Spike woke suddenly from a sweet dream of Drusilla in his arms. They'd both been drenched in Angel's blood and had been making slow love on his dismembered body.
He sat up with a scowl. The long drive from Seattle had done him in, and he'd overslept. He sensed that it was past dusk. Drusilla had already slipped from the bed and was gone. She couldn't have been gone long, wouldn't be leaving Sunnydale until she had purged Angelus from her system. He had time.
Spike lit a cigarette and drew several drags, then climbed out of the bed and started dressing. Apparently she'd fixated on the Watcher now. Simplest strategy might be to kill the man. But he didn't want to add to Dru's tally of grudges, not to mention angering the Slayer, who was conveniently out of the picture at the moment but could and very likely would reinstate herself at the worst possible moment. If only he had a way of making Drusilla forget about Angel, he could handle the rest.
Handling her had always been a dicey proposition at best.
Spike shrugged on his coat and stalked out of the mansion. Drusilla would be near wherever her intended prey was, which meant either the school or the wanker's home. He headed towards the school. If the Watcher was holed up at his apartment, they weren't apt to be going anywhere. Best to check the school first.
Cordelia unlocked the doors to the library and switched on the lights. She looked around hesitantly, then moved to the reading table to snatch up her sweater. Only thing wiggier than being in the library at night was being alone in the library at night. Fortunately, she only had to be in and out again. She ran out the doors and was halfway back down the hall, before she remembered to go back and lock up again.
"Not cool," she muttered to herself as she locked the library doors and walked back out to the school's entrance. "Definitely not so cool. Got to work on poise." Pausing at the doors, she pulled her red sweater on while trying to fumble her car keys from the purse, and dropped the keys. Grinding her teeth in irritation -- she would have made Xander drive her except that he'd been getting on her nerves obsessing over Willow -- Cordy scooped the keys up and pushed her way out the door.
Somebody was standing outside on the front walk to the school. A male somebody in a long black coat, his back turned towards her. Cigarette smoke wafted from his hand.
The hair on the back of Cordelia's neck rose, and her purse slipped from her hands. "Ohmygod," she whispered. Her hand went to her neck and she felt the silk of her magicked scarf against her fingers. "I bought it off the rack!" she spoke the trigger phrase.
He turned and stared at her. Petrified with fear, Cordelia could only stare back.
"You shouldn't look so surprised, luv," Spike said mildly. "I know what your game is." He sauntered up to her, smirking, and grabbed her hard by the arms. Before she could quite comprehend what was happening, Cordelia found herself being heavily frenched by the vampire.
Ohmygod, he thinks I'm Drusilla! she realized. And: Ohmygod, he's a good kisser. It would have been a bigger turn-on if she wasn't quite so aware that he more than likely was going to break her neck, if he didn't suck her dry, when he found out that she wasn't his girlfriend.
"Baby," Spike murmured into Cordelia's ear. "You know I'm all you need. I'll take you to Prague if you like, but let's leave this place tonight."
Giles had said that the spell would be effective until the viewer doubted the illusion. Acutely conscious of her hammering, all-too-human, heartbeat, Cordelia pushed Spike away. She had to keep him thinking she was Dru, until they were some place where she could get safely away. But ohmygod how did the insane vampiress act with him usually?
"I'm -- I'm -- uh -- There were daisies in the gym -- uh -- and the cheerleaders were wearing Guccis with Lycra! And -- uh clowns were there! In polyester!" Cordelia attempted a lunified smile.
Spike frowned at her. "Who have you been drinking off of, Dru?"
"Oh, some guy. He smelled really gross," Cordelia laughed wildly. She had to get him to take her some safe place fast. "Take me shopping?"
Spike broke out in a smile. "Sure, ducks. Anything you like." He wrapped an arm around Cordelia's waist and pulled her with him towards a black car that sat at the curb. "Where to?"
Cordelia did a double-take. "Anything?"
Spike pulled a Visa Platinum card from his coat pocket. "Anything that we can charge to this. All right, pet?"
She smiled, suddenly finding a center of calm. "All right, Spikey." She tentatively put an arm around Spike's waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. That seemed to be the right thing to do. The vampire pulled her against him with a bruising force and bent to nibble at her ear.
"You don't know how much I've missed you," Spike whispered. "Promise me you won't run off again?"
"Um -- oom!" Cordy said.
