I can hack into the police files.  Sunnydale police aren’t very bright about protecting them, or about anything else.”

        “That’s what’s bothering Spike.  He thinks this guy will get away with it.”

        Willow looked thoughtful.  “Spike worries more about the future than the past.  Don’t you think he’s worried that this guy will do it again?”

        “Yes,” said Buffy slowly.  “You’re right.  That’s what’s really eating at Spike.  The thought that it could happen again.”  She stood up.  “I’m going to have a look at the scene of the crime.  I couldn’t check it out before because the cops were still there.  Spike is still checking out some contacts he has.  He said he’d come back to the house afterwards.”

        “Maybe I’ll have found something by then,” said Willow hopefully.

        Buffy approached the old house cautiously, not wanting to have to explain her presence to any representatives of the Sunnydale police force who might be watching the place.  She followed a dirt driveway that approached the old building from the rear, and poked around the debris that remained without much enthusiasm.  Too many people had tramped over the area on the day the body had been found.  There was unlikely to be any sign left of the murderer, who had only needed to dump a body and leave.

        She looked at the house itself.  It seemed an unlikely source of a clue.  The murderer would have had no reason to enter, and Xander had told her that most of the building had been gutted by the time Spike found the body.  But as she approached, she noticed that someone had parked an old pickup truck behind the house under some trees, where it couldn’t be seen from the street.  Then she heard noises inside the building.

        She ran to the side of the house and stood with her back pressed against the outside wall near the kitchen entrance.  After a few moments, the door crashed open and a man staggered outside, carrying a large white object.

        “Care to tell me what you’re doing?” said Buffy.

        The man jumped, dropping the object he held.  It fell to the ground, breaking into large shards of porcelain.  “Shit!” he yelled.

        “I wouldn’t,” said Buffy.  “You seem to have broken your toilet.”

        The man stared at her.  “You’re the ho from the bar.  The one that went off with that English guy.”

        Buffy recognized him as one of the men who had been sitting with Spike when she met him after the body was found.  “I see that your manners don’t improve when you’re sober.  Neither do your morals, apparently.  You’re stealing a toilet?”  She was incredulous.

        “Hey, these are worth a lot,” he said.  “You cost me some money here, bitch.  I could have sold that for good cash to some guy who’s sick of the low flow models the damned tree huggers are making everyone use these days.”

        “Are you telling me there’s a black market in toilets?”

        “There’s a black market in everything that’s against the law.  You’re not allowed to make them like this any more.”  He gazed mournfully at the broken porcelain.  “And there were two of them here.  I got the other one before, but this baby was in the basement, and part of the ceiling had fallen in down there.  I couldn’t get at it until--”

He stopped, realizing he had given away too much.

        “Until what?” said Buffy.  “Until after someone else moved a lot of the debris out?  Which only happened yesterday just before the body was found?  So you were here before then.  You came to do a little salvage of your own before the job started?”

        “Hey, what’s it to you?” he said.  “And what are you doing here anyway?”  He began to sidle toward her with a threatening air.

        “I don’t have time for this,” said Buffy, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him up against the house.  He struggled for a moment, then stopped, his eyes wide with astonishment and fear.  She relaxed her grip slightly.  “Now that I have your attention, let’s go over what happened.  Why did you come here the first time?”

        “I told you,” he gabbled.  “To look for stuff to sell.  I didn’t want to take too much, make it too obvious, you know.  Just a few prime items.”

        “And while you were collecting these prime items, did you also happen to drop off a corpse?”

        “No, I swear, that wasn’t me.”

        She caught a nuance in his phrasing.  “But you know who it was?”

        “Not exactly.  I mean, I’ve never seen him before.  I thought he was just dumping something.  You know, people dump stuff that you have to pay to recycle now because of the damned tree—”

        “Tree huggers, I know,” said Buffy.  “So you thought a body constituted toxic waste?”

        “I didn’t see the body.  I saw him coming out of that shed when I was walking around looking for a place to pull in with my pickup.  I waited until he left, and then I came back and started going through the house.  I never went near the shed that day.”

        “What did this guy look like?”

        “A guy.”

