Where They Have To Take You In

by Herself

Notes: Number umpty-something of The Bittersweets Series. Set twenty-one years after the events of "Mrs Grieves & The Abandoned Husband."

Thanks: To Varina8, who consented to be spoiled when this was a Work in Progress, to help me plot it all out. And to everyone who read this in parts in my LJ and spurred me on with great hot lashings of creamy enthusiasm, praise, and character analysis. Thanks to Orthoepy and Lovesbitca for suggesting or inspiring character names, and to Thedeadlyhook for advice and enthusiasm above and beyond.

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."

"I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."
-- Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man, 1915

PART ONE

"You didn't invite anyone along?" she said. "I thought this was supposed to be a party."

He watched his mother look around the dark-paneled, underlit restaurant as she unfurled her napkin. He could see she was wondering why he'd chosen it -- or more likely, how, since she must've twigged to the why by now. Usually, when his parents came to visit, he led them into smoky caverns of red sauce Italian or fluorescent temples to Peking duck in Soho. The maitre d' here had wanted to stop them at the door, whether for lack of neckties or worse was unclear, but one look from his father, followed by her bright appeasing smile, convinced him it would be less fuss to seat and serve them. This temple of decorum was nowhere near the university or his surrounding stomping grounds. No one he knew would stumble across them here. They could fucking well afford it. Hell, so could he, for that matter. It was his birthday. He was twenty-one and free, with Uncle Rupert's ching-ching filling his pockets.

Her smile was too sweet, like those technicolor Indian desserts. "We told you you could bring anyone you like -- this is a celebration. I was hoping you'd introduce me to your pals."

"Oh yeah, I'll be doing that shortly. Pals, here's my parents -- they barely look older than we do, but don't ask me to explain how that is."

"Don't talk to your mum that way."

"What way? It's the truth. You're a couple of freaks -- no one's gonna buy that you're my parents. Why even go there?"

There was a time when he'd stopped buying it himself. At sixteen it occurred to him, in a late-night stoned epiphany, that he couldn't be their son, not biologically. His father was a vampire, for Chrissakes, and he so didn't buy that cockamamie story about travel through dimensions, through time. Even for them, that was a bit much to swallow. And she -- she was something not human either, because his mother just couldn't be the same twenty-year-old hottie who'd supposedly given birth to him, if the family photo album was to be believed. How could she not have aged since then? She was so fucking pretty it practically hurt. He'd throw a boner when she appeared in a bathing suit, or if she bent over the table and he saw down her blouse. And that time he came in early one Saturday night and caught her swaying on top of him on the sofa, their undulating bodies blue-pale in the shifting TV-light -- Christ. He's almost creamed his jeans, and at the same time he'd wanted to smash Papa's skull in -- Ugh. Don't think about that. They must've acquired Jem and him somehow. Not adopted, because who would let a vampire and a wild superwoman officially adopt children?

It was all so bogus and fucked-up. He couldn't really be a part of the two of them. He didn't have to be, if he didn't want to.

Surely?

When he confronted them with it, Mamma's eyes had gone all huge and watery; she opened her mouth but nothing came out. Spike slapped him so hard his head almost did a 360. How dare you? You know what your mum went through to have you, an' your sister both. Told you about it often enough. How dare you be such a bloody wanker?

He'd burst out crying like a big baby, but when she tried to put her arms around him, tears slipping down her peachy cheeks, he couldn't take it, having this nubile girl hugged up against him. He pushed her away. That went over big, too.

Now Buffy hurried to fill the smoldering silence. "Have you spoken to your sister lately?"

He didn't look up from the menu. Still trying to decide between the two most expensive things on it, because, fuck it. Fuck them. "Yeah."

"And -- ?"

"You talk to her too."

"I do," Buffy said. "I just thought -- "

"What, that I'd tell you things she told me in confidence?"

"Johnny, that's not what I meant."

"Yeah it is."

"You gonna talk properly to your mother, or am I gonna take her on out of here?"

"Go, if you want to go."

Spike was halfway out of his chair, but Buffy put a hand on his arm, and he settled back.

"So tell us, Johnny... what's... what's new?"

"My name isn't Johnny."

"What?"

"Sinjin is a stupid faggy name. And Johnny is for a kid. I changed it."

"You can't bloody change it, it's your name."

"Oh yeah, Spike? I can do anything I want with my name. It's mine."

"What did you do?" Buffy asked. Her voice was calm, but he heard the thin edge of dread there. Not that he cared.

"I got it changed. Legally."

"Bloody hell!"

"Changed? You know, we gave you that name because of... " She blinked, and for a moment he was terrified she would let loose with the waterworks, which would cause Spike in turn to do something to get them thrown out of here altogether. He knew the whole sorry story of his stupid name. Didn't they get that that was a big part of his having to get rid of it? Plus he was sick to death of spelling it and pronouncing it for people.

Anyhow, he was no saint.

"It's Nick now. Nicholas. Just a normal name."

"But you didn't change your -- "

"Nicholas Grieves Summers. It was too much hassle to change the last names." He hadn't even considered that, but he couldn't resist getting the little dig in. God, this was such a charade, sitting here with the two of them like they were three friends. Yeah, he knew he looked like them. Spike could've been his brother. Back in high school he'd tried that out on a few people, but it got back to her, so no go. And probably nobody really believed it, anyway. Everyone in town knew Spike and Buffy, at least by sight. Knew how long they'd been around, although no one ever really talked about how they never changed.

"You could've just kept John," Buffy said quietly. "That's a normal name too."

"I wanted Nick."

"Nick. Well, I hope you're not going to be all sensitive if I forget and call you Johnny." She smiled another one of her trying-too-hard smiles. Her long loose hair gleamed in the candlelight, and she was so -- not beautiful, he knew what made a woman beautiful and she wasn't that -- but she was so damn pretty, pretty in that fresh glowing nearly supernatural way that some girls had, a way that could be better than beauty because it just made you want to be with them, and they looked like they'd want to be with you. It did his head in. She was fifty. She was fifty and his mother and it felt all wrong. Jemima already looked older than Buffy did. The pair of them would still be here, still look like that, when he was dead.

He couldn't forgive them for that.

He glanced at Spike. He was still pretending to read the menu, although he only ever ordered steak, nearly raw.

"So, Nick," Buffy said, still with that tenuous smile, "we were hoping you'd come home for Christmas this year. Jem is coming, and I asked Tara to be with us." She mentioned these two as if knowing that he'd need other inducements than just their company. "And you haven't really spent any time with us yet at the new place."

"He won't," Spike said. "He'll be off to some country where the sun beats down all day." He let the menu fall. "Where's the bleedin' waiter? We either need liquor, or a fistfight. Rather try the booze first. Make the fight later better anyhow."

"I wouldn't think you'd find it all that interesting to fight me -- it would be over too soon."

"Yeah. S'what's kept your head on your shoulders these last few years since you've been ridin' the attitude train."

"Nobody's going to fight," Buffy said. "Spike, do you have to bait him?"

"Little bleeder won't talk like a person, what else am I supposed -- "

"What did you call me -- ?"

"For God's sake, keep your voices down."

"Y'know -- this -- fuck this. I don't need this, and neither do you. So let's just -- I'm gone."

He almost made it to the exit before his arm was grabbed. He tried not to turn, tried just to open the door and go out onto the street. But she was the slayer, and when she grabbed hold of you -- she grabbed hold.

"Johnny -- I mean -- sweetheart. Don't go."

She looked up into his face, her eyes gleaming like her gold earrings. "It doesn't have to be like this. Your father and I -- you know we adore you. Why must there have to be all this tension?"

"I don't know, mother. Why?"

"It's your birthday -- such an important birthday. We came all this way so we could celebrate, celebrate you." She touched his face, and the placket of his shirt. "You look more handsome every time I see you. Do you know that? You're beautiful the way your father is. I bet you've got all the girls at school trailing after you."

"Can we not talk about this?" He reached again for the door, but she placed herself in his way.

"Are you seeing anyone special, Johnny? I don't mean to pry. I guess what I'm really asking... are you happy? Here in London? Do you have nice friends, a nice... ."

"I'm fine, yeah. Look, I've got to go."

She stepped aside then. Her little face settled in an expression she probably didn't realize was a pout.

"Ma -- " He shut his eyes, shut them tight and pulled her against him, hugged her hard. She wore the same perfume she always wore. When her arms went around him, his eyes burned with an impulse to tears. He kept them closed. "I love you, but I just can't do this."

"Maybe I can see you again before we leave London? Will you call me?"

"You'll hear from me. Say goodnight to Papa. Tell him -- tell him I'm sorry."

He couldn't find a taxi, but after walking a while, he did find a pub, and within that pub, many pints of bitter. Bitter in, bitter out. A couple of hours later, worse for wear and blinking back tears, he shambled, not sure of his direction, feeling disconnected from the unpeopled streets of townhouses he passed, so many of them dark as if all the residents had gone away. He wasn't keeping track of himself, or them, his thoughts fixed on his mother, her questions, the things he couldn't tell her, and on his father, who always took her side, made sides when there shouldn't be any, and who always looked at him like he was a bug. And then he was on the Chelsea embankment. The moonlight on the Thames arrested him. Leaning on the barrier, he watched the shimmering water.

So easy -- too easy -- to feel all alone in the midst of the city. Just like he'd felt all alone at home with them in Sunnydale, for as long as he could remember. Alone with his parents, who weren't like him at all, weren't like anyone else, and seemed to need only each other, and the things they fought and conquered. Alone with his sister who was always so good to him, so understanding. But he couldn't tell her all he felt and feared, and she couldn't really fix things -- she rescued him sometimes, but that wasn't the same. She was papa's favorite, of course, and he was supposed to be mamma's, but... Buffy was really all about Spike. When it first dawned on him, around eight or nine years old, that his parents were lovers first and foremost, he felt he'd lost what he'd never really had.

He was hungry now, and getting a headache, and wished he'd postponed the inevitable quarrel until at least after the main course.

There would be taxis along here -- he could be back at the university soon enough.

When he stepped down to hail one, a woman appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. "Oh, can you find me a hansom, young man? I have tried and tried."

She swayed drunkenly, while still managing to look graceful. Her long dark hair hung straight and silky on either side of her pale face. She had large heavy-lidded eyes that gleamed in the yellow streetlight.

Another lost soul who'd had too much liquid cheer. "Here comes one." He stuck his arm out. Couldn't imagine what was wrong with the woman, that she couldn't hail her own taxi. But it was nice to be needed by someone attractive.

"You may share with me," she smiled. She stood very close to him. Her face was of a height with his. He could smell her perfume, very different from Mamma's. She smelled cool. That contrasted oddly with her tipsy precise speech, and the way she havered.

"Where are you going?"

"Oh, we can drop you off first. I'm in no hurry. The night -- " she wrapped her hand around his arm, and suddenly he was bearing part of her weight, " -- the night is so very young, you see."

She stopped into the ladies room after Johnny -- or Nick, but she couldn't think of him as Nick -- left. Stared at herself in the mirror, wondering what her son saw when he looked at her, that made him not want to look at her. Did he think she hadn't noticed that? Like Spike maybe thought she didn't notice that he didn't look at her the same now either.

She blotted up the moisture from the edges of her eyelids, saving her make-up, and blinked.

Spike had a drink in his hand when she returned to the table. His glance was more sympathetic than she expected, given how he'd been lately.

"I'll probably see him tomorrow. He can't seem to deal too well with us at the same time."

"Dunno why he has to talk to you like that. You've never been anything but sweet to him."

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Have I? I wonder."

"You have," Spike said, decisive.

She heard to him, although he didn't say it. "Do you want to stay here?"

"Could do. Or could go. Haven't ordered any nosh yet."

"Then let's get out of here. I'm not hungry."

He drained his glass, left money on the table. She shivered when the cool air touched her face.

He was quiet in the car. He'd been quiet like this ever since... Now she had to begin every conversation. The only remarks she could think of now would be about what just passed; she didn't particularly want to talk about it, yet she sensed it was the one subject on which he'd be readily sympathetic.

"Nicholas."

"Dunno why he's so sore about his name. Might've called him William. Didn't."

"He could just introduce himself to everyone as John. Who would know? I don't see why he had to change it altogether." She paused. "It's hurtful."

"That's reason enough why a lot of people do things."

She quivered as if he'd pinched her. "No. No, it really isn't. Not meaning to hurt -- not going into it because -- "

"Yeah. Well, same with him, then. Wanted to change his bloody name, didn't think about what we'd think." Spike tapped his fingers against the wheel as they waited at the light. "Pleased himself, he did."

"I suppose so."

"Why shouldn't he. Doesn't owe us anything."

"Spike, I wish you'd -- "

"Sure you're not hungry? Could pick up a curry on the way."

"Do you want something to eat? You know, we're not far from that nice little place where we used to -- "

"Don't care, really. It's up to you."

"Then let's just go up."

Spike pulled up in front, but didn't cut the engine. "Was thinkin' I could do with another drink or two."

"You're going to the pub?" Suddenly she was aware of her hands, of their emptiness. Usually he'd drive with one hand on the wheel, one wrapped around hers. But not now.

"Thought, yeah... could do with a drink."

"Are you going to be late?"

He was looking out the windscreen, not at her. He seemed to be waiting, as if for her to withdraw the question, or say something less obviously... abject.

"I just wanted to know, y'know... whether you'd like me to wait up for you."

He seemed about to say something, something that would be like a blow. But after a moment he exhaled, and the moment passed. "I'll just park it and come up, then. Have a drink at home."

She got out of the car.

She got herself a drink, and stood in the dark study, looking out the window at the sweep of the river, the glittering bridges, the glittering Eye on the south bank. The heat of the scotch she sipped failed to warm her. Things seemed to be dwindling, and who could've anticipated that that would feel so much scarier than all those time when the apocalypse threatened to snatch everything away in one big explosion of violence. Unhappiness didn't torpedo; it crept.

She took off her make-up, undressed. In her panties, a tiny red blossom. She rinsed them in the sink, and shed a few tears while the water ran.

He'd always forgiven her everything. Everything.

But there'd never been anything like this before.

Turning off the tap, she heard him come in. Bit her lip, afraid of what she was going to do, pride shriveled, the little voice inside saying don't. She walked through her misgivings as through a curtain of cobweb, felt them brush her skin so the goosebumps rose. In the bedroom she stood naked for a moment, breathing. Saw her reflection in the big floor-to-ceiling window. Remembered another reflection, when she saw herself in a new way, a whole new orientation, like looking into a kaleidoscope and being the kaleidoscope at the same time. She bit off the memory, slipped her high-heeled strappy sandals back on, and walked down the carpeted hall to the study. Spike stood where she'd been standing; he was drinking out of her glass. She stepped up close to him, her white nude skin up against the black cool cloth of his clothes, the cool expanse of his body. She hoped he wouldn't make her speak; there should be no need to speak. She lifted her hair off her neck and let it fall again, to release her perfume. Knew what he'd smell; he'd told her so many times, in a rapture of delight, how the sweetness of her flowery scent mixed with the soft musk of her skin, and the delectable salt tang of the blood seeping between her legs, overwhelming his senses so he could think of nothing but immersing himself in her, worshipping her. Over the years he'd never taken this offering of her monthly blood for granted, had always rewarded her for it with the most exquisite attention. Rewarded her too by his helpless excitement, his ecstasy. Even as good as their sex always was, those times were better than best.

Surely he wouldn't pass it up now?

Again she saw her reflection in the black window, and though she stood right beside him, her image showed her she was alone.

Spike stood as if he was alone too, and finished his drink.

She felt the slight draft off the large window in the moisture at her hairline and upper lip. She touched her breasts, full and heavy at this time of the month, the nipples hard from the chill and desire and trepidation. She didn't want to have to speak.

Please.

He set the empty cut-glass tumbler on the bookshelf, and then slipped hands into pockets.

She couldn't stop herself. She laid her head against his arm.

He tensed.

"... do you... do you need to punish me? You can." She crossed her wrists as if they were bound together, and held her arms up to him. "I'll let you do anything to me. To take possession of me again. Anything you want to, to punish me. Only this punishment, this... where you ignore me, deprive me... I can't stand it." She fought to keep from crying, her eyes burning so she couldn't look at him.

"Oh Buffy." He didn't reach out to her, not to her upheld slavegirl hands, not to the hair tumbled around her blushing face, or her trembling breasts pebbled in the coolish air. Her suppressed sob made her shoulders shake.

"Spike, I know I betrayed you. I know."

"You did, pet."

"I don't know why I did it. It wasn't to hurt you. You understand that, don't you? It wasn't because I was angry at you or wanted you to be hurt, I... I... I don't know why I wanted him. I don't know what I was thinking. But it wasn't about you."

"No, you didn't do it to cause me pain. You did it because you were able to not think of me at all while you were with him. My pain didn't occur to you at all. You forgot what we are." He took one step back from her. "You forgot us, Buffy."

"No... "

His eyes were lowered, he might've been looking down into the street, or into the past, or the future, but not at her. His lips made a small angry smile. "You were attracted to his power, his sorcery, but he put no spell on you to make you do it. Nothing like that. You just gave yourself to him. You opened. Let him know your secret aromas, the heat of you, you took him into yourself, into your pretty mouth and your quim and your little bunghole, an' you spent yourself an' clung to him. You did it over and over. I smelled it all on you, every bit. I can smell your love, an' it's absence, an' it's nothing to do with what you scrub off with soap an' water. You must've forgotten about me, if you could do that with him."

She drooped, knees trembling. They'd talked about this already... so many times. Gone around and around it, raging, weeping, arguing and reasoning, pledging and promising, and he'd said at last that he'd forgiven her, that he'd always love her.

Still they were far apart.

Saleem was more present to her in the vacuum of his absence than he'd ever been. She could not make him go. Spike held him there, between them.

Commanding forces that even Willow couldn't evoke, Saleem had been her full partner in defeating this latest End of the World. To prepare in the weeks before the ultimate battle, they'd had to spend a lot of time together. There were... rituals. Magical, mystical, mingling their essences, forging power neither of them could summon alone. But it was true, Saleem had done nothing to coerce or manipulate her. She took him for a lover because she could not ignore the potent hunger his presence brought into being. It was impossible not to touch him, to be entwined with him, to learn him and pleasure him. She'd had no one but Spike for more than thirty years. Saleem was something different, a revelation, like a new consciousness. He'd been apart with his power from the rest of the world for a time that encompassed many life-times; in ending his celibacy, she'd felt she was creating something, something intricate and gleaming and wonderful.

Together, she and Saleem made themselves into a new kind of warrior, unique in one another. Spike was right. She hadn't thought of him while all that was happening.

They'd defeated the interdimensional Army of Zhoth. Saleem died in the final moment of the battle.

She returned home, grieving, delivering her message of betrayal to Spike's every sense.

What could she say now? She'd already said I didn't love Saleem. I love you, I always will, I always do. Already said, I knew even while it was going on that it was only for that time. I was always coming back to you. Already wept, It was a mistake. A mistake. I know that. I promise it won't happen again. I want you more than ever now. I belong to you and I always will.

She knew how often William and Spike had been betrayed; had always felt proud of balking his expectations of loss. And yet she'd done this.

Didn't know, had the circumstances been reversed, if she could try to forgive.

"I let him have those things," she murmured. "I did that. And I'm so sorry. Spike. So sorry. But he didn't have my blood. That -- that's only for you." She lifted her hair again, holding it away from her neck, so he could see the delicate raised bite scars she bore. "I give myself to you, in love, I trust you to take and not to kill me. I know that's not everything, against what you understood about our marriage -- it's barely anything, I know! -- but it stands for. It stands for what you are to me. You hold my life, Spike. I've given it to you and it's still yours." She tilted her head, offering her throat.

He groaned. "Christ, Slayer."

"Please. Please, anything you want."

He lifted her then; his shirt felt scratchy against her breasts and flank. Crossed the room with her, set her on the high marble mantlepiece. A hand on each of her knees, he looked up into her face. "When you turn your heart away from me, that's when I remember that I'm really dead."

She started to cry then. He watched, as her face crumbled, the tears flooding over. With a sigh, he parted her legs, lifted her knees gently over his shoulders, and began to kiss her. His hands were soothing on her feverish skin, traveling up her hips and waist, then gripping her arms. She opened more, crossing her ankles at the nape of his neck. He licked her clit with soft patience until she felt something thick and liquid slip inside her; then he went lower, tonguing up the seeping blood, his mouth pressed tight to her quim, sipping her up.

"Oh... oh... this is good... oh... do you like this, Spike... Spike, oh lover... ." Her hands knotted in his hair; she mewed. He was holding her now at the small of her back, circling her clit with the other thumb as he drank her. His every touch gentle, the inexorable softness that undid her more than anything.

"Lover... oh God... Spike... are you hard? I want to touch you too. Are you... oh God, there, oh!... ."

When he sensed she was near spending, he changed the rhythm. She stared through watery eyes at the top of his head, the brightest thing in the unlit room. Combing his hair hard through her fingers, she felt herself floating, and it was far better than anything with Saleem, even when he'd made love to her on the ceiling, gravity something he could will away for a time. He could take her in midair, but nothing was this, nothing was Spike, her lover, her husband, her darkness, her light, her life.

"I'm yours... Spike... I'm yours... everything... oh God... oh oh oh... please... please... take it all, it's yours, I'm yours, everything... ."

When he finally permitted her to come, she almost slid off the ledge. He held her while the ripples lasted, face buried in her, and when she was still he kissed her there as he would kiss her mouth, and drew back gradually, as if with regret. She leapt down, reaching for him. Her hand brushed the hard bulge in his trousers, but he stepped away. She reached again, and he was receding. In the doorway, he said, "Goodnight, Buffy."

She didn't move until she heard the quiet click of the guestroom door closing.

Johnny was afraid she's be a nuisance in the taxi, and almost didn't get in with her after she leaned in the driver's window to tell him where to go. But she'd slid all the way over to the far side, nearly resting her glossy head against the window, and as they started up, she folded her two pretty hands in her lap. Bit by bit, he stole glances at her in the sudden flare of each street lamp they passed beneath. She was very pretty -- not the way Buffy was, and not like Penelope either. She'd seemed much older when she first accosted him, but now he saw she was young like him, though not dressed like a student, which must've been what threw him off. He couldn't really place her accent either, from the few remarks she made.

"Was anything wrong?" he said. "You're not lost, are you?"

"Lost?" She laughed, a charming sexy sophisticated laugh. "In the dear old Smoke?"

"I only thought -- "

"You were very gallant to assist me. It's just such a bad spot for hansoms, you see, and I was tired of walking." She glanced down; he followed her gaze and saw that she wore very high-heeled red shoes, which had ribbons that wound around the ankles and tied in a bow. Very nice ankles. He imagined lifting her dainty foot into his lap, tugging the end of the bow, unwinding the ribbon... . Then she turned her head to regard him, and smiled. It was a smile to bask in.

"You are not a Londoner, though. You are from America."

"Uh... yeah."

"I have been in America. On the whole, I did not care for it. The people there... they have no taste."

"No -- ?"

"And they are unpleasant. They interfere."

"Seems like lots of English people don't like us."

"No one could possibly dislike you, pet."

He wasn't sure if that expression on her face now wasn't a leer, albeit a restrained and lady-like one. At any event, it made him feel suddenly better.

"Anyway, I'm glad I live here now."

"I'm glad too," she said. Her eye-whites gleamed in the half-dark of the cab, her dark red lips glistened. He couldn't believe how... friendly she was being.

"I'm Nick."

Her mouth made a circle; she almost looked surprised. Then her radiant smile reappeared. "Nick. Such a nice strong name. Makes me think of... ." She trailed off, and glanced out the window. "Oh, we're nearly there. You must be a student."

"Well, yes, but... ."

"I do admire a scholar."

"I'm not a scholar, I just... uh... " The cab pulled up in front of his digs. "You know... it is early... maybe you'd like to, uh... get a drink somewhere?"

Her eyelids fluttered. "You are kind." She paused. "Perhaps another time."

"Oh! Uh... well, look, I didn't mean to stick you with the cab fare. Here, uh... here's a fiver." He held the bill out, as his inner voice prodded him, Ask for her number, ask, ask!

She took the banknote, delicately between her first and second fingers, and then used it to wave a little bye-bye, as if it was a handkerchief. "You've been very very nice, Nick. I'm so glad we met."

"Yeah. I mean, me too! I mean... you're sure you're all right on your own?"

She dimpled. "Don't you worry about me, you sweet boy. I won't be on my own for very much longer."

He'd been so sure she was coming on to him. Which would've turned this night -- his birthday, for God's sake -- around. He couldn't remember the last time any girl had flirted with him like that, out of the blue. Because his mother was wrong: he was good-looking, yeah: good enough, anyhow. But somehow he didn't seem to do half as well as other guys who had a lot less going in the looks department. He'd never been able to figure that out. He wasn't a social leper, but he'd always thought it should've been easier.

In his teens, he'd spent hours practicing Spike's thing in the mirror: that way he could look at a woman -- a waitress, a checker in the supermarket, a student at the slayer academy, one of his friend's moms, Buffy herself, and render them all bedroom-eyed.

And he could do it perfectly.

In theory.

In his flat he shrugged out of the good camelhair coat Buffy had bought him a couple of years ago, leaving it all anyhow in the armchair, and changed his good shirt for a sweater before slipping into his leather jacket.

He took his frustration to the pub. With any luck... He scanned the smoky bar as he walked in, gaze bouncing from head to head.

She was there, wedged into the corner behind a small table on the other side of the fruit machines, a cigarette in one slim hand, the other wrapped around a nearly empty pint, her mouth open wide in laughter at something George, Nigel or Oliver had said. Figured, she wouldn't be alone. She was never alone.

Although, what girl went to a pub to sit alone?

She spotted him then, and to her credit, half rose out of her chair to wave him over. "Johnny! Bring us a refill on the way!" She held up her glass, but he didn't need to see it. Hers was always a black and tan. The others held theirs up too, but he was damned if he was going to buy a round the minute he walked in the place.

Carrying two brimming pint glasses, he thought once more of the sultry stranger in the cab, then let her slip away in favor of what was right in front of him.

"Penelope."

"Ta, darling." She accepted the glass, and gave Oliver a shove that would've been rude in any less lovely and self-confident girl. "Make room, you large oaf."

"Let him sit over there. Why should I move?"

"Because I have so directed you. Johnny, c'mere."

"Nick, remember?"

She grasped his leather sleeve and pulled him in. "A little bird has told me, that today is St.John's birthday. He's twenty-one." She gazed at him with mock-seriousness, her dark eyes sparkling. She was blonde and fair, but her brows and eyes were a dark brown that somehow surprised him every time he looked at her. Like finding a chocolate left where you least expected it.

He didn't think she'd remember; he'd mentioned his birthday last week, but she hadn't taken it up then. He blushed with pleasure.

"That makes you a man," she said, still gripping his sleeve in her strong fingers.

"Oh, I think I've been a man for a while now." He winked at her. "Don't you?"

She opened her large mouth wide in pretended outrage. "I say! I say! Are you trying to imply that I have been unchaste?"

"No. Chased you rather, before I caught you, as I recall."

The four of them laughed uproariously at this; which pleased him. He was more pleased when Penelope threw an arm around and leaned against him, and as the evening went on and the personnel of their little table waxed, she refused to let anyone else take his place, even when he got up to go to the bar or the toilet.

When the pub closed, she let him take her arm as they spilled out onto the street. For a few moments there was some confusion -- she was in the midst of a hilarious conversation with two other boys, which he hadn't been following when the barman called time; and though she didn't positively pull away from him, she seemed inclined to go walking off with this conversation in the entirely wrong direction.

"I'm still waiting for my birthday kiss."

She wheeled around, grinning. She was loose and drunk, her eyes shining. "Who says you're to have anything of the sort? Go ask George or Ollie to kiss you!"

"Want you."

"Well isn't that curious." Her smile tempered then, became more personal to him. "Hmmm. Weren't you supposed to be dining with your family?"

"Yeah, but we made it an early night."

"Gunshots exchanged?"

"Pretty much."

"Poor Sin-Jin." She went up on tiptoe then, and kissed him. A kiss without sloppiness or liquor in it, and maybe without much passion. He knew she was capable of better, and put his arms around her. She repeated, "Poor Sin-sin. Jin-Jin."

"Nick."

"Oh, if you insist. Poor Nick. That sounds like the name of something. Poor Nick's Eucalyptus Throat Lozenges, proof against catarrh and hangnails and the bends. I like St.John better. St.John is a gallant fellow with a suit of shiny armor, and a quest, and a large large lance."

That word, 'gallant,' pinged in his inebriated brain even as he pulled her tighter, pushing her hair aside to state in her ear, "Got that lance right here."

"Oooh er, missus!"

She sighed, arms moving on the coverlet, hips stirring as he explored her with his mouth. He'd kept the light on because he loved the sight of her spilled across his bed, her neat little pussy laid open, then the plane of her belly, supplanted by the distant range of breasts and uptilted chin. Penelope was quality, choice. A girl wanted by everyone, the right girl. He was in love with her, even as he was aware, never more than right at the moment, that he didn't really know her, and that she'd never seemed to notice, or care, how unknowable she made herself.

Even knowing how to bring her off was a constant mystery -- the technique that worked one night might be a failure the next.

He tried hard to please her. If he found the right way, just the right way to be with her, in bed, out of bed, then something in her would turn, she'd fit with him, she'd become his girlfriend. He had hope.

"Darling, yes... just there. Johnny -- oh -- just there!"

He tried to do exactly what he was doing exactly as he was doing it. She sighed again, churning her hips.

Spike had never given him the talk -- he'd learned the Facts of Life in the school yard like most of the other boys -- but when he had his first real girlfriend at thirteen, Spike had taken him aside to impart a little paternal wisdom. You like a girl, you want to please her. Nothin' pleases her like addressin' yourself to her little cunny as if it was the most precious jewelbox that ever was. Which it is. Women an' their quims are here to be a little bit of paradise on earth, boy, an' the sooner you realize that an' act accordingly, the happier you'll be. You make your girl happy, early an' often, by going down on her like she's the most dirtysweet bitchqueen in the world, an' there'll be very little she won't want to do for you. But you don't do it just for the sake of gettin' your knob polished, either -- you do it because there's nearly nothing a right-minded man likes better than the taste an' feel an' smell an' sight of his girl's cunny, an' making her wild, making her come with your mouth an' hands. It's the secret of life as a man, that is. An' every girl fucks better after she's had a bit of tongue.

He'd never, at that point, even touched a girl's breast except over two layers of fabric, and this information, imparted in such an intimate, man-to-man manner, frightened nearly as much as it excited him. He wondered afterwards if his father had any idea how much he'd revealed, with those few sentences -- and a few more about technique that he'd barely been able to take in through his waves of flushed embarrassment -- about Mamma, and what happened behind the mysterious door of their eternally candle-lit bedroom. He'd been unable to look his mother in the face for almost a week afterwards, to the point where she became convinced he'd done something terrible, and was riddled with guilt.

But the advice turned out to be sound -- amongst the soundest he'd ever had from Spike, who wasn't otherwise good for much in the way of guidance. He realized how much the first time he put it into practice, when he fell in love -- passionately, painfully and seemingly permanently, with that seventh grade girl and what she had in her jeans.

In high school, he had an interesting reputation.

Not a lot of real girlfriends, but a lot of practice.

At the moment, he seemed to be getting it right; Penelope was getting noisier, trying to fuck his mouth, one arm thrown over face. The face-concealment was a good sign: the best. He redoubled his efforts.

Later, fucked out, he lay boneless, drowsy, and she seemed to drowse too, her hair spread out on his chest.

He was nearly asleep when she spoke.

"Darling, what do you think of George?"

It was an effort to move his mouth. "As little as possible."

"Ha bloody ha, darling."

"Don't want to think about George at all."

"Don't you? Curious."

He stroked her hair, letting that 'curious' go by, and waited for whatever she'd say next.

"Be a poppet and light me a fag."

He reached for them on the bedside table, but instead of waiting for him to do it, she took them, sitting up, and began to smoke.

"So, twenty-one. Anything exciting come with that?"

"This was pretty exciting."

"Prezzies or dosh."

"Oh. Yeah. Trust fund. From an uncle who died a couple of years ago. Not my real uncle, actually. An old friend of my mother's."

"Masses of tin?"

"Not masses. A heap, though. A small heap. My sister's had the other half-heap, back when she was twenty-one. He never had any kids of his own. His wife died young." Well, Anya was over a thousand, technically, but she'd still looked young, and she'd somehow never managed to get pregnant, though she talked about it enough.

"That's jolly." She rested her arms on her drawn-up knee. "Going back to America in the spring?"

He liked this new direction. Half sat up, began to caress her arm with the back of one finger. Smiled when she gave off a little shiver. She didn't move the arm. "That depends."

"On?"

"Well, on if, say, I had a beautiful girlfriend in London."

"Heaps of tin," she said, implying it could buy anything.

"Is that what you care about?" He went on stroking her arm.

"Oh, what I care about... shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings. Plus, of course, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, et-alia."

"Penelope... I'd plan to stay, if you... ."

She put out the cigarette, smiling her loveliest smile, and slid back into his arms, dotting his face with kisses before settling more seriously on his mouth. Her hand went adventuring at the same time, and woke him up.

The intercom buzzer woke him. He reached for Penelope and found nothing. But he smelled her smoke, and there she was, already dressed, slipping on her shoes with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, her hair trailing down half over her face.

"Your doorbell's ringing or something."

"God. What time is it? And where are you going? I was going to -- "

"Darling, you know I'm going to the thing in Turkey this summer. The, um, digamabob."

"Oh, did you get that? That's great."

"Yes. I shall be archaeological to the top of my bent." She stood up, adjusting her stripey sweater, tugging on her skirt. "So... you know, last night was super."

He sat up, smiling. God, she was so beautiful. "Yeah, it was. You're so -- "

"So let's go out, you know, on the high point. Right?"

"What?"

The buzzer sounded again.

"You should probably answer that." She tossed him his trousers.

"Penelope, what are you talking about?"

"You've been so sweet, don't let's have a scene." She was rifling through her purse now. Finding what she wanted, she leaned over and began brushing vigorously from the nape. He couldn't see her face now, and half expected her to set fire to her hair with the cigarette. He also half-expected himself to go up in flames: Yank student in spontaneous combustion shock horror

She stood up, and her hair bounced down around her shoulders like hair on a shampoo commercial. She came to his side, dipped to kiss his cheek. "Happy birthday, Sin-Jin Summers. Hmm, your name is like a little sentence. St.John Summers -- but where?"

Not in Turkey.

"Oh, better still -- you really should turn 'em around and be St.John Summers Grieves. It makes a better sentence. St.John Summers Grieves." She put a hand through his hair. "Only you won't, will you? There's no point, really. Promise? And you really should answer that persistent nagging bell."

He couldn't move. She smoothed her hair, took up her bag. "Or I could, you know, on my way out?"

Buffy rang again. She couldn't imagine he was up and out already, it seemed too early for that.

A girl came out the building then, one of those tall striking girls with fantastic hair and black Italian sunglasses, wearing a striped jersey that made her look even more Parisian. She glanced at Buffy, and laughed suddenly. "Well, there. He won't grieve at all, because he's got you all lined up. Go on up and console him, darling, he's already all laid out in the bed, just add, you know, boiling water. Or whatsoever your fetish." She held the door, and Buffy passed through, confused.

Upstairs she found his flat door open. "Johnny? Are you here?"

The place was a shambles, as usual.

"Ma? Shit -- don't come in here!"

"I'm not... did something just happen?"

"This is not a very good time."

"I thought I'd take you out to a late breakfast. We never even gave you your birthday present last night." Buffy strolled around the room as she called out to him, unseen beyond the bedroom door, which was down a little corridor. He was studying European history; large uniniviting books were stacked on every surface and tumbled on the floor. The desk was a riot of papers and empty lager cans. Since when did he drink so much? Everything was dusty.

"I can't."

"There was this strange girl who let me in downstairs. Was she just coming from here?"

"Ma -- !"

"She was really something. I'm impressed."

"Oh God, don't be."

"I always wanted to have that -- I dunno, insouciant thing. I bet she's titled. Is she titled?"

"She's an Honorable, actually. Ma, for God's sake, would you go away?"

Buffy tip-toed to the bedroom and peered through the crack between the half-open door and the door-jamb, seeing him while he couldn't see her. He lay flat on his back in the bed, just as the girl had said, looking rather the worse for wear -- sweaty and pale.

"Johnny, aren't you feeling well?" She gave up pretense, and walked in, driven by her overwhelming urge to feel his forehead. He groaned and snatched at the sheet, trying to roll away before she reached him. "You look like shit."

"Oh thanks. I'm fine. And my name is Nick now. Go away. Look, I said I'd call you. You were supposed to wait for me to call you."

"Well, I couldn't wait. I'm your mother and I haven't seen you in four months. Hmm, you're not feverish."

"What I am is naked and fucked and about to start screaming if you don't get out."

"Did something just happen?" She sat on the side of the bed. "Because you know you can tell me, sweetheart."

He rolled onto his stomach with his face in the pillow. His shoulder blades trembled. Buffy sighed. God, he was just like his father.

"Okay, okay. I'll wait for you in the caff around the corner. Will you come?" She waited. No answer.

"Johnny." Then, "All right -- Nick."

"Mamma, please. You can't be here now."

"I'm sorry she wasn't nice to you, but you know -- "

"Fuck!"

Buffy got out of the bedroom ahead of his fists pummeling the headboard. She'd said the wrong thing again. Lately everything out of her mouth -- or into it, she thought, wincing -- was a miscalculation.

She was going to go straight out, but she couldn't pass the chair, where his nice coat was dumped in a heap, without picking it up. She shook it out, and smiled at herself; when exactly had she changed from the careless child strewing nice clothes around like rags? The coat hung lopsided from her hand, from something heavy in the left pocket. She pulled it out: a woman's wallet, in royal blue leather, so stuffed as to be nearly spherical. It didn't look like the kind of thing the Honorable Whosits would carry; Buffy flipped it open. The ID showed a pretty, sweet-faced young woman with dark hair. Caro Banville. Caro had a big fistful of credit cards, plenty of banknotes, a fortune in weighty pound coins, and every receipt she'd ever been handed, apparently.

"Sweetheart," she called, "does Caro know you have her wallet?"

The shower was on, of course he couldn't hear her. Buffy hung the coat in the closet, and sat in the now empty chair, cradling the wallet in her lap, and picked up a Sunday Observer Magazine from the floor.

He came into the room wrapped in a towel, hair dripping, and started. Before he turned abruptly, Buffy thought he looked like he'd been crying. "You were supposed to be waiting for me at the caff."

"Your friend is probably frantic about her wallet."

"What wallet? What friend?"

She held it up. "I found this in your coat pocket."

"You're rifling my coat pockets now?" He came up to her slowly and took the wallet, turning it in his hands as if he wasn't sure what it was. "I've never seen this before in my life."

"It's Caro's."

"Who's Caro?" He flipped the wallet open, glanced at the ID. "Oh -- this... this is strange. It's the woman from the taxi last night."

"What?"

"Oh, I shared a cab with this lady. I don't know how her wallet got into my coat. Unless... she was kind of drunk, and she leaned into me before we got into the car. Maybe it fell into my pocket then." He shrugged. "I was kinda drunk too."

"You're not turning into the Artful Dodger, are you?" She smiled up at him, hoping to get an answering smile, something to break the frozen look on his face. He was trying so hard not to look miserable, it was obvious even to her, Oblivio-girl.

"You think I'm a thief? No, that would be Papa."

"Your father is not -- !" Not lately, anyway. "Now there you go! You always say something mean, and then -- "

"It's not mean, it's true. And he'd be the first to say so. He's quite a role-model."

"Johnny -- "

"Oh shut it."

She opened her mouth to shout at him, then stopped. What was the point? He wasn't listening. "Baby, we just love you. I'll leave you alone now, but will you come to the flat later? I think there'll be a surprise there."

"I've had enough surprises today. Don't think I can take another one." He walked away. She heard him banging around in the bedroom.

"Please." The word echoed in her head as she said it. The backs of her eyes burned. She'd barely slept all night, and hadn't seen Spike yet that day -- she'd gently tried the knob on the guest room door in the morning, and found it locked. She wondered if he could sleep either, and suspected he was sleeping fine.

"Yeah, all right."

"Okay. I'll see you later, Johnny. Call this girl about her wallet before you do anything else. She must be going crazy wondering how she lost it."

"Yeah, I will."

He didn't come out of the other room. Buffy let herself out.

Hung-over and dazed, he poured sugar into his mug in the vain hope that the sweetness might lift his spirits.

Penelope. She'd been... just so incredibly hot last night. Hot, and affectionate, and she'd remembered his birthday, and blew him without even being asked. He might've misunderstood her. Why would she treat him like that? She knew he adored her, and she'd seen him almost every time he asked her since the term started. She'd greeted him so exuberantly when he came into the pub last night. So how could she say -- ? Especially right after they'd had what was probably their best sex ever -- both before and after she asked him what he thought about... Christ. George.