"You won't regret it." Spike kissed her passionately again. "I'll set you up in style, a proper barbarian queen. We'll be on top of this world, and we'll stomp it bloody."
"Not in these shoes," she protested wobblily.
He scooped her up and carried her to the car, staring intensely into her eyes every step of the way. Cordelia forced herself to smile and meet his adoring gaze. Spike set her gently inside the car and moved around to get into the driver's seat. "Where to, my poppet?"
"What?" She blinked. "Oh! Spikey, there's a new Neiman Marcus just outside of town?"
Spike started the car. "We're there. But Dru -- stop calling me Spikey?"
Cordelia slowly smiled. Drusilla obviously had her man properly trained. And it was dawning on her that maybe the vampiress was unpredictable enough, even to her lover, that anything she did wasn't going to seem out of the ordinary. She could handle this.
She inched over and snuggled up to Spike's shoulder. He grinned and pulled her tightly against his side, throttled the car up, and they tore out into the night.
Xander and Willow sat at a table at the Bronze. A full cup of coffee sat in front of Xander. Willow was halfway through her third cup of Earl Grey tea. Xander kept staring at the scarf around her neck. The band was excruciatingly bad, and Cordelia was way late.
"She probably ran into some of her friends," Willow said, trying to pretend that she wasn't aware of Xander's obnoxious scrutiny. She jostled her tea so that it slopped across the table top and soaked the elbow of his shirt, but he failed to be distracted. "Or Ricky Shruggs! The quarterback! I saw Cordy talking to Ricky this afternoon."
"Oz seemed cozy when we got him settled," Xander said. "That was a sweet little good-bye kiss you gave him. Kiss and not nibble."
She finally got a little bit angry. "Full moon is up, Xander. I'm not going wolfie, okay? Stop looking at me like I'm a -- a bug or a werewolf or something." She folded her arms across her chest and steeled herself for him to ask her why she wasn't going werewolfie if she had a hicky. The only reasonable conclusion he could come to was that she hadn't collected it from Oz.
Xander looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I should have believed Cordelia, I guess. It's just -- I worry about you."
Willow frowned at him. "Believed Cordelia about what?"
"She said that a hicky couldn't turn you into a -- well I mean how could she know that? But I guess Giles must've told her. I'd thought he'd said that any bite or scratch could infect you."
She stared at him, aghast.
"Please don't tell Cordy the subject of hickies ever came up?" Xander said. "She threatened me with Words if I brought it up again."
"I won't." Willow sank back in her chair, bewildered. Why would Cordelia feed Xander a lie that hickies didn't count? She realized then that Cordy had very probably pieced everything together from the circumstantial evidence. But why was she protecting Willow?
Xander checked his watch. "She's an hour late now."
"She's been late before. She wouldn't be caught dead ever being early."
He looked up at the word 'dead'. "You know, this band really sucks. Maybe we should call Cordy and tell her to meet us somewhere else?"
"Okay." Willow grabbed her purse and they made for the public telephone. She waited as he dialed Cordelia's cell phone number, bouncing nervously and wondering if she could get Xander to go into the Boy's Room for a minute so that she could call Giles. She could call him anyway, make sure he was staying put tonight. But she also wanted to tell him that she'd been thinking about him most of the night, in between worrying about what she was going to do about Oz and dodging Xander's hicky obsession.
"She's not answering." Xander slammed the phone down on the hook.
"Maybe she left her cell phone in her car?"
"Cordelia?" Xander looked at her as if she were coming unhinged.
Willow nodded. "We'd better go find her."
Xander pulled Oz's van up into the student parking lot. Cordelia's car sat to one side like a lone wounded cardinal. "Looks like she's still here," Willow said hopefully.
"Her car is." He got out and stepped over to the BMW, circled it once, then walked towards the school's front entrance. Willow hesitated, then left the van to follow him.
They peered inside the front doors, but all was dark inside. Willow was fumbling through her purse for the master key, when she spotted a dark shape lying on the ground. "Uh oh," she said softly, and bent to pick up Cordelia's purse.
Xander grabbed it from her hands. "Damn!" He looked around helplessly, as if Cordelia would materialize on cue to claim her property. "Oh shit."
Willow swallowed. "Maybe we better call Giles," she suggested.
Xander looked out into the parking lot again, but nothing was moving anywhere. "Let's go inside."