        “Can you be more specific?”

        “Not real young, but young.  Like thirty.  Dark hair, kinda tall.  Normal looking.”

        Buffy regarded him balefully, but it appeared that his powers of description did not extend any further than this.  “Would you recognize him again?”

“Dunno.  Don’t think so.  I was kinda hiding from him, lady, not taking down a description for America’s Most Wanted.”

“Did you happen to notice anything else about him at all?”

        “He was too rich to have to scrounge old toilets for extra cash, that’s for sure.  His clothes were just jeans and stuff, but he drove a black Lexus.  Vanity license plate, too.”

        “Any chance you remember what the plate said?”

        “Not exactly.  It was something, weird, something bad. ‘Thief” maybe?  But that doesn’t sound right.”

        “No, that describes you.  This guy was a killer, not a crook.  Is that all you remember?”

        “Yeah.”  Buffy let him go and started to walk away.

He shouted after her, “I’m not a crook just because I pick up a few things here and there, you know.  Everybody does that.  And insults are pretty rich coming from a girl who walks out of a bar with some freak she just met.”

Buffy turned and said in a voice that made him step back a pace, “He is not a freak.  He’s my boyfriend, you moron.  We were having you on.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Do not,” she said levelly, “ever call him a freak.”  She turned again and left.     

        Buffy used her cell phone to call the house and let Willow know what she had found out. 

        “That’s great,” said Willow.  “Knowing the kind of car will help a lot.  I’ll get into the DMV files and then cross-reference all the black Lexuses with vanity plates with the police suspect files.  If I don’t find him there, I’ll broaden the search.”

        “Thanks, Will.  Since he’s not home yet, I’m going to look around town for Spike.  His phone isn’t working, as usual.”

        “I think it would be, Buffy, but it’s sitting here on the dining room table, turned off,” said Willow in a small voice.  “I’m sorry.”

        Buffy sighed.  This was not the time to start worrying about Willow’s strange new habit of apologizing for Spike’s lapses as if they were her own.  “Never mind, Will.  You keep working on the Case of Nancy Drew and the Purloined Toilet Bowl while I track down Spike.”

        A few hours later, Buffy walked slowly up the path to her house, and smiled wanly at Willow, who was sitting on the bench on the front porch.

        “Why so sad?” said Willow.  Her eyes widened.  “That guy didn’t do it again, did he?  Before you could stop him?  Or did I pick the wrong guy after all?”

        Buffy stared at Willow.  “You found out who it was?” 

        “Sure,” said Willow.  “I found him in the list of people the police had questioned.  They had nothing to hold him on and let him go.  He matched that description you gave me from that guy with the toilet.”  She saw that Buffy had no idea what she was talking about.  “It’s this rich guy named Mark Mentir.  I don’t have anything that would hold up in court, but I’m sure it’s him.  He drives a black Lexus, and, get this, his license plate is ‘LIAR.’  ‘Mentir’ is French for ‘to lie,’ so I suppose he thinks it’s a joke.  He lives a few blocks from here.  Didn’t Spike tell you?”

        “Spike knows?”

        “Well, sure.”  Willow looked uncertain.  “I told him hours ago.  He thanked me, and we talked about it a little.  Then he said he had an idea about how to catch this guy. Something about a trap for his mind.  Didn’t he talk to you about it?”

        “I haven’t seen Spike this afternoon.”

        “He came back here.  I thought he was going to go see you, but I guess I didn’t see him go out again.  I went upstairs to take a shower once I saw Dawn got home from school okay.”

        “A trap.”  Buffy stared at Willow for a moment.  “A trap for a guy who tortures teenage girls.  Oh no.  He wouldn’t!”  She jumped up, ran into the house, and raced up the stairs, only to stop in astonishment at the sight of Dawn coming out of her room.  “Where’s Spike?” she asked.

        “I don’t know,” said Dawn, bewildered.  “I haven’t seen him all day.”

        “He didn’t come looking for you?”

        “No, why, should he have?”

        Buffy stared at Dawn for a long moment and then ran back down the stairs and out of the house.  Dawn watched her go, shook her head, and went off