She'd had the nerve to tell him right there in his bed that she was about to kick him over for George. And then to give him a last pity fuck to seal the deal.

She must've thought that was really funny.

If he found her, she'd just be with George, and she'd pretend she didn't quite know what he was talking about. Fuck. Now he thought about it, he'd seen her do the like before, to other guys, the bitch. Asking him what he was going to do after graduation, as if she gave a toss. She was probably telling George right now that he was a complete tosser and she was so glad to be rid of him. George would be smirking like he always did, and she'd stick her tongue in his mouth.

Fuck fuck fuck. He'd cried in the shower, feeling like the world's biggest turd, so why was he tearing up again now? He covered his face with his hands; his cheeks felt hot, his palms hotter. God he was such a freak, a freak raised by freaks, and they all could tell, if not right away, then eventually. They'd be able to tell everywhere he went.

He picked up the phone, pressed the speed dial.

By the third ring he was muttering curses. On the seventh, he heard This is voicemail for Jemima Whidders. Please leave a message.

"Jemmie. Fuck. Why aren't you answering? Isn't that the whole point of a mobile, that you should always be there? It's me. I'm not having a good day. I'm not having a good life. I might have to kill myself. Possibly in front of this girl who -- anyway, call me."

Jemima's unreachableness reminded him that he barely had anyone else to call. No one he could tell about this, without making himself even more of a prat than he already undeniably was.

George Christ. George.

Yesterday's mail lay on the strewn table. He picked it up in listless hands. A couple of bills, a flyer for pizza delivery, and a note from MacManus, his tutor.

Summers,

Given the state of your work this year, I cannot write the recommendations you're asking for. In my opinion you're not ready for graduate study. A year or two in the world -- perhaps some job -- might help you get your priorities sorted. Better come see me.

And again FUCK.

He balled the letter up and tossed it over his shoulder into the general confusion.

For a few moments he sat with his cheek on the desk, eyes closed, as if waiting for a guillotine to come down; as if wishing for it.

Then he remembered the wallet.

She opened the door with her key. The rooms of the large flat that she could see from here -- the sitting room, the kitchen -- were flooded with the pale watery light of a sunny English winter afternoon. She knew the windows were fitted with special glass, but it still startled her to walk into a place where he was and find the windows seemingly undefended.

They'd never had anything like that at home in Sunnydale. Just the polarized glass Xander had installed in what had been her nursery, so he could come in to her during the day. But activating that made the glass black, and shut out the sun.

Setting her bag and gloves on the little table in the foyer, Jemima called "Papa? Are you here?"

At this hour he might be asleep, but she knew he wouldn't mind being roused, not by her.

When she found him in the guest bedroom, raising a yawning face from the pillow, she understood why her mother had been so urgent on the phone early that morning, asking her to come.

She'd been getting ready to come anyway, feeling furtive, so that worked out well. Not that going to see Papa was any more mentionable at home than her original purpose for the trip.

The bedroom door was ajar, but she didn't go in. "I'll heat you up a mug. Meet me in the kitchen."

The place was both comfortable and rather intimidating, in the way of things belonging to the Council. It was designated for the use of the Slayer, for her lifetime, although this was understood only to mean Buffy. Buffy was the only slayer in history who had lived so long, and who was so unique in other ways -- unique among the unique. The other slayer -- the one in what she thought of as the Faith line -- was always a young girl who would've had no use for such a place, just as the Council had no use for her in London. There was a new one every two or three years or so. She didn't like getting to know them anymore.

The microwave dinged.

"Hullo, Pudding."

He'd dressed -- soft white shirt, trousers -- but his hair stood up in bed-tufts. She went into his arms. "Papa." It had been so long.

He took a deep breath of her, held it for a moment in which she felt his thoughts ticking over, then pulled her in even tighter. Biting her lip, she let herself bask in the buttery radiance of his affection, before she'd have to complicate it with speech, about herself, or him.

He let her go a little, just enough to look at her. His gaze was so gentle -- far too gentle for what she'd have to tell.

"Oh, my girl, my girl. So my little one's going to -- "

She shook her head fast, to preclude what she couldn't bear to hear him say. "I've got to end it. Actually that's why I'm here -- in London. There's an appointment."

His head tilted. She might melt as he looked at her that way. She couldn't allow herself that. "I tried, I tried, I don't know why I did... but it isn't working out."

He pulled her into his chest again. No one could hold her like he did. Her eyes were very dry, eyes and nose and mouth, sere, thirsty. Feeling that absence already, feeling the failure. Failure of what should never have been. Complete waste of ten years she'd never have back again.

"You never wanted me to have anything to do with him and God, you were so right!"

"Had to find out for yourself, tho', didn't you, Sweetness?"

She shook her head. "No. I was stupid. I've gone on being stupid. I don't know why I went back to him this time."

"He's your husband."

"Was. Why did I have to ever listen to another word he -- " It took her seven years to divorce him, and then she'd been foolish enough to let him get to her again. To let him exact that promise, that she'd come back, try to make things right... a promise that included agreeing not to see her parents. I want us to be together, he'd said to try honestly and that has to mean no... no insidious influences. I still think we can make it, if only you'll meet me halfway... .

Spike kissed the top of her head, stroked her hair. She pressed her cheek against his silent chest, let her eyes fall closed. Why hadn't she seen, back then, how simple it was? Milo wanting to rescue her, by charm, then seduction, then cajolery, and finally blunt psychological force, from... from just this. From being held in her father's arms. That was what it finally came down to, after she peeled away all the layers and layers of complicated mystical, philosophical mumbo-jumbo he spouted.

Ten years.

"You should've locked me up until I was -- twenty-one, at least. Twenty-five."

"Would've done if I could, Petal. But then you cry, y'see, an' I -- "

She'd let Milo keep her from them, let him fill her head up with his towering rationalizations, made her doubt her own memories, her own experience. Because he didn't trust Spike, didn't trust Buffy. What they were, how they lived, their histories and powers. He was old school Council. And he'd picked her out, she was sure now, not because he really liked her, but because he could make her into the princess in his personal fairy tale, use her to prove all his theories to himself. She'd been so bowled over by him, he must've craved the mirror of himself he saw in her limpid innocent eyes. You're safe now, he'd told her once, I've caught you early enough, and you're safe. You'll be pure again, you'll see.

He could throw around words like that. Pure. Taint. Sully. Relinquish.

She'd mistaken that for love and lost so much time.

Spike had waited for her, though. He'd been angry -- plenty angry, plenty of times. He'd never made it the least bit easy. But he'd never given up on her, he'd waited for the scales to fall, and caught her when they did.

"It shouldn't be legal for eighteen year olds to elope. I should've... I should've waited to get your blessing. If I'd done that -- "

"Gave it you, though, didn't I?"

Afterwards, he had, with a wealth of misgiving in his eyes, unable to refuse her anything, even as she tried to pretend she didn't see how it killed him. But he'd never agreed that it would be all right, her marrying into the Whidders clan. He'd tried to hide that, for her sake, when it was a fait accompli. A stab of pain reminded her of the terrible confusion she'd felt then -- and years afterwards -- loving them, trying to be loyal to her family, when Milo expected her to be led by him, to see them the way he did. Two opposed ideas that never could merge, or coexist.

She lifted her head to look at Spike. "I haven't told him about this. It's not his decision."

"An' you're sure you -- "

"Don't ask me that."

"Not trying to knock you off your pins. Just wondering if maybe you wanted me to talk you through it."

She shook her head, cutting off the possibility. "Don't tell Mamma. It would make her sad, and... I think she's sad already."

"All right."

"Papa. Why is she sad? She phoned me early this morning -- she didn't know I was coming up to town, she asked me if I could get away and come to you, and it sounded like... ."

"Asked you to come to me, but it's her bein' sad you're worried about?"

"Something's happened between you, hasn't it?" She snuggled against him again. "I guess I shouldn't pry. Oh God, Papa, it's so good to see you. I have been so stupid. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I let him keep me keep me away."

"Ssh, ssh. Not hearin' sorries from you. Never necessary. An' not stupid, Pudding. Only young."

She laughed. "And now I'm not anymore. So there's that sorted."

"Twenty-nine's plenty young."

"You understand, right? Why I can't go through -- "

He nodded, and she had to avert her eyes from his.

"Promise me you won't tell anyone. Mamma or Johnny or anyone."

"Already promised. Do you want me to go with you?"

"Oh gee. Oh, that's so... but no." She twined her fingers in with his. How often he'd told her the story, of her own origin, how she'd survived two separate trips to the clinic. How he'd been for ending her, because he was afraid. For Buffy. And of himself. "No, I'm going to go alone."

"You'll stay here."

"I'm going to stay with a friend. If I come back here, Mamma -- "

"Yeah, right. But a little later, Jemmie. You're not going to go back up to York, are you? Back to him."

She hadn't even thought that far ahead.

"Plenty of room. We'll be here awhile. Sort yourself out."

"Maybe. Thanks. I'll see." She drew back. Noticed the empty mug on the counter. "Oh, your drink. It'll be cold now."

"Zap it again."

"But you say it's never as nice, reheated. Papa, what's going on with you and Mamma? I wish you'd tell me."

She caught him off-guard, and for a moment she really thought he'd answer her. Then he smiled, an off-kilter smile that seemed to say, ah ah ah, you thought you had me.

"You'll stay a while today, anyhow? Want to hear all about -- want to look at you. Know you're not happy, but I'm happy you're here." His smile deepened, became about her. His constantly-renewing pleasure in her. "Keep me company at least until the sun goes down."

She answered the smile, squeezing his hands in hers, and it was then, when she was smiling hardest, to reassure him, to show how much she loved him and how conscious she was of all her idiotic foolishness, that the tears came.

He lifted them off her cheeks with his thumbs. "Sssh, sssh. There's time, Sweetness. You'll have another husband if you want one, an' there'll be another... when you're ready. An' you know I'm not going anywhere. We'll make it up, you an' me."

Her body felt light, as if she was about to fall, and be caught. She would've given in to the luxury of sobbing then, if not for the sound of a key in the lock. She jerked back, turned the kitchen tap on full, and splashed her face, then made a good thing of blotting it carefully in the dishtowel. When she looked up, she was able to smile without trembling.

"Well, Mamma, you asked for me, and here I am."

Buffy was making coffee or something in the kitchen, but Jemima followed him into the sitting room, to cuddle up on the sofa like a little girl, head on his shoulder. Letting him enjoy her, and, for a little while, this secret grandchild he'd scented as soon as she'd come into his arms a half hour ago.

Couldn't tell her what he really thought, which was that he hated her decision to end it. Didn't want to lose any of his few darlings, even one he'd only just learned about. He'd always looked forward to the children she might have, more connections between him and real Life, company for the future.

Back at the beginning, when Jem was just a curl of surprise inside her mother's body, he'd never imagined Buffy would be alive nearly thirty years later. It was such an impossibility he'd discarded even fantasies about it -- kept himself, where she was concerned, strictly in the moment. Pretty easy, since his demon never did favor thinking much ahead.

Buffy seemed half gone to him now. He missed her while she was right there in the room with him. Dreamed of her in his sleep and awoke remembering how she'd returned to him reeking of Saleem. Wanted to talk to her like he used to, but couldn't summon up the words. She was right there, but he couldn't make himself reach for her.

Couldn't reach beyond the constant throb of her betrayal, which so filled him that he couldn't think of or approach her in any other light. What she'd done was a distorting medium. Through it, he questioned everything. Maybe she'd never really loved him at all. She'd been faithful all these years, but that didn't necessarily mean what his faith to her meant... it could be nothing more than that she hadn't seen anyone she liked better. Until Saleem.

She said it wasn't love with him. But if Saleem had survived the battle... ?

I didn't love him. She'd said it over and over since then.

If it wasn't love and its attendents grief and shock that he could smell pouring off her body after she returned worn and trembling from the big battle -- then what was love to Buffy? He thought after all these years that he knew the taste of all her truth, the sweetness in her she sometimes claimed wasn't there.

If that wasn't love with Saleem, that so shook her to her core, how could it have been love with him? Maybe she was right after all, years ago, when she'd said she just didn't know how. Didn't have it in her. Maybe he'd been fooling himself all these years.

He didn't know which was worse now, or better: that she love Saleem, or not. It was killing him.

"Papa, I'm sorry."

"Told you, you don't have to say -- "

"I don't mean about me. I'm sorry... about whatever it is that has you so down."

"You're a good girl."

At least he had Jemima back now -- perhaps -- he hated the idea of a trade, but wasn't such a fool as not to know: if she went ahead and had the baby, it would just become another of Milo's subjects. He'd never be allowed to know the child, not while it was a child, anyhow. So maybe better this way, if Jem really would do it this time, leave that righteous twat for good and all. He'd been so angry when she drifted back to him, but it was so like her soft affectionate nature, to be unable to refuse any needy call. She was more like Tara, in a way, than she was like either him or Buffy. Funny that.

"Have you fallen out with Mamma? I know you two -- that never lasts long -- "

"Hush."

Buffy came in, balancing three hot mugs.

"Don't you two look comfy."

"Sit here with us." She reached for her coffee, and patted the cushion on her other side. "Jem sandwich. Like we used to."

Buffy hesitated; her eyes darted to his, as if asking permission. "Lovely to have our girl with us again," Spike said.

She took this as affirmative, and sat. Jem put an arm around her, pulled her in to nuzzle her neck. "New perfume?"

"No," Buffy said.

"Something feels different."

"I'm glad you could come. Was it hard to get away?"

"Milo is out of the country just now. Apparently there's some new kind of demon in the north of Sweden." She looked into her mug. "I -- it was a coincidence, you calling today. I was on my way out anyway. I... I've left him. He doesn't know yet, obviously, but... I'm not going back."

Spike watched Buffy enact the proper maternal reaction -- glad cry of surprise, skeptical questioning, followed by more exclamations of relief and satisfaction. They shifted to embrace more fully, mother and daughter who looked like sisters, their two glossy heads together, but then Jemima took her place again curled against his side.

Buffy looked at him across their daughter's head. "This is wonderful." Her eyes full of pleading.

"It is." His arm was around Jem, it was nothing to lift his hand a little further and curve it around Buffy's cheek. She smiled, her eyes glistening, turning her head so she could put a kiss in his palm.

Between them, Jemima watched and smiled.

Like we used to.

"Typical. The three peas in the pod."

He was with them suddenly. No one heard him come in.

Jemima leapt up. "Sluggo! C'mere!"

"His name's Nick now." Their two voices in chorus, cut off abruptly. Spike didn't look at her. His hand was warm where he'd touched her, and he wondered why he'd done it.

In front of them, Jem and Johnny embraced, she laughing, he complaining about something as he rocked her in his arms -- a telephone message, neglect and abandonment and ruination.

She laughing more, pretending to shake him. "Stop being such a little pill!" Then more serious, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Sucks to be me, right now." He glanced at Buffy. "This the surprise you promised me?" Then at Jemima again, "How'd you get him to let you out of the asylum?"

"Snuck out." The news was repeated again.

Johnny danced her around in a circle, then noticing the wedding band still on her finger, made her take it off.

"Shall we pitch it into the Thames?"

"Not until it's official. And then -- yes!"

Still seated on the couch, Buffy turned the ring on her own finger. "Johnny, sweetheart, did you call that woman? About her wallet?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Gonna take it over to her later."

Watching them, Spike felt invisible. Remembered suddenly that last Christmas, 1879, when it was just him, Mamma, and sister Jemmie left in the house that had once held three more, their doings and chatter and faith and hope. Just a few miles and a hundred and fifty years away from here. Remembered how they'd moved around one another in the chilly drawing room as if they were all the wrong ends of magnets, repelling. Pretending to enjoy themselves, pretending to be glad because it was the time of year for gladness. Each smiling for the sake of the others, wrapping little parcels, pulling crackers, slipping oranges into stockings. Why had they pretended? Wouldn't it have been better to admit to each other that they were frightened and bereft? What use all that dissembling?

He rose. "Come here, son. Come tell me something."

Johnny looked up, with that same sullen face as the night before.

"Not gonna bite you, boy. Let's go in here."

Led the way into the study, a room lined with leather-bound books that must've been discards from the Council's collection -- nothing he or Buffy ever cared to crack, but they gave the room its tone.

"What?" Johnny said.

"Haven't wished you a happy birthday yet."

Easy to see he wasn't any happier than the rest of them. He'd gotten lucky last night, but along with that Spike could smell the underlying sourness of sudden disappointment.

"If she's been a cunt to you, forget her. That's my advice."

Advice he'd never taken himself in his entire life, but maybe the boy would be different.

Johnny made a face. "Why do you do that? It weirds me out. It's like mind-reading. No -- it's more disturbing than mind-reading. Don't smell me."

"I can't help smelling you. I smell everything. S'like if I said to you, don't look."

"Yeah, but you don't have to make a thing of it. I'd prefer not to know that you, y'know, smell stuff."

"Just trying to help." Spike wondered at himself. Had things been so bad last time they'd met, in the summer? He hadn't thought so. Somehow in the intervening time, they'd also stopped touching each other. It left little to do.

He would try, though. "Twenty-one. Really. Congratulations. I'm proud of you."

His face went hard and closed. "That makes one of us."

"Told you. Your age, no bird's worth gettin' -- "

"Can we not do this?"

"You used to talk to me. You looked just then like you wanted to be drawn out."

"Do I smell like it, too?"

"No, you smell like a little shit's forgotten how to have a proper conversation."

"You only ever want to talk to me when it's about something wrong with me. You sense a weakness and there you are -- you want right in." Johnny raised a defiant chin. "That's a demon thing, so I guess it's just how you are."

"What, you think I'm trying to hurt you? Why would I want to do that?"

"I'm not saying you can help it -- but God, you're like a hawk, you just get right in there and -- "

"Look, 'm sorry if I growled at you last night."

"If!"

"Heard you say just now that something was up -- "

"I was talking to Jemmie."

Spike eyed him for any slightest crack in the veneer, then turned away. "When're you gonna forgive me for puttin' it to your mother?"

Johnny gasped, but no fast rejoinder followed. Guilt, disgust, anger scented the air, and then Spike had the room to himself.

"God." Johnny let his head loll against the seat back, eyes closed. Making a left turn, Jemima saw the white curve of his adam's apple silhouetted against the dark window. "They exhaust me."

"I don't know why they should. You just like posing as an exhausted youth. So where am I taking you exactly?"

Sighing, he flipped the wallet open again. "Montague Terrace. Do we know where that is?"

"Get the A to Z out of the glove box."

They drove in silence for a while, as she wondered whether to encourage him in this mood. She'd heard the voice mail from earlier, and was worried. As he'd known she'd be.

He seemed, not content in his silence, but determined not to be the first to break it.

"All right." She sighed. "Who is this girl over whom you're going to end it all?"

"Fuck the girl. I'm in trouble with my tutor. I may not get to graduate with my class. Come May I'll be nowhere."

"Nowhere? Please. You'll be right where you always are, Mr Drama-pants, and not exactly facing signing on, not with what Uncle Rupert left us. What are you talking about?"

He sighed again, furiously. "Everything's complicated. Things are just... nothing fits."

"Nothing?"

"Me. I don't fit."

"Oh, Sluggo. What does that mean? Your girlfriend broke up with you?"

"It's more than that. And she wasn't my girlfriend. I love her -- she knows how much -- and she didn't even have enough respect for me -- fuck it. Fuck it."

She glanced nervously at him as he rubbed his eyes. Was this going to be a repeat of that time he took the overdose? Winter break when he was seventeen, and she, temporarily separated from Milo, stayed with him while Spike and Buffy were off battling some... thing. She couldn't remember what. He'd taken an insane amount of pills -- so many that the excess probably saved him, making him so sick in the night that she woke and found him.

He'd denied afterwards that it was a suicide attempt and exacted her promise not to tell anyone. She hadn't told, although for a year afterwards she'd been jumpy as a cat every time either Spike or Buffy started to talk to her about him. If she'd made a mistake, it would be all on her.

"I think you'd better forget about the girl. It's your work I'm concerned about."

He was studying the A to Z now. "Here. Turn here, I think. It must be just up here."

The street was a long terrace of Edwardian houses. She stopped across from the number. "Do you want me to wait for you?"

"I'll get on the tube afterwards."

"Look, I've got something to do for the next couple of days, but we should spend the weekend together. If it's not raining we could take the boat to Kew, or go to Hampton Court."

"You're so quaint, Jemmie."

"I like those places and so do you."

"You're going to coddle me, and thereby exact terrible promises to shape up, aren't you? You'll wield tea in brown pots, and little cakes, to do your dirty work."

"Johnny, I don't want you to be unhappy."

"And yet we all are."

She smiled and touched his face. "I'll be better, once things are clear between me and Milo."

"Once there is no more 'you and Milo.'"

"Yes."

"Don't let him browbeat you."

"I promise."

"Good." He started to get out of the car. "I'll call you in a couple of days, then?"

"If you don't, I'll call you! Don't make me do that!" she laughed. He gave her a little backwards wave as he crossed the street. She watched him climb the steps to the red painted door of Caro Banville's lit-up house, the wallet in his hand. He was so handsome, it was easy to forget that he could be anything less than confident and successful. She'd wanted to help him, and felt now that she hadn't. He might've confided more if she'd answered the phone when he first called her that morning -- but she'd left it off during the whole drive down from York lest she get a call from Milo and have to confess her escape. As it was, all he'd done was drop a couple of bombs in her lap and leave her with them.

The house door opened. He turned and motioned her off before disappearing inside. She put the car in gear and set off.

"So do you think it's really over?" Buffy said. "The Milo Era?"

"Hope so."

"You hope so?"

He only shook his head. Buffy felt a twinge of anger; it was one thing for him to refuse to be her lover, or even her friend. But they were parents together no matter what. His manner now wasn't about indifference to Jemima -- far from it, Jemima was his constant passion. It was about her. About not caring enough for her to discuss what he cared for so much more.

"You don't still think it's my fault that she married him?"

"Bloody hell."

"You used to say -- "

"I used to say that she couldn't bear disappointing anyone. Wanted to love everyone, give herself to everyone whether they deserved it or not. He played on that. Played her like a sodding fiddle."

"And she turned out that way because I didn't love her enough when she was small."

"Never said that."

"You implied it."

"Buffy, I don't blame you. Jemmie is who she is. Better to be a warm little heart than -- "

"Than what I am?"

"Now you're twistin' everything -- "

"Oh God, I am." She pressed her hand to her mouth. "Spike, I'm sorry -- " That word again; saying it made her feel guilty, as if for trotting out something old and tired.

He was already moving away, and didn't turn to see her gesture. "Goin' out now. See you later."

She was so happy to have her wallet back. She danced and laughed and clapped her hands in a way that should've been sort of silly but wasn't: it was sexy. It implied things.

Honesty, she said, was so very rare these days. It called for champagne. He must stay and have a drink with her.

He was always happy to drink champagne on somebody else's dime. Happy to sink into a corner of the sofa, his legs wide apart, and let this pretty woman -- Caro Banville -- treat him like a hero.

She had music playing, something he'd never heard before, sort of sultry and exotic sounding. The room was all candlelit, the lights off. When he first came in he thought she must have a date coming, that she'd want to hustle him out before he arrived.

But he was the date. She meant to give him a nice reward, he could tell, for returning her things.

A reward, maybe, that would take all night.

She was smiling at him now over her champagne flute. She hadn't come near him yet; she perched at the far end of the long couch, her legs doubled under her. Her dress was made of velvet; it was low-cut and tight and dark-red. She wore pretty little high-heeled shoes -- the same ones he'd liked before, with the ribbons that wound round and round her slim ankles. Her hair fell forward over her shoulders and shimmered in the flickering golden light. She looked at him as if he delighted her. Not at all the way Penelope used to look, with that half-distracted air even when he was fucking her into the mattress.

Caro Banville looked at him like he was the only man on earth.

She didn't let his champagne flute empty. The bottle was one of those enormous ones -- bigger than a magnum. Ridiculous, really. She asked him a lot of questions, and she was so sympathetic, with her big eyes and pouty mouth and head set a little at one side, like a listening dog, that he found himself telling her all kinds of things: about Penelope and his course-work and how his tutor didn't understand him, and how the English could be so frustrating -- present company excepted -- friendly enough, maybe, on the surface, but hard to establish intimacy with. He was used to Californians, who were more straight-forward, perhaps, or perhaps it was just that the English thought Americans were funny.

She pouted. "You are lonely here. Alas, alas, there are so many lonely in London."

"I'm not, I'm fine, I -- "

"I can't think why such a beautiful man as you should be lonely. What was that silly Penlope thinking?"

"We don't have to talk about Penelope."

"If I was your lady friend, I should show you the proper attention." She tugged at the neckline of her dress, and for a moment he saw a flash of areole, wine-dark against the pale breast.

He stared. He felt light all over, his skin prickling under his clothes, it was like standing at the edge of a sharp drop, disorienting and exciting. "Would -- would you?"

She asked about his family.

There was no point in patrolling in London these days; the feral vamp population was nearly nil. Most of the undead here were wily non-hunters with investment portfolios and old houses whose windows were covered with heavy swags, dark and unimpeachable-seeming from the street.

Which was all to the good, Spike supposed, nodding to the barman in a dark little pub a couple of miles and a world away from the high-rise flat. Except that, wanting a spot of violence as he did now, options were limited to mixing it up with humans. And that was no fun -- you could stamp on skinheads getting out of order in a Paki neighborhood -- if you managed to stumble upon 'em in the act -- but you couldn't finish them off. Ditto for the common or garden variety bar brawl. Mix-up interruptus was worse than none at all.

He was itching for a fight to the death.

Knocking back his third boilermaker, the thought came: he wanted it with her.

Wanted to fight her, all out. Pour his rage onto her body, that she'd given to another man, beat her for disregarding him enough to do that. Make her suffer, make her hurt. Force her to defend herself at stake point. Get her down with his fangs at her throat: kill or be killed.

If she stayed her hand at the last second... let him live though he might kill her... he'd know then, wouldn't he? That she really cared? That she was still his?

Not really. She used to decline to slay him all the time, out of pity. Out of not taking him seriously.

He was impetuous and stupid but even so he could forsee how that would play out. She'd know he was testing her. She'd be angry, cry manipulation, and she'd leave him.

He couldn't turn back to her, couldn't make himself forgive her. But he knew if she left him, he'd die.

He reached for her, but she stayed in her corner of the sofa, far off -- farther off than she'd seemed a few glasses of champers ago. His mouth was moving, he was still talking against the ever-playing music, and she was smiling, nodding, sometimes laughing. She approached him only to refill his glass, and side-stepped quickly when he grabbed for her waist.

"Naughty naughty boy. The bottle isn't empty yet."

He had to stop drinking -- he might already be too drunk to fuck. And it was so obvious that was what she wanted, what she was goading him towards with her looks and her flashes of nipple and her trilling laughter. She wouldn't just plop herself in his lap, though.

He let the glass drop to the carpet, and launched himself at her.

He'd been right. He'd been right, right, right, so right. Caro Banville wasn't too drunk to get his jeans open lickety-split. Caro Banville wasn't wearing any underwear. Caro Banville wrapped her arms and legs around him and let out a happy growl when he sank into her.

Caro Banville was tight and muscular and knew how to move.

She rippled and squeezed and growled, so he wasn't sure anymore what he was drunk on.

She kissed him all over his face, and his neck. His skin felt fiery-hot; her kisses were cool yet inflaming.

She could nip with her cunt like no girl he'd ever had before.

"Oh you are so warm and lovely and pulsing. Oh, I shall miss that later. I never felt it with him, but I shall at least have the memory of you."

Girls said some amazing crap when they were getting fucked. He dicked her hard and fast, and she took it. Her ankles, still ribbon-wrapped, were on his shoulders. His face was buried in her hair, she was giving out high breathy cries that made the pent-up crazy feeling move up from his balls, spreading all through him.

"Come. Come, petkin. Come to me, pretty boy. You've come to me, you're mine -- " Her mouth fastened on his neck.

He seized up, rumbling, seismic -- and shot.

Her kiss beneath his jaw went on and on. He trembled, floating on the afterglow, his heart fluttering in his chest, and when she brought his numb mouth to her breast, he sipped the thickish liquid from her nipple, and was out.

The early morning waiting room was bright and full of plants, but everyone there was more or less solemn. A teenage girl with her mother was sobbing by the rain-flecked windows. Jemima had determined to be sensible about this; she'd already had her crisis, at home in York, when she realized she hated Milo, really hated him, and that the pregnancy couldn't go on either, because if it did she'd never really be free of him. She'd cried, and steeled herself, waiting for him to leave for Sweden so she could leave too.

All that was done, and now she had to just get through this part without a fuss. Afterwards she could grieve, and figure out some other life.

She had a book open in her lap, but she couldn't read. Reaching into her open bag, she pulled out her mobile. There were already five messages from Milo. She'd been afraid for a while to listen to them, just let them pile up. Was struck, when she finally played them, by how peremptory they were -- each more than the one before. It never occurred to him for a second that she might not be calling back because she was sick or in an accident.

But then, he wasn't stupid, he must know she was actively ignoring him. The last message, received late last night, said she was being childish, and thereby forcing him to fly back early.

Well, he'd find an empty house. Of course he'd come right to London then, right to her parents, wanting to know where she was hiding. But by then it would be too late, she'd be finished with this part.

One of the staff came up to her. "Mrs Whidders, do you have somebody who'll be here to take you home after the procedure?"

"No, I was going to just phone for a taxi."

"We really do recommend that you don't leave alone. You may feel faint or a bit ill afterwards."

"I'm sure I -- "

"Haven't you a friend to call?" The woman looked pointedly at the mobile in her hand. "You just have time before we bring you inside to prep you."

She glanced at the window. From where she sat, she saw only an expanse of grey sky through rivulets of wet. "Is it supposed to clear up today?"

"What? Oh -- I heard just now on the radio that we won't see the sun again until the weekend."

"Thanks. I'll call now. It's all right."

The woman walked away. Jemima pressed the speed dial, and waited.

"Papa."

He groaned. She'd awakened him, then, and from... "Hangover?"

"Never mind that, Petal. What is it?"

The tightness in her eased a little. This was like him. No matter what, she was always Petal, or Pudding. Always his little girl.

She heard her name called and glanced up. A nurse in white was holding a door open.

She started to her feet. "Papa, I'm at the clinic. Could you -- could you be here when it's over?"

He awoke not knowing where he was. Couldn't open his eyes. He was lying under something heavy. Tried to shout, but when he opened his mouth, it was suddenly filled with grit.

He spasmed, kicking, thrusting his arms -- and suddenly he was sitting up. There was absolutely no light, but somehow he could see -- he was sitting in a large box filled with earth, in a cellar. He'd been covered up, dirt was stuck to his hair, his skin. He wasn't wearing any clothes.

He screamed.

Above, footsteps scurrying across the ceiling. A sudden wedge of golden light.

"Baby's awake!"

Her heels clattered on the wooden stairs. Caro Banville loomed at the end of the box, her face alight with joy. "I did not expect you so soon! You're an early riser." She laughed. "That bodes well -- you're eager, my lovely." She put out one slender white arm towards him, the fingers of the hand opening and shutting as if to snatch something out of the air. He grasped her hand. She pulled.

"Caro, how did I -- " He stopped. He knew.

So this was what it felt like. No!

"Oh God. You turned me! You made me into -- shit. Shit." Buffy's face loomed in his mind, the largeness of her shock and disappointment flooding his every new sense. "I'm a vampire. No. No. I can't be a vampire! My mother's gonna kill me!"

Her mouth drew down into a moue. "The Slayer will do nothing of the sort. That's not in my plan at all."

"Your plan?" He burst into tears. "Where are my clothes? I have to get out of here!" He tried to barrel past her, but she blocked him.

"Caro! Please -- "

"Silly boy. I'm not Caro. Caro was a too-generous girl who shared a hansom with a stranger. She was quite tasty, though, and such a nice maisonette she left for me." She was pulling him now, up the stairs. He seemed to float. The effort of climbing was nil. He felt so strong -- and so hungry. "You must know who I am."

They reached the top of the stairs; she pulled him through the kitchen and back into the sitting room, still candle-lit. All those flickering votives, on every surface... just like his parents' bedroom back in Sunnydale.

She was game-faced now, regarding him with wide yellow eyes. "You must know... he must have told you about me... for you, pretty petkin, are your father's son. Who is my son. And was my knight and my lover. And now you are all that, and we shall be together for a long long time, all feasting and fun."

"Drusilla. You're Drusilla? I thought you were -- "

"Dead?" She was disdainful. "Did my Spike tell you that? And you believed him? He never was a good liar. I tried and tried to teach him -- "

"No. He... he never told me anything about you. He wouldn't... wouldn't talk about you." Standing there, barefoot and naked in the flickering glow, Johnny saw his whole life as if in a long perspective, remembered everything his father had ever said to him about his own past -- and realized it was nearly nothing. He'd never questioned him, and Spike never volunteered. He only knew about Drusilla at all because Uncle Rupert or Uncle Xander had sometimes mentioned her. He'd never been curious enough to look her up. He didn't want anything to do with all the musty vampire lore.

"He let them put bits in his head. They invaded his poor pretty head. Slayer bits. But even before that, he turned away from me. He wanted to love the ones who hated him, and he forgot how to love poor me." She drooped as she spoke, then brightened. "But they made you just for me... and I have waited for you. I have waited while the stars twirled, until you were ripe." She came close, pressed herself against him. The velvet of her dress was soft; her sinuous body hard beneath it. "We will have such larks, my darling. We shall be all in all to one another."

He still wanted to resist her, her touch, her words, the craziness of her confidence. But his cock was rising against her belly, helped by the way she ground against him, and then he was hungry, he was ravenous. He smelled something -- something beyond her perfume, something that smelled like fear. Like food. Suddenly his mouth was full of fangs, and his face -- he touched it. His face was a different shape. It was like hers.

She smiled up at him. "Such a handsome one it is. I knew it would be." She touched his brow and his mouth. "Come see what mumsy's got waiting specially for you."

She wrapped a hand around his cock, and tugged him towards the dining room.

He saw it now, what he'd smelled a moment ago. A girl his age, bound hand and foot, mouth sealed with duct tape. She lay on the dining table, and when she saw them peering in at her from the doorway, she began to whimper.

"She's for you," Drusilla said, letting go of his erection and giving him a pat on the behind. "Now let me see you eat her all up."

Spike was grateful for the call, because he always was grateful for a chance to help Jemima -- too rare since she'd married that Milo wanker -- and because it was an excuse to walk out on Buffy for a while.

Jemima was pale as a used-up victim when she appeared in the clinic waiting room, clutching her bag and a sheet of instructions. But she held her chin up, and smiled when she saw him. The nurse with her smiled too; Spike could see she thought they made a handsome couple.

In another couple of decades, they'd take him for her son.

"All right, Pudding?"

"Not too bad."

"Shall I carry you to the car?"

She almost laughed as she shook her head. "No such dramatic gesture needed."

Jemima's friend met them at the door. She introduced him as "my dear friend Spike," and she said, "Nice to meet you, come in." She seemed to think they were a couple, and mostly left them alone, going out for the evening. They watched movies on the telly, cuddled together on the sofa. She smelled now only of herself, tinged with the high smell of a body that's been stirred around inside.

Milo's get, he reminded himself. Milo's get, and so none of theirs. There would be others, later, when she found a good man. She wouldn't make the same mistake again. She'd made it twice, but not a third time.

At midnight she let him carry her upstairs, setting her down at the bathroom doorway with a kiss. "I'll kip on the sofa. You need anything in the night, just speak out, you know I'll hear you."

"Shouldn't you call Mamma?"

"Your mother's not expecting me."

"But -- "

"Didn't tell her. A promise's a promise. But it's all right. I'm yours long as you need me."

She seemed uncertain, but nodded.

"You're my brave girl. All brave an' shining."

"You're so good to me." She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Then, her hand on the bathroom doorknob, she turned back to him. "Papa -- show me your other face."

She asked for this sometimes, unpredictably. "Why?"

"I want to see it. I like it."

He fanged out. She smiled softly, and touched her fingertip to the ridge of his nose. "Milo wanted me to hate you. Why didn't I see right away, how wrong that was?"

"He didn't know me." He knew. He knew more than you ever have or will, sweet loving girl, he knew about the iceberg of me and you know only the tip that glitters in the sun.

"When you say things like that, it's only so I won't feel bad."

"Never want you to feel bad, Jemmie. Never on my account. Go on now, get your sleep."

She kissed him again, and slipped into the bathroom, shutting the door with a quiet click behind her. He knew she did it that way because even putting a door between herself and anyone she loved might feel too exclusionary, unless she did it very gently.

How hard it must've been for her, to separate herself from that beginning of a child.

Giving J a bit of attention. Back when I'm back.

Buffy crumpled the note. He'd done this before, since Saleem, without leaving a note, so she supposed she ought to be grateful.

The first time he went AWOL, she'd been sure he'd left her. Told Willow and her sister in separate, tearful late night phone calls. Willow, as always, tried to accomodate Buffy's misstep, explain it away, take her side. Dawn was quieter, her what did you expect? unsaid but obvious. She'd asked her sister not to tell Xander. Xander was closer to Spike these days than he was to her. He wouldn't have much sympathy, if he found out what she'd done with Saleem. "He's not there with you, is he?" only thinking to ask when it would've been too late to keep him from overhearing if he was. "No," Dawn said, "not tonight." Buffy wondered, as she always did, why Xander and Dawn didn't get married, or at least live together, but she'd learned not to ask.

Now she called no-one. Never mind that she'd have liked to see her daughter herself; she'd seen more of her in the last few years than Spike had, but this visit to London was still their first reunion since she'd gone back to try again with with her husband.

Spike would come back when he was ready. He'd returned the other times, after a few silent days, looking like he'd been on a bender.

She wondered how long this was all going to last.

Lately she wondered that alot. What it meant, that her friends all looked fifty, while she looked just as she had when Willow brought her back from the dead. Did that mean she was immortal the way Spike was immortal? Or would all this non-aging catch up to her suddenly one day, turn into some cancer that would rip through her in a month?

The Council knew nothing about any Slayer who survived past the age of twenty-five. None of them had been resurrected as she had.

The Council's medical officers, who gave her a physical once a year, said she was biologically twenty-two years old. She showed no sign of nearing menopause. No sign of anything breaking down or using up or running out. Spike said he had it on good authority that she was a sort of angel, and therefore the normal rules didn't apply. But that had to be his poetic fancy.

Normal rules never had applied to her, she supposed.

It wasn't a cake-walk, this non-aging thing. Not when her friends were starting to look -- sinewy. Not when a store clerk mistook her and Dawn for mother and daughter the last time they were together.

Not when she thought, as she often did in the middle of the night, about how she might well live on like this after her contemporaries and then her children were gone. With no one to know her well, except Spike.

Much as she loved and needed him, that prospect... had a chill to it.

She'd spoken to Angel about it. A late-night phone call from Reykjavik to LA, one of the times when Spike wasn't there. Hoped he'd have some words of wisdom for her.

But he'd reminded her that before they met, he'd spent decades disconnected, drifting from one place to the next, without associates and sometimes without a home. And now he was facing the same thing she was. Even more so. "Wes... there's very little left of Wes except his mind. That's still strong, but... the cancer's made him a fragile old man. Hollowed him out. Every day I go to see him I think 'this could be it.'"

His best friend. He had younger people around him too, his "minions" as Spike called them with a sneer; those who helped him with the work as Wes and Cordy once had. He spoke of them with familiarity, with love. But no one was a replacement for Wes.

And Angel still denied himself a partner.

"You'll be all right," he told her. "I'll always be here for you, Buffy. But more important, Spike will take care of you. You take care of each other, and it'll be all right."

She didn't tell him that night that she had no idea where Spike was, or if he'd come back to her.

The girl's eyes were enormous. He'd really never seen fear like that before, at least not outside a news photograph. Part of him wanted to study it, memorize it. He realized the sight of it, its stink, gave him pleasure. An anticipatory pleasure. His belly rumbled. The hunger was intense, as if he'd never ever been fed, as if he was hollow inside. It wasn't a human hunger. Suddenly he thought of his father. Was startled that he hadn't thought of him yet: after all, he was like him now, made that way by the vampire who'd made Spike long ago.

Spike knew this hunger and resisted it.

Christ, how?

And what for?

With this thought, a new discovery: something he'd always carried within himself was missing. He didn't care what became of this stranger in front of him. Her fear, coming off her in hot waves, roused no compassion. It was important only in that it whetted his appetite. Made him smile, made his cock harder.

He grabbed the bound girl by the hair at the back of her head, yanking it up off the table's glossy surface. His fangs didn't go into her like a hot knife into butter; the skin resisted for a moment, then gave way with a messy crunch. She squeaked through the gag. His mouth filled with blood, hot, alive. It ran out the corners of his lips, too much to swallow it all at first. His hunger surged, and a wild bolt of joy rippled through him.