Willow nodded and fit the key into the lock. They moved inside to the darkened hallway.
"Come on." Willow led the way to the pay phone in the student lounge. She dug around the bottom of her purse for a quarter; Xander stood close to her watching the shadowed corners around them and looking like a spooked rabbit. She finally found a coin, fed it in, and dialed.
"You'd think that the night janitor, at least, would be around," Xander said.
Willow reached back to squeeze his hand reassuringly. She frowned then, hung up and tried again. "Busy," she said to Xander with a helpless shrug.
"Busy?" he said indignantly. "How can it be busy? Giles doesn't talk to anybody but us."
"He was going to make some calls tonight. About Buffy."
Xander shook his head. "It's not like Giles is going to be able to do anything to find Cordy that we can't do. I'm going to check the library."
"We should check with him anyway," Willow said stubbornly.
"Cordy may be in trouble. Wait here and see if you can get through to Giles. I'm going down the hall to the library, then I'll come straight back and we'll get out of here. This place is giving me the wiggins all of a sudden."
"Okay . . ." Willow said reluctantly. Xander smiled at her and hurried from the lounge. Two minutes, it shouldn't take him more than two minutes to run to the library and back again. She dialed Giles' number again. Busy. She was obviously going to have to talk to the man about the modern conveniences of Call Waiting. She put her finger on the hook and waited.
"Does the moonlight make you want to scream?" a soft voice spoke.
Willow blinked and pulled the receiver from her ear to examine it.
"There were auguries storming the moon when I looked last. Do they speak to you too?"
She dropped the receiver and turned, backing away from the presence by her side. Drusilla stood almost within touching distance, regarding her quizzically.
"Maybe they were -- I-I wasn't listening," Willow said. She fumbled a cross from her purse and held it up.
Drusilla didn't seem to take any note of it. "But you were talking to the moon just last night," she said. A smile shifted across her lips. "You have secrets together."
"Secrets?" Willow said weakly.
Drusilla picked the dropped receiver up. "I know why the stars cry. They listened in on the moon and heard things they were not meant to know." She hurled the receiver at Willow's chest. Willow threw her arms out to ward the object off, and realized a split second later -- as the vampiress's fist connected with the side of her head -- that she should have been more canny in choosing her defenses.
Giles sat at his desk at home, nursing a scotch while he sorted through old correspondences. He'd been lax since coming to the United States, allowing his preoccupations with being Buffy's Watcher and then later his involvement with Jenny, to overshadow his academic connections. Many of the people he'd known or had been corresponding with from England were no longer at the old numbers. Much of the night's telephoning had ended up only alerting him to the depressing fact that his address book was seriously out of date.
The few people that he had managed to contact tonight -- most of them part of the Watcher's Network -- had seemed reticent in speaking with him. He wasn't particularly surprised -- he'd known for a long time that he was held in low esteem by a significant segment of the Old Guard -- but he was feeling the pinch now.
Giles flipped through the pages of the address book. So many of the entries were now ticked by question marks: people he needed to make an effort to track down and reestablish his ties with. School friends, academic colleagues, distant relatives, a few from the Watcher's Network that he'd at one time or another been on easy terms with. He'd never considered himself social or particularly well-networked, but skimming down past question mark after question mark suddenly brought home to him now how totally isolated he'd become since moving to Sunnydale.
Giles tossed the address book to the floor and reached for his glass of scotch. He'd have to turn to formal Watcher channels. He'd known, of course, that news of Buffy's going absent without leave would get back to them, but to have to ask for their aid in locating her -- well it wasn't going to help his already tarnished reputation. No help for it now.
He downed half the remaining scotch, then stopped himself and set it aside. He wasn't going to do any one any good if he allowed himself to slide down this slope. It was a long, steep slope, would be so very easy to abandon himself to. He'd been on the verge ever since Jenny's death, but his obligations had kept him off the brink. Obligations, and Buffy's need for him to be there for her.
But Buffy had left and all he had left were the so very tiresome obligations, which he was no longer equipped to fulfill. A bloody muck-up all the way around. Giles once again tried to trace back along the train of events of the past two years, to determine at which point he'd made the fatal error. There were so many mistakes in retrospect, but even now he wasn't certain if he could have changed what had happened.
