But the torture had been so pleasurable...
He knew three other vampires were
in the general area: Angelus, William the
Bloody and Graham. No one had been
able to get Graham to even consider
helping them, Angelus had a yen for
the Slayer from the past (or so it was
rumored), and William the Bloody...
"Fat chance in hell," Tsar muttered.
William the Bloody hated Tsar for a more
personal reason, the reason he thought
was dust.
The reason sleeping nearby.
There was one thing he'd always wanted
to do since he got that one thing,
other than William the Bloody with
it:
Find out how he slept in the same bedroom with all those damn dolls.
***
Willow set the spell up carefully,
directing it to both Buffy and Oz, on the
off chance one of them was busy.
When she was finished, she recast
the spell to Buffy for Graham, careful not
to see what he'd written on the piece
of paper that had the message. All she
did was transfer it.
And then, it was all done. It hadn't
been a hard spell, just hard to do in
the dorm because of the memories
attached.
They began to clean up, quietly, when
Tara burst through the door. "Xander!
I...saw...I mean, you need to..."
She stopped talking and caught her breath.
"I just saw Anya and Spike together."
Xander shrugged. "Well, Anya's following Spike, so--"
Tara shook her head. "No, I saw them
*together*," she said, adding emphasis
to the word "together."
Willow's mouth rounded in an O as
she caught what Tara was saying. "You
mean..."
They turned to Xander, who'd sat down
on Willow's bed, balling his fists up.
"She's been cheating on me."
***
Buffy, Graham and a very talkative
Spike were almost done with their patrol
when the words appeared. One minute
the tombstone had it's normal message on
it, and the next minute a fire outlined
message to Buffy was there.
"We're doing what we can," the message
said. "We know you're in the future
and we're trying to get both of you
back. Be careful."
Buffy smiled, then jumped around a
little. "They know we're here! They know
it!" Then she hugged Graham and Spike,
then went back to jumping around a bit.
"Slayer," Spike said sharply, causing
her not to jump. "There's another
message...oh, never mind, it just
disappeared," he continued. "I didn't catch
any of it except that it was to you."
He looked at Graham when he said it,
though, and Graham understood. It had
been his message to her, the one
that simply said "Come home."
"I don't think it was all that important,"
Graham said. "Come on, let's get
out of here and back to Jenna's."