At his back, Drusilla was singing a little nonsense song in the voice of a fairy. Suddenly he wondered what she looked like naked. He could barely recall what it had been like to fuck her, he'd been too drunk. He wished he could remember exactly what her bite felt like, but that was lost in the maelstrom of that last quarter hour that he could not grasp, as it is impossible to grasp the sensation of falling asleep.

Letting the girl's head fall, he turned to her. She sang, doing a snaky dance, fingers stirring the air like it was water. He shot out a hand, hooked the collar of her dress, and tore it open. Drusilla let out a delighted scream. Her body was pale as a peeled banana, the areoles of her small pointed breasts nearly as dark as her scrim of cunt hair. He pushed her down on top of the hyperventilating girl, who writhed and mewled through the tape. Drusilla cooed, outstretching her arms and legs. Her hair fell across the other girl's face.

He climbed on top of them both.

Left them both limp and spent when he finally rolled off, smirched and sticky and sated.

Time for a bathe.

He drowsed in the steamy heat, immersed to his chin, satisfied with himself and everything around him, until Drusilla appeared in the bathroom doorway. She was still naked, her body marked with bloody smears and the bites and bruises he'd just inflicted on her. She held her breasts in her two hands, pushing them together. He'd gnawed her nipples, and they were swollen. She regarded them with a contemplative look.

"Come here. Let me see those."

She bent over him, her hair falling softly against his face as she presented her breasts. They tasted of blood -- hers and the victim's. He licked the rusty stains, then sucked one distended nipple into his mouth as she moaned. With one wet soapy hand he traced the inside of Drusilla's thigh, then grasped her cunt.

This woman had belonged to his father -- rather, he'd belonged to her. He knew that much, courtesy of Uncle Rupert, and knew also that she'd thrown him over because he lost his ability to satisfy her. Lost it when he became attracted to the Slayer.

If not for that, he would still be with Drusilla, and he himself would never have been born. He gnawed at the nub of flesh with his blunt teeth, working his fingers into her. Drusilla gasped and giggled. He pulled her to him by her cunt, looked up into her downturned face.

Things happen for a reason, Spike used to say to him when, as a boy, he bemoaned consequences. He didn't know yet what was the reason for this, but he'd already realized he liked it. Liked it better than anything that had ever happened to him before. He'd never known he could feel so entirely free.

He shoved his fingers higher, tightened his thumb over her clit. He raised his arm, hefting her by her sex until her toes barely touched the floor. Her gaze widened. It was adoring.

"Let's get one thing straight right now," he said. "I'm not my father."

She wriggled against the pressure of his hand, squeezing his fingers until an orgasmic tremor took her in a long shiver.

"No, petkin. You are yourself."

He lifted her higher at the end of his outstretched arm. He was immensely strong now. He could do anything. She balanced, her legs dangling, hands in her hair, looking rapacious and pleased. Then he let her fall, caught her, bone against bone in the splash. She let out a happy scream, and another when he twisted her hair in his fist to get at her mouth. Kissing her was sublime. In the hot water they were both warm, slippery, everywhere moist and sensitive. She shifted in and out of game face as he explored her mouth, still holding her tight by the hair as his other hand took possession once more of her sex. Her little wounds bled again, turning the bathwater a delicate rose. He sucked at her breasts, then slid down into the water.

When he was a child they'd gone on beach vacations, in an isolated place on the Pacific coastline of Mexico that was lent by someone Uncle Rupert knew. As the last tinge of pink and orange disappeared from the horizon each evening, Spike would emerge from the house whose windows were always slatted against the sun, and run into the ocean, diving beneath the surf and disappearing for long awful minutes together. Watching from the sand, he'd be terrified, anxiously scanning the dark shifting water, waiting for Papa's white head to pop up, the white arm to lift in a wave. He'd heard it explained that Papa didn't need to breathe, and that there was nothing to fear when he swam far far out beyond the breakers. He wouldn't tire, and he wouldn't drown. But it was so hard to believe, and every time he felt the awful suspense, thinking that this time surely Papa would fail to appear above the surface of the water. He'd hold his own breath, and have to gasp for air long before Spike crested the surface.

When he did, Johnny was relieved, and at the same time felt a low-down tickle of disappointment in his belly.

And then often at night, when he was supposed to be asleep, he'd get out of bed. From his room at the top of the house he could see the whole expanse of moonlit beach where his mother was now swimming with her husband. It was a silent tableau, silvery and magical. When she was with Papa like that, Buffy never glanced back at the house. He watched her, his lip sucked up beneath his teeth, feeling his pulse there, wondering if she remembered him at all at that moment. The night was theirs, and the very fact that he was a child and supposed to be asleep made him feel excluded not just from their togetherness, but from everything adult and mysterious and therefore worth-while. He saw them swim out together, their two heads side by side on the dark surface, and then Spike would be gone, and Buffy floated, gazing up at the sky. He would stand at the window for as long as it took for his father to emerge from his long long dive, to make sure he brought Buffy back to shore.

He didn't understand what he was watching for a long time, not until the day he overheard Dawn and Willow, on a visit, whispering and laughing when they thought he wasn't nearby. The understanding crushed him. He couldn't get up anymore to watch over his mother. Instead he lay in bed, eyes squeezed shut, unable to think about anything but this thing he was't supposed to know about, that filled him with unease and dread.

All of this flashed through his mind in the second it took to slip beneath the surface of his bath. He exhaled a torrent of bubbles against Drusilla's pussy, and then his lungs were empty, and there was nothing, no burning in his chest, no urgency for air. He fastened his mouth around her clit, sucked on it until she thrashed.

This was what Papa did with Mamma in the ocean -- did everywhere -- this was what made her so focused on him to the exclusion of everything else.

What made him feel like such a bystander in his own family.

Now he had no family... and he wasn't a bystander. Drusilla had made him, but he wasn't going to belong to her.

She would belong to him.

He fanged out and sank his teeth into her tender flesh as if to devour her from below; she spasmed against his mouth, her scream muffled by the water and her thighs, but reverberating through her body, through his head. She grabbed his hair. His mouth was full of her fluids, salt and tart and luscious. He sat up slowly, picturing her rising out of the water like a vampire Venus, riding his face. Let the bumps go then, and pushed her off.

"Do you like what you've brought into being?"

"Oh yes. You are a bad selfish boy and I adore you! My pretty petkin."

"Don't call me that. My name is Nick."

Nick. He was even more glad he'd chosen that now. It was one of the names of the devil.

PART TWO

Buffy spotted him as the cab neared the flat. Dressed like a banker, as always, standing on the pavement with his arms crossed as if he'd been kept waiting too long, as if his time was more valuable than anybody else's.

Great.

She gathered up her shopping bags. All the therapeutic benefit of this run to Knightsbridge was just about gone, and she hadn't even spoken to him yet.

He spotted her at the same time and stepped forward smartly to open the taxi door, and paid the driver before she had a chance to stop him.

"Milo, what a surprise."

"Do let me carry these. I see you've been propping up our British economy."

Don't be charming, she wanted to say, but didn't.

"I hoped I'd find you. I waited some time."

"Lucky it wasn't raining." She wished she could just not invite him in, but he'd already followed her through to the lift, his manner so sauve that it felt impossible to turn and make an excuse to keep him out.

She determined, as they rode up, that she wouldn't be the first to mention Jemima.

When they reached the flat door, Milo said, "Is he here?"

"Who?"

He loathed saying "Spike." She knew that.

"Your husband."

"I don't think so." She opened the door, and he followed as if he lived there, setting the shopping bags down in the foyer. She wouldn't offer him a drink, either.

"You're looking very well," he said. "As always."

"You say that as if you resent it."

He did resent it. He resented her, and had done ever since he first walked into their lives and somehow convinced Jemima that he was important, too important to ignore.

She stood in the foyer and regarded him. He couldn't advance into the flat without her, so he stood too.

She let the moments tick by.

Finally he said, "Of course my wife is here."

"Of course?"

"Is she out at the moment?"

Buffy raised her eyebrows.

"Where is she? You've seen her."

"Milo, I really don't care to be interrogated."

"I haven't been able to reach her for nearly four days. She's obviously left our -- "

"Your wife has left you? Tsk tsk -- poor Milo."

"I didn't say that. Clearly, she's come to London -- to see family. I didn't know you were going to be here -- "

"No? That's funny. We told Jemmie about this trip three weeks ago."

" -- but I deduced, upon her absence, that she must have -- "

"You deduced?"

"Buffy."

"What can I do for you, Milo?"

"Where is she?"

"I really don't know." Abruptly, she'd had enough, and stepped around him to open the flat door. "When I hear from her I'll ask her to call you."

"For all you know, she might be lying dead in some -- "

"Is that your theory? Because you sure aren't acting like a man who thinks his wife might've been in an accident." She held the door wide.

After a moment of mutual staring, he crossed the threshold. "I'll be at my club. It's imperative that we speak."

Buffy closed the door.

After she told Jemima the lay of the land, Buffy said, "Is your father still with you? Let me speak to him." She didn't mean to sound stern, as she caught herself at it. She'd struggled long ago with these twinges -- sometimes more than twinges -- of jealousy. But she'd conquered it. Spike was devoted to them both, and it wasn't fair to keep score. A therapist she'd seen briefly when Jemima was a teenager had suggested these feelings had more to do with Hank's abandonment than anything else. She accepted that.

"Slayer."

"Why do you call me that?" This wasn't the right way to start this conversation, she knew it. But there were times to call her Slayer, and times not to, and he ought to know by now, which was which.

"Name, nature," Spike growled.

This rolled over her, a jolt of pain. When it was past, she said, "I just wanted to check in."

"Yeah."

"Milo's looking for her."

"So I heard."

"She doesn't look like she's going to see him, does she? I hope she won't."

"Don't think so."

"Good." The phone was slippery against her cheek. The large apartment resounded silently, emptily, around her. She looked out the window at the river. She wanted to ask him to come back, to be with her that night. She couldn't ask. She couldn't plead with him anymore to sleep with her, to look at her, to talk to her. Not after the other night, when he'd pleasured her out of pity, so she'd felt ashamed. "But if he turns up there, Spike... don't get into it with him."

"Won't turn up here. Doesn't know where she is."

"But you know how Jem can be -- if he keeps phoning, she might take the call. She might tell him. You know how -- "

"She won't."

"Okay." She breathed against the window glass, and traced her initial in the vapor.

"Anything else?" Spike said.

She couldn't answer. After a moment, he said, "Right, then," and hung up. She listened for a few seconds to the silence, then turned off the phone.

He felt he was flying. The city was brand new -- he'd never seen it this way, bright in the dark, redolent with new smells -- and no one he saw more powerful than he.

He'd made his first real kill (he didn't count the trussed girl in the Banville house -- a fish in a barrel): a young Chinese prep cook in stained whites who'd stepped out into a Soho alley for a cigarette. The first girl's blood was flooded with fear. The man's -- surprised and taken before adrenaline could rise -- tasted different, but no less thrilling. Drusilla gave him first rights, but helped him finish. He caressed her hair as they held the body up between them until the heart stopped.

They crossed the river. His new night-vision made everything sparkle. He stared for a long time at the dark water, inhaling the smell of the river, feeling for the first time that he was connected to everything, all the city's long past, all the death that had ever occurred here, all the violence and fear. Now he fully understood what Spike meant about smelling being the same as seeing -- it wasn't merely the same, it was more. Standing above the Thames, he could smell more history than he'd read in two and a half years at university.

He held Drusilla close and kissed her. "You've given me the whole world, haven't you?"

"Everything under the stars is ours, pretty Nick."

Near dawn she brought him to a place she called Where We Stay. The cellerage of an abandoned warehouse, dank, dark, expansive. In one dry corner, a bed-chamber was set up, nearly queenly with its hangings and rugs. There were dolls: she showed them to him, dancing them forward and back like a child making introductions at a toy tea party. He saw her dresses and shoes, her jewelry and ribbons. She had trunks full of things. There were old pictures, of her, and of his father.

"Why do you keep these?" he said, brandishing the images of Spike. Most of them were yellowing, curling, displaying him in clothes and attitudes he'd never imagined before and didn't want to think about now.

Drusilla snatched them from his hands. "These are mine!"

"Yeah, but you don't need them. He threw you over, what do you want these for?"

"He was my brave parfit knight. He has such a soft heart, you see. Not like you, I can tell, petkin. You are hard and harsh and cruel, but Spike loves, he loves... he loves where he should not. Everything he does is for love." She regarded the pictures sadly. "Poor foolish Spike. He was not true to me. But he brought you up so pretty and neat, so that I could have you. So he must still love me a little. A little little. Like I do him. A little little little, for I am very fickle. He often told me so."

"You only want me because of him." Somehow it stung, her calling him harsh and cruel. He wanted to be that in the world, against those who were still alive, but not with her. His heart was already flooded with love for her. She'd rescued him from all his shortcomings and frustrations, and taken all he'd dished out -- kisses and bites, caresses and blows. He'd never known it would be possible to have a sweetheart who could really absorb all that he was, the full range of him. It was exhilirating.

If only Spike hadn't had her first.

"Sssh, sssh, my beautiful prince. Not true, not true. We shall be such a pair, forever and ever. All the universe says so." She threw the pictures down, and grabbed his arms. "Dance with me."

They danced to the sound of her laughter. As he whirled her about, he became aware of new presences. When they stopped, he saw four others ranged against the wall, watching with humble expressions.

Drusilla addressed them. "You see, Minions, he is here."

As she stared at them, the four vampires -- three women and a man -- dropped to their knees. Johnny grinned at the sight.

"Just as you promised, Mistress," one of them said.

"Yes. I always do keep my promises, do I not? He is your master now."

The one who'd spoken crawled towards him then, and knelt at his feet, neck bared. She wasn't pretty (none of them were, he noticed, and assumed this was deliberate -- Drusilla seemed like a very deliberate sort of woman), and he didn't want her, but he understood what was expected, and yanked her up by her shirt front to sink his fangs into her neck.

One by one the minions presented themselves for his assertion; tasting the still blood of each, Johnny's excitement flared. The last minion to present himself was the male; there was something about his submissive stance that roused and irritated him. Johnny kicked him hard, to see what he'd do.

He fell over, but when he righted himself, there was a tight little smile on his lips.

Drusilla knew how to pick them.

He grabbed her hand. "C'mon. Now I'm going to show you some of my world."

He was still laughing when he pulled Drusilla into the shower after him. It was hilarious, the way Penelope had looked at her, the expression that came into her face when she heard Dru's accent, and then the way she'd said in that fakey friendly voice of hers, "And do you dress up like a Jane Austen heroine every day, sweetie?" before Dru shifted and went for her throat. She'd died with her eyes locked on his, full of disbelief and pleading. He'd enjoyed watching that -- enjoyed it far more than he'd have imagined before it happened, when he'd just been planning to kill her himself.

George was a good mouthful, though.

Now he was replete, the scalding water pounding down and making him feel just pleasantly warm, like the fresh blood he'd drank. Drusilla turned her face up to the spray, grinning around her fangs, her wet hair plastered to her scalp. Such a small pretty head she had; he tipped it back and kissed her. She sighed extravagantly.

"Happy?"

"It's bliss. I knew you'd be fierce and terrible. When you were born I knew about it, and your dreadful promise."

"How did you know?"

"I have the sight, of course," she said, sounding a little hurt. "But soon after all the creatures were aware, my pet. Vampires are a gossipy lot."

Why, he wondered now, hadn't his parents done anything about this? If every vampire knew Spike's business, then he must've known this was a possibility, that Drusilla would come for him. Yet he'd never spoken of her, much less tracked her down.

Did he mean for this to happen?

Well, fuck him. Fuck him, and Mamma both. He liked himself better this way. And this was just what they deserved.

If they'd really loved him, they'd have kept this from happening, a long time ago. So fuck them now. They'd have plenty of time to be sorry.

Clean and dressed again, he was throwing things into a suitcase -- clothes, shaving tackle, laptop, a few favorite books. Drusilla wandered about his rooms, poking with her delicate fingers at his papers and souvenirs.

At the bureau mirror, she fingered some snapshots of Jemima stuck into the edge of the frame. "The first-born. The sister."

"Don't touch those."

"Spike loves her best."

"Yeah."

"She looks like her." There was such disdain in her voice, which after all, didn't surprise him. Still, he didn't think Drusilla hated his mother -- she wasn't important enough to her for that.

"I said, leave those alone." He plucked the pictures out of her hand.

All these years, he'd known Jemmie was Spike's favorite -- knew it to his marrow -- and yet he'd always adored her without resentment. She'd never seemed less than completely worthy of all the love that came her way; she was always good to him, not at all like the older siblings of his friends. Buffy and Spike were so frequently distracted or absent, but Jemima -- like Auntie Tara, though from a distance -- felt omnipresent, patient, gentle, sympathetic.

He glanced from Drusilla, who was now humming through the contents of the basket at the side of his bed, to the pictures. Already he could feel that Dru wouldn't love him the way she did. How was he going to do without his sister?

For the first time it occurred to him that this change might not be all feasting and fun.

He shut up the suitcase. "Let's get out of here."

She glanced up. "We shan't come back, you know."

"I do, yeah." The words gave him an uneasy feeling. It was too late to change back, to go back. He couldn't remain here any more than he could step out into sunlight now. He was turned -- away from his old life, away from the boy he'd been. Literally turned into something else.

The last thing he grabbed as they walked out was the cell phone charger. He was dead, but to the world, not dead yet. He could keep that up for a while, at least.

"He doesn't answer."

"Maybe his battery's run out."

"We had plans for this weekend. I told him he should be in touch, or else -- " Jemima looked at her phone as if it was at fault. "I wanted to look after him a bit. He's been pretty down lately."

"Has he?"

"Don't you talk to him at all, Papa?"

"It's Johnny doesn't talk to me."

"What's happened to us? I mean, all of us?" She looked at him beseechingly.

"Nothing. Temporary glitches. I wasn't much for my own father when I was his age, but we mended our fences a bit later on. Were good friends again when... well, when he died." Spike stood by the mantlepiece, touching the smooth curves of the glass paperweights lined up there. Jemima's friend had a large, glittering collection. "I used to be glad of that, not having him on my conscience." When I used to have a conscience.

"I know. At least, I hope so." She'd been moving restlessly around the room. Her energy level was back to usual, two days after the abortion. She seldom sat still for long, unless immersed in a book. Now she was like a fly caught indoors. "I'm going to go over to the university and look for him. Shall I drop you at the flat, or -- ?"

"I'll come with. Let him know I care. Think he had the opposite idea the other day."

She looked at him, and he could tell again she wanted to ask about her mother, about what was going on. All the time they'd been together they'd skirted the subject -- skirted all the subjects: Milo, Johnny, the extinguished baby, Buffy. Blocked it out with TV and cards and the kind of nonsense chatter they'd always shared so effortlessly, joyfully.

"Won't muck up your plans. When you find him, I'll leave you to jolly him along on your own, yeah?"

She smiled. "Sure."

Outside, she sniffed the evening air like a discharged prisoner. "I hate being laid up, even for a day."

"Me too."

"When are you ever laid up? Vamps don't get sick."

"Well... we do get hangovers. It's the sunlight thing I was thinking of. There's times it makes me so restless I can't stand myself."

"But that's when you're supposed to be asleep."

He was always happy to sleep with Buffy, wrapped around her heat, lulled by the pulsing of her body. He thought of the nape of her neck, seen through hair, resting his cheek against it in bed. How she'd sigh in his arms. Might be he'd forgotten how to sleep alone.

"Older a vampire gets, less of that he needs."

They got into her car. As they approached the university, Spike said, "What makes you think he's gonna be at home if he's not answering his calls?"

"Sometimes he is."

"He does this a lot?"

She slid her teeth over her lower lip; he was sure she wasn't even aware of this little gesture that meant I'm going to fib. "I don't see him a lot. I've hardly been down to London this whole year."

He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Rapunzel in her tower. But you've jumped down now an' scarpered."

She rewarded him with one of her smiles, melting, sweet. "Yeah. Oooh -- a parking space."

She had a key, but he wondered why she didn't ring the flat first. He followed her without remark into the building -- a tall pre-war house divided into tiny flats.

"This the best he can do? Thought we allowed him enough."

"Right -- you've never been here," Jemima said. "Rent around the uni is outrageous. It's not so bad, really. He says the heat and hot water are reliable." She was already on the stairs. They climbed four flights, to the top of the building. Three doors faced the cramped landing. She knocked on one. "Johnny? You in there? It's me -- I'm coming in." She paused, her ear against the wood.

She had an intensity about her brother, an overflow of feeling. When they'd lived at home, she defended him when he messed up, tendered excuses for him -- but always afterwards Spike's keen hearing revealed her scolding him apart, telling him just where he was wrong, pleading with him to get himself together, and to remember that everyone loved him. She took his failings personally, more like a mother than a sister.

"I'm coming in! I hope you're decent!" She opened the door. Over her shoulder Spike saw a room that looked as if it had been turned over by thieves, but the sight of it brought no reaction from Jemima, so he supposed she'd seen it like this before. "Johnny!" She moved out of sight towards the bedroom. "You'd better not be -- " She cut herself off.

Spike could tell already that there was no one inside. "He's not here, pet."

"This is strange -- "

"What is?" He started to follow her, and was well into the room before comprehension froze him.

He hastened back to the landing, composing his face just as she reentered the front room.

"Some of his things are gone. Clothes, toiletries. His suitcase."

"Took off for a dirty weekend with some bird." He heard himself speak in his usual tone of voice, though he was in such a turmoil he was amazed he could string the words together at all.

"He wouldn't just do that when he knew we had plans." She glanced around helplessly. "Anyway -- he told me she just broke up with him. He was upset about it. That's why I thought maybe he was holed up here. I was afraid he might be drinking. I didn't want to tattle on him, but his boozing can kind of get out of hand, sometimes he holes up in here and drinks by himself."

"Well, looks like they've made it up again, an' took off for -- "

He couldn't bear to finish, but Jemima didn't notice. She was looking around at the strewn desk, the piles of books. She touched the dusty aggregation of beer empties. "He's so inconsiderate. I was hoping he'd outgrow that soon. He makes everything so difficult -- I'd like to kill him sometimes."

Spike's eyes burned. He fought the urge by blinking, and jammed his fists into his pockets. When he was sure he could speak normally, he said, "Come away now, love. I expect he'll turn up in a day or two."

"I suppose so. The thing of it is, I was looking forward to hanging out with him. He should've thought of that." She sighed. "But I guess if he's getting his wick dipped -- as you'd say -- that's all he can think about."

"That's how we are, yeah." He started down the stairs. In the building foyer, he pulled her into his arms.

"You're so sweet, Papa." She clasped him back. "But it's okay -- I'll get over it."

"Your friend'll be in this evening?"

"Yes, probably. It's okay, you can go. We've had two days together -- "

"Yeah, it's just -- got a yen to see your mum now, if she's about."

"Sure." She kissed him, her face a-glow with a knowing smile that knew the wrong thing, knew nothing. "Dirty weekends for all."

"Will ring you tomorrow morning."

"You don't have to, Papa. Give Mamma my love."

He could've held her in that shabby lobby, breathing in the scent of her hair, all night. He released her with a reluctance he did his best to disguise. Better for her to have one more relatively peaceful night. After wrenching herself away from Milo, and ending her pregnancy, she deserved a brief respite before getting hit with anything else.

And he wanted to be alone with Buffy when he told her their son was dead.

Everyone was wrapped up in the arms of their beloved -- or at any event, their squeeze -- except for her. Walking back towards her friend's house, alone for the first time in a few days, Jemima's feelings crashed in on her. She'd had an abortion she didn't really want. And her life was a shambles. She didn't know where she wanted to live, or what she wanted to do. All her adult life she'd worked for the Council -- more or less for Milo -- but that didn't seem like an option any more. She was cut off, adrift. Was this what being homeless felt like? Out in the world with no particular place to go?

As she gave way to this thought she passed a real homeless man crouching against a wall. With a pang, she fished some change out of her bag. Of course she wasn't homeless. She had family, friends, all sorts of people who would take her in. Who would forgive her for her stupidity even though she couldn't forgive herself.

As she dropped the coins into the man's hand, her mobile rang again. Without thinking, she answered.

"At last!"

"Oh... Milo."

"Oh, Milo, indeed. Whatever are you playing at?"

She couldn't say that she'd only taken the call because she'd forgotten about him for a moment, and expected her brother or her father. Yet she had forgotten, even as she was thinking so hard about her circumstances, that Milo was in a way the author of them -- or at least, the catalyst.

"Noth -- nothing."

"As you know, if you've listened to my messages, I've come to London to fetch you home."

"You shouldn't have done that."

"Of course I've done it. What else would I do?"

"You shouldn't." She couldn't think what to say; the sound of his voice made her mind a blur, made her feel small and guilty and silly and wrong.

"Jemima... we need to talk. We need to be together and talk."

"I don't want to."

"Don't be absurd. Darling -- I miss you so. I don't want you to be unhappy."

"Milo, I have to go."

"Is that fair? We're a married couple, Jem. We made vows... I take those very seriously, and I know you do too. At least meet me, let me speak to you. Fair's fair."

"I... well, all right." She felt herself crumbling; his importuning affectionate tone defeated her. It would be unreasonable to refuse him a face to face meeting, unreasonable and unkind. She agreed to meet him later that night at a public house near his club.

Her mobile rang again.

All the way to the flat, Spike tried out different ways to say it.

Buffy, love... better sit down.

My queen... there's been... well, dunno if it was an accident... .

Sweetness... something's happened to our boy... .

Pet... Johnny's gone missing. Missing and... he's gone. He's no more....

As long as he rehearsed, he could push off the understanding that it was real. Push off the knowledge of what would have to come next -- going to the authorities. Searching for his body. Trying to find out what happened, and when and why.

Slayer, I just walked right into his flat without thinking -- an' we both know what that means. Boy's dead.

Riding up in the lift, he was still juggling phrases in his mind, juggling them amidst a barrage of memories of the infant, the child, the boy, the young man. God, he'd been stupid the other day, why didn't he just embrace him, just tell his love and pride without seeming to withhold it in the same breath? He knew he'd done that. Knew he'd been doing it for years, so no wonder... no wonder the boy... .

It occurred to him then for the first time.

Could his death have been deliberate?

The lift door opened.

Outside the flat, he froze. How could he tell it? How could he look at her, and say those words? He wanted to crawl into Buffy's arms. He wanted her to know without being told, he wanted her soft lips against his brow, and her reassurance that it was a mistake he'd made, that it just wasn't true.

None of it was true. She hadn't gone with Saleem, and their boy was just fine, and Milo was gone and Jemima was going to give them a grandchild and wouldn't he please come to bed with her and celebrate?

"Buffy?" It came out barely above a whisper. He raised his voice. "Buffy!"

The name fell out into silence.

He walked through the flat, turning on lights. Everything was tidy, in that slightly impersonal way of a place cleaned by an invisible crew. In the kitchen, an envelope on the counter, with his name, William, on it.

Something nasty is going on in Nepal. Mina is tied up elsewhere. They needed me -- and since you don't right now -- I went. Back when I'm back..

"Sluggo! I'm so glad you finally called, I was worried -- " She started up from her chair, reached for him.

Johnny stepped back. "Don't, I'm coming down with something, don't want to give it you. What are you drinking? Want a refill?"

"No, I'm all right."

She watched him move through the smoky air to the bar. Two women turned their attention from their dates to follow his progress. He stood with his usual touching diffidence, hands in pockets, waiting for the bartender to notice him. Poor sweetie, she thought, letting her pent-up anxiety go in a rush of affection. He had no idea how lovely he was. Maybe that was why the ones he wanted didn't get it either. Or maybe he just hadn't learned yet how to sort people out, how to know who was going to be worthwhile.

Of course, she wasn't very good at that herself, as he'd be the first to chide her.

Her brother wended his way back through the crowd, a pint of lager in one hand and two packets of crisps in the other. "I'm craving salt like mad," he said, taking the chair opposite her. She had to lean forward to hear him over the strains of the jukebox, the nearby fruit machine, and the chattering punters. He tasted the first crisp as if it was new to him, chewed thoughtfully. A smile of satisfaction lit his face, like potatoes were a glad discovery; he dug into the bag for more.

"You look just like Papa when you do that," she said.

This didn't please him. He gave her a slow look. "You think about him too much. Aren't you too old to be such a daddy's girl?"

"I... I'm not. I love him, that's all, Mamma and Papa both. And you. Johnny, what's going on with you?"

"Nothing. I'm swell." He smiled his dazzling smile.

"I went to your flat. When I saw your suitcase was gone, I thought -- "

"What? What did you think?"

She let out a laugh. "I don't know! Papa said you'd gone off on a dirty weekend with some girl."

"He would." He took a long swallow of beer. "I did, actually."

"Oh. So you've made it up with -- ?"

"Not exactly. I -- hey, what are you doing?"

"What? I'm not doing anything."

"You keep craning at the door. Are you expecting someone?"

"I... "

A look of thunder crossed his brow. "You're meeting Milo. I should've guessed why you were here when I called you. It's not like you to just sit alone in a pub."

"He kept ringing me!"

"You should've turned off the phone if you're too fucking weak to resist answering it."

"Don't be harsh. I don't want to be cut off from... from everyone."

When she said this, he scowled into his half-empty pint.

"Johnny?"

He was far off in a moment, without moving. It was like sitting opposite a stranger in a crowded caff. The elaborate distancing in a tiny space. In that chasm of unfamiliarity, she wondered if she'd care for him at all, if she hadn't known him all his life. He could drop such terrible remarks without a single thought for how they hit. She recalled suddenly that at the time of her divorce, he'd taken Milo's side at first. As a teen he'd liked Milo's way of disparaging their parents, mistrusting them.

She'd forgiven that, because he was a teenager, and unhappy, and she was too unhappy to add to anybody else's little griefs.

"Johnny. Please. I couldn't say no. He's my husband. Anyway, I have to talk to him sooner or later, if -- "

He glanced up then. "Jemmie, would you love me even I did something you didn't approve of?"

"What have you done?"

"That's no way to answer!"

"Of course I would, but -- what's the matter? Is this about school? That trouble you mentioned?"

She reached across the table, laid a hand on his sleeve. He jerked his arm away. Suddenly there was a hand on her own arm. She looked up. "Milo!"

"You sound like you weren't expecting me. I'm not late." He leaned over to kiss her forehead. "I thought we were going talk."

"We can talk. Johnny is visiting with me. We were just having a brother-sister chat. Sweetheart, I'm sorry, but maybe you should go."

"I haven't finished my drink."

"I know we were in the middle of -- we could meet in the morning. For breakfast? And I'll give you my undivided attention then. I'm so sorry -- "

"The morning won't work. Look, do you really want me to leave? If I do, he'll only talk you into going back to him, and you've said you don't want to."

Milo said, "What is this?"

"She's left you," Johnny said. "I'll say it because she won't. Game over."

Milo slipped into the chair at her side, half-turning from Johnny, ignoring him. He wrapped one of her hands in his. "Darling, let's go, we'll go back to my club and talk there. I'm sure we can work this out. I don't want to lose you. That's the main thing -- we mustn't lose each other. Whatever our differences -- "

Johnny gave off a rude guffaw. "Listen to him! That's not how he talks to you when he thinks no-one's listening, is it?"

"Jemima, please." He rose, still holding her hand. "Come with me."

"I don't think she wants to."

"Johnny, hush!" She looked at her hand clasped in Milo's; looked up into his face that was all hopeful affection except for something around the eyes that suggested he was counting to himself, and that when he'd reached zero, his real mood would be revealed. He'd spoken before of fairness, and she knew this wasn't fair, promising him a hearing and then having her brother there to heckle. But she didn't want to leave the snug noisy pub, or Johnny's side. She didn't want to go into Milo's stentorian club to be hectored and wheedled. Johnny was right: if she went with him that far, she'd end up back in York.

She tried to pull her hand away. "We can talk here. Whatever you have to say, you can say to my brother too."

"Our marriage is none of his business. Come, Jemima, this isn't right."

Oh, he knew just the phrases to assault her with. Fair. Right.

"Hey." Johnny was on his feet. "You heard her."

"Oh God. Please, please, let's not make a fuss... ."

"StJohn, I remember when we were friends. I don't know why that should change -- but surely you see that now is not the time for you to interfere -- Jemima doesn't wish for you to interfere."

"I don't want you to have her. You don't deserve her."

"Johnny!" She rose too. "Please, please, what are you saying? Stop it, both of you. If you don't stop, I'm going to leave."

The three of them stood over the small table, the men bristling, both focused on her rather than each other. She could feel Milo's restrained temper building. Johnny tilted his head just a little, imploring her with his eyes. Again she thought how much he looked like Spike. And what had he been saying just before Milo walked in and wrenched her concentration away? Something about being in trouble.

That decided her. Johnny was her brother forever. Milo would be her husband for only as long as it took her to go through the whole divorce rigmarole again.

"Milo -- I promise I'll talk to you in the morning. But I'm not going to go with you now. It's late. I'm tired."

He started to protest, but she sat down again, wrapping her hands around her half-empty glass, holding onto it like a pole in a gale. He stood there, his body just barely touching her shoulder, while she fought the urge to shove him, to shout. Wondering why she didn't, why he should make her feel so helpless. She couldn't remember now why she'd ever been attracted to him.

"I'll expect you at my club, then, in the morning." Milo paused, perhaps hoping she'd say something to allow him to linger. She nodded but didn't look up until she felt his looming presence recede.

She lifted her head. Across the table, Johnny smiled. "Let me get you another drink."

"Yes, please." She pushed her glass towards him. When he came back, she took a long sip. "I'm not going to thank you for that. You didn't behave well."

"Who cares. I made him go away." He leaned back in his chair, legs spread, a tipsy grin lighting his face. "You're not going to see him in the morning. Don't see him at all."

"Johnny -- what were you saying before -- about -- are you in some kind of trouble? Because you're really not acting like your usual self."

"I should make him really go away. Hell, I could. Shall I? Shall I make Milo go away, Jemmie?"

"What are you talking about? Johnny!"

His grin had gone hard -- almost maniacal. He was still sprawled in the chair, but his body had taken on a strange tense energy, he nearly rippled.

"I think I should... should do that for you. It's about the only thing I can do for you anymore."

"Johnny, stop it. What are you saying?"

He was on his feet now. "Remember I did the one thing for you I could. I still love you, that hasn't changed. It won't ever change. It'll be forever, like me."

"What -- Johnny!" He must be drunk. Although he hadn't seemed so when he came in, and he'd only had one pint since. But what else could account for this behavior? He wasn't like this.

He was halfway to the exit. Snatching up her bag and jacket, she ran after him. A couple were coming in; he slipped past them in the doorway, and for a moment her way was blocked. She shouted his name. He glanced back over his shoulder, smiling, and his eyes were yellow. They flashed like bike reflectors, and his mouth, his face, were -- He looked like Spike. A gap opened up inside her at the sight, which filled immediately with fear, a cold hard fear such as she'd never felt before. She tried to shoulder around the newcomers. Ahead of her, he laughed, blew her a kiss. Then he was gone. On the street now, she ran a little way on her high heels, heart racing, calling for him. Her voice bounced off the dark shuttered shop-fronts.

"Are you all right, miss?" A couple of middle-aged women, themselves a little worse for drink, gazed at her with sympathetic curiosity. "Did you lose something?"

"No -- that is -- I lost my -- I lost my brother."

The words echoed back to her, sounding different than she'd intended, sounding a truth she'd not yet realized.

Oh God Oh God.

The women spoke to her, but she walked blindly away from them, fumbling in her bag for her mobile, pressing the buttons with trembling fingers.

He was pleased and not surprised when Drusilla suddenly appeared, keeping pace with him, slipping her small hand through his arm. They ran together through the late-night streets, fast, fast, it was like ice-skating -- it was faster. Her laughter was quicksilver, trailing after them like a long scarf. She seemed to know just where they were going, and why. It was like gliding through a dream. The air was fresh and almost pure at this speed, and he could already taste his victory, his triumph.

He knew Milo's club, had been there as his lunch guest a couple of times when he first came to London. It fronted on a small quiet 18th-century square.

When they rounded the last corner, he saw him walking ahead -- he was only just arriving himself. Better and better. He glanced at Dru, who nodded, and peeled away to ghost across into the garden at the center of the square. Nearly at Milo's back, he stopped, let a second or two go by, then said, "Listen."

Milo turned.

"StJohn."

It was just like his stiff-necked nose-in-the-air self to insist on calling him by his loathed name, no matter how often Johnny had asked him not to.

"I didn't appreciate your little performance in the pub. I don't think Jemima appreciated it either."

"I doubt you have the slightest idea of what Jemmie appreciates or doesn't."

Milo shook his head then, as if Johnny was very young and ignorant and only to be condescended to for just so long. "StJohn, I don't know what you hope to accomplish by following me here -- "

"I want to talk to you." He fitted his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels a little. "Look, I'm sorry this is all happening. I always thought you were good for my sister. I'm worried about her if she follows through on this. I mean, she works with the Council too, and -- "

"Why should her work be affected?"

"Well, I don't know. I thought -- do you have a cigarette?"

"Since when do you smoke?"

He smiled. Milo was holding out his cigarette case. He had him. Taking one, he started off, as if thoughtlessly, towards the garden. Milo was right there with him, and when he patted his own pockets, offered a gold lighter with his initials engraved on it.

"Anyway," Johnny said, "You know I'm getting my degree this spring, and I was hoping you -- I was thinking of going to work for the Council myself, so -- "

"Ah, well that's another thing altogether, why didn't you say so? But you can't expect me to put you up for a position if you're going to behave in such an erratic manner -- "

They were in the silent shadowed garden now. Drusilla, without sound, had stepped out directly behind Milo. She stood on tiptoe to signal to him around the man's tweed shoulder, and made a gesture with her hand that Johnny understood at once.

"Oh," he said. "Better look behind you, Milo."

"What -- ?" Milo turned.

Drusilla smiled sweetly -- she looked deliciously sweet, in her long white gown, her hair arranged in ringlets around her neck and shoulders -- and held up one hand, two fingers outstretched towards his eyes. "You want to look at me, Mister Man, you do. Look right here."

Johnny was ready for him to cry out, to make a sudden move; he was poised to block and bring him down. But he barely murmured as Dru drew him into her eyes, and all around the square, Londoners slept and heard nothing.

Ratcheting towards panic, Jemima searched in vain for a taxi. Spike had told her to go back to her friend's house and stay there until she heard from him, but of course she couldn't do that. Milo didn't answer his phone, nor Johnny his. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she hastened painfully in her impractical shoes in the general direction of the club, though she was a good couple of miles away, gesturing frantically at every car that passed. With half-a-mind she understood what she must look like, stumbling along in the gutter, but the sense of time wasting, of enormous danger she had to confront and stop, pushed her along.

At last a mini-cab appeared, and pulled over at her wave. In the back-seat she mopped at her eyes with a tissue, which came away black, and fumbled again at her mobile with numbed fingers. The other thing Spike had told her during their hasty conversation was that her mother had left the country. "You can track her down. Best thing you could do. Go home and track her down."

She called Willow, who almost always knew where Buffy was when she was slaying. But the outgoing message on her voicemail said she was on assignment in Nepal and might be out of range for some time.

Jemima left a message, call us, it's urgent. She was surprised at the steadiness of her own voice.

After that there was nothing to do but watch the traffic lights and try to figure out who she was most frightened for: Johnny, Milo, or Spike.

As soon as he entered the square, Spike smelled the blood and fear. It was a smell he'd long loved, the great stimulant. For a moment the attraction of it overrode his purpose, and he sprang forward with the thought that he might yet get in on a part of the kill.

Two figures were sprawled on the ground on the thin winter lawn at the garden's center, one atop the other. But it was the third presence who distracted him so he skidded to a stop.

Drusilla danced langorously around them, arms outstretched, singing in her high thin voice. The ambient light made her eyes and jewelry gleam; her white dress glowed. She stopped at the same moment he did, turning in his direction with a snaky grace. "My Spike's come to see the fun. Oh, it's been so long, so long, but I'll kiss you yet, because they say old sweethearts are best. Don't they? I don't know who says that... but you see I have a new one. You began him for me, with the slayer, and I have made him perfect. He's perfect, and he's all mine now, as you were once."

As she spoke, dancing lightly towards him, Johnny raised his head from Milo's neck. His face was covered with blood, as if he'd smeared himself with his hands.

"Papa. Somehow I knew you'd turn up."

"You stupid, stupid -- "

"Come, he's no more stupid than you are. Angelus always said you were a stupidhead, but he would say that, because he was very mean, and you know you often vexed him." Drusilla laughed at this, as if it was a great joke.

She'd almost reached him; Spike stared, the stake in his hand nearly forgotten. He hadn't laid eyes on her since he'd had her and Buffy chained up in his crypt, more than thirty years before. When Buffy had spit in his face, long before a life with him, or this ruined child of theirs, was ever thought of. His body still yearned towards Dru, her familiarity and mystery. His sire.