The mental exercise left him exhausted and aching again from his recent injuries. He wanted to fall into bed and sleep until the Hellmouth swallowed them all up.
Giles finally recognized the incipient post-magic depression for what it was and forced himself to get up, toss the rest of the scotch in the sink, and start trying to think about fixing himself something to eat. At least he and Willow had managed to generously restock the larder this morning, he thought with a small smile as he considered the contents of his freezer.
Willow. And Oz, Cordelia, and Xander. More than obligations, they were his friends. The only ones he had at the moment. And Willow had somehow managed to become something more than a friend.
Giles sighed, sorely tempted to go back and refill the glass with more scotch. Face it, old man, he thought. You're lonely and tired and totally at sea. Willow threw you a lifeline of magic and of her own vibrant loving self, and you latched onto it for all you were worth.
He shut the refrigerator door again and leaned back against it. He'd given up the magic once before. At this point in his life it had ceased to hold any fascination for him beyond the purely intellectual. But he was going to have to give up Willow too, and that realization was a pain he wasn't sure he was strong enough to stoically withstand.
The telephone rang. Giles moved his head to stare at it, tempted to let it ring. But one of his old contacts might be returning his call. He pushed himself away from the refrigerator and stepped over to the telephone.
"Giles here," he said into the receiver.
For a long moment nobody spoke. He thought it might be a crank call, then had a wild hope that it might be Buffy.
"I'm having a party," a woman's voice, cockney accented, finally informed him. Her tone was at once coy and knowing.
He knew the voice. Giles felt the hairs raise on the back of his neck. "Drusilla," he whispered.
"You're invited." He could hear the smile in her voice. "We will be dancing and eating cake and I will be wearing my new hat."
He cleared his throat, his eyes darted nervously towards the front windows to his apartment. Was she close by? For an insane moment he thought about accepting the invitation, about going to the rendezvous with crossbow in hand. Whatever happened then, at least some of his problems would be solved.
Giles forced himself to sit down. "Who else will be there, Drusilla?"
She giggled, clearly pleased that he had called her by name. "Friends, foes, and lovers. My Spike has come all the way down from the North for the dance. And your red-headed sweetheart has come."
A ball of ice formed inside his chest. "Is she there now?" he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. "I want to talk to her."
"Dearie?" he heard Drusilla speak to somebody in the background. "It's your lover, he wants to talk to you. Ask him to bring the wine?"
"Giles?" Willow's voice. "I'm sorry . . ." She was slurring her words slightly, didn't seem wholly awake.
He shut his eyes, trying for some semblance of calm. "Willow, where are you?"
"Don't come," Willow insisted. "Please. She -- she just grabbed me so she could get you out here."
"But I like you," Drusilla insisted in the soft background. "You're so very pretty, and your hair burns my fingers. And you're a clever girl; you took over my class so very well."
Willow sobbed quietly. Giles' grip tightened on the receiver until his hand ached. He forced thoughts of what might be causing her to weep from his head. He had to focus. "Willow, I need to speak with Drusilla again. I'm not going to abandon you, all right? Please trust me to deal with this."
She sniffled. "Giles."
He was hit suddenly with an intense sense of affection/terror/trust. The empathic connection to Willow had flared back into life. The depth of her trust shook him; he would never be able to come close to feeling worthy of it. But he had to at least try.
"Shall we count on you to come then?" Drusilla said cheerfully.
"Where?"
"You know where. Our last rendezvous." The line went dead.
Giles stood, clutching the receiver in both hands. Ripper was clawing to take control, to send him into the same suicidal motion that had gripped him in the aftermath of Jenny's death.
But Willow wasn't dead. He couldn't help her if he were spiraling out of control. Calm. Giles took a deep breath and hung up the telephone. He began to go back over the conversation word for word. Something had struck the reasoning part of his mind, behind the blind terror of the conversation, as odd.
Drusilla had complemented Willow on her cleverness. On her ability to take over 'her' computer class,
"Dear god," Giles murmured. He felt sick at the thought, but forced himself to run with it anyway. In some small corner of her mind, Drusilla must have 'become' Jenny.
It was a weakness. One that, perhaps, he could exploit.
"Jenny, forgive me," Giles whispered as he moved to get what he needed for the 'party'. He took what small comfort he could from the certainty that Jenny would have forgiven him; but he had no such assurance that he was going to be able to forgive himself for what he was planning to do.