"What have you done?" He didn't know why he asked. It was perfectly obvious. Obvious like getting clobbered by a falling church organ -- this was going to happen. Maybe she'd even known it that night in his crypt. Maybe she'd always known it.

Why he hadn't known it, and done something about it before now, was the killer.

His rage was so enormous it pinioned him. Drusilla was right in front of him now, her hand on his face, and he couldn't move against her.

"He's made like you, do you know? He's got a lovely action." She growled and pumped her pelvis to show what she meant. "But he's hard too, like you never were. Perhaps he gets that from his mummy. She's no softness, has she, the slayer?"

"You cunt -- " He punched her in the face. She crumpled.

His nose told him the man was still alive, not that he cared much one way or the other. Johnny crouched up over his body, his face a grinning maw.

"Saved you some."

She had the door open before the cab was fully stopped; threw a tenner into the front seat and bolted out. She saw them through the garden's wrought-iron fence, two vampires fighting. They were far enough from the street that the sounds of their conflict didn't reach her; it was almost like watching a shadow-play in the waning moonlight. She knew better than to cry out as she scrambled towards the gate. Knew she shouldn't be here at all.

She wanted to intervene -- half believed if she stepped out onto the lawn she could turn this into something rational, solveable. Johnny had said he still loved her -- he'd done nothing in the pub to hurt her -- surely he'd listen?

And Spike wasn't really trying to stake him, was he?

At this distance, she couldn't tell. Once inside the garden, keeping to the shadows under the tall shrubs, she moved as close as she dared. The loudest sound she heard was her own racing heart, and somewhere far off, a siren wailing. There was no traffic on the square. It might as well have been deserted; the surrounding houses were dark.

This might be all right. Spike had caught him up before he reached Milo, and somehow or other he'd subdue him, and then... and then... . She inched around to the right, her lip sucked up under her teeth, eyes fixed on her father.

Near her foot, a moan.

Jemima jumped.

Milo was a dark unmoving shape. When she bent over him, she smelled the blood, saw it glistening.

Her stomach twisted and heaved.

"I'll get help -- wait -- wait -- "

Before she could move, something seized her from behind, and lifted her clear off the ground.

"Shall I make a matched pair?"

Spike wheeled. Drusilla held Jemima up, feet dangling, hands snatching at the hand closed around her throat.

"Let him go, my Spike. Or else I shall gather your other one to me."

At the same time Johnny wriggled out of his grip, kicking clear to scramble to his feet and run. Which was just what Drusilla intended; as soon as Spike rushed her, she dropped Jemima and streaked off after him.

"Bloody hell -- what are you doing here? Did she hurt you?"

She shook her head, breath rasping. He swung her up to her feet. "Go home. I've got to follow them."

"No you don't. Got him right here."

"Edwina. Thank Christ. I thought -- "

The witch strode towards him, grinning, her dreadlocks waving like tentacles. "I wouldn't get here in time? Almost didn't. You woke me out of a sound sleep, vampire, an' you know I'm not a morning person. Couldn't snag 'em both, sorry."

She yawned then, still smiling her irrepressible smile, then shook her head, remembering herself. "Mentasay, sorry. About the boy. Bad luck. Where's your angel-girl?"

"Other side of the world, an' doesn't know. This is my daughter, you've heard about her. Jemmie, Edwina here pitches in on the magic tip for us once in a while. Was a great friend of your Uncle Rupert's." It was surreal to be making introductions here, with Jemima still clearing her throat and Johnny now entrapped in a shimmering field of magic that held him just off the ground, silent and motionless.

Jem said, "Milo -- "

"Fuck Milo. We're getting out of here. It's nearly dawn."

"But -- he's still alive -- he's -- "

"Come on. Can't linger or we'll all be fucked." He grasped her arm, pulled her towards the gate. Edwina brought Johnny along as if on an invisible string, and seemed to exert herself not at all to do it, which was disquieting, but for the moment, handy.

Jemima tried to twist away. "Papa, I said, Milo is alive!"

"An' I said you'd better mind me if you don't want to be in even more trouble than we already are. Lookin' after you an' the young idiot is the job here. Milo's none of ours." He'd never hated bloody fucking Milo more than he did now.

"None of ours!"

He dragged her along without looking back, not caring if he bruised her in the process. His car was just around the corner. He'd stuff both of them into it and be back at the flat before sun-up -- nothing else mattered.

"Papa, let me go. We have to help him, we have to -- "

"He's dead."

This was Edwina. Jemima craned around at her, wide-eyed, disbelieving. "How can we be sure? A few minutes ago -- "

"Was a few minutes ago," Spike growled. "He's dead now, all right. Shut your sweet little gob an' get into the car."

He'd never lied to her like this before -- he could still hear the faint patter of Milo's heart, smell his ebbing life on the freshening air -- but tonight was full of firsts.

He shut Johnny into the boot. Edwina was still smiling -- over the years he'd figured out that she fed most heartily on drama, and was no more tightly tethered to morality than he was.

She slipped something into his hand. "When you're ready to release him, use this. The spell will wear off on its own, but it'll hold tight for at least a good couple of days. What are you going to do with him?"

"Get him out of London. Then... then I'm not sure. Thanks for turning up."

"S'always inneresting."

"... police are investigating a grisly double murder at the University of London. The mutilated bodies of the victims, Penelope Leigh-Palmers, and George ffolkes, students, were found late last night in Miss Leigh-Palmers' flat, where -- "

Spike snapped off the car radio. "Would that've been him?"

Jemima was turned away, staring at the car window -- there wasn't much to see out, because it was still dark, and raining now. She wasn't crying, but Spike felt her barely-perceptible quivering.

"You'd know that better than I." She let out a gasp, sobbing once, but it didn't turn into anything. She seemed to hold her breath.

"Bloody hell." He pictured it. Pictured... Cecily, really. She was his first real kill, the one that was personal, deliberate, the one he'd always remembered and treasured. He could summon the taste of her fear-drenched blood, the sound of her terrified groans, the smell of her viscera, just by closing his eyes. She'd humiliated him, driven him to his death, and by all that was unholy he'd given that pain back to her ten-fold before he'd let her snuff it.

He didn't think of her much since Buffy -- but the memory was still a pleasureable one, and he didn't question that pleasure.

"Gonna swing by your friend's house -- you go in and get your things. Should just have time before it gets light. Not that it will much with this rain."

"My things."

"Yeah. You're going to come an' help me with your brother, aren't you?"

She was resting her face against the windowglass; he couldn't see her. After a few moments he said, "Jem?"

"I heard him groan. He was in so much pain. He wasn't -- "

"Family."

"He was mine."

"We need you. Your brother an' me. 'Specially with your mum out of town. Family needs you."

Her hot tears scented the close atmosphere of the car.

Finally she said, "Yes."

They were almost there now.

"Listen, sweetheart... wouldn't ever tell you not to mourn... any of 'em."

She didn't answer. When he pulled up, he reached to squeeze his hand, but she pulled it out of the way, and got out of the car without a word.

PART THREE

The Hyperion had barely changed in the thirty years since he'd last visited it, that time Buffy dragged him there to rub Angel's nose in her perverse new undead relationship, back when all they did was fuck twenty-two/seven, with an hour a day out for killing things and another for her to cry and wish she was still dead. He could've almost felt sorry for the big poof that time, except he didn't have it in him. In the years since, he'd signed Buffy's goddamned Christmas cards to him, even spoken to him on the phone a time or two when there was some mystical crisis on, but that was all. Their rapprochement was almost purely theoretical, fostered by distance.

Now he'd find out what it was good for.

A young woman he'd never seen before appeared behind the desk. "Welcome to Angel Investigations. How may I help you?"

"Here to see Angel. Better fetch him out pronto."

"And you are -- "

"He's Spike."

The voice came from above. Which always seemed to be the case, no matter where Angel was physically. Spike had to crane his neck to see him up on the balcony. He gazed impassively down, hands in pockets.

Spike's calm -- the calm he'd held in place for a day, for the sake of getting organized and getting here, for Jemima's sake in the close quarters of the slayer's private plane -- gave way to molten rage. None of this would be happening if not for goddamned Angelus -- he'd put it all in train, he'd made them -- damned them -- all. Spike fanged out and snarled.

Two men appeared suddenly in opposite doorways, crossbows drawn.

"Stand down, guys, it's all right." Angel said. He began to descend. "What's in the duffle bag?

"My son." He let the bag drop from his shoulder to the floor with a dull thud. Bent and yanked open the top. Johnny, still in his mystical stasis, stared up unblinking, game-faced.

Angel didn't even raise an eyebrow. "How did it happen?"

"How do you bloody think it happened? Family." He spat the last word. Angel paused for a moment on the stairs, looking.

"Drusilla?" Angel strode towards them.

"Yeah, Dru-bloody-silla! She's yours an' what've you done about her! What've you been doin' all these bloody fucking decades, if not riddin' this sorry world of the likes of her! Why'd you leave her out there! She -- she -- Christ look at what she did to him!"

"This isn't my fault."

"'Course it's your fuckin' fault! You're her sire! You're the cause of this whole miserable cocked up -- She killed our son!"

"Where's Buffy?"

"Course she's all you fuckin' care about. Nepal. 'Cept last word I could get, she's off fightin' in some other dimension. Not reachable. What the fuck am I gonna tell her when she gets back? Boy just turned twenty-one, an' he's the apple of her eye."

Angel knelt, regarding Johnny with grave unreadable attention. "Why did you bring him here? To rub my face in this?"

"You're gonna help him! You're the one's got an in with the Powers, knows who the Fixers are. Gonna do whatever it takes to get this undone."

Angel rose slowly. Spike didn't think he'd ever seen an expression of pity on the old bugger's face before, but he saw it now. Somehow it only made him angrier. He threw himself at Angel, fists windmilling, and found himself knocked back with a searing pain in the thigh. The arrow quivered as he stared at it.

Angel turned on his associates. "I said you could stand down. In fact -- give us some privacy."

"You bloody fucking stupid Mick bastard -- " Spike pulled the arrow out, and launched himself at Angel again.

He didn't know how long the punch-up lasted -- a long time. They were too well-matched, or maybe that was a good thing, he didn't know. He didn't know anything anymore. But when he couldn't lift his arm to get in another blow, when he could barely lift his heavy head up from where he was splayed on the marble floor of the hotel lobby, his cheek stuck there with blood, but saw through one rapidly swelling eye that a yard off Angel was much the same, he felt...

... well, not better. Didn't think he'd ever feel "better" again, whatever that was. Grief and anger had taken up residence in him the way the demon had when he was turned, never to be untwined, and become part of his sinews, his marrow, his mind.

The cold stone seemed to absorb him where he lay, and there was no more fight in him.

The gentle touch in his hair, fingers stroking the disordered curls, and the nearby smell of warmed blood startled him back to awareness. He didn't want her to see him this way, his face beaten and his spirit beaten -- not when it wasn't at her hand.

His lips were dry and cracked when he whispered, "Buffy -- don't... ."

"It's not Buffy. Don't start hallucinating on me. Sit up. Drink this. You're practically empty, Spike."

He'd never seen Angelus look pity, and he'd never been touched by him like this either. He was on a bed in a room upstairs; Angel's hands were easy and firm, propping him up, handing him the hot mug.

Angel sat beside him, an arm around his shoulders, and held the cup to his mouth.

The first taste revealed it to be human, nearly fresh. He swallowed it down. The warmth suffused him. For a moment he sat still, silent, battening on it. Nothing was as good, nothing, as a warm live feed. He only ever fed anymore from her, but not for a long while, all her goodness had been withdrawn a long while.

Then he remembered everything, and the grief resurged. It was all out of control, endless failure and wrong. He began to cry. Shame spasmed through him like physical pain, to do this in front of Angel, but the tears came from a cistern inside him he could not stem.

Angel pulled him in with the other arm, tight against his broad solid body.

"I know what it is," Angel murmured. "My son, too... lost. Years ago now, and I still think about him every single day. How much I love him. Spike, I'm sorry."

These words unlocked some further cavern of anguish; Spike cried out, struggled. Angel held him. After a while he realized he was only struggling in order to feel his grandsire's strength, the raw comfort of his immoveable stolidity. His encircling arms were warm; he must've just fed as well. Spike pressed his face into Angel's neck and wept.

"That's it. Get it all out."

"It was my fault this happened! I should've gone after her... when they were little, I should've made sure... oh God. Jesus Fucking Christ, it's my fault he's killed." The breath sawed in his throat as he spoke. "Where is he?"

"He's secured. And still magicked up. You can see him as soon as you like."

"Like to pull his head off my own self, stupid little git."

"What happened?"

"Dru came for him, seduced him. Found her dancin' round him as he was feeding off his idiot of a brother-in-law." Family. He winced. "An' she's got away again. Barely thought of her, all these years. Never spoke of her. Never so much as showed the boy her picture, so he'd know her if he saw her. Christ, I'm a moron."

"If you are, then Buffy's another."

"She never wanted to think about my past. Dunno how I'm gonna tell her... Goddamnit... an' I think she's left me."

"What are you talking about?"

"There was this wizard bloke, name of Saleem. She was workin' with him earlier this year. Got too cozy. Tried to forgive her... thought I wanted to forgive her... but I couldn't. Can't. Nothin' feels the same, an' we both know it. It's been hell, since. An' now, this. Stupid, stupid, stupid... ."

Angel didn't tell him not to be hard on himself. He didn't tell him it would be all right. He'd never said those things back when he was Angelus and Spike was William the fledge, willful and naughty. But his embrace didn't let up, and it felt like the only embrace on earth. Sire. He was that in all but the bare blood fact; with no one to teach him but Dru, he'd have been dusted in a month.

No love there, but Spike knew there were one or two emotions stronger even than love.

Angel's hand was in his hair again, a tentative caress. Spike inhaled his familiar aroma, sighed.

"Will, Will, Will, Will."

"Failed him. I've always failed him. He reminded me of -- "

"Yourself."

"Yeah. Was afraid for him. He knew. Always thought I didn't love him proper. I couldn't show him... he thought I cared more for our girl."

"You always did," Angel said. "Never one for the lads, were you. Always playing up tough, but I saw through that."

"Did you?" He was beginning to feel foolish with his head on Angel's shoulder, but he showed no sign of wanting to withdraw, and Spike was so tired. The trouble was a boulder on his chest, it was good to rest it on someone else for a little while.

"Always liked taking care of Drusilla more than anything, you did. Tearing up a roomful of punters was only fun if you could do it with her, or go back an' tell her about it after. Am I right? And... all these years, you've cherished Buffy. You've kept her strong, kept her in the world."

He couldn't think of how to acknowledge this amazing admission. Overwhelmed with disbelief at his kindness, the sobs resurged. Angel held him.

"Poor Will. Didn't know what you were getting into."

"He didn't know. We didn't teach him like we should've. Like I should've. S'my fault. If I'd loved him better, would've made sure he wasn't so eager to go be damned forever. Thought no one loved him enough, an' that's why he went into her arms. Must've been."

"Like you," Angel murmured. "Looking for love in all the wrong places. You'd have loved me back then, if I'd let you. Wouldn't you? I think you did."

Spike looked up then, to see Angel's face. Angel kissed him.

His mouth was bruised and cut by Spike's fist, as his own was by Angel's. He tasted blood on the kiss, but not aggression. Angel renewed it, holding his head. His tongue in Spike's mouth tasted of some home he'd left so long ago he'd nearly forgotten it.

"Christ, Will. It's been a long time."

At first Spike thought he meant long time since I had you, but as he continued to kiss him, hungry kisses full of frank desire and a pent-up sweetness, he understood that it was just a long time. Since Angel had touched anyone this way, or been touched.

"For you too," Angel said, his fingers tracing the lines of Spike's face. "I'm sorry. You must miss her so much."

"Don't want to talk about her."

"No." Angel nipped at his ear, his jaw. "What do you want, Will? Have it. Be good for both of us."

Incredulous, Spike drew back. "What're you sayin'? You gonna surrender the brown just 'cause -- "

"Because I want to. You and I were never lovers, and we were never friends. But I'm your sire, I know you... and this is time out." He pulled his sweater off.

Spike gaped at him, his bruise-darkened face almost comically incredulous. His own words echoed in his mind as Angel reached out to undo Spike's shirt buttons. I know you. It took so long to know a person, and people were so very brief. Wesley was the living being he knew and loved best, and he was sinking day by day beyond the horizon of his illness, it was like watching a candle gutter. Sitting at his bedside every afternoon, Angel longed for unspeakable things for him, for himself. Love was so terrible.

He felt so very empty now. Slept less and less because bed was so empty. Loved his team members less than he'd loved the ones who came before, even as he sensed the futility of such a defense. Less love protected nothing -- it only made less love. And he already had so little.

He wanted to tell all this to Spike. Spike was an expert in love, it was a mystery to Angel how this was, Spike was soulless and brutal, but he teemed with it, and in recent years it had come back to him tenfold for what he'd given. Spike was loved, and that was like being alive. It was like having a life, and a soul, it was safety. It was precious. He wanted to speak of all this, but he couldn't think how, so he kissed Spike's mouth, sucking on his tongue, ran his hands over the long smooth back, the undulant arms; pulled him in belly to belly so as to feel his cock rising, to take in the subtle scent of his arousal. Spike's body still resonated with unspent sobs like a faint pulse. His hands were in Angel's hair now, gripping tight, and he kissed back with small moans.

"Gonna fuck you. My God, I'm gonna fuck you so you'll know it."

"Yeah," Angel breathed. "Yeah, that's right." He was hard, his cock tenting his trousers, prodding against Spike's. Spike sucked on his mouth, his neck. Then let go, leaning back to push his jeans off.

Standing at the bedside, he was an alabaster pillar, lit on one side by the single low light on the night-stand, shadowed on the other. Angel fisted himself through his trousers, staring at Spike's cock. Hadn't seen it in an age. Had never tasted it, let alone allowed it anywhere near inside him. He'd tormented it and forced shamed pleasure from it, used it to humiliate its owner, as he'd beaten and cursed and raped and fought him.

Somehow through all that, he'd never been able to wring hatred from Spike.

Even when he'd come to torture him for the gem of Amara. Spike had anguish and rage and envy in spades. But not quite hatred.

It was something else between them. Something that couldn't be severed or thinned out by age or distance or misuse or abuse. It made Angel want him now, want him in ways he'd never wanted anybody.

When Spike went into him, Angel thought, he'd feel it. He'd be touched in the place that was dry and cold and nearly dead, and it wouldn't make him happy, not that way, but it would be good, it would be connection, what he needed. He considered that this one indulgence might make the days and nights ahead even more seer. But his cock was throbbing, his whole body alight with need, and nowhere to go but forward. The need was Spike's too. He'd needed the bone-crunching brawl, he needed the tears. And now, before rest, he needed this.

Standing on the other side, Angel pushed off his own clothes. "Come fuck me, then."

The bed lay between them like a field of challenge. Angel stretched out on his back, and reached for him.

He was still half-convinced this was a trap. Sire's big hand would close on his arm, he'd wrestle him down on his belly, pinion him with fangs in the back of his neck, and --

When he didn't take the proferred hand, Angel rolled closer and took Spike's cock in his mouth.

He arched, hissed. Angel's hands wrapped around his hips, drawing him forward. They were large hands, encompassing, but not now trying to bruise, to maul. The mouth large too -- he took in half Spike's length without seeming effort, and it wasn't spicy hot, like Buffy's small sweet mouth that could hold little more than the knob of him tight as her quim, but wet and close and weirdly familiar, though he'd never been there except in old resentful fantasies. Angel bobbed his head up and down, let him go enough to lick at the tip, his tongue rounding up the droplets of pre-come that spluttered out of him in fast astonished dribbles, before taking him all in again.

Couldn't credit that this was happening.

He still felt like he wanted to cry, but the feeling was all through him now, in his muscles and his balls, that pent-up hot urge, demanding, unstoppable. Angel was looking up at him, it was a look that might kill him, so unlike was it to any way he'd ever seen Angel before.

Then he let the cock go, pulled Spike in closer, and mouthed his balls. Catching at Angel's hair, he groaned, loud enough that the sound echoed through the suite, and Angel groaned too, sounding glad and desperate. He pulled him down onto the bed, onto his back, crouching over him, one of those big fists wrapped around his length, other arm holding down one quivering thigh, the tongue lapping him with the determination of a cat grooming a kitten.

"Christ -- Christ! Fucking hell, you -- oh fucking hell." He came suddenly, a spasm like a hard sneeze, shaking all over, crying, arms stretched over his head. The shame descended at once, like darkness. "Damn it."

"No." Angel still held the softening cock. "That was good. You'll get hard again in a minute." Turning, he licked up the white droplets from Spike's belly. Licked a line up the chest. Addressed himself to a nipple, biting gently, then at Spike's gasp, harder. The same to the other one, then loomed over him, in a way that was familiar, that Spike held in permanent memory in his body, all the thousands of times he'd lain beneath Angelus, submitted to him, on his back. His weight pressing down, his cock like a club.

"Kiss me, Will."

Never like this. When he slid his arms around Angel, the other man sighed, rolled them over so Spike was on top. Said it again, Kiss me, and this was someone he didn't know at all.

They sucked one another's mouths. Angel's hard cock was bent back between their bodies. Spike wrapped a hand around it, thumbing the wet tip so that Angel wriggled and moaned. His own twitched, lengthened.

"You really gonna let me do this?"

"Not 'let.' I want it."

"You want me? Want a good fucking?"

"Yeah. I -- yeah. God. Do that -- "

Spike squeezed him harder, rubbing the underside of his prick-head at the old remembered place that made Angelus growl and tense. Wondered when he'd acquired a taste for getting dicked, and with whom. In the old days Angelus would've rolled over for no one. Unimaginable that even as a fledge he'd been made to give it up.

But he was quivering in anticipation, head already rolling on the pillow. The pre-come bubbled out of him; Spike swiped a good thumbful and brought it down to the tight dark pucker between his legs. God, he was so big, big everywhere, like one of those Henry Moore statues, legs like columns toppling as he shoved the knees apart. Pushing the finger in made Angel stiffen and wince.

No. No way. Couldn't be this is his first time. Not for me. "Why're we doin' this?"

"Jeezus, Spike, not now. Play twenty questions after."

Life was one big bewilderment now. Might as well do it up to the hilt. Had to drop in for a closer look -- take a taste. Hooked Angel's knees in his hands, rolled him up to expose that most defended place. Scent-of-sire strong now in his nostrils, compounded of hard cock and blood through skin and sharp high need. Mastery (temporarily) displaced. Plunged his tongue into the dark tight place, and Angel's whole body rippled out from that one move, a ripple ending in a hard ungggh. Spike felt a laugh bubbling up. God damn world was upside down. The son he never should've had was a vampire and old Angelus was going to give up his cherry to his own former butt-boy.

And not only that.

Just to make this extra surreal, he was gonna plead.

Angelus was pleading like Buffy did when he bound her hand and foot and oh-so-delicately ate her out.

"Oh God -- Spike -- do it -- Will -- fuck -- please -- "

So damn big and heavy. Crouched like this, arms outstretched to hold his legs, it was almost like pushing a boulder uphill with his tongue.

Substituting fingers for tongue, Spike reared up to have a look at the lie of the land. One arm covered Angel's face. He pulled it down. "Want to see you."

"Do it now."

"Doin' it, yeah. Doin' it -- Christ. Shit -- Angel -- "

He was fucking Angel, Angel's arms were around his neck, his ankles on his shoulders, Angel was straining up to kiss his mouth, between gasps at every sawing in-and-out. Spike wasn't sure when they both fanged out, but the kisses became blood-flavored, the cries turned to growls and rumbling roars.

This was so damn good, it couldn't last, and it didn't. But Angel came first, on a stunned shout, splattering, head thrown back, thrashing under him. When Spike shot, Angel had just caught his tongue again in his mouth; he sucked it in, his arms and arse and everything pulling him in, vibrating and panting and taking it, taking it all.

Spike cried out, dissolved. Long fall, like off Glory's tower. But the landing was soft. Angel held him, arms grappling tight, hand in his hair, and lying like that with his face in Angel's neck he could hear, feel, the deep contented astonishing purr.

He hadn't come with anybody but Mrs Palm and her five daughters for longer than he cared to count -- wondered how long it had been for Angel. Nothing stopping him getting laid, long as he didn't get too happy -- but apparently that didn't fit in with the program of self-flagellation and brooding.

Spike blinked and let the silence spin out. Couldn't move -- spine gone, limbs gone to noodles, and cock nothing but a wodge of wet tissue. But the glow could've powered the whole goddamn hotel.

Couldn't get weirder, or better, so when Angel exhaled and said "Thank you," he put it down to the general unreality, and only nodded.

The next time Angel spoke, he started, knowing he'd been asleep. Shouldn't sleep now. What the fuck was he doing? Didn't come here for this. Had to stay focused. He sat up.

It occurred to him that he'd gotten back at Buffy now.

Maybe in more ways than one.

"What time is it? Why'd you let me sleep?"

"You needed it. When's the last time you had any rest?"

"Don't go all Mamma Bear on me now. Need to get the boy fixed."

"I don't know that you can."

"There's always a loophole, if you know where to look. You know the sort of places one goes to ask for these things."

"Always a loophole, yeah. And for every loophole, a catch."

Spike met his eyes, which were opaque, solemn.

"Anybody can have anything, they're willing to give up enough for it. I'll do anything to get the boy his life back, give him back to his mother an' sister."

For a moment Angel was completely still, his eyes looking not at him, but through him. Then he swung around and rose. "I said that too, once. But Connor's still lost to me. Go on, grab a shower. I'll meet you in the lobby and tell you where to go."

The magic was wearing off. He could blink now, tense his muscles, but still not move. He was in a low, dank place, completely dark, lying on his side on a cement floor, but his demon eyes could discern the black-on-black outlines of the large space, could see the close-set bars of the cage he was locked into. He heard the inner workings of the hotel, it gurgled and groaned around him like the bodies of the victims he'd consumed.

He was hungry.

So hungry. Milo's thin blood was long since absorbed, and the magic that held him immobile for the last day and a half had somehow sapped his energy. Or maybe it was just being immobile for so long, being slung around by his father in a duffle bag with no regard to the fact that he was -- well, not a human being, but sentient, and capable of feeling pain, and undeserving of this treatment. He'd only done what vampires do -- what Spike had done thousands of times. It was instinct.

Footsteps overhead, then the bare bulbs above flashed on and two pairs of feet came down a metal stairway. He smelled them, Spike and Angel. Now that he was transformed, his father smelled different -- before, he'd barely had a smell at all, but on the plane Johnny'd had plenty of time to concentrate on his new olfactory abilities, and to parse the distinctive scents of Spike and Jemima. There was nothing else to do, other than listen to his sister's sub rosa sobbing. He'd have thought she'd be pleased to be well rid of her asshole husband, but after a few hours he decided perhaps she was crying over him, being dead. He'd have reassured her that on the contrary he'd never felt more alive, except for the not being able to move or speak.

They stood now outside the cage, leaning against the bars, looking at him.

He knew about Angel... at least a little. That he had a soul, and before that was, as a vampire, the worst of the worst.

That he'd been his mother's first lover. That on the rare occasions when his name came up, she'd sigh, and a grimace would cross Spike's face that he probably wasn't even aware of.

That was all he knew. Except that Drusilla had spoken of him. He was her 'Daddy.' Her sire.

He breathed them in, Angel who had been Angelus, and Spike. There was something new about his father's scent. Something... odd, about the two of them.

They smelled of each other.

"He can see and hear?"

"Not sure. I think so."

"Huh." Angel looked at Johnny. "Where'd you get that spell? I could use something like that."

"Friend of a friend."

"How do you undo it?"

"I'll show you after we fit the shackles."

"Looks like it's wearing off already." Angel unlocked the cage. Johnny was trying to move, but the effort only landed him flat on his back.

They stood over him now, one on either side. Johnny showed his fangs, growled.

"What a puppy he is," Spike said. He prodded him in the side with the toe of his boot. "Foolish twat."

"Aw, don't do that," Angel said. "He didn't do anything you didn't do."

"Like I said, foolish twat. An' he's killed at least three people I know about -- you think his mother's gonna be best pleased with that? If she'd been there, she'd have had to stake him, or hate herself for not having the heart. For chrissakes, he killed his sister's husband. She was about to get a divorce, I hope, but... s'not what we need." He heard himself mouthing off, as if any of this was light or funny, and knew his rage had passed into a new phase, had become dryer and whiter, sharper. He couldn't touch his love for the boy through the heat of his anger, or his love for Buffy either, even as he did all this for them, and for Jemima, and wouldn't consider doing otherwise.

The demon that his son had become was an enemy like all those other demon enemies he'd fought at Buffy's side. He'd expend himself in conquering it, and if he fought hard enough, Johnny would be Johnny again. And maybe then he -- or someone -- would be able to talk some sense to him. But right now he could barely see the boy. The enormity of his disappointment blocked him out.

"You're gonna come with me to this place?"

"I'd better not. The Conduit... doesn't like crowds."

"Crowds?"

"Every other time I've gone to ask for information or help from the Powers, I've had to go in alone. Anybody I brought with me got knocked back pretty hard. So... ."

"Yeah, all right." He snapped the shackles around Johnny's ankles, with enough give between them so he could walk but not run. Chained his wrists behind his back. Spike tried to remember the last time he'd really touched him. Years now, by the boy's choice. Didn't go in for hugs, even at parting, since he was teenaged. For Spike, love was always intensely physical. Couldn't help feeling more in that rejection of his embrace than just rejection of an embrace.

Johnny's skin was cool. Touching it, Spike wanted to bang his own head against the concrete and howl.

He dragged him up, still growling, to his feet, propped him against the bars.

"Hold him for me. Like that. Yeah." Spike pulled a roll of duct tape from the box, taped Johnny's mouth, right over the curled back lips, the fangs. Took Edwina's talisman from his pocket and touched it to the base of the boy's throat. The magic shimmered away. Johnny sagged, and Angel pressed one hand to his chest to hold him up.

"He's good-looking," Angel said. "Like you were."

"Were?"

"I mean -- he reminds me of you back then. How you looked. Before you changed yourself over."

"Suppose so. Buffy thinks he favors her."

"Really? I don't see it."

"Doesn't matter."

"He's hungry," Angel said.

"I don't fucking care. No more blood for him. When this is over, we'll go for sodding burritos. Help me get him to the car."

It was like watching a pond ice over. The change in Spike, from how he'd been in the bedroom a half hour ago, to now. He'd been wide open then, raw anguish, raw need. The boy was worse than dead, and all the fault was his, yet he'd accepted solace, been comforted for a few minutes at least.

But that was over. He'd shut it down. Wasn't going to let it get in the way of what he had to do.

Angel knew all about that, the way feeling could overload and cancel itself out, the way the task could become more important than the outcome. As they trundled Johnny out to the car, he wondered how it would go. What they'd be like when he saw them again. If he'd see them again.

Spike wasn't thinking any further ahead, he could tell, then getting into the face of the Conduit and demanding what he wanted. He had that blindish look he would get in the old days before a fight in which they were outnumbered and ought to be without hope. Spike didn't need hope going into a fight, he shunted it off along with reason and fear.

As he got into the car, he said, "See you later."

He said it because it was something to say.

Angel watched the taillights until they disappeared down the boulevard, then went back inside.

He was at his desk, drinking coffee, deliberately not looking at his watch as he sifted through paperwork Rita had left for his signature. He didn't share Spike's arrogant assurance that anything could be bought. Maybe it would've been better if he'd left Spike sleeping and staked the boy himself.

He'd never have forgiven him, but then there were plenty of other things already that Spike had against him. And better perhaps to face Spike's rage than Buffy's, if he got himself fucked up beyond recall. She'd blame him for not putting a stop to it.

Someone came into the hotel. The scent was new, but had an undercurrent of familiarity. Light steps crossed the lobby, and the bell on the counter rang.

He rose silently to peer out without leaving the office. He could see the newcomer, but she couldn't see him.

"Hello? Anybody here? I need to speak to Angel."

The counter came up to her bust. A small, fine, pale face, medium-brown, medium-length hair parted on the side, eyes of indeterminate color in swollen lids, underscored by smudges of grey. The red lipstick seemed out of place on such a devastated face. He could hear her heart racing.

"Hello? Is anyone here?"

Something vaguely known about the timbre of the voice, as well as the scent. She turned to look around the lobby, to scan the balcony.

While her back was to him, he stepped out.

"I'm Angel."

She jumped. "Oh! Oh... ." She fell back a little from the counter as he came up to it, raising her face to look at him. It was that he recognized, more than any particular feature, that way of tipping back to look up into his height. He made the connection just as she opened her mouth to speak, and it shook him.

"I'm Jemima Whid -- I mean, Jemima Summers."

It wasn't so much that she looked like Buffy. She did. A lot. She looked like Spike too, but what she really put him in mind of -- and he couldn't quite believe he remembered them -- was William's photographs of his dead sisters, those contraband sepia images. Why, with all the other ways he'd found to torture him, hadn't he confiscated those pictures, forced Spike to burn them? He'd thought it insipid enough that he'd treasure anything from his past life. But they must've made some sort of impression on Angelus, because now he could see them in his mind's eye, and she was like those girls -- formal, solemn, serious, but with a hint that all that could fall away before laughter and delight.

Which were in short supply for her at the moment.

The last time he'd seen any picture of her was easily eighteen years before. For a couple of years, Buffy was enamored of those sort of Christmas cards that were a photograph of the children with a message printed on it. He'd kept them, looking at them sometimes with wonder and a sense that these kids were somehow connected to him, because he was connected to Spike -- but the feeling shamed him, and he never mentioned it to Wes.

She spoke with a sort of English accent, which wasn't too surprising, given that she'd lived in England since her marriage. He knew that much about her, and that the marriage had pleased neither Buffy, nor Spike, nor, apparently, Jemima herself.

He couldn't think what to say to her. That she existed at all was startling enough; he'd never imagined meeting her. "I didn't know you were here in Los Angeles."

She looked confused. "But I came with Papa. Didn't he say -- ? Where is he? He left me at the hotel to sleep -- by time we got here I just couldn't stay awake another minute. But he said he'd call. He should've rung me up by now." As she spoke she paled even more; her eyes were shiny with dread.

Angel was stuck on the soft way she said 'Papa.' He thought maybe it was that that unhinged him.

"He... uh... he went to see what could be done for your brother."

Jemima's eyes widened. In the silence, she seemed to feed her anxiety to him.

"I... um... I meant to say. I'm sorry. About... ."

She said, "Went where?" and he said, "How's your mother?"

The remarks vanished into the vastness of the lobby.

She swallowed, glanced nervously around. Beneath her freshly-applied perfume, she smelled of fear.

Angel tried again. "Your mother -- "

"I can't believe he went without me. I need to be there. Where they are."

"Look, come inside. Have you eaten? There's coffee."

She looked at him then as if he was insane. "Don't you understand? I have to be with them!"

Angel had the odd sensation that he was an elephant afraid of a mouse. "J-Jemima," it felt strange to say her name, as if it was a presumption, "that's not a good idea. He's gone to importune a Conduit to the Higher Powers. It's very dangerous. I'm sure Spike didn't want -- "

"Take me there! This minute, take me there! Oh God, I'm afraid -- "

"Well, see, that's why you shouldn't -- "

She seemed to grow in a moment. Or maybe she just went up on tiptoe. But she was immense as she shouted at him. "Stop making excuses! They're all I have left -- I can't wait -- Take me there now!"

All she had left? Hard to grasp that someone so young, vibrant, should be so desperate; Angel had come, in his growing isolation and loneliness, to feel that that was the province only of the very old, like him. She startled him to his core, this little woman, with her fierceness and her Buffy-eyes and her refusal to be coddled or cowed. Her small hands gripped the edge of the counter, the knuckles white. She had pretty nails, painted the same red as her lipstick. She had a wedding band and a diamond ring, and a blistering intensity in her stare.

"I'll get the car keys."

She raised her chin. "Hurry!"

"Please tell me she blindsided you. Tell me she grabbed you while you were being sick in the alley behind the pub an' you never knew what was happening."

Behind the duct tape, Johnny grunted.

The driving was a problem. Spike could see it was going to be a problem as soon as they'd been on the freeway for ten minutes. It was still just late afternoon, newly dark. He couldn't bear the radio -- LA drive-time voices chattering away about all kinds of bullshit that ignored how his marriage was falling to shit and his son was a member of the Grateful Dead and even Jemima wouldn't look at him with a frank expression. And this was the first time he'd been alone with Johnny since... well, he couldn't remember since when.

Before he spoke, Spike had a vivid fantasy that lasted past four exits, of taking one, finding some deserted parking lot behind a warehouse, and kicking the shit out of the boy until he was vampire hamburger. He could practically feel the bones crunching against his steel toe.

"Because that I could maybe forgive. Christ. I know I should've hunted her down years ago an' staked her. I know that. But fucking hell, boy, you're the son of the Slayer -- you can't have been so bloody stupid as to get tricked by a vampire."

Another grunt. Spike glanced at him. His eyes glittered. He was still in game-face. Either out of defiance or because he couldn't figure out how to slough it off. He remembered he'd found it tricky at first too.

"What've you got to say for yourself?" He tore the tape off, hard and fast, so Johnny yowled and flinched. "Shut up that noise an' answer me."

"I'm a way better fuck than you are, apparently."

He wished he'd left the tape in place.

"She said so a bunch of times."

"Don't care what Dru said -- she's crazy."

"You care." Johnny laughed. "You're so pussy-whipped it's not even funny."

"Shut yer gob before I shut it for you."

"What I don't get is what you gave it up for. I mean -- shit. Fucking Mamma can't be that fulfilling. Not after all these years. If you needed her so much, why the hell didn't you turn her so the two of you could, you know, really live? I mean -- it's pathetic that you didn't. You're pathetic. All this power, appetite, it's fucking incredible, it's the most amazingly great thing ever, and you walk away from it. You don't even have the excuse Angel's got. The soul. I could smell it on him." He made a face, and spat. The stuff dripped from the dashboard. "I know about the chip. But you got that out before I was born. That's when any vampire worth the name would've made his move. You'd waited long enough. Mamma trusted you -- you could've taken her in her sleep by then, for chrissakes, easy-peasy. I can't believe you didn't want that. Instead you went on living in that stupid little house, drinking pig blood and tying Jemima's pig-tails, and calling Mamma 'my queen' like some ball-less dork. No wonder she doesn't love you anymore."

Spike swerved out of the left lane, cutting off three other cars with a screech of tires, barreled onto the shoulder and slammed into park. With a roar that shook the car, he grabbed Johnny by the throat.

"You little shit -- give me one good reason why I don't dump you in the desert tonight so you'll fry at dawn."

Johnny stared back, and didn't tremble. "Because, Mr Whippee, Mamma would never forgive you if you did."

"Believe me, she wouldn't have to know."

"Anyway, you wouldn't, because you wuv me. I'm your precious little boy." He chortled. "That's your disease. Love."

Spike pressed him down onto the seat, out of view of the passing drivers, and punched him in the face until he felt the nose break. Then he tore off a new piece of duct tape and stuck it over the bloody mess.

He came back, moving slowly, with an axe. Big heavy-browed man with an axe, and yet there was something tentative and furtive about the way he held himself. It suggested he was lying to her. She didn't know what to make of him. She'd heard and read so many stories about Angel and Angelus -- including Uncle Rupert's Watcher Diaries, and anecdotes from Uncle Xander to be filed under 'don't mention to your mother that I told you this'. Growing up, she'd felt a powerful curiosity about that split personality everyone attributed to him. She was very aware that he'd been her mother's first lover, though they never spoke about that at home.

The soul, the gypsy curse, it was mysterious and a little bit hard to believe; Milo had always described it as a sort of jiggery-pokery, but then he had no interest at all in seeing a good side to any vampire, or even plumbing the details of their behavior.

"Did you bring an axe for me, too?" she said. "Will we need that? Where are you taking me?"

"I don't know if we'll need it. I... uh... seldom go anywhere without an axe."

He didn't speak in the car. Not a man to fill a silence. She was grateful for that; didn't want to be distracted from her own nearly overwhelming anxiety. She couldn't understand why Spike had gone off without even speaking to her first. It could only mean he was planning something so dangerous he didn't want her near it. She wished now that she'd talked to him on the plane about what they were going to do in Los Angeles. She hadn't thought about it at all; the whole time her mind was clouded with what had already happened. All that death in the space of a few days, it felt like her fault. She should've kept closer tabs on Johnny. He'd given her so many signals that all wasn't right with him. She should've listened. Postponed the abortion to be with him. If she'd done that... he'd be alive. He'd be alive, Milo would be alive, and the child... well, the child would still have to go.

Angel cleared his throat. "Are you all right?"

"How far is it?"

"Outside the city. Another hour."

They'd been riding for thirty minutes already.

"You asked me before, about my mother." She watched his impassive profile. "She doesn't know about this. She's on a mission, in Asia. Before that, she was well. Now, I can't say how she'll be."

There was a pause. Then he said, "You can go ahead and cry if you feel like it."

"I've been crying for days." She fiddled with the clasp of her handbag. "Is there any chance Johnny can be, you know, un-vamped? Made alive again?" As soon as the question was out, she wished she hadn't asked it, and knew he wished so too.

"You... probably hear this a lot, but you're like her. Your mother. I always thought... well, I thought she was the prettiest girl in the world."

"I'm not pretty. And I'm not really like her at all. But, uh, thanks."

"Don't take it like that, I just meant -- and you are pretty."

"Oh for chrissakes, I'm a widow of thirty, I had an abortion last week and my brother is a monster, who cares what I look like?"

"Sorry. I was just... sorry."

"Why didn't you stop him? If this is so dangerous -- "

"Nobody stops Spike. Anyway... he's got to do what he's got to do."

"... I know. I just don't want -- " Her stomach growled. She hoped he hadn't heard it, although of course he had, she knew he could hear her blood circulating and probably her cells dividing -- when she was small Papa used to amuse her by saying he could hear that and describing what it sounded like and where in her body they were multiplying most furiously, and she'd believed him as she believed everything he said.

She didn't want Angel to remark on her hunger or suggest they stop. Nobody was going to stop her, either.

God, she should've spoken to Papa on the plane, found out what he was thinking, consoled him. Of course he wouldn't care about Milo. He was only trying to protect her and Johnny. If they'd stayed, called the authorities... they'd still be there. Tangled up with police and red-tape and suspicion. He'd done the right thing. Right by his lights. Which weren't quite the same as hers, as her mother's, supposedly because he had no soul.

Although there were plenty of people with perfectly good ones who'd have done the same.

She still didn't understand this soul thing. Who could say he didn't have one? All along she'd thought it was just another word for love, because she'd always assumed that was what made Papa unique among all the vampires she'd ever seen or read about -- not that he loved at all, which wasn't so unusual, but that he loved the living, and didn't want to make them over to be undead like him.

"Why didn't you go with him? Help him?"

"It doesn't work like that."

"What doesn't work like that?"

"He's trying to make a bargain -- a deal -- with the Powers That Be. For your brother's life. There's nothing I could do one way or the other. I'm not part of it."

"Well, I am. Drive faster."

It was cold here, and the stars seemed very high and far away. This distance from the highway everything seemed remote. Spike wasn't sure if he'd come to the right place -- Angel's directions were good, but there was so little to distinguish these dry hills from any others, even to his heightened senses. He'd pulled Johnny out of the car, set him kneeling on the scrubby ground, and made a circle around the two of them in the dirt. If he was in the right place, and got the incantation right, then they'd be admitted to an antechamber where he could address the Conduit.

Only as the portal shimmered into being in front of them did it occur to Spike to wonder what he was going to offer for the boy's life.

The Conduit-thing was enormous and grumpy and impossible to look at directly without burning the eyes. It lived, if you could call it that, inside a sort of cave, except not made of rock -- rather made of something else that was also enormous and grumpy and impossible to look at; it squelched and undulated under his feet and gave off a foetid disquieting heat. Like being inside something's mouth. Something that didn't want to swallow two vampires; that wanted to vomit them out, as violently as possible.

The thing picked Johnny up by the neck and snapped him, like a towel. "NONE ADDRESSES US WITHOUT AN OFFERING. IS THIS YOUR OFFERING, LOWLY ENTREATOR?"

"No."

"THEN WHY IS HE CHAINED AND BOUND IF NOT AS AN OFFERING TO US? WORTHLESS, UNWANTED OFFERING."

The whole chamber rippled; Spike's feet were sinking into the floor, and he had to throw his arms out to keep from toppling. Johnny was keening in terror, struggling so hard that he tore through the duct tape; his scream reverberated around the chamber.

Spike braced himself and spoke into the sickening brightness. "He's my stupid son who got himself turned. He's not just my son -- his mother's the Slayer. An' not just the regular slayer -- she's the Slayer who was dead an' resurrected. Buffy Summers. The one you Powers must respect, 'cause you've seen to it she's still around all this time. She's off fightin' some big Nasty right now, an' I'm here on her behalf as well as my own."

"THAT IS OF NO IMPORTANCE. THIS BORES US." It bounced Johnny like a ball on a string, then let him drop from a great height. "WHAT IS THE OFFERING?"

"I'm the offering. Give him his life back an' let him go from here, an I -- "

"WHAT? YOU DARE TO HAGGLE WITH US? YOU ARE ONLY A VAMPIRE. A VAMPIRE IS NO OFFERING."

The chamber convulsed then, with an ear-shattering noise. It was like being inside a whooping cough. The floor was no longer the floor, and when he fell the surface singed his skin and clothes. He heard Johnny cry out again, but couldn't see him, or much of anything.

He struggled up. The atmosphere was murky now as well as impossibly brilliant. "Hey! Master vampire here! I'm old -- well, older than plenty -- an' cunning, an' strong. You give me what I ask, an' I'll -- I'll give myself in his place. Use me to fight your battles."

"YOU?" The rumbling that followed must've been laughter, at least if you could say a volcano erupting was laughter too.

"I've helped save the world a time or two! But if that's not bloody tempting, send me to hell to pay for his life. Give him his normal span of years, an' I'll work it off in any hell you pick. For as long as you say."

"I see it." She opened the door even before the car bumped to a stop. They'd been riding over shaggy dry hummocks of grass for the last ten minutes.

Angel grabbed her arm. "You see it? How can you see it?"

"Let go of me. Sometimes I see -- mystical things. Openings. I have since I was a kid. It's my one utterly useless power." She leapt out, running towards the shimmer.

He caught up with her, grabbed her arm again. "Let me go first. Make sure it's safe."

She glanced up at him. The blue glow of the portal played over his features, but he didn't seem aware of it.

"Of course it isn't safe. And you don't see it at all, do you, so I have to show you. Come, it's here." She grabbed his hand -- it was cool, like Papa's, but much larger. For a moment he resisted her tugging, then followed just as she was going to let go. She didn't need him for this, not anymore.

When she pushed herself into the thin opening, it squeezed her all around, so she couldn't get her breath. The atmosphere on the other side was convulsed and confused; it felt like she was pressing against some kind of invisible repellent membrane.

That's when Angel put his body around hers and forced them both through with a sensation like turning inside out.

The first thing she heard, before she could see anything at all, was Papa volunteering for hell.

The chamber convulsed around them. "WORTHLESS VAMPIRE BESEECHING A WORTHLESS BARGAIN! YOU ARE TWO DEAD CREATURES OF NO IMPORTANCE! HOW DARE YOU COME HERE AND BRAG TO US!"

"Not bragging! Just... telling what I'll do. I'll do anything. Anything so you send the boy back to his mother the way she made him -- alive."

"WHY WOULD YOU WANT SUCH A THING, VAMPIRE?"

"Told you -- he's my son! You know that -- the Powers know everything!"

Johnny was completely folded up, and even Spike was cowering now. Angel held onto Jemima, trying to shield her with his body from the nauseating heat and undulations, the sense of psychic unease so strong it made even him feel ill. But she struggled in his arms, jabbing her sharp heels into his shins. She had nothing remotely like her mother's strength, but their implacability was the same.

"WE KNOW. YOU ARE THE VAMPIRE WHO IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS. YOU THINK YOU ARE A HERO BECAUSE YOU LIE WITH ONE. YOU THINK THAT ENTITLES YOU TO IMPORTUNE US."

"So, are you gonna give me what I ask?"

"YOU WILL SUFFER ETERNAL AGONY SO THE BOY MAY LIVE AGAIN?"

"Just said so, didn't I?"

"YOUR SENSE OF SELF IS LARGE. YOU BELIEVE YOUR SERVICE HAS WORTH, OR YOUR SUFFERING MERIT. WHAT IF YOUR REMOVAL TO HELL REMOVED YOU AS WELL FROM THE MEMORY OF ALL WHO KNOW YOU?"

Spike was on his knees now, vamped out, grimacing in pain beneath the Conduit's crushing force. Beside him, reduced by terror to a trembling lump, Johnny mewled like a sick infant. Jemima had stopped resisting, thrilled frozen by the scene. Angel felt her body temperature decline as dread turned to stone terror.

"You'd let the boy go and no one would know -- ?"

"YOUR NAME, YOUR BODY, EVERY SHRED OF AN IDEA OF YOU WOULD BE ERASED FROM THIS WORLD. YOU'D TOIL FOREVER IN THE LOWEST HELL AND THESE YOU CARE FOR WOULD KNOW NOTHING OF YOU."

"And my son will have his life?"

"HE WILL HAVE HIS LIFE. AND THOSE HE KILLED -- FIVE SOULS -- SHALL HAVE THEIRS. IT IS MORE THAN YOU DESERVE BUT YOUR PETITION IS NOVEL AND DIVERTS US."

Whatever it was that had him pressed down must've eased then; Spike stood upright, tremulous, paler than pale, his hands dangling as if the muscles had been cut. "I accept. 'Course I accept." His voice rattled, small and bare-sounding in the vast space, like an old old man's. "Thank you. It's more than I -- Please, before I go, just let me have a moment -- "

He knelt beside Johnny, who raised his head. The yellow eyes were incredulous, suspicious.

"Can't give you a message, can I, you won't remember... but loved you always, though you maybe didn't know it. You'll know it now, for a minute anyway."

"You're crazy! I don't want this! My life? What good was that? I don't want anything from you! Cancel this -- I'm going back to Drusilla." He tried to rise, arms wrenching against the manacles.

As if he hadn't spoken at all, Spike reached out, put his fingers through the boy's hair with a soft, contemplative gesture. Angel could tell he wasn't seeing the angry vampire, but the man he'd been, or perhaps not even that, but the little boy, the infant in arms, still innocent and sweet-smelling and simple. He'd seen that himself once, in the face of another young man's rejecting rage.

"You'll be all right. You're a good, smart boy, an' you'll have a good life. Take care of your mum an' your sister. There's nothing more important than your kin. You hear me? Work hard, an' find a sweet girl to love, an' this'll be worth it."

Jemima cried out, a high terrible echoing wail. She convulsed against Angel so he had to drop her.

Spike started up at the sound, dreamy tenderness giving way to alarm. He'd been too preoccupied to scent their presence. Spotting her now, his expression was taken by a dismay Angel had never seen on him before.

"No! No no no!" Jemima pulled free and threw herself in between them, face upraised to the shifting terrible brilliance of the Conduit. "You can't do that! He's too good a fighter to take this way! The Slayer needs him! Let them both go and kill me instead! My life for their freedom! Come, that's a good trade!" She rushed towards the glaring radiance, face set against the nauseating energy that pulsed from it.

Angel had never felt so heavy, useless, stupid, as he did in that moment. The scene seemed to slow down so he could experience every detail with apparent leisure: Jemima's whip-tense gestures, the sharp smell of her fear and resolve. Spike's burgeoning horror as he snatched at her shoulders, tried to drag her aside. The glance he shot back at him, full of incredulous reproach.

The boy's reaction seemed even slower, a film shown frame by frame. He stared, eyes widening. Then the game face fell away, bit by bit, as the mouth opened to emit a silent howl. He rocked up to his feet, arms and shoulders straining. The manacle flew open; suddenly free, he seized hold of her arm. For a moment it looked like the two vampires might tear the girl in half between them. Seemingly unaware of that, she just went on demanding to be killed instead of any of them.

Spike bellowed, "No!", and "Get the fuck out!" Strength returning with a jolt, Angel lunged forward to jerk Jemima back. She cried and convulsed in his grip; the electricity of her panic transmitted itself to Angel's skin in sharp little shocks.

That's when Johnny screamed "Stop!

The chamber shook, throwing them apart; Angel just managed to keep his hold on Jemima as he toppled. When he looked up, Johnny was dangling, suspended in air.

"THE YOUNG VAMPIRE WILL SPEAK. SPEAK!"

The terror was on him again, but Johnny stared at Jemima and that seemed to give him courage. His voice wasn't loud, but it was nearly steady. "Stop this. Don't hurt my sister. I'm nothing, I'm rubbish, I don't matter anymore. Just dust me and let them all go. Dust me and end this!"

"YOU REJECTED LIFE, YOU WANTED TO RETURN TO YOUR SIRE, TO YOUR BLOODLUST AND FREEDOM. IS THAT NO LONGER YOUR WISH, CAPRICIOUS VAMPIRE?"

"Please don't hurt my sister. Please. Or... or him. My mother needs him. She's the Slayer."

"IT HAS BEEN MENTIONED."

"This is a big mistake. Just dust me and let them get out of here."

"WHAT DO YOU CARE FOR THESE, SOULLESS CREATURE?"

Johnny was sobbing now. "I still feel for her... it burns, here, it's horrible. Make it stop. Just end me, and end this!"

A new sound issued from the Conduit, a jarring rumble that vibrated them all so hard Angel bit into his own tongue.

At his side, Jemima whispered, "Oh Christ, it's laughing... ."

"YOU THINK THAT TINY BIT OF LOVE BURNS YOU, LITTLE VAMPIRE? YOU ARE SUCH A COWARD YOU SEEK TO ESCAPE EVEN THAT? YOU ARE TOO AFRAID OF SUFFERING. BUT NOW A LESSON. YOU WILL BE LIKE YOUR FATHER WHO CAME TO SEEK MERCY FOR YOU."

The air flashed, Johnny shrieked, and Angel could smell it, the union of soul and flesh, forced together like a hot brand driven against the skin.

He smelled it... twice.

The air was clear, cold, thin after the crowded atmosphere of the Conduit's chamber. A breeze played over his face. Overhead, the stars twinkled. Jemima snuffled at his side, sitting up slowly, holding her head, and further off, the two vampires lay sprawled in agonized silence.

Angel knew the feeling.

He staggered up. Jemima was already bent over Spike, crying and laughing and saying "Papa Papa Papa." Johnny scrambled onto hands and knees, gripped by violent dry heaves.

Angel clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Can't get it out like that, son," he said. "Believe me, I've tried."

Jemima had never, since she was eight or so, wished to be anyone else. But she did now, driving Spike's rental car back to Los Angeles with him stretched out in the back. She wished she was her mother.

Her mother ought to be here for this.

It wasn't that her mother would know would to do -- she was fairly sure she wouldn't, particularly, anymore than Jemima herself did -- but it was her Spike needed. He needed the physical solace of her body.

She'd tried again to reach her by phone before they started the drive back to the city, but once again she only reached the voice mail. Even if Buffy was merely in Nepal and not in some other dimension altogether, Jemima knew the phone service there could be spotty. It often was in the sorts of places Buffy traveled. She left another message, saying where they'd be.

She drove with the windows open, snuffing up big breaths of cool moving air. The disgusting atmosphere of that place, the way the walls and floor moved, left her breathless and ill. What he'd tried to do in there, the bargain he'd agreed to with the Powers, made her so angry. She didn't want to trade him, not even for her brother's life. The thought that all knowledge of him might've been erased from her mind -- she imagined it like a big dirty thumb coming down to squish through the lobes of her brain -- was appalling. He was going to do that without allowing her a say! If Angel had refused to take her there, if they'd reached it too late -- he'd be gone. Entirely gone, and... what would be in his place? Who would her father be, what would her life be? She couldn't imagine herself except as his daughter.

She was angry at both of them, Spike and Johnny. Angrier than she'd ever been in her life. The more she imagined what had happened to her brother, why he'd allowed it to happen -- because he must have, no one got turned without at least some tiny spark of volition -- the more this hot feeling of betrayal and helplessness crept over her.

Angel had seen that, and didn't want to let her make this drive alone. But there were two cars, and it was pretty obvious anyway that trying to put both shocked vampires into one of them together wasn't going to work very well. Johnny was furious at Spike for getting me fucked up like this! as he kept screaming. She was glad Angel could take him on, and suspected he'd cold-cocked him as soon as she drove off.

For the first hour of the drive, Spike lay unmoving with his face pressed into the join between the seat and the back-rest. Sometimes she heard him crying quietly, and then she didn't know what to do; the world was upside down when he was in tears. He wouldn't answer when she spoke, and she wasn't sure why he was so upset -- they were all still here, uninjured.

Tears rose up in her own eyes, immediately dashed away by the wind. Part of her anger was at herself, for feeling angry at all, especially at Papa. He was trying to do his best for them. Of course it would seem good to him, to agree to anything for the sake of one of those he loved. He'd always been that way.

She understood that, shouldn't be hung up by it. But he'd tried to trick her, and that was... she remembered how Buffy used to put her to bed when she was small, and not tell her she was about to leave on a mission. She did it, she said, to avoid a fuss, because she thought the parting would be easier somehow. But in the morning, when she awoke to find they were gone, and she'd been deprived of the special last embraces and kisses and words she needed when they left her for days at a time, the helpless rage swallowed everything, and if they phoned, she couldn't speak to them.

This was like that again, except with a side of narrowly-averted mind-rape.

She was startled by a touch to her hair, and swerved.

"Sssh, sorry. Should've made a bit a noise."

She set her mouth. He didn't remove his hand, but sat forward, stroking her hair softly. "Jemmie, better stop up there. Can hear your stomach growling. There's no rush, got hours of dark left. You should have something to eat."

"I'm not -- "

"Sure you are. Thirsty, too. After all that screaming, crying."

Now he said it, the sensation crashed on her; all at once she was light-headed, hollow. She pulled abruptly into the Denny's parking lot, cut the engine, let her forehead rest against the steering wheel.

"I was screaming and crying because you tricked me and you were going to leave me and I couldn't bear it, I couldn't bear it I couldn't bear it I couldn't bear it!"

"Tricked you? No baby, really. Just... just had things to go over with Angel while you were resting, yeah, an' then... you know. Didn't want to put you in any danger. Not after what happened to Johnny. But had no plans to trick you. Didn't stop you goin' to Angel, catching up with us, did I?" He climbed over into the front, popped her seatbelt and pulled her against him in one smooth motion. "Sssh, sweetness, no more crying."

"You were crying! I should've stopped and helped you, I didn't know what to do! What's happened to you! What happened in there! I don't understand!" It was all hitting her now, she wondered how she'd managed to sit upright, to drive.

"Sssh, sssh, gonna make yourself ill."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She didn't know why she was saying that. Except it felt wrong and weak to be like this, for him to have to comfort her. He was the one who was in trouble.

"Let's go in. Get you fed."

"What does it feel like? Papa, the soul, what does it feel like? Why does it make you cry?"

He smiled a little, his eyes shadowed and old-looking. He traced the shape of her jaw, lightly, with the side of his finger. The touch made her shiver, and she leaned into it. "You know what I am, Pudding. But you don't know all I've done, across so many many years. In a way, neither did I. Only now... all at once... now I do. Now I feel every bit of it."

She looked at him, his face half-lit and angular in the yellow parking-lot lights. A glimmer, tiny, wildly reluctant, at the edge of her consciousness, was helped by memory of what the Conduit said, five people killed by her brother in a couple of days. Five people, multiplied not by days but by decades. Decades upon decades.

She winced, shook her head. "But you're good. You're good and you've been good, for a long long time -- !"

"Come on. Talk about this later."

She held his hand as they walked toward the restaurant. His grip was tentative, she could tell he was being patient, extraordinarily patient, in a way that couldn't possibly last. He was staving off something -- something too enormous and unconscionable for her to fathom or even want to know. Staving it off until they were no longer alone together, until he could hand her off and then...

It made Johnny rave and swear and scream. Was it going to be the same with him? Was he going to go mad in another hour, or a day?

How was she going to cope with this? Why wasn't her mother here?

As they reached the entrance, she drew him around. "Papa, one thing."

He waited, almost not looking at her. The threads of his calm were, she thought, starting to show. She hastened to speak. "Whatever happens -- or happened -- whatever you are, or were, or will become -- I love you. Nothing is going to change that. Absolutely nothing."

He nodded, one curt nod as if acknowledging some banal remark, and pulled open the door.

"So now I'm supposed to sit at your feet so you can teach me how to be a good vampire? Forget it. I didn't ask for this."

"Them's the breaks, kid."

"Fuck you. Fuck you, and fuck him. What, I'm supposed to be glad now? That I'm spared any more blood on my hands? Hey, I liked it! I still like it! I'd like some right now!"

"Feed you back at the hotel. Why don't you shut up 'til then?"

"Why don't you? I'm supposed to be grateful because Papa loves me so damn much he was gonna die for me? I didn't ask him to do that. At least that thing screwed him too. I guess you're pretty sore you're not the only one anymore. The Amazing Angel, Only Vampire With a Soul."

"I'll cope."

"Well, I'm not gonna give you any competition. So not interested in the whole goodie two-shoes thing. What a bore. You can't force me to do anything."

"That's not entirely true."

"What? You're gonna hold me down and pull my fangs out?"

Angel repressed an urge to snarl.

"You think I didn't know about that? I know stuff." Johnny smiled suddenly. He was in game-face -- had been all along. "I know stuff that happened back when... when my father was a fledgling. And I know stuff... that's more recent. In fact, if you don't stop the car and let me go right now... well, I might tell what I know. To my mother."

"So tell." Angel speeded up.

"You don't mean that. You think I wouldn't do it? I'd do it. Stop the car. I'm out of here."

"Shut up. If I stop this car, you won't like what happens next."

"So don't stop. Yeah, it's better if you don't."

Johnny laughed, and then he wasn't there. The passenger-side door yawed. Angel started to jam on the brakes, but another car was coming up fast behind him, and there was no shoulder; just a guard-rail between the curving road and a sharp drop down a scrubby hillside. By time he could pull over, the spot where Johnny bailed was nearly a mile back. There was no point doubling back; by time he could get onto the other side of the highway, return to the spot, climb down the incline, Johnny would be long gone.

He should've chained him up for the trip, except he'd really thought the kid would settle down once Spike was out of sight and they were moving. He remembered his own experience -- the intensity of the pain when the soul suffused him like a virulence, the fear and agony of his victims more real to him than the clothes on his body, or its hunger. He'd been nearly immobile for days afterwards.

But Johnny -- obvious now -- wasn't him.

He was... more like Connor.

"I'm sorry," Angel said. "I should've taken precautions."

After letting him in, Spike went back to kneeling at the mini-bar, pulling out bottles. Some were already scattered in a half circle on the carpet. Angel wandered to a window. The suite was enormous, affording a glittering LA view. The Council certainly did things differently for the slayer these days. At least, for Buffy. Ample salary, private plane, deluxe hotel rooms anywhere she -- or her family -- went. Spike seemed pretty used to it, but then, he'd always been adaptable.

He shrugged, rising with two fistfuls of tiny bottles. "Would do my drinkin' in the bar, 'cept not in any mood to hear music. Why's there always music in a bar? Tony place like this, you'd think they'd like a dignified silence to go with the mahogany paneling an' the cigars." He glanced at Angel. "Never mind the boy. Wasn't your fault. Couldn't hold him forever if he had a mind to scarper."

"Maybe. Except that he's going to feed, and someone's probably going to die."

"Many do." Spike dumped the bottles in the middle of one of the two big beds, and sprawled beside them. "Many many many."

"Look, are you all right?"

"Are you?" Spike cracked the seal on a Dewar's, sucked it empty. "Big change for you, isn't it, not bein' the only one any more? Rocks your little world, I expect."

"Huh. That's what he said."

"Sorry, mate. Know you set some store by it. There's some kind of prophecy attached, I'll bet. Don't worry, whatever it is, you can keep it."

"Spike. You didn't answer my question."

"Jemmie was so worried. She thought I was gonna lose my mind in bloody fucking Denny's, have a psychotic break right there. Poor girl, she thinks I'm a good fellow. One of nature's gentlemen. Consternates her, it does, to think of me suddenly havin' a soul, because then she's got to think of what I was like without one." He opened and emptied another bottle. "Doesn't know me at all, sweet little darling. Y'know, they say even Joe Stalin was beloved by his daughter."

"Spike, don't do this." Angel pulled the next bottle from his hand. "Where is she now?"

"Suite across the hall. Asleep, if there's any justice. Got these little white pills, handy things."

"Pills? How many did she take?"

"Just the one." Spike giggled suddenly. "Very clean-living she is. Doubt Jem's ever been more than tiddly off a pint of shandy in her life. Nah, she wanted to get a good sleep in, so she'd be all fresh an' ready to help her brother. Thought he'd be wanting her. Good cop to our bad cop. Not that that's how she put it. As it is, she can sleep in."

"She said... she... a lot's happened to her, the last few days."

The silly smile on Spike's lips dissolved. "She told you? 'Bout the baby?"

"Uh... just that she had an abortion."

"Just. S'no just about it. Christ, I'd've put my own eyes out before I'd let her see me shed a tear over that -- couldn't go makin' it harder for her. Girl's got to do what seems right to her, but... an' now the boy'll never be a Dad neither. He's still dead. Worse'n'dead. An' where's their mother? S'not right that she doesn't even know yet."

"Do you have any of those pills? Maybe you should take a couple, get some rest."

"Couldn't sleep if you shot me full of elephant tranq."

"You don't know 'til you try. Look, I'll stay with you until you fall asleep, if -- "

"What're you now, a bleedin' saint?" Spike rubbed his eyes, leaving them redder than they were before. "Shit, how've you stood it all these years? They hate you, some of 'em, and some of 'em don't, some of 'em are just... they're just bloody fucking bewildered. They die prayin' to Jesus because they just can't believe what's happening to them. Dunno which is worse."

"Spike... when was the last time you made a kill?"

"Dunno. Nineteen-ninety-eight or so. Forget exactly. What difference does it make? They're all fresh up here." He tapped on his forehead. "An' it's not just that. Jem's moron of a husband... wasn't dead when we left him there. Told her he was because it was Johnny I was concerned about. More worried about the dead than the livin', because he was one of mine -- " He grimaced. "An' now I feel him. I feel his terror, his desperation. Lyin' there listenin' to us moving away, realizing we weren't stopping for him. God. God help me. Only he won't, will he? No help for the likes of us."

"What you did -- that's a judgement call you could argue -- "

"Don't wanna argue. Don't fucking argue with me, what's the use of that? You wanna be of some use right now, Godfather of Soul, get your kit off an' fuck me." Spike staggered up as he spoke, undoing his fly, shoving the jeans down. His cock, half erect, bounced as he kicked free of them. "What I need right now's your splitter up my arse an' no more talk."

"You want me to punish you." Angel stepped away. Ought to leave but couldn't figure out how to turn his back, how to get out the door. It didn't seem likely Spike would stay put quietly if he did, and he'd already made one egregious error that night.

"Nah, can kiss me an' all." He lurched forward, grabbed Angel's head in both hands, and demonstrated.

I know stuff that happened back when... when my father was a fledgling. And I know stuff... that's more recent.

Angel pulled back.

"Hey, this is a first, innit? Two souled vampires havin' a shag. S'one for the record books. We'll have to call the Council after, make sure they note it down in their big leather-bound chronicle."

"Spike, I don't think -- "

"Yeah, s'what I like about you. Now get your kecks off an' give it me good."

Wouldn't ever say it out loud to him, an' thank Christ the old pouf was too slow-witted to twig to it -- but it was a deep solace, having sire penetrate him, breathing in Angel's scent, supporting his weight, enormous and heavy and close. The overwhelming force of his physical demand quieted the swirling thoughts. Bent double with his legs curled around the columns of Angel's rigid arms, mouth pressed open to Angel's rummaging tongue, Angel's cock stretching him like a fist, he could be Will again, Will whose only responsibility in the moment was to give Daddy a real good ride.

He'd taught Buffy to be good with the strap-on, but that wasn't this: nothing was this. He hadn't had it for more than a century, but when Angel pushed into him, time collapsed. It was brand new, the astonishment of submitting to him. His own body bcame strange and new -- his cock, previously everything, nearly forgotten, his ass undergoing a transformation from something that was just there into the rough path to the most low dirty bliss.

"Aw, fuck. Fuck, yeah. Shit. God, you're a beast. Do it. Tear me up. Fuck."

Angel didn't speak. He rumbled against Spike's open mouth, tongue digging against his tongue with the same unvarying tempo as his cock. Splayed open, taken, Spike's pulsations turned to deep shudders; he gasped and panted and began to cry. Angel bit his mouth, blood mixed with saliva.

Trembling hard, Will was surrendered, Will was giving obeisance, giving pleasure. There was nothing else. Angelus was master and Will was his pretty toy.

Angel shifted abruptly, kneeling back, pulling Spike's ass into his lap. With no tongue in his mouth, he was free to groan when Angel's hand closed tight around his cock, thumb digging into the tip, tugging it up tight and fast so his balls stretched and his arse clenched.

"Good boy," Angel breathed. "That's my good, good, boy."

He'd forgotten some of the positions, but Angel remembered them all, and his own body remembered. Remembered, and conformed, and was comforted by this blunt invasion, by the cruel pinches to his nipples, the crushing grip that left hand-prints on his pale flesh. Angel dragged him into place by his hips, letting the rest of him fall away or follow. Dicked him for long minutes together like a girl, like a whore, bruising clench of hands on arms, thighs. Then broke the rhythm to offer his mouth for a kiss like wet velvet. Or dragged Spike's head up to his mouth to whisper wetly into his ear, "You're mine. I made you and you've never not been mine."

He came and came again and still Angel fucked him. He could no longer lift his arms to encircle Angel's neck; his legs flopped against the mattress, and it went on. Spike breathed in sobs, grateful, ecstatic, and Angel slowed into undulations that were minute and deep, cock barely moving at all now, tiny increments that made Spike's spine simmer and quake.

Big hands wrapped around his head, angling his mouth, then kissing again, tongue tracing the inside of Spike's lips with a delicacy that convulsed him. Thrusting short and hard, once, again, again, then slipping into a long sliding helpless fall.

Spike was nearly asleep as Angel drew away, limp cock trailing wet across the sheet. He was pretty in repose, boyish and lost looking; in the old days, candlelit, he'd put Angelus in mind of Ganymede.

Tempting to remain and wrap around him in sleep, but dawn had broken, and there was a possibility, pill or no pill, that Jemima might knock on Papa's door.

Out in the corridor, he paused. Heard, a room away, her breaths, deep and even, the soft tremor of her sleeping heart.

Spike would be all right, he thought sadly, even in this new trouble. With a daughter like that to love him, he'd be all right.

There were so many messages. None from her mother. Jemima made up her mind, after listening to the sixth or seventh voicemail, not to respond to any of them. Yes she knew her husband had been found brutally murdered in the square across from his club. No, she wasn't going to return to London to deal with it. He had plenty of family and colleagues who could see to him. From here, it felt like if she were to go back to England now, she'd be swallowed into a deep black maw more awful and inescapable than the cave of the Conduit.

Let the police and her few friends think what they would. She'd been about to seek a divorce. Dora, whose house she'd stayed at for the abortion, knew about it -- she'd tell the others.

This was the first time in her life that she'd left any nearby mess without cleaning it up, but then there was enough mess right here for her to feel far from idle.

The hotel's toothpaste was wintergreen, and made the orange juice she took from the mini-bar taste foul. She sipped it at the window, looking out on the sunlit towers of downtown, wondering what she'd be doing now if not for this. Her whole life for the past dozen years had revolved around Milo -- being with him or refusing to be with him, change and change about. Her work with the Council was just an adjunct of his, and his... well, she'd used to tell herself that cataloguing demons must be as useful, in the long run, as fighting them. Even if it didn't feel that way.

Anyhow, she was no fighter.

In the bathroom, she shrugged out of the fluffy robe and regarded herself in the mirror. Her hair struck her as terrible -- the color was neither here nor there, and the style, if you could call it that... well, it was the same way she'd worn it since she was three, except that she'd eventually given up the pink plastic barrette on the longer side of the parting. The circles under her eyes seemed etched in. She'd always been small and delicate and pale -- Spike used to call her, when she was in her teens, our little china shepherdess -- today she was verging on scrawny. Food was the first thing to go when she was unhappy, and Milo had never much cared what he ate. When she'd loved him she'd thought of that, illogically, as being a British trait -- people of his class, anyway, regarding themselves as rather above all that, focused as they were on finer, intellectual concerns and the quality of the scotch in the cut-glass beaker. Now she recognized that indifference as part and parcel with the dearth of sensuality in his life. He was a species of Mr Casaubon -- young and handsome though he was, or any way, had been -- and she was rather like Dorothea. Their courtship and marriage was all conducted in the head, with the senses nearly excluded. He'd given her books but never perfume, taken her all over the world but never paused to admire a garden or a sunset. Their bed life... she curved a hand over her right breast. During those secret weeks of pregnancy, they'd plumped, the nipples newly sensitive as they rubbed inside her clothes. She'd bought new bras, one size up. Now they were small again, like always. Too small, insubstantial and somehow ignorable.

She'd always thought of herself as the plain one of the four of them -- Spike a marvelous sculpture cut from a piece of perfect marble, her mother with the dazzling prettiness of youth and preternatural health and the glow afforded by Spike's adoration, and Johnny ending up with the best traits of both, a little taller than their father, silky everywhere, his adolescent awkwardness promising a later breakthrough into unabashed beauty. Whereas she was tiny like Buffy, but without her strength and stance, and was saddled with Spike's nose, which was too large for her. He'd liked to show her how much she resembled her namesake, her long-deceased aunt, and she'd shared his obvious pride in that, even as she privately thought, looking at the brown picture in its silver frame, that all her aunts were homely.

Jemima made herself up now with more energy than usual -- not just the red lipstick she'd bought in London as a pre-procedure pick-me-up, but eyeliner too, and lots of mascara; brushing it on, she became transfixed by the flecks of brown and blue in her hazel eyes. She wanted to look vibrant for Johnny, optimistic. He'd need that, she thought, need her to be positive.

Spike's door had the do-not-disturb sign hanging from it. She hesitated with one curled hand up to knock. Impossible to guess what he'd be like today, or ever again. Yesterday's change was too profound to understand so quickly. She didn't like the thought of losing track of him, or of him having a single unwanted moment of solitude. The soul, she imagined, must be raw and sore like a wound not yet scarred.

But if he was asleep... she should wait.

She wanted to wait, but Johnny must be waiting too. At last she decided to go on to the Hyperion by herself. She'd do better with Johnny one-on-one -- she always did. Spike just tended to get him riled up, even at the best of times, which this wasn't.

Remembering the apparent pleasure with which he'd eaten crisps in the pub -- and understanding suddenly that he'd not been at all sure he would still like them; they must've been the first food he'd tried since his turning -- she stopped on the way and bought a box of donuts, imagining that the cloying scent of the sugar would somehow reassure him, like hoisting a white flag on a stick over a no-man's land.

She did not think... could not think, of how he'd feasted on Milo, how he'd bitten him, tasted him, the texture and salt of his skin, the beard stubble on his neck through the sticky film of blood. The idea thrust itself into her head as she rode in the taxi through the sun-drenched streets of the city; she thrust it aside.

Even before he died, Milo did not need her. Johnny was still here, and needed her immensely. That was all she had to focus on. He must be reclaimed.

He sensed her entrance a few seconds before Rita, at the desk, shouted his name. He'd told her to leave them be when Jemima arrived, and she obligingly disappeared into the back.

Jemima came up to the deserted desk as he stepped off the stairs. When he walked up behind her, she started.

"Must you always do that?"

"Apparently, yes."

"Where's my brother?"

"He's... he's not here. I'm sorry."

"What -- he went out?" She glanced over her shoulder at the bright day now dimly visible through the hotel doors.

"No. The thing is... he didn't want to come back here. He jumped out of the car last night. He's gone."

"He jumped out of the car? When it was moving?"

"Yeah -- but vampires, remember, pretty sturdy. He might've gotten a little banged up rolling down the hillside, but I'm sure he's -- "

"Why aren't you out looking for him? Why didn't you tell us? Does my father know?"

"I told Spike last night. And I've put the word out on him through channels, various demon communities will be keeping an eye out for him. But actually searching for him... it's not so simple. This is a big city. Unless he makes a kill -- "

"Oh God. But he wouldn't do that, would he? That's what the soul is for -- "

"Theoretically."

"Theoretically? Did you kill after you first got your soul?"

He reached out and touched the donut box. "Can I take this from you?"

"They're for -- they were for Johnny. But -- you could have one. Or -- or two, even. All you want, in fact."

Angel looked glum. "I don't eat."

"Don't you?" A little moue of disapproval flitted over her face. "Papa eats everything. Especially if it's sugary, greasy, or spicy. So I thought my brother also -- "

"Spike's never been like other vampires. He's always cared for things... that I couldn't understand."

This seemed to disarm her. She looked up into his face, her eyes wide and curious. They were pretty eyes, fawn-like, mild, full of intelligence.

"He's always been attached to... the world, people... in a way that's not... not the usual vampire thing. Which is why you're here. I mean, why you're alive."

"I know that. I've been told I'm a phenomenon." For a moment the anxious downtug of her mouth disappeared, and she seemed to be reliving some pleasant memory. It didn't last. "But that's silly. Anyway, it's not important. What's going to happen to Papa, now he's souled? Is he in pain?"

"I shouldn't speak for him."

As they talked, he led her gently into the conference room. He poured coffee, and offered her a donut as if they were his now.

"Will you help him?"

"Spike's strong. He won't need much help from me. Anyway, it's not the same -- my soul came with a curse. His, your brother's -- they're fixed. Nothing can take them away."

"Whereas yours can be removed by a moment of perfect happiness." She sighed, breaking a donut in half. Her hands, Angel noticed, where very small and delicate, their joints whiter than the surrounding skin. He stared at the dainty movements of her fingers as she broke the donut half into half again, and then again, without bringing any of the pieces to her mouth. The halogen lighting over the conference table made her diamond engagement ring glitter. "Sometimes I've wondered what a moment of perfect happiness would feel like. I don't think I've had one since I was a little child. I know what happened after you had yours... with my mother... but still I think in a way you're lucky, to have known one. I hope you remember it."

This was the last thing he'd ever expected anyone to say to him -- especially her. "I... I do."

A brief smile lit her face with a wan light that quickly faded. "And it came to you during love-making, which must have been... well, so wonderful... but then maybe ever since you've been afraid to do that anymore, because you think the two are inextricably linked... that must be hard for you. So many people are afraid to feel things very deeply -- not that they realize they're afraid, they may ascribe it to poor taste, 'bad show,' you know. I know... knew... someone like that... it really isn't natural though, is it? I'm realizing now it's so much better not to be too cautious with oneself." As she spoke her eyes shone, looking past him, and she touched the rings on her wedding finger. Then she shivered, and pushed the donut fragments away.

"When I forgot to be cautious, people died."

Jemima met his gaze. "I know. I've heard and read a lot about that. But no one ever seemed to think about what it was like for you. That's what makes me curious. Milo says I think too generously about -- " She froze, her lips a thin line, and on the table, her hands trembled.

"I'm sorry," Angel said, out of his confusion. He was a-swim in it, but not at all sure he wanted to go ashore.

"I suppose this will happen, won't it? Little gusts of forgetting, and then remembering again. Feeling bad because I didn't love him anymore. I care more that Johnny did this than that he did it to Milo. That's very bad, isn't it?"

"You shouldn't think that."

"I don't know what to think."

"You've got so much compassion," Angel said, "share it with yourself."

She blushed at that. A waft of her scent -- perfume, and the musk of her clean underfed body -- crossed the table to him. He had to restrain himself from drawing in a deep breath of it. It seemed shameful to experience her like that. He wished there was a way to dial down his senses, to know less.

She rose. "I should go back to Papa, then. You will contact me if you hear from my brother?"

Angel nodded. She put out her hand to shake, but before he could make up his mind whether to risk a refusal, she pulled it back. The confusion was hers now; he wasn't really sure why, but the important thing was that she go. He needed her to go.

When she was gone, he inhaled, and held it.

The ventilation system in the hospital made a low shush shush hum that only he could hear. Angel associated it with Wesley's illness, it was like some paranoid foretelling of his demise, background whispers of conspiracy against his life.

"How is it today?" Angel asked, peering into the private room before entering.

The largeness of Wes's eyes in his otherwise sunken face was always startling. Everything about Wes about so faded and diminished, but their color was still true. He wore a knitted cap Rita had made, that matched them. "It wasn't a good morning, but I feel a bit better now. I was looking forward to your visit. It's as well you didn't come yesterday, as the less said about yesterday, the better."

"Any new news from the doctors?" Angel asked, pulling a chair up to the bedside. He took Wes's hand, which felt cooler than his own.

He shook his head. "I'm still dying. By quarter-inches. What news is that?" He smiled. "It's tiresome, so let's not think about it. What's new in the world?"

"I've had visitors. That's what kept me away yesterday. Spike's in town. His son ran into Drusilla into London, and -- "

"Oh no. Oh dear."

"Spike brought him here to ask for help." Wes's eyes teared as he listened to Angel's account, but it was difficult to know if it was emotional or just physical. His eyes were so often moist and rheumy. "... so he's run off, and could be well on his way back to Drusilla for all we know."

"Souls. It hardly seems possible."

"The Powers can be capricious," Angel said. "A soul certainly wasn't what Spike was asking for -- neither for his kid or himself. But we know how these things always go. You walk in wanting one thing, and walk out with your ass on backwards."

"Extraordinary. How does that make you feel? William the Bloody with a soul."

"He hasn't been the Bloody in decades now."

"Which is neither here nor there. How does it make you feel?"

Angel shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't really. Well, there's a little -- "

"Envy?" Wes supplied. "That his is fixed, while yours isn't? Not a punishment -- "

" -- I don't think he sees it that way."

"How does he see it?"

"He's upset. Disoriented."

"And Buffy?"

"She doesn't know yet. About any of this. She's battling something big, on another plane, incommunicado."

"Terrible, that one's children should die before one. Although I suppose Spike couldn't have expected anything else."

"His daughter is here. She's... she's good with him. She'll take care of him."

"Ah, the daughter. What's she like?"

Nothing, not even the rain, has such small hands. "She's not like Buffy, if that's what you're wondering."

"No?" Wes waited, but when Angel didn't fill the moment, he smiled. "Perhaps that's as well. One Buffy is enough."

"There could only be one."

"Difficult to imagine her as a mother. Of course, it's been such a long time since I've seen her."

A nurse came in then, warning of the imminent approach of doctors.

"I was a sore subject yesterday," Wes said, "so now they must descend upon me en masse."

"Do you want me to stay?"

Wes appeared to ponder, but Angel thought it was only for politeness' sake. He looked so tired. "Gather more to tell me, and come back in a day or two. I'll look forward to hearing about all this."

Angel wanted to lean in close, to kiss the papery cheek above the peppering of beard stubble. But it wasn't something they did, at least, not yet. "I'll keep you apprised."

Wes nodded. "A story is something to go forward on."

In the next street a dog barked. Her dream skittered away like a mouse into a corner. She rolled over in bed, her braid catching in her mouth, settling against a cooler spot on the pillow. In the unshaded windows, dawn was a grey hint.

Below them, she heard a porch-board creak.

Followed by a slow pacing, up, back. She listened to it. It paused by each of the four downstairs windows. Someone peering in.

She rose, dislodging two cats, and went to the window. She couldn't see anything from there, but continued to listen, her heart beginning to race. Slow steady tread, up, down. The sky was lightening, thick clouds moving. At the apex of a hill, she had a broad view of the sloped tiers of houses, the city glittering beyond, and an enormous amount of sky.

The person on the porch continued to move about slowly. She grabbed up a robe and left the room.

As she came off the stairs she heard the tapping. A finger against the door's glass pane.

Why didn't they knock properly, whoever it was, or ring the very obvious doorbell?

She paused in the foyer, wondering if she'd regret just going to the door. One of the cats who'd followed her down twined around her ankles, mrrring.

The tapping went on. She'd almost made up her mind to grab the fireplace poker before investigating any further when she heard the voice -- barely louder than a harsh whisper. "Auntie Tara? Auntie Tara -- let me in!"

She put aside the curtain, then seeing who was there, unlocked the door and opened it a few inches. "Johnny? What are you doing here? Oh my -- what's happened to you?"

"I've been hurt. Please let me in." He made no gesture towards the sliver of opening, but kept glancing over his shoulder at the tall bushes surrounding the porch. His face was a mass of bruises, clothes torn and stained with blood.

She could feel the presences he was so wary of; some sort of demons, half-incorporeal, haunting the shadows off the porch.

"Please. Please."

She felt them, but she was aware of something else too.

"I'm so sorry this has happened to you, very -- but... I don't think I can let you into my house."

"Auntie Tara -- I wouldn't hurt you -- please, please -- it's almost dawn, I don't have time to go anywhere else. I'm afraid."

"Johnny, you know I can't. You're a vampire." As she said the word, it hit her, and tears sprang to her eyes. He made no threatening gesture, just stood there, hunted, haunted, eyes pleading.

"Auntie Tara -- I have a soul."

"Oh Johnny. How can I believe a word you say? I don't want to die like that."

"I promise it's true. I swear! I've loved you all my life, you know that. I'm in so much trouble now, but I knew you'd help me. Papa tried to trade himself for my life, but instead we both got souls, and I ran away, I was angry, I didn't want his help -- but I do now! I need help now. Please. Those things chasing me -- they don't care if the sun comes up. They'll come up here and kill me when I can't run."

The demons' hunger, their patience, tingled in her fingertips. She wished she could be aware of his soul as she was aware of these other magical things. But it wasn't so simple as that.

The sky was brightening. He looked so lost.

"On my honor, I won't hurt you," he said. "Those -- things -- have been on my tail since -- please don't be afraid of me, please -- "

Tara opened the door. "Come in. Quick, before I change my mind."

She bolted the door again, although she knew the demons couldn't enter. His presence at her back gave her goosebumps. She took a deep breath as she turned to him, thinking this might be her last moment, that she was turning to face her death.

But his hands still dangled at his sides, and he was still just Johnny, battered and bruised, his lower lip trembling.

"Auntie -- I'm sorry -- I'm sorry, I really am -- "

She opened her arms; he went into them, sobbing. He smelled of dried blood and gravel. The shape of him was unchanged, but when she felt the cool stillness of his slender body, her breath hitched. She couldn't think of a sadder thing to happen to one of Buffy's children.

"Come into the kitchen. I have nothing for you to eat, but I'll make tea. I can go out in a little while and buy some blood."

"I'm hungry," he said, following her with bent head. "I tried to feed, but I couldn't. Everything's all fucked up. I fucked it up. I'm lost. I'm just lost."

"Sit down and tell me about it."

He awoke feeling like William. The way William would come to in the morning, have a few moment's peace in the warm bed before the coughing started and the world slammed down on him again -- anxiety about the state of his lungs, and how he could keep his mother and himself if they worsened, and whether he dared marry and if so, how he could ever, on what they paid him at the bank, make Miss Addams an offer she'd accept.

He'd lie there in the cold gloomy room, willing himself not to touch his morning erection, thinking of schemes, bargaining with God.

Spike could feel William inside, his sense of self, his way of looking at things, getting stronger like tea infusing in a hot pot. William's intense and complicated and guilt-ridden feelings, coming out of the recesses he'd shoved them into so long ago. So goddamn many feelings. In becoming a vampire, he'd lost, not the intensity of his feelings, but that awful habit of combing through them endlessly, writing them down, pondering and praying over them. William was never sure of anything until he'd thought it over at every angle for days. And at the same time, he was sure of all sorts of intensely stupid things that turned out not to be true at all. All the middle-class Victorian genteelisms.

And now all that was back in him, like it had never gone away.

Spike stretched. The big bed smelled of sex, but Angel couldn't leave a warm patch when he rose any more than he could. Anyway, he'd been gone for hours.

His kindness in all this... wasn't what he'd expected. The old man had changed, mellowed. Spike's cock stirred at the memory of Angel in the bed with him, on top of him. He'd done the trick, driving into him and driving out everything else -- the queasy feeling that came with the blasted soul, and the despair that after he'd done his utmost, the boy was no better off than before.

He fisted himself, stroked hard; his hand didn't seem big enough now, not in contrast to sire's. Christ, he still wanted him. Missed the days when Angelus ran his existence, and he'd had no worries and no conscience, could love and hate as he pleased.

A knock at the door.

"Gi' us a minute, Pet!" He scrambled up and into the bathroom, quick wash of face and hands and groin, jumped into his jeans and yesterday's shirt before opening the door.

"How do you feel, Papa?"

"Got a soul, pet, not the flu."

She pouted. "You know what I mean."

"Glad you want to look after me, love, but don't overdo it."

"I just want to understand."

"Soon's I understand it, I'll fill you in. Meanwhile, Angel's still the expert."

"I was with him before. He told me about Johnny. He lost him."

"Angel's done more'n I ever thought he would. Not blaming him for the boy bailing."

"I'm not blaming him... or anyone. I think if I started, I'd be blaming us all." She shook her head. "I'm just... I'm overwhelmed. Last week, our lives were one thing... and now they're completely different." She gave him a pleading look. "Are you overwhelmed?"

"Yeah, I am."

This would've been the moment, ordinarily, to embrace, but they stood apart, regarding each other. Spike was wary. Didn't want her to know what he'd done with Angel, or to start asking him a lot of questions about the soul. Close as they were, there were a lot of things he didn't want her to know about him. If he was going to confide in anyone, it would be Angel. Or Buffy. Except she'd never seemed farther off from him than since the days of their initial antagonism.

What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"Dunno. Thinkin' I might stay on here a bit, in L.A. Confab with Angel. Least while your mum's off busy."

She wandered up and down, leaving a trail in the nap of the thick carpeting with her high-heeled shoes. "You've barely said a word about her, all this time."

"Been focused on your brother."

"It's not just that, though. Why did she go on that mission without you? You've quarreled."

"We have, a bit."

"I knew it." She stopped by the window, drooping. "Oh God."

Spike went to her, drew her around by the shoulders. "Don't worry about that. It's not so bad. Anyway, it's just as well she left me behind, or else you'd have had to deal with all this on your own. 'Course now your brother's scarpered, guess you're at a loose end."

"I've been at a loose end for a long time. I was at a loose end when I came to London in the first place."

"What do you want to do now?"

"I have to go to Milo's funeral. And there's so much clearing up to do. If I get on a late flight tonight, I can make it in time."

"Don't go to the bloody funeral unless you want to."

"I've had six different messages just from Milo's sister. He is... was... still my husband. It would seem so odd if I didn't show. After that, I can go -- "

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Come back here. Have a bit of a holiday."

"A holiday."

"None of us is in a holiday mood, yeah, but you deserve a rest, bit of r'n'r. Lie in the sun, buy yourself some new clobber. Eat up a bit. You've gotten so thin. Want to be ready when your mum comes back an' we break it to her."

"That'll be the second wave."

"Yeah." He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "And I need you. So come right back after the funeral. Don't keep me waiting. S'time now for family. An' Milo's lot aren't yours."

She smiled then, and squeezed his hand. "Papa, you're so good."

Good, yeah. He was already thinking about the binge he could start on as soon as she was out of the way.

Asleep, he looked like any young man tired out from some traumatic event. His face in repose was pretty, the mouth full and pouting, brows feathery, damp hair curling as it dried. He was clean now, and the cuts and bruises were already so much less that Tara could see they'd be gone altogether by time he awoke.

Sitting on the side of the guest bed, her hand still wrapped in his, Tara remembered all the many times she'd put him down for the night when he was small, or chased him upstairs, laughing and scolding, as he got older. Buffy had sent him off to her so often throughout his childhood -- he'd even lived with her for almost the whole of a school year that time the warlock Maronas was loose in Sunnydale -- that she felt a propriety in him. She'd never wanted children of her own, but was glad to have so much of Johnny. He'd been glad of her too; his feelings about his parents were always fraught and complicated, but she was just Auntie; she knew he pondered her inner life not at all, but accepted her devotion just as his due. There was something natural and restful in this for both of them. He talked to her about the loneliness and conflict he felt when he was with his parents (although she always sensed there was far far more to his troubled ideas than he ever articulated), and seemed glad of the respite his visits afforded him from these confusing storms of feeling.

He was even more confused now, wild with remorse one moment, defiant and self-rationalizing the next. His confession of his kills, wept into her knees as he knelt before her in the kitchen, shook her more than she was willing to show. Now that he was sleeping, she looked into his sweet face and allowed herself to feel the horror of it. His hand in hers was tepid and still. She moved her own away, gently lest she wake him. He was as still as death.

A soul of course undid nothing; it only put in a conscience to torment the demon forever. It wasn't what Spike had sought, which alone was explanation enough of its granting. She knew enough about the ways of the Powers to understand that, just as she knew enough about Spike's fierce paternal love to see he could've done nothing else but what he had, consequences be damned.

That's what it was, a damnation here on earth. She wondered how he was handling it himself.

Time to find out. Back in the kitchen, she placed a call.

When Spike turned up weaving across the Hyperion lobby with an open magnum of Dom in hand, he was already drunk.

"Celebrate!" he crowed when Angel appeared on the balcony above. "Boy's turned up safe at his auntie's."

"Dawn?"

"Tara. Did you ever know Tara? Lovely thing she is, second mother to him. To all of us. Have a drink." He waved the bottle up at Angel. "Everybody have a drink. Where's your little minion-people? Enough for them, too."

"No one else's here right now. Come upstairs. Where's Je -- your girl?"

"My girl my girl my girl's gone off an' left me all on my lonesome. Little cunt. Knew I'd know what she was up to, an' did it anyhow. Bitch. Always was a bitch."

"C'mon, Spike, don't do that." Angel lifted the bottle from his hand, reached to steady him as he nearly stumbled at the top of the stairs.

"Know what she does? Rank little bitch she is, comes to me when she's on the rag, all pouty an' sly, tryin' to tempt me to forget what she did to me. Knows I can't resist that when she offers it. You had her, great gouts of slayer blood from her pretty neck, I know that. But never had that, did you? Swear to you, Angelus, nothin' in this unlife's sweeter than sippin' the stuff straight from slayer's little cooze. Was my regular monthly treat. Christ, when I suck it out of her, she comes like a -- "

"Spike, shut the fuck up. You don't want to talk about her that way. Especially not to me."

He reared around. "Why not to you? You're only one who knows what I'm bloody talkin' about. How the touch of her, smell of her, look on her face, just kills you. It kills you. You know what that is. She killed you 'fore she ever killed me."

"I know. I know. But don't talk about it. Anyway, I didn't ask you about her. It was Jemima."

"Oh. You said, 'your girl,' and you know that's what she is -- Buffy. S'my girl. Lot longer than she was yours, I'll thank you to remember. Or that dirty bastard Saleem with his cheap good looks an' his levitation tricks."

"I'm asking about Jemima," Angel said, leading him towards his suite, holding the champagne out of reach. "Isn't she with you?"

"Nah, went to her poxy husband's poxy funeral. Be back here in three days. Around the time Tara'll bring the boy down to us. Said she wanted to keep him a bit, cosset him. She's always been good at that. Maybe deliver him in some fit state to teach him a thing or two."

"Keep him where? Where is he?"

"San Francisco. She said he came to her door near dawn, bunch of Z'Pilten demons on his tail, fagged out an' scared. Nearly didn't let him in on account of not trusting his word, but it's all right."

"The funeral, Spike. Is there anybody there to stand by her? I got the impression she wasn't so close to the husband's family."

"Nah, but she's stronger than she looks. An' when she comes back, make sure she has a bit of pleasure. Put her out in the sun for a bit, yeah, with something to drink that's got a parasol in it. Good for what ails her." As he spoke Spike was trying to get at the champagne bottle. Wrestling him off was easy, he was loose and bendy and harmless, like a life-size Gumby, but if he was let to drink anymore, the little flashes of anger would turn into a full-force gale of bitterness.

He tipped him into a chair, then went to pour out a mug of coffee.

When he came back with it, Spike was sprawled, arms and legs thrown out, head tipped back to expose his throat. Eyes closed, an ethereal little smile on his lips.

He could well smile. His son, unlike Connor who was gone forever, might be over the worst. His daughter would soon come back to his side. And Buffy too... Angel couldn't imagine her anymore without Spike. He'd been her partner all of her adult life. Nothing was going to alter that, whatever vagaries interceded.

Now that he had a soul, Spike was just that much more fitted to her, in all the ways he himself was unfitted, either for Buffy or any other woman. The trouble between them would pass away and be forgotten, or if not forgotten, as unimportant in their everlasting now as the trouble he'd made for her himself.

"Drink this and sober up."

Spike's eyes opened. Lazy and blue above that little smirk, fixed on his. He made no move to take the mug. "Don't want to be sober. You ought to be drunk."

"I don't go in for that much anymore." Angel set the coffee on the wide chair arm.

Spike's hand snaked up and grabbed a fistful of his sweater collar, pulled him in close. "Kiss me, then. Know you've a taste for that."

Angel's mouth hovered next to Spike's; he smelled the sweet champagne on his breath, and beneath that the rising aroma of desire. The first time, the night he got here, it made sense. Spike was in a passion of need; he gave. And last night... well, that was about Spike's need too, for the deep luxury of subservience. But now... well, Spike was just lazy. Opening his pretty mouth for the plum to drop into.

And three times would start to feel like habit. Angel couldn't afford to form a habit for this. Not when it would be taken away so quickly, make the nights that followed all the blanker. He yanked free, moved away.

"Nothing least bit gladsome in you," Spike said, struggling to his feet, still sounding amiable and tiddly.

"No." He went back to the kitchen, poured coffee for himself.

When he turned, Spike was right there. Taking hold of his face, he pulled it down, kissed his mouth with stubborn softness.

He smiled as he drew back, looked into Angel's eyes. His own were mild, curious, friendly. He wasn't used to seeing Spike like that. Almost felt voyeuristic to see that expression. It must be one that he usually kept only for Buffy, or for the girl.

She had that look too. In fact, they were remarkably alike at this moment. He pictured her, small and tired, flying back alone to the cold north of England, to attend the funeral of a husband she didn't love, done in by a brother she did. Wished he could have somehow spared her that, even as he suspected himself of sacrilege for thinking of her at all. She was none of his business. She was not part of his life.

None of them were, Buffy's little family. This was only temporary. Could only be temporary.

"Have you told Jemima? About the boy?"

"Yeah. Caught her on the phone before she took off."

"They don't know, do they? The Council. About how it happened."

"Don't think so. She won't tell them." Spike was still smiling, but it wasn't at anything, it was a residual smile. It faded now. "Any luck, they'll never find out. Wouldn't want Jemmie to have any trouble."

"No," Angel said. "That would be bad." He imagined her in struggle with the Council, shadowy men in dark shadowy rooms. Accusations and reprisals.

"You'll help us, yeah?" Spike's smile was gone as if it had never been. Head held on one side, querulous, anxious. "He's gonna get lost if there's no one to guide him. Can't be me. Blind leading the blind. You're the one's knows how to be this. Vampire with a soul."

"Yeah."

"An' you're the head of the Family. It was always you, even when Darla was alive. S'you more than ever now."

"I didn't think you gave that any thought these days."

"Can push it from your mind, but a fact's a fact, ain't it? We're order of Aurelius, an' always will be. So's the boy, now."

"He's your brother, being Dru's get."

"Yeah." A snort of bitter laughter from Spike, as he opened and slammed the kitchen cabinets. "She gets 'em and leaves you to bring 'em up. Need you to bring him up, Angel."

"I can't force him to stay."

"Your ways'll be different, yeah, from what they were." Spike laughed again, slipping into game face. "Remember how you held me down an' yanked out my fangs. How I howled. Made me starve 'til they grew back. How many times did you do that? Was more'n once."

"You told your son about it. He mentioned it in the car, before he jumped out."

Spike frowned. "Don't recall telling him, but Dru might've. Remember her being quite keen on my pain at the time. She chortled an' danced while you did it, an afterwards wanted to feed me tea out of that dolls' toy set she had. God, she'd be so wet whenever you were torturin' me, could smell it all over the house. Little minx as she was." Spike stood still, focused on him again. "Do you think about her?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I can't help it. She... she was my worst abomination."

"Is that why you've let her be all these years? You could've tracked her down -- when you were with that law firm, could've found any little vamp on the planet you wanted to put your finger on, an' squashed 'em like a bug. Why didn't you?"

Angel growled. "Why didn't I have you dusted? Could've done that too. It wasn't because I thought you were so good for Buffy."

"I was out of the killing fields then, at least. She -- "

"She kept herself out of my way. I had plenty in my way to worry about without looking for trouble. Why didn't you track her down? Neither of us wants to think about staking her. She's part of us. She was your mistress. And mine."

Spike quirked a sorry grin. "Family."

"Right. Family."

"And now my son's part of the bloody family too. An' we'll be damn lucky his mother doesn't stake the lot of us when she finds out."

"Came back from the fight stinkin' of him. She couldn't give me any good reason. An' it wasn't just the one time. Would've been bad enough, if she'd jumped his bones once in the heat of the moment, eve of battle. Could've understood that in a way. But she was with him for weeks, preparin' for the big show. Didn't communicate with me, didn't think of me."

"Why weren't you there?"

"Was workin' the second front, with the other slayer an' Willow. This thing was enormous, took everything we could throw at it an' used it against us -- it fed off magic. Willow's best just made it stronger. This Saleem was the only one had the right sort of mojo to sap its strength. Had to combine with Buffy -- mystically -- to make it happen. Required weeks of preparation, ritual. I got that. But didn't require her to fuck him every way possible. That little addition was all her own."

Angel sipped from the bottle -- not the champagne, but a fifth of Jack he'd dug out of the back of a cabinet -- and passed it back to Spike. They sat at right angles; Spike on the sofa, Angel perched on the arm.

"You say he was powerful. Maybe he made it a condition... her, uh... cooperating with him, in, uh... what he wanted."

"Hoped it might just be that. But no. Apparently the guy was a celibate. He was all about the mysticism. She seduced him."

Angel glanced around. "How do you know?"

"She fucking told me. She told me all about it. Didn't pretend it hadn't happened. Didn't pretend he forced her, coerced her, played mind-games on her. No, she admitted it. She wanted him."

"Well... maybe she... she is a slayer. They're not like regular women. They have larger, uh... needs."

"No really, do they? I had no fucking clue."

"I'm just saying -- "

"I keep her satisfied. Me. For thirty years I have seen to her every single night. Every single goddamn night I give that woman what she needs. What we both need. I make her plead, I make her scream, I make her sing. That's what I do. I know Buffy, like no one else. I take care of her."

"Thirty years, it's a long time."

"I was faithful to Dru for almost four times as long."

"I know, Spike. I meant, for her. Thirty years... she never thought she'd see thirty. Now she's fifty, and all that time's been with you."

"What're you saying? Don't tell me if it was you instead of me that you'd be okay with this."

Angel sighed. "No. I'm just trying -- "

"To get me to forgive her. Don't you think I tried? Christ, Angel, you don't know what it's been like with her all this time. I mean -- it's been bloody fucking great, she's everything I always wanted, an' I love her like blazes. But she can be an ornery moody little cunt -- you know. She takes everything out on me. Gets into these states where she doesn't want to tell me what she's feeling. Or she flies into rages and hits me to make herself feel better. Always swears she's changed and won't do it anymore, and for a long while she holds to it, but ultimately she is what she is, an' I get that, I can absorb it. She's forgiven me for plenty too -- just welcoming me into her life is biggest act of forgiveness there could be. But this was different. She didn't just give her body to another man. She withdrew -- "

" -- her attention from you. Is that it, Spike? And when you're not the most important thing to her, you feel like you've ceased to exist."

"Fucking hell. Since when are you so smart?"

"Never understood that. How'd Darla conceive? We're all dead, shouldn't have happened."

"That's something we never found out." Angel stared at the bottle, nearly empty now, as Spike passed it back to him. They were both loose and floating, bitterness bypassed in favor of a frankness they'd never had before. He'd slid off the couch arm and was sitting beside Spike now, both wide-legged and heavy-headed. He'd never have imagined it could be so good, talking to him. All their history mysteriously translated into a well of fellow-feeling, comprehension. "But you should've seen her. When she got big, before he was born, the most astonishing thing happened. His soul... affected her. She loved him, she had this brief period of just loving the kid and wanting him to be all right. And she knew it wouldn't last, that once he was free of her body she'd be feral again, and it made her so sad."

"What happened to her? I mean, I know she got dusted, but who did it?"

"She did. She drove the stake into her own heart, so Connor could be born."

"Christ."

"He was the sweetest little thing. Out of my despair, her hatred, our two undead bodies... we made this little morsel of sweetness."

"They don't last," Spike said, tipping the bottle back, swallowing the last drop. He let it slip from his fingers to thud onto the carpet. "Good things don't."

"No. Usually not." Angel glanced around at the desk, where he still kept some of Connor's baby pictures propped in silver frames. He needed them to remember that he'd been real. To get back again for a slim minute the sense memory of holding that warm squirmy little body, his milky smell and avid gaze. He'd only had that to enjoy for a few weeks, and afterwards there'd been no joy at all. "But not always. Your Je -- " He would've blushed if he could, caught out in something incriminating.

Luckily Spike didn't notice. "Here's other thing I don't understand. Had your son, looked after him that short time, an' he was a miracle, he was a delight to you. I know how that is. Had plenty of moments of perfect happiness off my kiddies. So how'd you keep your soul?"

"I don't know. I've wondered that myself. He made me happy, happier than -- than almost anything else ever did. But I was never not anxious for him. Maybe that's why."

"Anxious, yeah. Think I wasn't anxious enough, lot of the time. Fuck -- I drove Johnny right off the edge. Buffy did too, but I'm not blamin' her so much as myself. He always had to compete with his sister for my attention, and later on, when he knew what I was, it threw him. He half didn't believe it, an' the other half was disgusted by it. He felt like a changeling. Like the odd one out. An' he was. We didn't give him what he needed. Too wrapped up in each other, an' the mission. Jemmie mothered him, an' Tara, and Dawn sometimes too. Old Rupes treated him like a son, and Xander cared for him. But it wasn't for them to do our job with the kid, was it?" He paused, drawing figures on his knee with a fingertip. "Wonder sometimes if he'd have been better off if we'd let his father take him. William -- the other William, whatever the fuck he was. Wanted him so bad. Had just as much right to him as we did."

"You can't know what will be better or worse. You can't know what's going to happen."

"Was like a fucking nightmare, meeting myself that way. Can you imagine it? Having young Liam suddenly trundled out before you? I wanted to kill him. Almost did, in fact. Not because he was layin' claim to Buffy, but just because he was. Made me feel all unquiet inside. An' after he'd gone there was the boy, an' he was like me, and I didn't feel... didn't feel the same as I did about Jemmie. Tried to, but there's some things you can't force."

Angel lifted a hand -- it was so heavy, a slab of meat -- and touched Spike's face. "You loved your own Da, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, was all right, he was."

"I murdered mine."

"I know. Think Johnny wanted to do the same to me. Probably still does. Can't imagine what he's thinking now. Gone an' done this stupid thing an' it's forever. Not thankin' me for the soul, that's for sure. Maybe I should've staked him. What do you think?"

"Spike -- don't ask me that. How can I -- "

Angel's hand still cupped his face; Spike leaned into the touch. Covered the hand with his own, turned and pressed a kiss into the palm. The skin burned, warmth flooding up his arm.

He yanked Spike to him, mouth open against his mouth, kisses that Spike returned without resistance, crawling up to straddle his lap.

So much for resolve.

"This can't be anything that'll go on, we both know that," Angel said.

"But doesn't mean it can't be anything. You an' me... got a couple of days here, to deal with each other. Talk."

"We're talking," Angel said, snugging him closer, nipping at his neck.

"We are. Like we never did. Feel like I never really knew you at all. Want to know you now."

Angel pulled him in, and Spike moved at the same time, so he couldn't tell which of them initiated it, only that their arms were wrapped around each other, open mouths pressed together in hungry curious exchange. He'd had Spike twice in the last three days but still this felt brand new, made him tremble all over like a virgin undone by anticipation.

There was no better kisser than Spike. And he couldn't take any of the credit for teaching him. Five minutes of it and Spike had him on the point of tears. No one had kissed him for so many years, let alone so generously.

It reminded him of Buffy. And that almost made him tear away.

Spike seemed to be reading his mind. He pulled back a little, his hands holding Angel's face. "You got any idea how bloody rare it is, perfect happiness? Why d'you deprive yourself of this?"

"It's not what I'm here for."

"S'not what any of us are here for, but it makes the bein' here bearable." Spike kissed him again. Whispered against his ear. "Gonna suck you off now."

"Not yet," Angel breathed.

"Kiss you some more?" His smile was all melting sweetness. Angel felt Spike was seeing something he'd never seen, because he'd never allowed him to see it, and Spike, the Spike he remembered, wouldn't have taken it on board even if he had. It was true, they'd both changed, and didn't know each other any more, at the same time that there was a solid pavement between them of their mutual experience, their blood bond that made them as familiar and easy as twins. Extraordinary thing that the merely human couldn't be expected to understand. How all that old pain and antagonism could distill itself into this smoothness.

"Yeah -- please -- "

"Sssh."

He'd forgotten, forgotten how good it could be. Not since Buffy had he kissed like this, kissing for nothing except kisses, all the things he couldn't say and do throttled back and concentrated in lips and tongue, in the squeeze of his arms around her. Spike leaned into him, bulge against bulge, pinned his arms against the sofa back. Made love to his mouth like it was a sex, like he could get him off with only that.

Angel felt like he'd pried apart his breast bone, reached into his chest. With a groan, he pushed him off.

He wanted to cry out that this was too hard, that two days of intimacy was worse than none at all, that if his curse was to be alone, then he must be alone, no glimmers of light in the dark, snatches of music in the silence. Spike was only a tourist in his solitude, he'd exit this crisis, back to his rich life, and Angel would remain here forever. Wes would be dead and his team would eddy around him, not really understanding him, not allowed to get too close, and that was his life, tasked to make life safe for everybody else.

He should get up and send Spike back to his fancy penthouse hotel suite.

"She's going to come back to you. You know she will. Whatever came between you, that was before this thing happened to your boy. How can it be important anymore? Of course you'll pull together."

Spike appeared to ponder this, like it was some kind of reasonable proposal put to him. Angel stared at him, and throbbed.

"It'll be worse for me after," Angel whispered.

Spike squinted, regarding him. His expression was soft, sympathetic. "Get that, yeah, but they say the things you regret the most are the ones you don't do. We got our couple of days here, where it's just us. Still, you want to stop this, we'll stop."

Angel got to his feet, ran his hands through his hair. Spike watched him, unmoving.

"Get naked. I want you in my bed."

"This's what you need," Spike murmured, gnawing at Angel's chest, "not a girl you're gonna get all googly-eyed an' lovey over, but some nice boy who'll bite you back an' roll over for you too. Give you a bit of peace of mind, but not too much of that dangerous perfection, yeah?" Smiling up at him, Spike might've been that boy. "You like that, don't you? Always did like to ravish a comely lad."

"Yeah." Angel caught his head, pulled him in for more kissing, but Spike was being chatty.

"An' you really should get fucked once in a while. There's nothing like it to release the tension. Bit of cock up the bum somehow pushes that all important reset button."

"Does it? And where've you been getting that all this time?"

"Taught Buffy how to do me, an' she's a tiger. Still, the proportion's wrong -- I'm taller'n she is."

Angel sat up suddenly. "Uh -- dizzy now. Not sure I can process -- "

Spike laughed, but not merrily. "There's almost nothing that woman can't do if she puts her mind -- or her something else -- into it." His smile faded. "Didn't mean to talk about her now."

"Me neither." Angel threaded his fingers into Spike's hair, tugged him against his mouth.

"'Cept I miss her." He looked into Angel's eyes. "Do you ever miss her?"

"That's... more than I can afford."

"Yeah. I know. You had to leave her, that was your path. That's the difference 'tween you an' me. Only path I ever had that wasn't straight to hell was at her side."

"You still have it. You always will. She loves you."

"I don't know."

"I do. She talks to me sometimes, Spike."

"To you."

"Recently she was worried about... her longevity. She wanted to know how I handle it."

"She didn't say anything to me."

"No?"

"Worried about bein' trapped with me for eternity, wasn't that it?"

"I reminded her that you'd always love her, that you took good care of her and that that would never change."

Spike stared into him, lips parted, head tilted. "Bloody hell," he whispered, "did you really tell her that?"

"I think she was comforted. She sounded that way. She was so far off. She always is."

Spike nodded. "Sometimes even in my arms."

Spike would be far off too, soon, but not right now. Angel pulled him into his lap, stroked the long lines of his back, cupped the sharp shoulder blades in his hands. Spike's kisses resumed, the kisses that were like fucking, his hand wrapping around their cocks, rubbing the slick heads together.

"Just like this," Angel said. "I want you just like this."

Spike nodded. His smile was small and private. He brought Angel's fingers to his mouth, swallowed them in, sucked on them, made them wet. Rose up on his knees astride Angel's lap, arching when Angel pushed the fingers inside him, hissing as they stretched him. He grinned as he pushed himself down onto Angel's cock. Stared into his eyes, put his tongue out to lick at Angel's mouth.

"You're always so tight for me," Angel said. "Always tight like the first time."

"You'd have staked me, wouldn't you, if I hadn't surprised you by being such a prize piece. You think I didn't realize that, but I knew."

"Yeah. Didn't think I'd have any use for you, but you turned out better than you looked... Christ, you change, but your arse doesn't. Fuck yourself on me."

Spike's own cock brushed Angel's skin as he writhed on him, leaving wet curlicues on his stomach. "This's a good position, can suck face like movie stars while we do it."

"There was no boy I liked better than you," Angel said.

"Really?" Spike grinned. "There were so many."

"None like my saucy Will." He ground his mouth against Spike's, thrusting up into him. Eyes closed, he tried to imagine how they'd look together, if they could have the benefit of a mirror. Spike all white, the lines of him like licks of flame. He imagined himself dark by contrast, dark and heavy like something carved from rare rich wood. Spanned Spike's waist in his hands and worked him, like he was nearly weightless. His arms rested on Angel's shoulders, and he'd left off kissing, was just gazing at him with a soft mindless expression, humid-eyed, involved.

Something about this, the tight sheath he rode into, the narrow body he held, brought up a flash of memory. Her. He'd had her like this that night, it was the last thing, Buffy on top, sore and unsure of herself but wanting more. God, you're stretching me, she'd said, I think I can feel you up against my heart, looking down at him with uneasy awe. He'd held her waist, and then when she'd sunk down all the way, her hands, held them lightly up as if she was balancing on some high edge.

Which she was. It was in that moment, seeing her atop him, experiencing the concentrated strength and trust and love in her small yielding body, that perfect happiness bloomed.

"Don't go," Spike said.

"Go where?"

"Sssh. Here." Spike made a two-fingered gesture, from Angel's eyes to his. "See me."

Spike gave himself so prettily, all lissome raunchy grace, which might've been almost distasteful except that it came so naturally, it was the opposite of performance. He got lost in sex, no inhibitions, no calculation. Complete absorption. Angel envied even as he followed him. He'd never been that way. Even as Angelus, there was no debauch in which he hadn't kept a corner of his mind focused on detached observation, judgement, disdain. Of himself as well as everything else.

Both Angelus and William the Bloody had permitted themselves everything. But Angelus loved nothing and no-one, while Spike, even in the midst of his worst carnage, loved the world. He loved his very victims for the pleasure they gave him.

He said this to Spike, sprawled at boneless ease beside him. Spike raised his head to squint at him. "You were a sick fuck an' I was another."

"Yeah, but you were always a person. You understood people, you related. I try to, but -- "

"What is this? You just boned me senseless, an' you're brooding again already? Jesus Christ, you think too much. Gonna fuck you now. Show me your arse."

Angel turned over. Spike gave him two sharp slaps on each cheek. "There, that make you feel better? Or do you want me to chase you round the suite with a riding crop, like you used to do to me? Bloody hell, could've lived without that."

To his surprise, Angel laughed. Spike hit him again, two stinging blows, but followed them immediately with a caress, tracing the curve of Angel's ass with the flat of his palm, coaxing him with little taps up onto his knees. Then Spike's hand passed between his thighs, grasping his ballsac, as his tongue swarmed into him. Angel groaned aloud, jerking forward and back.

"God yeah, you need this. Why didn't you let him do this to you?"

"Him? Him who?"

"Wyndham-Pryce? Is that his name? Dunno how you can have it off regularly with a man an' not turn an' turn about."

" Wes and I... we weren't lovers."

"Could've sworn I heard that somewhere. Who from, now... was Willow. Years ago. Came back from spendin' some time here, said you were playin' it close to the vest, but it was so obvious, bein' around you both."

Angel buried his face in the pillow. His knees trembled, he wanted to weep out his throttled desire, ideas stymied before they could ever be mentioned. The things you regret the most are the ones you don't do.

"Fuck me, Spike. I need it."

"Lemme see you. Gonna do this eye-to-eye."

When he rolled over to confront him, Angel wasn't sure what he saw in Spike's face. Not anything as simple as pity, but a pensiveness that embarrassed him. To cover for it he reached for him, pulled him in to mingle mouths. This close, maybe Spike wouldn't see what was going on inside him, how the mention of Wesley opened up some gash he'd been sure was closed.

Sometimes the amount of past he had was nearly unbearable.

Spike drew back. "Listen to me. Want you to let go. I'm gonna fuck you 'til you come, an' get up an' come again, however long that takes. An' I don't care whose name you call when you get there."

"Oh God."

Spike lifted his legs and went into him.

"Keep tellin' you, there's no reason you shouldn't have a lover. You know you're not gonna have a repeat of -- of what happened before. Might be you'd be even better if you had someone to unwind with, let off the tension."

"Who am I going to have, Spike? Some human? No one really wants a relationship with an immortal being. It's too disturbing for them, knowing they'll age year by year and I never will. Especially in this town, where everyone's so paranoid about how old they look. And I can't be with another demon, because trying to love something without a soul... well, that's too disturbing for me."

"So that's the real reason you've held off?"

"I guess so. One of them. The risk of hurting someone else -- I don't mean as Angelus, I mean, disappointing someone, breaking another heart -- it's too great. Like I told you -- don't feel it's what I'm supposed to do."

In the bad old days, Angelus could fuck and eat half a dozen whores in a night. But now he wasn't interested in anything less than real love, and was terrified of failing at it. How the mighty had... altered.

Spike dropped a kiss on his shoulder. "I didn't know when I got into it with her that Buffy would be immortal. Still don't know that she is. Could be that she'll wake up one day soon an' find all the years caught up with her, an' crumble into nothin' in an hour. Point is, I loved her an' I wanted what I could have with her, even though we all thought her life expectancy was likely to be months instead of years. I just wanted every possible second I could snatch with her. Wanted to shore up all the memories I could."

"You love her so much. Don't pretend you don't. You'll never leave her. You'll always forgive her."

He didn't feel ready to hear this. "Look, I'm sayin' -- "

"Spike, there's no one I feel that way about."

"I'm sayin', though, let it happen. If anyone comes along. Lord knows, if I deserve to be loved, you deserve it even more. Not that deservin' has anything to do with it, or most of us would go wanting."

"I'll think about it."

"Oh yeah... s'lovely... fuck yeah... "

Angel covered him from head to toe, mouthing his neck. A slow slow fuck, that stopped sometimes all together, letting him experience the almost impossible fullness, the imposing weight of him. The toes of Angel's foot slotting his Achilles tendon. One round knee pressing into the back of his. Fingers entwined. Spike flexed inside, drew gasps and grunts from Angel. A sensation of time slowed down around them, a bubble within which this could happen and be completely good.

He couldn't turn his head far enough to see, but Spike heard the game face come up. The sound raised goosebumps on his flesh, anticipation of delicious pain.

"Want to taste you."

He'd never asked permission before.

Spike moved his head to present his neck more fully. "Sire."

Angel's pleasure, in hearing him say that word, in his shuddering moan as he was bitten, in the long remembered taste, transmitted itself through the pulses of his hips, and how he stroked Spike's hair as he drank. He was everywhere large and heavy and sheltering, yet Spike felt himself more solacer than solaced.

Later, Angel held him in his arms, kissing him for a long time with eyes closed. An uncanny sense passed through him, as he gave himself to Angel's tender, persistent mouth, that he was receiving affection meant for someone else, someone who could not be there, could not safely and willingly accept it.

A wave of sadness as physical as nausea took him, and he turned his head aside.

"Will?"

He remembered a little sailor, wiry and muscular and no more than five feet tall, caught up on the wharves at Nice. He had a waxed moustache, and one eye that was blue, while the other was brown. He'd fought and struggled and started to die in silence, but when he was almost gone he cried a name, Mathilde, Mathilde. One life taken, and how many spoiled?

Remembered a child he'd snatched off the street, right from under her mother's nose, during the New York City blackout of '77. How her snot slicked his fingers as he pressed them over her small face. How she smelled of sweet child-sweat and watermelon candy and gorgeous gorgeous terror. Her blood like raspberry juice running down his throat. He'd left her empty body in a trash-strewn lot. Somewhere her brothers and sisters lived and remembered her and never got over the horror of her abduction.

Every victim he'd plucked from the web of life was mourned. He'd meant it that way -- didn't like to feed off those sorts of human refuse no one would miss. Wanted to disrupt the human pattern, gash it, make a hole that wouldn't close over.

Foul foul foul.

And he'd done nothing since to atone for any of it. He'd charmed his way into a slayer's bed, taken her love as if he had a right to it, fought her fight so he'd always have access to those magic restoratives, her gaze and her cunny. If there was no cunny, he'd have gone on being as evil as the damned chip would permit.

Angel's warmed fingers rubbed the tears from his face. "Will, what is it?"

He couldn't speak. The tears seemed to shake themselves out in spasms of grief. Each resurfaced memory clutched at his throat, his vitals. He could see them all. Time hadn't dimmed a single face.

He wished the Powers had taken his offer, sent him to hell. He'd have suffered there, but not in this way. It was as if he'd been anaethesized; the drug worn off, he realized he'd been torn open with a rough and rusty blade, left to bleed and writhe. A soul was a wound. A suppurating wound that could only throb and ache and stab. His whole existence was unnatural, he was dirty, a pestilence. Shouldn't have a woman to love him, shouldn't have children -- no wonder Johnny went and got himself damned, what chance did he have, son of a vampire?

He didn't even realize he was saying anything out loud until Angel's voice penetrated the flow of broken words. "This'll pass. It hurts like hell, but it'll pass. You'll learn to live with what you were, and you'll remember you're something else now, something good."

"Where's all this respect for old Spike comin' from? Never used to -- "

"No. Never." So much had changed, just in the last forty-eight hours, his mind first among them. "You're lucky you had all that time with nothing on your conscience before it happened to you."

"Nothing on my conscience? Whose bloody unlife are we talking about here, 'cause it isn't mine. Yeah, you really don't know me anymore."

"You haven't taken any victims in decades. When it happened to me -- "

"Are you worrying about me? Is that it?"

Angel didn't know how to answer. He continued his caresses, each one feeling like a leave-taking. "I worry."

Spike chuckled, raised his head to look into Angel's face. "Sucks, doesn't it, havin' goodness thrust upon you?"

Spike's phone rang. He peeled himself out of Angel's arms to hang off the bed, fumble for it in the pocket of his jeans puddled on the floor.

Angel could hear the tiny voice clearly, even before Spike crawled back into his place, curled against his body. A hot feeling rushed through him, he wanted to leap up and escape its range; he wanted to grab the phone and hear it in his own ear. She sounded faint, as if she was very very tired, or calling from the bottom of the ocean.

Angel heard her tell Spike that she'd decided not to go to her husband's funeral. They talked about whether Milo's sister connected his death-by-vampire to them. As he talked, Spike's face relaxed into a smile that revealed his pleasure in his daughter.

"Come back to LA now. Come quick, Pudding."

"I will, Papa. I love you. Goodbye."

Again Angel had reason to be glad he couldn't blush. Her voice evoked memory of her face, her little hands, the tension of her body wreathed in melancholy, the pretty eyes looking so lost. He couldn't wait to see her again. Maybe she would say some other astonishing thing to him, some remark she could make to no one else.

"Pudding," Angel said. "That's cute."

"There's not enough endearments in the world for her." Spike tossed the phone onto the bedside table. "Could do with a hot cuppa red and a bath before I sleep."

This was over then. Angel fought off his impulse to hold Spike back, ask him for a few more hours together in this bed. But he could see that Spike had already drifted away, his thoughts pinned once more on his approaching children, who would need him to be steady and capable.

"Are you going back to your hotel? You can stay here, there's plenty of rooms made up."

"I'll come back tonight then, thanks." He was on his feet now, putting on his clothes, but came back to him where he sat on the edge of the bed, bent to kiss him. A kiss both lingering and parting. Drawing back with a smile. "Knew when I came here you wouldn't turn us out, but still... you've surprised me, all this. Some little bit of good can come out of almost anything."

Angel clasped his hand, and then Spike was gone.

Tara was afraid.

He'd done nothing overtly threatening. At first he did nothing at all, except drink the blood she brought him, sleep nearly round the clock, then take a bath that lasted hours and used up all the hot water her creaky old heater could generate. When the sun was nearly gone in the late afternoon he presented himself, wet hair slicked back, dressed in the clothes she'd washed for him.

"These don't look right anymore, do they?"

She looked up from her book. "We can go out and get others."

"I have no money. I got separated from my wallet in London. If you'll lend me some, my father will pay you back."

There was nothing threatening in this, except the complete strangeness of it. His aura was the wrong color, and beyond that, he felt off. Tears came to her eyes as she watched him move quietly around her study, looking at her books and pictures. He'd last visited her here in the early summer, and he'd done the same thing, moved the same way. But this wasn't Johnny. He was, as she'd been taught to believe way back in Sunnydale, a creature wearing her nephew's face, who was yet not her nephew. She'd never known anyone who was turned before, and so had doubted it, but the feeling of his displacement was profound and sharp.

He stopped by the mantlepiece, his back to her. The mirror that hung over it was old and beautiful, with its elaborate gilt frame, the silver showing through so that it reflected more light than image. He'd always enjoyed looking at himself in it, climbing on a chair to do so before he grew tall enough, saying he was sure this was the same kind of mirror as led Alice through the Looking Glass. He put a hand out now to touch it, tentative as if afraid his fingers would penetrate the surface.

"Does it seem right to you that a souled being should still have no reflection?"

"I don't know. I guess some things that are lost never can come back."

"You're crying."

He hadn't turned, and from where she sat, he wouldn't be seeing her reflection. She supposed he could smell her tears, or feel the heat of them.

"You love my father, but you're afraid of me."

"I know Spike, but I don't know you." The words came out before she could stop herself. They were true; there was a distance between her and this creature that didn't seem bridgeable. She wanted to weep because the child she loved was dead.

"Don't you trust me?" He faced her now. His eyes were yellow, flashing in the room's waning light.

"I trust you. But it's unkind for you to ask me that way. To... to look that way."

"Oh, I'm like the big scary man walking behind you at night, who ought to cross the street to show how sensitive he is, that he's not threatening you. Yes?"

This wasn't working; Tara pulled herself together, rose from her chair. "I'm sorry you miss your reflection. I'm sorry you're confused. I want to help you -- "

"I hear 'but.'"

"There's no but. I want to help you as much as you'll let me."

"You think I won't let you?" He crossed to the study doorway before she could reach it. Tara stopped a few feet away from him. He lounged in the opening, a hand up on either jamb. "Where are you going, Auntie? We're talking."

"We can talk. Why don't you sit down?"

"Why should I?"

"I think you're getting pleasure from making me uncomfortable."

He pushed off out of the doorway, flung himself into a chair. "I don't think I'll ever get any pleasure again! How the hell can I? Everything's ruined!"

"Oh. Oh -- " She felt her way back to the armchair opposite. "Don't say that, it's not true."

"Tara, I don't want a soul. It's too painful -- it hurts too much. How can I get rid of it? There must be some way."

"Johnny, don't think about that. There isn't, and it's not going to do you any good -- "

"Nothing's going to do me any good. There must be something in all your magical books that'll turn me back into what I was."

"You said Spike tried. If the powers refused to make you human again, I certainly can't."

"Not that. I don't want that. I just want to be a vampire. I liked it! That's what they refused to understand! They're all do as I say, not as I already got to do for centuries! This... this isn't natural." He made a face. "Guilt. I don't want to be sorry. I don't want to atone. I just want my freedom. I won't bother any of you, you'll never have to hear of me again -- "

"I wouldn't like that. Never hearing of you again? Never seeing you? I love you. So do Spike and Buffy, your sister -- lots of people."

He sneered. "You can't love me, not like this. You don't think I'm me anymore." He jumped up; the next moment he was in her face, looming over her, pinning her to her seat. "I just want to be like her -- like my sire. I want to get out of here."

Tara struggled to stay calm in the face of his gleaming fangs. "I thought you came to me because you needed help. The kind I've always given you. Not the kind you're asking for right now."

"I bet your blood would be so sweet. If it's like you."

She tipped up her chin. "Are you going to tear my throat out after all? Do it then. Don't stand here talking."

He pushed off, went to the window. Tara gasped, pulled herself up out of the chair. "Johnny -- "

"I killed five people. That can't be undone either. I can't stop thinking about it. I liked it. I want to do it again. But it makes me hurt. I hurt."

"Yes. I see that you do. But you have to face it. You're not a child anymore. You have to be responsible for yourself. Just like all the rest of us are. Like Angel and Spike are."

"Why should I have to suffer for what I did when I didn't have a soul? I did what vampires do! I didn't ask to be turned!" He burst into tears.

"Oh Johnny. Oh sweetheart, this is hard, I know." She opened her arms. Shuddering, he pushed past her and out of the room.

When she heard his tread on the stairs, the rush of water going into the tub, she made a phone call.

"He was going to erase himself," Johnny said. "For me. And my sister was ready to die... well... not for me. That was for him. But my father, he was going to do that for my sake."

"He loves you."

"Oh yeah. You wouldn't say that if you, you know, actually knew us."

"I know you," Angel said.

"I only saw you for the first time two days ago."

"I'm Spike's sire. I know him. I don't think there's anything Spike cares about more than you and your sister. Or ever has."

"You're joking, right?"

Angel glanced across at him. They'd been riding in perfect silence for more than four hours before this outbreak.

"I don't joke."

"My mother? You know he just lives to boff the slayer. That's always been the most important thing. That, and fussing over my sister. I didn't even come in a distant third. I didn't come in at all."

"He knows he wasn't always there for you. But you just said yourself, he was ready to do whatever it took for you."

"Fat lot of good it did. Now we're both all fucked up."

"You're not fucked up."

"I wanted to be a historian. Maybe an archaeologist. I wanted to travel. I wanted to have friends -- normal friends. Normal girlfriends. Lots of them. Who don't know about vampires. I wanted to enjoy myself. What am I supposed to do now?"

"The work of atonement."

"Oh, that sounds like a bundle of laughs." Johnny popped his hands off the dashboard. "But you're gonna say something profound like -- 'it's actually a privilege.'"

"It's actually a privilege."

"I'm not going to be any good at it."

"Neither was I, at first. It grows on you."

"I don't know how to fight. How to kill things. Except humans. Humans are easy."

"You'll learn. I'll teach you."

"Why?"

Angel looked at him again. Beneath the veneer of defiance, the kid actually seemed unsure.

"Because I'm the head of the order of Aurelius, and you're its newest member."

"Say what?"

"I'm your grand-sire."

"If you're so responsible, why did you leave Drusilla walking around? Do you have any idea how many people she's killed in my lifetime?"

"I can't be everywhere. I'm just one guy."

"You didn't want to kill her."

"We're talking about you now."

"I'm just saying -- it wasn't my fault. I didn't know -- "

"You drank from her."

"I must've. I don't remember. I'd had a lot to drink of the booze variety first."

"In a strange house with a woman you didn't know. And you're saying it's not your fault."

"Uh, yeah. Besides, if I'd resisted, she'd have killed me. But I don't think I could've. I was nearly dead by then."

"And blind drunk."

"Yeah." He was quiet for a while. Then -- "Shit. What's my mother going to do when she finds out about this? Is she going to stake me?"

"She hasn't staked Spike in thirty-five years, so I doubt it."

He was quiet after that, hands twisting in his lap. Angel could practically feel the cogs in his head turning. Which wasn't surprising, of course he had plenty to think about. He was scared, beset by guilt and dread. All feelings Angel knew intimately.

"You're in trouble," he said, "but that doesn't mean it's hopeless."

"How would you know? Shit, she's gonna hate me now. They all are. They blame me for being stupid. And nothing's going to bring back the people I killed. My -- well, she wasn't my girlfriend. We slept together but she wouldn't exactly date me."

"Huh?"

"It's complicated. Well, not anymore, because she's dead. And Milo's dead. Jemmie's never gonna forgive me for that."

"I think you underestimate her."

Johnny stared at him then. "You don't know her. Don't tell me about my sister."

"Fine. I was just trying -- "

"So you're gonna make me fight demons with you and you're gonna therapize me? Christ."

"I'm going to help you. Why is that concept so difficult for you to grasp?"

"Right. Because you help the helpless."

"Yeah."

"And I'm more helpless than most. So when do you rape me?"

"What?"

"C'mon, like I don't know. You've been screwing my father since we got here. Is that how he's paying for this? Is that how I'm supposed to pay, with my ass?"

"No!"

"You were mighty interested in that stasis spell Papa used on me. That'll be the only way you'll have me, because I swear I'll kill you if you try anything. And I will tell my mother what I know. She won't wanna hear that you forced him into -- "

"You've got it wrong. I didn't force Spike to do anything. And what's between him and me is private."

"It's not private if you reek of it afterwards."

"It was consensual, and it wasn't about you. That's all you need to know."

"That's impossible. He wouldn't be unfaithful to my mother!"

"There's a lot you don't understand. But it's none of your business. All you need to know is, I'm not going to touch you."

"I know you raped Drusilla. And my father. So I'm thinking that's how one gets jumped in to the Glorious Elevated Order Of Aur-fucking-elius."

"It used to be, but it isn't anymore. Now shut up before I get the idea you're really asking for it."

"This is your room," Angel said. "You can move the furniture or change it if you want. I'll have the blood delivery upped to cover what you'll need. I understand you have money of your own, so you can pay me rent. I'm not going to give you a salary until I see that you're productive. Then you'll go on the payroll. Right now, you're low man on the totem pole -- any of my people ask you to do anything, it's like I'm asking you. Cooperate. Any questions?"

Johnny shook his head. He wouldn't look at either of them. Spike wondered what had gone on during the trip. He'd been surprised when Angel offered to go up to Tara's to fetch him; he'd expected to do that, after she called to say she was a little nervous about making the trip down herself.

The room Angel picked out for Johnny was as far away from his own -- and from the suite he'd offered to him -- as it could be. Smallish, with nothing much to see out the single window. Another way of letting the kid know his place.

"Get some rest. This afternoon, we'll get started."

Angel pulled the door shut between them. Spike followed him down the corridor, taking care to be well out of ear shot before murmuring, "What do you think?"

Angel looked up. "He's aware of what we've been doing. What we've... finished doing."

"Huh. Guess that shouldn't surprise us."

"He believes he's got blackmail material, with Buffy. And that I've coerced you. That you wouldn't ever step out on Buffy without being forced."

Spike couldn't repress a grin. "Aw. Well, an' so I wouldn't, if she hadn't done it first."

"He doesn't know about her thing with the wizard."

"No. Neither does Jemima, an' I don't want her to, that is, unless Buffy decides it's all right to tell her. Didn't want them gettin' mixed up in our peccadillos, tho' I guess that won't be so easy to prevent now."

"He thought I was going to... that I would force myself on him."

This, and Angel's matter of fact way of saying it, startled Spike. Although it was hardly a startling conclusion for the kid to draw. Spike wondered what Drusilla had told him; remembered how she used to regale him with elaborate tales of how Angelus had raped and tortured her at the beginning. Sometimes she was full of indignation, and at others, her descriptions were ecstatic and wistful, building into a crescendo of tearful desire that he'd have to try to satisfy, though he never did much like being savage with her.

"I told him those days were over."

Spike shrugged. "He's shit-scared."

They'd reached the door of his own suite, directly across from Angel's.

"When do you expect your daughter?"

"She just got in, an' went straight to the hotel to sleep."

"There's still a few good hours of dark," Angel said. "We could -- "

"Yeah?"

" -- patrol." He smiled. "You up for that?"

"Yeah."

"C'mon then. Know you've wanted to kick the snot out of me for years now, so here's your chance. Do it. Show me what you got now you're one of us. No holds barred, 'cept you don't kill me an' I don't kill you."

Standing a body's length away, arms dangling at his sides, Johnny stared at him through his spectacles. Spike wondered why he was still wearing them -- he'd never needed his again after he was turned -- and almost dropped out of his stance to ask, then remembered he was trying to do something here. The boy wouldn't listen to him on any subject; wouldn't talk. He was behaving like the same sort of deaf-dumb-and-blind warthog of misery as he could be when a child. The resentment in him was so apparent, like seeing an immense mesa rise up out of a flat landscape. So, Spike figured, let him get his ya-yas out. Might be the shortest way to catharsis, and that's what was needed here -- a confession, a good cry.

"You're either going to beat my face in like you did in the car, or you're going to hold back and let me win so I'll feel like a twat. No thanks."

This was unexpected. Still, it was a line of argument that wasn't going to lead where Spike wanted to go, so he ignored it, roared into the boy, and shoved him hard.

Johnny came up fast with a punch to the face, nothing that hurt him, but with a good snap to it. Spike vamped out, grinning, taunting with his hands. "That's the ticket. C'mon, kid. C'mon, give it me good."

They were in Johnny's room. Spike suspected they'd wreck it, which might annoy Angel, not that he didn't have about sixty other unused rooms in the place, but maybe having to put the room back together after this would help Johnny feel like it was really his. He'd be here a while, after all.

"You're disgusting. I know what you've been doing. I know what you're always doing. If your cock fell off you wouldn't even be a person anymore. Because you're really not about anything else, are you?"

"Dunno, am I? What're you about, then?"

Johnny threw another punch that flung him back against the wall, and leapt after, getting in a barrage of rage-powered blows that lacked finesse but grew in power as Spike took them. Johnny didn't even notice when he cut his knuckles on Spike's fangs; the blood splattered on both of them. When Spike finally ducked, Johnny's fist went into the wall.

"Shit."

"Pull it straight out, you'll be okay."

"Don't fucking tell me what to do."

For a second Spike considered attacking him while he was distracted, but decided to err on the side of fairness, even if the kid might think later that he'd let him off too easily.

The hand came out torn and red, but as Johnny flexed it, the cuts were already closing. Spike gave him a few moments to take this in before attacking him again. "C'mon! Mix it up! Don't let your guard down!"

Johnny parried, hit out -- and then stopped. "Fuck this. Fuck this."

"What?"

"I don't want to do this. Is this what I'm supposed to be now? A brawler on the side of good? That's all you are -- fighting and fucking are all you do. Like a machine. You might as well not even have a mind."

"Uh -- that's a bit of an exaggeration."

Johnny sank onto the bed, his head cradled in his hands. "This isn't going to work."

Cautiously, Spike sat beside him. "Feels that way now, but won't forever."

"Oh, is that cliché number two-hundred-and-twelve? Got any more? Let's hear 'em all now and get it over with! Because if that's the kind of crap you and him are gonna tell me every day, I think I'll just -- " He flung himself up, fists pounding the walls again as if to break out.

Spike leaned back on his elbows. "Tell me about the people you killed."

He spun around, wild-eyed. "Huh?"

"How many did the Conduit say it was? Just five? I envy you."

"You what?"

"Thousands an' thousands, me. An' I remember every single one. But this isn't meant to be my pissing match. Want you to tell me about yours."

"So you can scold me?"

"Scold you for doing what vampires do? No. So they're real. So we can give 'em proper respect."

"What good is that going to do?"

At least Johnny was talking. Spike stayed calm, patient. "I'm figuring this out same as you. Don't have the answers. But I think we've got to face up to things we both done. Figure out how to go on, knowing we can't restore the lives we took, erase the suffering we inflicted."

He stared at nothing, his mouth gone slack.

"S'overwhelming, yeah? That's why you should tell me about 'em. Least then we'll know... what we're talking about here."

"And what are you going to do? Write an inventory of your thousands and thousands?"

This didn't seem all that far-fetched, except he couldn't grasp what the point of it would be, exactly.

"Worry about that in a bit. Your five, now."

"Dru had the first one ready for me, bound and gagged. A girl. Probably a student. Or -- no. An office worker, because she was wearing a silk blouse. It started out white and ended up red. I opened her up, and then I fucked Dru on top of her before she died. She was stiff with terror, and her heartbeat -- " His face crumpled then, like it had when he was a tiny boy coming upon a dead bird beneath a tree.

Spike had to struggle to remain impassive. "That's one. An' the next?"

Johnny shook his head. "Don't make me. Don't make me do this."

"I'll trade you one. S'no better than yours. My first kill -- a dirty little street-whore was probably no older than thirteen. Presented to me the same way."

"And did you do the same thing? Have her on top of -- of -- the other one's body?"

"No." Spike rocked forward, clasped his hands on his knee. He hadn't had Drusilla at all, not that way, not for years. He'd tell the boy all he wanted to hear about it, but this didn't seem like the right moment. It would be too easy to let him distract himself by eliciting tales. "Let's hear about the next."

Her smile when he set the plate before her was pure Buffy -- that element of almost desperate sparkle she sometimes had. She tucked a lock of dangling hair behind one ear as she surveyed the food, picked up the heavy silver fork. Angel slipped into the chair opposite, watching her take her first taste with a suspense nearly worthy of a Grand National.

Jemima closed her eyes, her face lit with a gentler light than a moment ago. "Oh, this is good. I do like fried tomatoes with my sausage and eggs."

"I can make more. There's plenty of tomatoes."

"Let me work on this first. This is so kind of you."

"Well, I thought... you looked hungry. I mean... don't get me wrong, you look good... I mean, I just wanted -- "

"I am hungry. I'm not really sure when I last ate anything hot."

She ate, with a methodical ladylike quietness, but with barely a pause, until there was nothing left. He didn't take his eyes off her the entire time; sometimes she glanced up and repeated that smile, but mostly she concentrated on her plate. His scrutiny didn't seem to bother her. Neither, apparently, did his silence.

"You want more," Angel said, starting up, going back to the stove where the pan still sat on a low flame.

"Don't tell anyone I was so greedy."

"Who would I tell?" He sliced the tomatoes. The juice ran out, thick and dark, on the cutting board, like... he still tasted Spike's blood. Not the right thing to be thinking of with her here. When he topped up her coffee, he poured a cup for himself, drank it down black.

She was watching him now, contemplative. "How is my brother? Really?"

"He's... troubled." The pan sizzled as he threw in the red slices.

"He always has been, I think."

"Why?"

"Some people just are, aren't they? He blames our parents, but really, there was so much love for him at home. He was the baby. Everyone doted on him. Not just Mamma and Papa and me, but Mamma's people, you know, Xander and Rupert and Anya and Tara. Willow. They were all there when he was little, and they all adored him. He was a surprise, and a miracle -- not like I was, because Mamma wanted Johnny, she wished for him. And at the last minute we almost didn't get to keep him, Mamma was going to let the other William take him away. I was there, I've never forgotten it. Everyone was so emotional. When he gave my brother back to her, there was this collective sigh of relief." She shivered. "That was an amazing night. But -- not what we were talking about. I was only trying to say -- I don't know why Johnny is the way he is, but it's not exactly new."

"Being a vampire is new. Getting his soul back is new."

"But that's a good thing, isn't it? The soul -- will keep him from doing anything bad."

"We hope so. But plenty of bad gets done in this world by people with souls, every minute."

"So you're saying... you don't know if he's back? Back with us, I mean?"

"He's ambivalent."

"There must be so much pleasure in vampire things, when there's no conscience to interfere. And then the conscience comes back, but -- maybe the pleasure is still there. Maybe there's revulsion and pleasure both, and it's confusing."

She was so willing to see two sides, even when it concerned the obscenity of demon appetites. Angel bit back a rebuke. Put the fried tomatoes on her plate. She smiled up at him as he set it before her. "Thank you."

"There are some things you don't have to try to understand."

"Why? Because I wear pink sweaters and have a small shoe size?" She began to eat. "So does my mother."

Angel dropped back into his chair, stunned. She was stunning.

"Please don't condescend to me. This is delicious."

"I -- "

"Just because I try to understand, don't confuse that with excusing. I know what Johnny did. I saw what he did to my husband."

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

"We were always close, I always understood him better than anyone. I want to understand him now, I want to help him, but I'm not making excuses for him. He's been, as you say, troubled -- for a long time. But he never set out to hurt anyone except himself. I suppose that's the big change that happens when someone gets turned -- it frees them to put the destruction on others."

"That's... yeah. It's true."

"I was seven when I found out about Papa. You probably don't know that."

"Seven? Seven's... young. I can't imagine Spike would've -- "

"Mamma had recently lost her leg, and things were tense at home. I walked in on them when they were fighting. She was punching him, and he'd fanged out."

"My God. Did you -- "

"About lose my baby mind? Yes. I never was so frightened before or since." She skated the last slice of tomato around on the plate, watching its progress intently. "Uncle Rupert explained to me then about vampires, and I don't suppose I understood half of it, but I was determined to love Papa no matter what, especially because at the time it seemed like maybe my mother didn't anymore. When I got older... I learned more. My husband, who had an agenda, showed me everything the Council had on him. And even if half of it was exaggerations, it still.... He thinks I've shut out the truth about him, that I'm wilfully ignorant. I'm not. But what I know best of all, is that he loves me, he's good to me, to my mother and to everyone we know. For all our sakes, he works hard to be good. That's just as real as what he was before. The point is I'm not some little Pollyanna, but I'm not going to turn away from either of them because of what they did. "

He wondered if she realized how markedly she kept bringing the conversation back to Spike. She was Daddy's girl, that was for sure. Was that why her marriage had failed?

"Your brother will need your help most of all."

"I'm ready to give it to him."

"Are you? Your world's turned upside down in a day -- that's got to take a while to process."

"Jemmie!"

Johnny shot into the kitchen, then stopped just out of arm's reach, as if kept back by a force field.

She got up and went to him. "Sluggo, you're bruised."

"You shouldn't be here." He looked curdled. Shied away when she put a hand into his space.

"I'm here to be with you."

"You shouldn't have to be exposed to -- to what I am." He glanced at Angel. "To any of us. Monsters. I know now, what goes on in the minds of -- even with a soul. I know.You shouldn't have to be anywhere near -- "

"Oh Johnny, don't start this. We'll get one thing straight, yeah? From now on, you're done hurting people. And we'll work on you not hurting yourself, together. What you did to Milo, to those others... it was bad, but it's finished. We're going forward."

Angel wondered if she'd regret her own willingness soon. Forgiveness like this didn't seem quite human.

Neither of them, brother and sister, was ready for this, both shaken to their cores. They couldn't prepare, they'd just have to live through it, moment by moment. In a year perhaps they'd look back and be able to parse how much was really meant of what they said with such apparent sincerity.

Johnny walked past her, came up to him. "Look, does she have to be here? She's the last unsullied, normal person in our family -- I don't want her witnessing...."

"I think your sister passed unsullied and normal about five exits back. She wants to help you. I'm not going to turn her out."

"There's no way she can help me. She's free now. She should go have a regular life, somewhere... regular."

"Everyone I love is here," Jemima said. "Or will be soon. Are you trying to boot me out of the family because I'm the only one without the special powers?"

"Don't joke!"

"I'm not."

Her eyes were glistening, and Angel wanted to punch Johnny into the floor.

"I can't stand this!" Johnny said.

"Then sit. And shut up." Angel shoved him into a chair. "My place, my rules."

When Angel arrived at Wes's room, Rita was already there, with Darryl and Noel; sunshine poured through the windows, and there were fresh flowers on the bedside table, beside a pile of books and journals they'd brought him. Sitting up in the midst of them, Wes was livelier than Angel had seen him in a long while. In Rita's knitted cap and new green pajamas, his eyes clear and almost sparkling in his sunken face, he looked like a strange parody of a cheerful marionette, the carved and painted head emphasized over the body, which depended long and skinny and limp.

From the doorway, he smiled. "It's an Angel Investigations staff meeting."

"Come in," Wes said, beaming. "This is so nice." Darryl hastened to pull the blinds.

"The only one we're missing is Constanza." When Noel said it, Rita gave him a sharp look. After a few minutes of idle chit-chat, they got up en-masse and left.

"We don't talk about Constanza anymore?" Angel said.

"Death. We don't talk about death in front of the dying man." Wes's thin hands twitched on the coverlet. "Apparently."

"Every new thing seems to sweep the last one before it. Since this thing with Spike, I've barely thought of her. And yet before that, I felt her absence every day, and wondered -- "

"So there's been no sign? From the Powers?"

"No. It's hard -- I can't exactly wish the visions on any of them, Rita or Dar or Noel. I wonder why they don't just give them to me."

Wes closed his eyes, as if he was looking inside for some answer. When he opened them, he seemed to have found one. "Because the Powers want you never to forget that you are so much more when you work in league with others. If you had the visions, you would begin to imagine you could be a lone force. And you would lose the mission."

How the hell am I going to lose you? "That must be right."

"I do think so. She's only been gone, what, ten weeks? There were other times when we had to wait -- after Cordelia there was a long lag. After V'Dala. But the guidance was always there when you needed it most."

"I've got my hands full right now, that's true." As he said it, Angel put out his own to clasp Wesley's. It was like holding something that had already begun dissolving back into its component chemicals.

"How's it going? What's the boy like?"

"He's a mess. I'm not sure what I'm going to be able to make of him."

"Describe him to me. Is he smart?"

"It would be easy to say no, given how he got himself into this mess, and how he's acted since. But he's not stupid. He lacks self-awareness, at the same time that he isn't aware of anything but himself."

Wes let out a soft snort of laughter. "Which of us was different, at twenty-one?"

Angel nodded. "Was a long long time ago, but I remember. Johnny's hating himself right now. Although according to his sister, it's an on-going condition."

"I suppose if he didn't hate himself, we'd wonder if the soul was really in place."

"I took him patrolling last night at Hancock Park -- there's almost always some vampire action going on there if you time it right. I wanted to see what he was capable of."

And -- ?"

"He almost got himself staked. Twice. His heart just wasn't in the fighting, even to defend himself."

"Not his father's son in that respect, then?"

"No."

"Well, they don't get much press, but we know the world is full of vampires who are almost entirely nonviolent. Vampires who pass."

"I wouldn't say full. They exist, yeah. But most of them didn't start out nonviolent. That would be almost impossible. The first thing any vampire wants -- needs -- when he rises is blood. The urge to take it by force, to feel the victim's terror and death... it's a strong urge. Overwhelming. And there's no countering sense of wrong to make you think twice. Most vampires that young barely think at all."

"So if he won't make a fighter, what are you going to do with him?"

"I don't know yet. He might... he likes books. I showed him your library this morning, and it was the only time I saw his expression crack. But -- "

"No no! Of course he is welcome to use the books. You have no one else with a real feel for them -- "

"I don't know if he really does have a feel for them or if he was just thinking he could hide in there. There's no one like you. No one who could take -- "

"My place? Someone must, Angel, for you to go on. I have no doubt someone suitable will appear. Just as the visions will resurface."

They'd never talked about this, even though Wesley had been too ill to work for months and months. Angel had known all along that Wes wouldn't recover, but it was impossible to think of Angel Investigations without him. He was the brains of the operation. Spike's boy, no matter how clever he might turn out to be -- and that was purely theoretical for now -- couldn't fill his shoes. Wesley was more than the problem-solver. He was the confidant, the continuity. There nearly from the beginning. Knowing everything he was.

Wes squeezed his hand. "I am sorry."

"What?"

"That you have to go on with the fight even as all your comrades go to their rests. It's harder to make new friends, form new bonds, as we get older."

"I have good people."

"You do. But I know you miss the others. Change is hard, when what you are and must do cannot change. For you -- who goes on and on never getting any older at all, and yet feeling, I imagine, so ancient -- it must be so very lonely."

Angel wanted to hide his face. Sometimes Wes's determination to face facts, to articulate them... could be too much.

"I hope Spike is making you feel a bit less alone now," Wes went on, his voice low and gentle. "Although he too will leave."

" -- How do you know -- ?"

"You have two very prominant hickeys on your neck, Angel. One where the skin is broken by what could only be fangs." Wes's smile was wistful. "Two vampires at love -- it must be a fiercesome sight."

Angel tugged at his shirt collar. "Don't I get to have any secrets?" Immediately his mind went to Jemima -- had she seen these marks? But he'd been wearing a high-necked sweater that morning when she came.

"Don't be cross with me."

"No. And there's nothing I want to keep from you." Angel did it then, leaned in and pressed his lips to Wes's stubbly cheek. Wes stiffened for a moment, then let out a long sigh that sounded like satisfaction's phantom. He smelled of sickness, his blood thin and wrong. "This thing with Spike," Angel said. "We certainly didn't plan it."

"Who plans a love affair?"

"It's not -- Anyway, it's over now."

"How's the little girl? Has she returned? What's she making of all this?"

The transition was so fast, Angel almost couldn't make it. His whole self resisted thinking of Jemima in the same moment as his new-sprung passion for Spike. Yet she was in his mind all the time, now. He was learning her expressions, her tones of voice. As he'd made his way to the hospital he'd imagined entire conversations with her.

"She's... she's good."

"Nothing more to say than that? Hasn't she made any further impression on you?"

"It's been busy."

"And you must get back," Wes said. "Anyway, I'm tired. All of a sudden...."

The animation he'd displayed when Angel walked in was evaporated. Wes's eyes had gone dull and half-lidded. But still he tried to smile a goodbye.

In parting, Angel kissed him again, more confidently.

PART FOUR

"What do you think of this one? Be honest."

Jemima held a shift dress up beneath her chin, the red of arterial blood.

Johnny winced. "Not red. You shouldn't wear red."

Two girls brushed past him, the heat of their bodies going straight to his groin. The mall's fluorescent lights made his eyes vibrate. The entire place smelled like food, and he was starving. Salivating at the approach of every passerby. The craving was incredible, it suffused his every thought, made his body ache. Pig blood did nothing to cut it. He imagined how he could tear the throat out of the saleswoman at just the right place so her blood would fountain into his mouth until her heart slowed.

"Well, it's such a charming dress, but the only other color it comes in is black. I don't want to wear black. This is LA, it's warm and sunny here."

"You don't live in LA."

"California girl, born and bred. I'm coming back to my roots. What about this one? This is nice and simple. Do you object to pale blue?"

How could she make little jokes and be sweet, and try on summery frocks? How could she think that bringing him along, asking him his opinion, making him hold her selections, was anything less than grotesque? She smelled like sorrow, while trying so hard to hide it from him. He couldn't stand being near her, but at the same time it was impossible to refuse her anything.

"Blue's okay."

"Don't overwhelm me with your enthusiasm, Sluggo. All right, I'm ready to try on. Gimme these." She lifted the garments out of his arms and started off towards the back of the store.

He sprang after her. "Dont -- don't leave me."

"I'll just be in the dressing room. I won't take too long. See, there's a chair right here, you can take a load off."

It occured to him, he could walk out of here. He was still Nicholas Grieves Summers, with a wallet-full of freshly-reissued credit cards, all of Uncle Rupert's money at his fingertips. He didn't have to stay around for this.

He could satisfying this incredible hunger.

He could feed. He didn't necessarily have to kill anyone. He could drink his fill and leave them alive. That wouldn't be too bad, would it?

The crowds were thick; everyone seemed to be coming at him, all these brightly dressed walking meals. Moving towards the exit, he was the wolf cleaving the flock. He'd get out, get a little distance, the city was full of food ripe for the picking. Before dawn he'd thrill to the pounding terror of a squirming body in his arms, fill his mouth with that essential living heat.

At the door, the cool night air hit like a drug. Yes. Freedom. Inhaling, his body, his desire, his strength expanded. He was powerful, more than alive. He could have what he wanted.

"Johnny -- what are you doing here?"

Angel stood before him, arms akimbo, all brow and broad as a wall.

"How did you know where I was?"

"I spotted you inside. I was running an errand." He held a shopping bag, too small and feminine for his big hand, with pink tissue paper sticking out of the top.

"My sister's inside. Shopping. She brought me along."

"But you're leaving."

"Just -- getting a breath of air. It stinks in there. You must know."

Angel's stance softened. "I know. It'll get easier -- you won't be white-knuckling forever. C'mon."

Like a truant, he followed Angel back into the mall. Led him to the shop where Jemima was just exiting the dressing room, her arms full of dresses.

"Johnny, where'd you go? I was calling you, I wanted you to find me a different size -- oh. Angel. What are you doing here? Is everything all right? Where's Papa?"

"Everything's fine, I was shopping too. Ran into Johnny here."

"Oh. Well, hello."

"Hello."

Johnny stepped between his sister's smile and Angel's. "Are you getting those?"

"They're too big. I didn't realize...."

Angel reached around to relieve her of the armful of dresses. She tucked her hair behind her ear, even as it slipped forward again. "Thank you. This turned out to be a waste of time, I guess." She turned to him. "If you hadn't disappeared -- "

"We should get out of here," Johnny said. "I think you're more tired than you thought."

"But I need some clothes, I don't have anything with me -- " She glanced around, flustered. "You can never find a salesgirl when you need one."

"Sit," Angel said. "I'll pull your size."

He was off before either of them could protest, moving nearly faster than the eye could follow. Johnny watched fascinated -- could he do that too? Dart seamlessly from place to place in a blink, so that the women browsing didn't even feel his passage? Shit.If he'd known that --

Angel was back, a new set of laden hangers dangling from his big hand. "Here you go. Take your time, we'll wait right here."

"Thank you." Jemima seemed not the least bit surprised at either his speed or his service, as she disappeared back into the dressing room.

Johnny nodded at Angel's bag. "What's that?"

Angel stared at him until Johnny realized that he wasn't going to answer. He dropped onto the chair. "Are you sure you weren't here checking up on me?"

"No. Should I have been?"

"No."

"Because I can't follow you around all the time. You have to trust yourself."

He sank lower in his seat, stuck his feet out. "Nothing will happen."

"Interesting passive sentence construction there."

"Hey -- I'm not passive."

"Aren't you? So far, you've been nothing but. I expect a period of adjustment. The changes you've undergone in the last week are profound. But I get the feeling you're just waiting for the whole thing to go away. It's not going to go away. If you want anything to feel good about, you need to commit. You need to be a player."

With a sigh, he leaned back, stared up at the acoustic tile ceiling. Blinked at the buzzing lights. He was getting a headache.

"The mission, right."

"Why's that so foreign to you? You grew up with it. Your mother -- "

" -- is the slayer. I know."

"Look, I get that being son of Spike isn't exactly a -- "

"Shut up. You're screwing him, so you don't get to pretend to commiserate with me about what a load he is."

"Who's pretending?"

The headache was getting worse. Johnny pinched the bridge of his nose. Since when did vampires get headaches?

"How's this?"

Jemima did a catwalk turn in the same scarlet dress Johnny had first dissuaded her from.

Angel looked her over. "Tasty."

"Damnit!"

Jemima touched his arm. "Johnny, c'mon, it's just a dress -- "

"Not that. My head hurts." He got up. "I need to get out of here. These lights are gonna kill me."

No one spoke in the car. With a twinge of guilt, Jemima enjoyed the wind in her hair, the freedom of riding in a convertible for the first time in years.

Angel pulled into the hotel's circular drive. "Let me help you with your bags."

Behind her, Johnny started to get out. "I'll bring her inside."

"You stay here. I'll be right back." Angel bounded out of the car. She accepted his outheld hand; he gripped it only for a second, until she was on her feet, then gathered up the shopping bags.

In the lobby, she said, "I'm fine from here, thank you. Don't leave Johnny waiting, he gets so impatient."

"Another thing he's got to learn to control. He'll keep for a minute. I wanted -- " His confidence seemed to dry up in an instant as she gazed up at him; he looked like a tall boy whose voice had just broken.

"Yes?" She pushed her trailing forelock behind her ear.

" -- uh -- to give you this."

She hadn't noticed the tiny shopping bag amidst all the others. It looked silly dangling from his big hand.

"Is this something for me?"

"It's... it's almost nothing, but I thought...."

She felt down into the crinkly pink tissue until her fingers touched something cool, metallic. She drew out a small flower made of red stones that glittered in the pinspot lights of the lobby.

"It's for your hair. I noticed you're always pushing that one lock of hair back -- like you're doing right now -- "

She became aware of the gesture, and blushed. "Oh, this is -- you didn't have to -- "

"I know." He took the barrette from her hand. "There are a lot of things I have to do, but giving you this isn't one of them, which is why it's such a special pleasure. These are garnets."

"Garnets! I don't think I can accept -- "

"It's not expensive -- just a little token of -- that I'm glad to have met you at last -- so don't feel you have to -- "

"No. Okay. Yes." Confusion made her stutter. She dipped her head; he fixed the barrette above her temple.

"That's nice," Angel said. "And it'll match that new dress."

There was a mirror by the elevator bank; she went to it. Behind her reflection she saw the collection of shopping bags where Angel was standing. She had to glance around to assure herself he was still there.

She went back to him. Offered her hand. "It's beautiful. So unnecessary -- but thank you. Thank you again."

"You'll come to the Hyperion in the morning?"

"Yes. Of course. Where else would I go?"

"Good night then."

"Good night, Angel." She watched him cross the lobby, go out through the automatic doors. As they opened she could see his black convertible, her brother starting to rise up from his seat in the back. He shouted something she couldn't hear, his arms opening out in a weird grasping motion.

And then he fell out of the car.

"Shit." He was seeing three of everything -- three moons in the dark sky, three looming high-rise hotels, three Jemimas bending over him, three Angels. For the first time he noticed that he had no heartbeat. His heart ought to be racing. The absence of sensation was even more disquieting.

"What is it, what happened?"

"I feel sick."

"In what way sick?" Angel said.

"Headache. It started in the mall. I thought it was the lights. But it got worse while we were riding. And then I started to -- I'm not sure -- hallucinate?"

"What did you see?"

"Who cares what he saw," Jemima said, "carry him inside."

"I care what he saw. Tell me, boy." Angel didn't sound concerned with how awful he felt, or how if he could just wrench himself around, he'd vomit al over the big man's shoes. He didn't matter at all.

"I'm not sure... some kind of... big snot monster that breathed fire." He jerked himself free, fell forward on hands and knees. Retched, but nothing came up.

"Where was it?" Angel said.

"What do you mean, where was it? In my fucking head."

"Where was the monster? What part of the city? A house, a street, an alley? What was going on? Were there people there? Was it hurting someone?"

"Are you crazy? What difference does it make? Anyway, I don't know."

"It makes a difference. You're vision guy now. You're supposed to tell me what you saw, so I can go fight it." Angel dragged him to his feet.

"What do you mean, he's vision guy?" Jemima said. "Is that some sort of punishment?"

"Ever since I came to LA, I've had someone close to me who gets visions sent by the Powers. They show me who I have to help. What I'm up against. I've been working blind for the last couple months, since Constanza was killed. She had them last."

Staggering around the car, willing his stomach to stop flopping, he eyed a over-neat corporate flowerbed as a good place to let fly. "I don't know where it was. I don't know this city. Mostly I just have a migraine. Christ."

"Are you still seeing it?"

"No. And I'm not gonna see anything else. Really don't want to die again any time soon."

"Constanza didn't die because of the visions. And you really don't have a choice," Angel said, his voice low and tight. "Neither of us do. C'mon. We're going back to the Hyperion. Maybe we can figure out where this thing is if we listen to the scanners."

"Don't go without me."

Jemima had the car door open, was clinging to it like someone was going to fling her away. Face full of anxious pleading.

He wished she'd spit on him, or come at him with a stake.

Five minutes later he found out what it was like to spew half-digested pig's blood at fifty miles per hour out of an open convertible. The results looked like spin-art on the Pontiac's rear flank. Head still whirling, he subsided onto the upholstery, and shut his eyes.

Cool and a little too haughty, with his exhortations about The Mission, Angel talked at Johnny's sullen silence. Peaches was usually a man of few words, but when something wound him up, he could Bore For Britain. He went on for quite a while before the boy blew up.

Spike could've told him he would, except for sensing it wouldn't do any good, and not particularly wanting to be one of the bad guys at the moment. Any intervention, even on his side, would've made Johnny savage him. So he just lounged in the shadows of the Hyperion lobby and watched.

Besides, Spike kind of enjoyed seeing the kid roar into Angel. He didn't yet know his own strength, and the first blow was a lucky one; it sent Angel flying to skid across the marble floor. It also made Jemima cry out. Spike went to her, drawing her out of the way behind the reception counter.

"Sssh, baby. Let your brother have his tantrum. They're not likely to hurt each other much."

She shuddered. "There's too much fighting. I hate it."

She pulled her head around so as not to see what happened when Angel scrambled up, although she could certainly hear it, the unmistakeable sound of fists on flesh. Spike watched the fight with her face buried in his neck. He didn't hate it, particularly -- no more than he hated the whole rotten situation. Angel knew what he was doing -- he could've put Johnny down any time, but took his blows and curses and game-faced snarls with a grim deadpan that concealed underlying good humor. Johnny didn't know Angel well enough yet to spot it, but Spike could see that this mostly amused him. It was like playing with a frisky puppy. When Angel decided he was through indulging Johnny, they'd be done. Meanwhile, Spike was enjoying the show.

At least until Buffy appeared out of thin air and staked the boy.

Their collective cries met and shattered against the high ceiling. In that moment Spike saw them all as if they'd been dipped in amber: Johnny, the game-face fallen away, pinned to the floor with the stake in his breast; Buffy half crouched over him, arm outstretched in the completed jab; Angel windmilling towards her. Nearer in, Jemima, her hair flared out around her head in mid-whirl, arms outstretched.

It was the moment that occurred between the stake's penetration, and the falling to dust -- the un-life before your eyes moment, Spike called it. Some vamps managed a word or two; almost all had time at least to register incredulity or disappointment before they disintegrated.

Johnny had time to look up into his mother's face. His was everyway askew: glasses knocked off, mouth and eyes wide open in shock. Spike's own eyes widened, straining to take in this last glimpse of his impossible wonderful son before he became nothing but memory.

Then sound and motion crashed back into being. Angel knocked Buffy out of the way. Wailing, Jemima flung herself forward. Spike leapt over the counter and caught Buffy before she could ricochet into a fresh attack.

And Johnny, both bloodless hands wrapped around the stake, cried out, in uncomprehending terror and pain, for his mother.

Shocky, tensed around the painful hole in his chest, Johnny moaned, "Mamma, Mamma," like a frightened child awakening from a bad dream. He had no idea she was right there beside him.

Angel had pulled out the misplaced stake and gone to get bandages. Jemima knelt on Johnny's other side, one of his hands squeezed in hers.

"Let me get him up on the couch," Spike said, moving around Buffy's crouching form. Knowing the boy would be all right didn't make his limpness, or the strong scent of his spilled blood, less difficult to experience. Both women grabbed his arms in wordless protest as he gathered him up. "Ssssh. It's all right. Just gonna move him over here." Buffy followed like an automaton, her hands reaching out, large shiny tears rolling unheeded down her chalky face.

Spike laid Johnny down with his head in her lap. She touched his hair as if she'd never touched it before and wasn't sure what it would feel like. She raised her face to him then, the tears still rolling down, muscles at the corners of her mouth ticcing; it was like seeing her through rainy glass. "How... did this happen to him?"

He couldn't begin to answer.

Then Angel was there with the first aid kit and a flask of blood. He took over -- directed Spike how to hold Johnny while they got his jacket and shirt off, cleaned the wound, wrapped it. He tried to be gentle, but Johnny fainted.

"Might as well get the kid upstairs to a bed while he's still out," Angel said, lifting him. "Jemima, help me."

Buffy made no move to follow, but stood, droop-shouldered, tracking their progress up the stairs and along the gallery until she couldn't see them anymore.

Spike watched too, and watched her.

"Who turned my son?"

Spike didn't want to say the name.

"How'd you get here, Buffy? You didn't walk in through the door."

"When we got down from Nepal, when I heard my messages... from Jemmie, and from the Council... I thought you'd lost it. I was afraid to wait, so Willow teleported me straight here."

"What do you mean, lost it?"

"They said Milo was killed by a vampire, outside his club -- I thought you'd snapped."

He was surprised, and not surprised. He couldn't bring himself to think of what it meant about their relationship, that this was the first story she fitted to the meagre facts.

"So how did it happen? Who did this?" "In London. When I caught up with him, I brought him here, to get Angel's help."

"His help? To do what? That... that isn't our baby. Spike... he's got to be slain." Her eyes overflowed.

"No. He's got his soul back."

The air they stood in seemed to crackle. Buffy's expression showed how she was hurtled backwards into memory, even as she struggled to grasp this immediate news, to figure out if it could be called good or not.

"I brought him here an' Angel told me where to take him, to ask for... to ask for... well, never mind that. Way it ended up, The Powers That Be restored the boy's soul." Spike could've laughed. Imagine him giving a toss for a vampire's soul! He's always despised Angel's. Always been a bit proud of himself for getting on so well without one -- thirty years in the slayer's bed and board had to be a big endorsement, right? Buffy never talked about how he wasn't the same as William Grieves -- leastways, not like it was a bad thing.

But now here he was, holding out souls to her like water to the thirsty.

"His soul -- ! And I nearly slayed him. Spike... I never miss. I never miss."

He reached for her, but she jerked away, a skittish animal.

"How did it happen.... Tell me who turned him. I think you know!"

The floor stubbornly refused to swallow him. Nor could he swallow his own tongue, thick and stupid as it suddenly was in his cakey mouth. There was nothing to do but confess it. "...was Drusilla."

She fell to her knees. "Then it was me!"

He was barely conscious again before another vision whirled his guts. But this time Johnny was able to describe what he saw well enough that Angel, apparently satisfied, took off.

That left him alone with Jemima. Despite the nausea, she insisted he swallow the pint of warmed blood Angel had brought up. She held the cup for him to drink, even after he protested that his arms still worked. As he sipped, a sensation rode up his spine like that of prey aware of a circling hawk. He dug his heels into the mattress, arched his back against the headboard.

"What's the matter?" Jemima said. "You can't be getting another vision already!"

"It's me." Buffy stood in the doorway. "He's afraid of me."

Her slayerness shimmered off her body, made his hackles rise. His life now was shit. Saddled with these visions that turned him inside out, and in primal terror of his own mother. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.

"May I come in, Johnny?" she said. "I promise I'm unarmed."

"You don't need a weapon to kill me."

"I didn't mean to kill you. I didn't know." She came up to his side, looking sorry and tired.

"If I had no soul, you'd have to kill me. Put me down like any other vampire. Isn't that true?"

"Oh baby, don't talk that way." She sat and pulled him into her arms, saying all the endearments she'd called him when he was small enough to fit on her lap. He wanted to curl against her and cry and let her rock him into sleep. Her hair was slippery against his cheek, and she smelled profoundly of home. But it was a smell his demon feared and hated. He arched and curled and she let him go.

He didn't notice Jemima leave, but suddenly he was alone with Buffy.

"Johnny, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't protect you better. If I'd done my job, this wouldn't have happened."

"You just said you didn't know."

"No, darling, I mean, I should've protected you from Drusilla. It's my fault. And I'm so sorry about this, attacking you and frightening you and wounding you." She laid her palm gently on his bandaged chest.

"Be careful -- it hurts!" Her presence made the very air jangle.

"I know. But it'll heal up in no time. This happened to your father once, and two days later there was just a bitty little scar." She pressed a kiss to his forehead.

He couldn't stand this. "Mamma, I'm so tired."

"Go to sleep. I'll sit with you."

Sleep would never come again, with the slayer looming over him.

"Don't you need to talk to Papa?"

"He went with Angel."

"Please... I can be by myself."

She seemed to get it then, pulling away with a brief galvanic shock. She stood awkwardly. "We'll bring you more blood in a little while. You need to keep your strength up."

When she was gone he felt a little less bad. For the moment. Except that existence going forward seemed insupportable. He barely knew who or what he was anymore. Giving house-room to a demon that could torture as much as it tantalized, and a soul that had never pricked him as it did now -- possibly because he wasn't anything much but a pathetic milquetoast before. And the visions. Apart from making him wish for oblivion, this new twist effectively made him Angel's slave.

Burying his face in the pillow, he wished he was dead.

"Spike. Spike! We're done. It's dead."

"It's dead, yeah, but I'm not bloody done."

"C'mon." Angel, coming up from behind, reached for him, then leapt back when Spike arced around, sword first.

"Whoa -- jumpy!"

"Don't sneak up on my blade arm. Who taught me that but you?"

Standing over the eviscerated M'shokie demons with rampant sword, splattered with gore and still game-faced, Spike was magnificently pissed off -- and magnificent. Angel wanted to shove him against the damp brick, pilfer those parted lips, rummage below his belt so he'd gasp and shout.

Instead he asked, "So, what did she say?"

"What do you think? Said she blames herself. Which means she blames me, but she won't admit it. Wouldn't even look at me. Wouldn't have talked to me 'cept she had to."

"I wouldn't get hung up on anything she does for the first day. She didn't know what to expect when she got here."

Spike jammed the sword again into the big humped corpse at his feet, then tore it out, spattering more grunge on them both. "She thought I'd gone off the rails an' did for Milo. Thought the kids came to you for help subduin' me."

"Oh."

"Dunno where she gets off imaginin' that. Never have done anything like that since I had the chip out. She's got a guilty conscience, so she shoves it all off on me. I'm Big Bad."

"Neither of you is bad. You're just... mixed up."

"Ah, I'm comforted. Ought to do this professionally. Hang out a shingle -- Undead Marriage Counseling."

"I'm just saying -- "

"Well, don't. C'mon. Fuckin' stinks around here."

Spike sat low and was silent in the car. Even as he glanced at him every few moments, Angel's thoughts drifted to his daughter. There'd been no time since he'd given his gift to savor her reception of it. He thought the gesture had gone well. After her charming confusion, she'd favored him with one of her stunning smiles. He held tight to the tactile memory of his fingers briefly in her hair as he fixed the tiny jewel, how her eyes shone up at him. He'd surprised and pleased her, which seemed to Angel only right given how she'd been surprising and pleasing him ever since she first walked through his doors.

"So, this vision thing. What's it gonna mean for him?"

Angel snapped out of his revery. "It means he's really part of the mission."

"An' what'll it do to him, besides make him sick every time? Dru had the sight, an' we both know how barmy it made her."

"It's not really the same thing," Angel said, although he wasn't entirely sure about that. He wondered if Spike had forgotten who'd really driven Drusilla mad, or if he was maintaining a polite fiction now they were on such good terms with each other. Of course, he'd never known Dru before she was thoroughly round the twist. As far as Spike was concerned, she merely was what she was.

Spike sank lower. He still held the sword across his lap. Every time he stroked it with the pads of his fingers, slow from hilt to tip, Angel felt it. But Spike never looked at him.

"So whose idea of a joke is it, him bein' afflicted with this just now?"

"Could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. Cordelia thought it was, when she got them. Not at first, but she rose to it. The visions were the making of her."

"Until they killed her."

"No, that was something else."

"It's always something."

"They did make her sick. Very sick. Until she consented to accept an aspect of the demon, and then there was no more pain. Unfortunately she got taken over by something Evil shortly afterwards."

"My boy's already a demon." He spoke without affect, his fingers caressing the blade. "Already taken over by somethin' evil."

Angel felt like he could start apologizing -- for following Darla into that alley, and every single thing since -- but if he started, there's be no end, and it wouldn't mean anything. Anyway, he knew that wasn't what Spike was fishing for. He wasn't fishing for anything, as far as Angel could tell. He was sunk in melancholy. Stuck. Which wasn't like him, but then he'd been changed just as profoundly as Johnny was.

"He has a soul, and now he's got a real job to do. There's worse things."

"You don't know him. He's stubborn an' broody an' he hates anything that sounds like 'have to.' He never wanted anything to do with his mother's mission. Can tell you right now, he's not gonna come to Jesus waggin' his little tail behind him."

"Uh... no tail-wagging required."

"Right." Spike smiled suddenly, without taking his eyes off the blade in his lap. "Got me for that. Except -- "

"Yeah," Angel said. "Except that it's time to stop."

He braked for a red light. Spike slid over close to him. "Kinda wish it wasn't." He turned Angel's head, pressed a kiss on his mouth -- a slow, appreciative kiss that took no notice of the dried demon gore on their faces, the imminence of the green light, or the show he was putting on for the people in the surrounding cars. "Was good while it lasted."

"It was," Angel said, sorry when the kiss broke.

"We'll do it again, in another hundred-an'-twenty years. Yeah? That'll be our standin' date."

Angel smiled. "I'll pencil it in."

"All right then." The light changed, and Spike resumed his lounging stance against the opposite door.

"What are you going to do now Buffy's here?"

He shrugged. "My instinct's to leave the boy to get on with it, without the two of us watchin' an' babyin' him every second. But his mum will want to rend her garments an' beat her breast a while, I suppose, an' I'm not the man's gonna pry her out 'fore she's done with that. She an' I'll have to talk, but can't say I'm in a rush to start. I suppose after a few days she may decide the thing to do is slam the barn door, an' then she'll be off after Dru, if she can find her."

Angel debated with himself before asking the next question; tried to restrain the impulse, and couldn't. "What about Jemima?"

"Expect she'll want to stick by her brother a while, whether it's good for him or not. Poor darling's at a loose end, otherwise. She'll work at whatever task you set her, though, an' if you don't, she'll find 'em for herself. She's always been like that. Not an idler. Still, if she's underfoot, don't stand on ceremony. Give her the heave-ho. She'll understand."

"I can't imagine her in the way," Angel said, still trying to sound off-hand, though it was clear from Spike's answer that he wasn't onto him at all.

"I like the thought of her in the warmth an' sunshine. This time of year, London's too dank an' Reykjavik is too dark, for the sweet little likes of her."

Buffy had listened to everything Jemima could tell her about what the hell is going on here. She'd cried, and embraced her, said she was sorry over and over for not having made sure nothing like this could happen. Sorry about Johnny, sorry about Milo, sorry for suspecting Spike. She couldn't talk anymore, the tears were dried up. In the lobby's vastness, Buffy stared into space, Jemima's head in her lap, combing her fingers through her hair. A little sparkly barrette was starting to work its way out of place; idly she unclasped and repositioned it. She was so tired she could barely form thoughts anymore. With all her experience of these things, how could she still be amazed at how one apocalypse could follow another? These days it was the personal ones that were far more devastating. The struggle she'd just won in Nepal, to preserve this dimension for Slurpees and sunshine, already seemed trivial, even unreal, except that her body still ached from battle, and from the stress of being teleported half-way around the world. She hadn't had a bath or seen a toothbrush or eaten a meal in -- she couldn't quite think. Time was different where she'd been, anyway.

"Mamma, this problem between you and Papa... promise me you'll put it aside now. We need to be together. We need to take care of each other."

It took her a long moment to understand. Her brain was nearly stilled with fatigue.

"He told you there was a problem?"

"No, but I'm not stupid. I knew there was something wrong back in London, before any of this happened with Johnny. Whatever it is, I wish you could set it aside."

"So do I, baby. I'm not sure your father can."

Jemima looked at her with an expression that seemed impossible for a woman who'd already lived what she'd lived. It was the face of the little girl still resisting with all her might the loss of innocence.

"Papa loves you more than anything. When has he ever held a grudge?"

"I know, Jemmie, but everyone has his limits."

She squinted. "What are we talking about here?"

"I... really don't want to say. If your father hasn't told you -- and I'm glad he hasn't -- I'd really prefer not to."

"You've hurt him."

This was more than she wanted to hear. "Jemima, I don't think we should be having this conversation. Look, I'm really tired, and -- "

"Papa has a soul now. I've got to think that makes him even more of all the good things he's always been. I wish you could've seen him, confronting the Conduit. He was so brave. He didn't think of himself at all."

You didn't think of me at all. You forgot what we are, Buffy.

"I miss him," Buffy said. "I miss him so much."

Jemima's eyes sparked. "It'll be all right then. I'm sure it will. Come, I'll show you which room is his, you can rest and wait for him. I'm sure he and Angel will be back soon."

Bewildered and barely able to hold her eyes open, Buffy followed her daughter up the stairs. "Are you staying here too?"

"No, I'm still at the Bel Age." She kissed her. "I feel better now you've come. Now we're all together."

"... good. That's good Jemmie." The doorknob was beautifully cool against her palm. "Call me if... if Johnny... or if anything happens."

The room was large and impersonal and not uncomfortable, like all the hotel rooms she'd grown used to over the peripatetic years. The books she'd last seen on the guest-room bedstand in London were on the bedstand here, and one of Spike's black shirts was draped over a chair. In the bathroom, his hair gel and shaving tackle and toothbrush were neatly lined up beside the sink. Feeling glazed, she washed, stripped to her panties, and climbed into the bed. The pillow smelled faintly of the gel. She pressed her face into it.

In Nepal -- beyond Nepal -- she'd had a little time to think, moments snatched from strategy and battle, when she let herself crave him, let herself wish, even hope. He was punishing her, whether he meant to consciously or not, but she'd begun to think that the punishment would have to come to an end, that if she rode it out, with patience and humility -- not her two finest attributes -- he would turn back to her. She'd never doubted wanting to go on with him. The more she tried to understand why she'd seduced Saleem, the less sense it made. And somehow the less importance it held -- what were those few weeks of physical conversation against the conversation of decades she had with her mortal enemy of old?

Maybe Jemima would be right, maybe the death of their son would wipe it all away, allow Spike to believe again in her love, their commitment.

She drifted, making a starfish in the cool sheets. When she awoke he would be lying beside her, and they'd weep together over their poor stricken son.

"What are you doing?"

"Shove over. I'm lyin' down with you."

"But Mama's come back -- "

"You're the one need's company right now." Spike pulled the blanket up, then stretched his arms up, twined his hands around the headboard. Looked at the ceiling with an insomniac's gaze. Johnny rolled onto his side to see him better.

"That doesn't hurt?" Spike said.

"A little. It's all right. I can feel it closing up. It's the weirdest thing."

"Hope so. Hope it's the weirdest thing that ever happens to you, from here on out."

"It won't be. But it's nice of you to say." Weird was the word for this, Spike climbing into bed with him, but to his surprise, Johnny didn't mind it. He was lonely and scared -- lonely and scared enough to even admit it to himself, if not to anybody else.

"Look, try not to hold it against your mum. She couldn't have known it was you -- last thing she was expecting. Yeah, it was a rare miss, but it was a miss, an' best thing is not to dwell on it."

Without meaning to, Johnny blurted, "But she feels like an enemy. I mean, I feel her -- the slayer -- it's like my ears are ringing but it's all of me. How do you stand it? How have you stood living with that all this time? It's intolerable!"

Spike looked surprised at this. "She's your mother. Loves you same as ever."

This missed the point. He started to protest, but Spike went on.

"You just have to believe me when I tell you, she wouldn't have staked you if she'd known, even if you were ready to savage her. What I did for you -- she'd have done the same if she was there. Anything she could do to preserve you, rescue you, she'd do gladly. You're her son. That's what she sees when she looks at you. It's what I see."

"Yeah, okay." Obviously Spike wasn't going to answer the question. Maybe, Johnny thought, he didn't want to hear the answer, because what could it possibly be that a father could tell a son about his mother? Anyway, he knew. No two people in the history of the world exuded such a clog of sex and passion and blind involvement as his two parents. Of course Spike was aware of her as the slayer -- hell, he addressed her that way half the time, even in the supermarket or on line for a movie -- their whole relationship was the Big Sublimated Death Wish thing. His fires flared and were quenched in her only to flare again, because he was a vampire and she was his appointed enemy. Maybe Spike still thought about killing her. Killing and fucking, he'd learned since awakening undead, could be almost the same thing.

Spike looked at him, his eyes softening. After a moment he put a hand out, pushed the hair off his forehead. Johnny started to flinch away, then stopped and let him do it.

"I'm sorry," Spike said. It was almost a joke, Papa coming in here to keep him company. Obviously he couldn't just go back to fucking Angel now Buffy had returned, but neither could he crawl into bed with her under Angel's roof.

With nowhere to stick his cock, Papa was at a loose end.

"Hope eventually you an' I'll be better friends. I see you hate all this right now, but it's a second chance for you. Your existence can still have meaning."

Papa didn't get it. "She wanted me."

"Who, Drusilla? Dru... wants a lot of things. She picks an' plays an' forgets an' remembers. She's like a little child."

With her I was a king. "It's easy for you to dismiss her. But she satisfied you for a long time."

"Satisfied me? That a claim she made?"

Why stay with anyone for a hundred years otherwise? It was that he wanted so much, that cocooning of two spirits. Easy enough for Spike to shrug about it when he'd never had to do without it. He didn't know what it was to be lonely.

"Angel's all right," Spike said, not waiting for an answer. "Could do worse than learn from him. He's the expert -- the only one -- in dealin' with a soul an' a demon both."

"So are you planning to stick around and go on taking lessons from him yourself?"

"I'm talking about you."

"I don't think you're really qualified to be handing me advice."

"No?" Spike quirked an eyebrow. "Well, perhaps not. I'm finding my way, same as you."

You're not the same as me. He squinted at Spike. He was what he was, and always had been: almost impossibly handsome, cocky, privileged, and despite the intense familiarity of how he talked and acted, remote too, being in on mysteries that were not for children or the merely human.

"I don't know if I can do this. The visions. What Angel expects."

"You don't really know yet what Angel expects. But we all have to grow up sometime. Even naughty Bad Ass vampires."

"That's not true."

"No it's not," Spike said, rolling to his feet. "Caught me there. Can go on bein' a teenaged turd for centuries, as Angel would be happy to tell you, I'm sure, if you ply him with a bit of whiskey to loosen his tongue. But if you ever want to be anything worth a damn, ever want the love of someone worthy of love, want to look good people in the eye -- then you bloody well do it. That's my advice, qualified or not."

He went to the kitchenette. Johnny listened to Spike moving around behind his back. He smelled blood heating. Spike thrust a warm cup into his hand.

"Drink up, an' get some sleep, an' try not to worry."

Spike settled himself in the armchair. Johnny listened to him breathing, and heard him stop. No, they were nothing alike. He couldn't possibly sleep. If Spike understood anything, he wouldn't be able to either.

Alone in the kitchen at the Hyperion, surrounded by glimmering copper pots and the masses of groceries she'd brought strewn on the counters as if spilled from a cornucopia, Jemima chopped vegetables. The onion started her weeping like a bit of yeast starts the dough. She'd been holding back for days. After the initial shock of Johnny, Milo, the one-two punch, she'd shut off the pain. The flight back to England, the couple of days there, the return to Los Angeles, were undertaken in a sort of cocoon; she'd not allowed herself to think or feel too deeply. She cried without making much sound, still listening with half her attention to the radio tuned to NPR, hands moving in the practised rhythm. Kitchen work had always soothed her. No matter what was going on, people had to eat, and she'd long ago learned that she liked feeding them.

The blood simmered in the big pot as she sauteed the onions together with hot sausage and tabasco sauce, adding extra cayenne peppers. She couldn't taste this particular dish as she went, but she'd made it many times before, if not lately. The stink of it didn't bother her. She tipped the contents of the frying pan into the pot of blood, and stirred it in with a wooden spoon.

"My God, what is that aroma?"

She jumped and turned, a hand on her breast. "You should wear a little bell!"

"Sorry," Angel said. "What are you doing here? And are you crying?"

From being a figure in the doorway, filling the doorway, he was all at once a colossus right at her side, forcing her to look up. He filled her entire field of vision, pensive, attentive. He lifted a hand as if to touch her face, but the touch never came.

"I didn't think you'd mind. I'm cooking, so we can all sit down to dinner later."

"But what?" Angel lifted the pot lid. The heavy spicy smell enveloped them. For her, it was too familiar, too wrapped up with good associations, to be sickening.

"That's blood soup. Mamma invented it for Papa. It takes longer than anything so I started it first." She stirred it again, then lifted a wooden spoonful out of the pot, holding her hand beneath to catch the drip. "You taste. Tell me if it it needs more spice."

"I told you, I don't -- "

"Taste." She brought the spoon to his lips; obediently he parted them for her to tip the contents in.

For a moment he held it in his mouth, and she could see him thinking. Then he swallowed, and a smile bloomed, a smile that reminded her that he'd been a very young man when he was turned, lively and handsome.

"That's... gee. Something. Something good."

"See? I'll get you eating yet."

"You just might." He took the spoon from her, went for another dip, but she grabbed his wrist. "It has to cook."

"When will it be ready?"

"Tonight. There's lots more to do. I'm making a ratatouille for Mamma and me, and steaks because everybody likes those, Papa especially, and baking some bread, and a cake and a pie, because I like to bake. Papa has a sweet-tooth and maybe Johnny will too."

"Your father's unusual. Really, vampires don't -- "

"Everybody should eat, and enjoy themselves a little... I want us all to sit down together as a family, and... you see, my husband tried to separate me from them. Now that I'm finally separated from him, I want my people all around me. You're part of our family too, of course. You're like... you're like the lovely benevolent grandfather. I don't have any grandfathers, and I've always sort of wished -- "

Angel stared at her, his face frozen around his previously pleasant, absorbed expression.

Blushing, she backed. "I mean -- I don't think of you as -- it's just because, with my father, and you're his sire -- but you're not like a grandfather at all, I mean, you're not old, well, you are, but I don't see you as -- you're a friend. I see you as a dear family friend."

"A family friend." His voice was dull.

"Not just that! My friend too. You've been a good friend to me since I came, and I think... at least, I hope... we will get to be better friends."

He looked completely demoralized, and she wasn't sure how or why. "If you're not busy, you could help me here. There's a lot to do."

He chopped vegetables at a prodigious speed, and when it came to kneading bread dough, he was almost too strong. But she noticed that he did everything carefully, intelligently, apparently mindful of the finished product, and again this bemused her, because he didn't eat.

"Did you like food before? When you were alive?"

"Not as much as I liked drink. I was a drunken lout, when I was alive," Angel said. "There was nothing good -- benevolent -- about me."

She'd really hurt his feelings with that thoughtless remark. Sometimes she kind of was a Pollyanna, always trying to put the best face on things. She'd been like that for as long as she could remember, it was a way of dealing with the fear and uncertainty of her life, and though she wished she could do it less, change was difficult. "I know that. Remember, I've read all about you."

"All about?" Now he was really pouting.

"Everything there was," she said boldly. "But being around you... shows what none of the chronicles can, about who you really are. You were given a second chance, and made good on it." Johnny too had been handed another chance. She wanted to believe he wouldn't squander it. "Tell me, Angel. Can vampires be alcoholics?"

"Sure, if they were in life. I was a gin-hound myself, when I was alive. Actually, I was less interested in booze afterwards -- there was too much other fun to be had, that I wanted a clear head for. Not that I was a teetotaler. Far from it." He stopped kneading, and stared into space, his aimiable expression once again dissolving into solemnity.

She debated whether to tip him off about her brother. Instead she said, "The visions Johnny has now. Will they always hurt him like that?"

Rousing himself, Angel dug the heels of his hands into the dough, folded it, dug again. "Probably. More or less. That seems to go with the territory." He met her eyes. "You're very worried about him. About him and your parents, I can see that, but you barely say a word about yourself. You were crying when I first walked in here."

"It was just the onions."

"It wasn't."

He came up to her again, she would've called it looming except that it was comfortable, like standing in the shadow of a tree on a too-sunny day. She didn't mind when his flour-coated finger touched her chin, tipped her head up. She couldn't remember the last time a man had looked at her that way -- interested, but undemanding. Milo had been nothing but demands.

"Tell me, Jemima."

There was something thrilling, freeing, in the way he said her name. "Well... I was thinking about what I was spared. Milo would've made our divorce an agony every step of the way. I don't have to go through that now. Which is such a relief, but my God, I shouldn't feel relieved, because he's been killed."

"You didn't ask for any of this to happen."

"No, I know I didn't. But -- " She told him about meeting her brother in the pub, how Milo came, and what happened after.

Angel listened with a grim patience. "It's not your fault. This kind of thing... I've seen it often. Vampires... sometimes they still care for the people they loved before, but they have no moral compass anymore. That can give rise to certain perverted favors. Grotesque expressions of... what they think of as kindness. I'm sorry this happened to you."

"It's not that it happened to me -- it's Johnny I feel sorry for. He's never going to be able to forget it. That's why he doesn't want me here, because the mere sight of me reminds him what he did. It's no joke, getting a soul after you've gone without. I think the Powers gave them to him and Papa, to mock them. It's a booby prize."

"It doesn't have to be," Angel said.

And again! "Oh -- I didn't mean -- "

He went back to punching the dough with renewed force.

Waking, Buffy knew he was in the room. Without opening her eyes, she listened. He touched the clothes she'd draped over a chair. She imagined him lifting them to his face, inhaling them.

"What are you doing now, Spike, administering the sniff test to check up on me?" She flipped the lamp on next to the bed.

"Slayer."

"What -- God, what are you doing -- get out of here!" She yanked the sheet up over her bare breasts.

"Is that any way to talk to your beloved only son?" Johnny meandered to the foot of the bed, sat down. "I thought you'd be happy to see I was up and around."

"I -- I am. But Sweetheart, you should've knocked."

"Now I'm Sweetheart, that's good." He laid a hand on her ankle under the sheet. She pulled her leg back.

"I need to get dressed. Can we meet in the lobby in a half hour? Then we could talk."

"I don't want to talk to you in the lobby. I want to talk to you here. You look so beautiful, Mamma, just like that. So beautiful and powerful. I can feel you, no matter where I go in this place."

Okay, I hate this. She wasn't supposed to have to be creeped out around her own son. Guilty, yes. Distraught, of course. But not held prisoner in her bed by his too-bold stare. "Where's your father? Have you seen him?"

Johnny shrugged. "You can manage without him for a little bit, can't you? I thought you missed me. You were away a long time, Mamma. A lot happened while you were gone."

She forced herself to relax, her hands still curled around the sheet pulled up to her armpits. "I know, baby. I'm sorry I wasn't around. It couldn't be helped." He looked the same as ever, her handsome young man with the curly sand-colored hair, the sweet near-sighted expression.

He leaned in closer, smiling, then closed his eyes and inhaled her. "You smell -- I can't describe how you smell. But it's no wonder Papa was obsessed for so long with your--"

"Don't do that!"

"What?" His eyes sprang open, twinkling behind his glasses. "Can't I even enjoy my heightened senses? I have to find something good in this utter shit I've turned into."

"Sweetheart, please leave the room now. I'll meet you in the lobby in half an hour. If you see your father, please send him up to me."

"Why? I don't think he wants you anymore, Mamma, despite your tantalizing scent. If he did, he'd already be here." He paused. His gaze bore into her, without shame or mercy. "I'm here."

"Yes, and I've asked you -- nicely -- to go."

"Because you want to get up, right? And you don't want me to see your pretty breasts."

"Johnny!"

"I've seen them before. That's how I know they are pretty."

What, she wondered, did he expect was going to happen? This vague insinuating menacing was supposed to lead -- where? Was he trying to provoke her to smack him down? She didn't want to do that to him. She didn't want to be slayer-versus-vampire with her boy. Anyway, he shouldn't be acting this way. Not with a soul.

"Please don't say anything else that you'll regret. Let's just stay... on the right side of the line, okay? Get up and go, and we won't have to refer to this again."

"And you won't tell my father, right?" His voice was so reedy, so young. He'd always been young for his age. "Because you know Spike would want to stake me himself if he got wind of what's going on here. How I'm breathing you in, how excited you're making me. You've always driven me crazy, Mamma, but now -- I can barely stand it."

"Stop this."

"Stop -- ? How can I stop? Even from my own room, I can smell your blood, your cooze. I don't know which I want more. I'm hard as a rock."

With all her strength, Buffy yanked at the sheet, rolling away from him. He tumbled off the bed; she made for the door.

He was there waiting for her.

"Where are you going, Mamma?" His hand cupped her jaw. He lowered his face past hers, sniffed at her neck. Her skin revolted in goose pimples; she trembled against the urge to just make a fist and knock him out. Why couldn't she do it? It was what this horror called for.

Instead, she murmured. "If you don't stop this now I will scream, your father and Angel will come running, and they will know without my even having to tell them, what you're doing here. There will be no going back from this. But if you go away quietly, they won't have to know, and we just won't talk about this ever again."

He tilted his head. Just the same way his father did, the way that made her melt. "I'm disappointed. Don't you love me anymore?"

"St John -- "

"Well, Mamma, when you call me by my odious name, I know I'm meant to listen. Fine. I'll just have to go wring myself out all alone. At least I'll know that you'll be thinking about me. That's good too."

He slipped out. Buffy sank to the floor, the tears coming in a hot rush she tried to stifle. He would smell them too, and know he'd caused them.

Maybe there were no souls, in him or in Spike. What proof was there? She'd never been able to sense Angel's soul -- only his behavior signaled its presence or absence.

Johnny's behavior... was a monster's, monstrous.

Smiling at everyone gathered at the table, Jemima lit the candles. "Okay, where's Johnny? I told him we'd sit down at eight."

Spike leapt up. "I'll get him." It was only a few minutes' reprieve, but that was better than nothing when it came to sitting there next to Buffy, feeling how she wouldn't look at him, how her flesh went hot and cold at his mere proximity.

Her hand shot out and closed around his wrist. "Maybe -- don't. If he doesn't want to sit with us... let him be."

"Last thing he need's to be alone. S'more soup here than me an' Angel can eat, anyhow."

He took the stairs two at a time, threw himself down the long corridor to the last door, Johnny's door. Knocked hard and went in without waiting.

The room was empty. Clothes were strewn on the unmade bed, and on the floor. An empty bottle of Jack stood on the bedside table, beside a short stack of books.

Spike pushed through to the bathroom, and stopped.

What he saw in the brimming tub was the kind of thing no one wants to find, especially in their child's room.

Spike dragged Johnny out of the red water, let him drop onto the tiles. One of the bottles on the tub rim tipped over into the water; the other, still half full, fell to the floor and shattered in a brown burst. Diluted blood spread pink onto the white tiles from the gashed wrists, creeping to meet the brown puddle of bourbon.

"Hate to tell you, my boy, it doesn't work that way. Can't drown, an' bleedin' out won't end the madness either."

No response. Spike knelt over him, shook him. "Oi! Open up."

He wasn't dead, of course, only dead to the world. When Spike put pressure on his chest, more pink water spilled from his slack lips. He'd been submerged a long time.

"Fucking hell. You're determined to put your mother through her paces, aren't you?"

"Spike, what is it? Oh."

Angel stood in the doorway.

"I don't want Buffy seeing this. Or Jem, needless to say. Would you -- keep 'em from coming up here."

"What should I say?"

"Christ, I dunno. This is makin' me tired."

"Not as tired as it's making him."

"I thought he'd be stronger than this."

"You thought -- ? Spike, when it happened to me, it took decades for me to find any kind of equilibrium. I spent months at a time in various kinds of stupors."

"But you were alone. He's got people to look after him. Bloody good job we're making of it."

"C'mon, I'll help you move him."

"No, you'll be stained, and then the girls will wonder. I'll clean him up and put him to bed."

"He needs blood."

"First he needs to sleep it off." Spike gathered him up, the water soaking his clothes. This was the most physical contact he'd had with Johnny in years; he pulled him in tight. If carrying him could make the slightest difference in Johnny's future, Spike would go on carrying him forever. Except it wasn't going to be that easy, and it wasn't up to him.

"Spike."

"Yeah."

"He's not going to wear out his welcome. I said I'd help him -- help you all -- and I will. However long that takes."

Angel waited for his words to sink in. Spike nodded.

"Go an' eat some soup. Tell 'em Johnny had a fit of vapors. They can see him later, when he's presentable again."

Coming into Johnny's room with the tray balanced on one hand, Buffy found Spike sitting at the bedside, in the near dark, a book in his lap. Johnny lay motionless much as he'd been just the day before, recovering from the stake-wound.

"I brought you up some hot soup. And blood for him, when he's ready for it."

"Won't be for a while. He's too steeped in Jack Daniels to drink anything else. Would take a steam hammer to wake him up."

Buffy set the tray on the dresser, brought the bowl and spoon to him. "Here, Spike. Eat."

He made no move to take them.

"You are hungry. Don't starve to spite me." She kept her voice low and gentle. "Please, sweetheart." The rare endearment touched him and fell to the ground, a badly-sailed paper airplane.

But he accepted the bowl, tasted a spoonful, and smiled, a smile she knew was for the cook, and not her.

She leaned against the wall, just beyond his circle of light. "I'm sorry I suspected you. Of killing Milo. I realize it was very hurtful, I shouldn't have even told you, only I was so upset, I didn't think."

"You're the slayer."

"No. Spike. Don't say that -- not that way. I still trust you the same as ever."

"Do you? Then I suppose it was just bein' angry at me that made you so eager to think I'd kill a man because I didn't like him."

The conversation, impossible to plan or control as it was, skittered ever more out of her control. Buffy kept her eyes fixed on Johnny's blank, shadowed face as she struggled forward. "Not because you didn't like him. I was afraid that he might've hurt Jemima. I know you would do... almost anything... to defend her."

"Oh Buffy, leave it alone."

"Listen to me, Spike. Jemima told me everything that happened while I was gone. The bargain you tried to make with the Conduit."

"Nothing went right there."

"She told me you were going to trade yourself for him. Oh Spike. You were going to go away from me."

It would always come up to haunt and shame her, this strong sense that she loved unnaturally, because he was just a little bit more to her than the children. Even now, when the thing of so many of her nightmares had come to pass. She closed the heavy space between them, perching on the arm of his chair, leaning in so her face was beside his. He didn't look at her, but he ceased the motion of spoon to mouth.

"How could you think that would be good -- you taken from us, from our memories! I'm glad your offer wasn't accepted -- Spike, I know I couldn't live without you."

Nothing in his cool unresistent flesh suggested that her touch meant anything.

"I know they gave you a soul, too. You omitted to mention that, but Jemima told me."

"An' will that make a difference, do you think? You always set such store by 'em. Me not having one, always seemed like a bit of a lack."

"I haven't thought of you that way in years." She smoothed his hair, loving its texture, the feathery feel of his nape. He closed his eyes, as if to reject some sight too horrific to gaze at. She needed his attention, his forgiveness. If he would just realize that she understood, that she loved him for everything he'd done, everything he was, he would see that it would be all right.

"My Spike... lover... you always take care of us... you're so good to us... but I'm going to take care of you now. I'm going to take care of you and your sweet new soul... I can see that it hurts you, but it'll get better. Everything will get better, as long as we face things together. I'm so proud of you, and so grateful, and I love you so much."

His hand came up, fingertips tracing the line of her cheek, her lip, with all the gentleness she was used to. He studied her with a widening gaze whose heat was something it seemed she might dare bask in.

"Been fuckin' Angel, since we got here."

"I guess after what happened the last time he tried to sit down for a meal with our parents, slitting his wrists seemed preferable." Jemima didn't quite know why she had to make a joke -- maybe because Angel looked so deeply stricken when he told her what was really going on up in Johnny's room. She wasn't sure just when, but she'd begun to feel protective of his sensibility.

She began gathering up the unused plates and silver, but Angel took them from her hands. "You don't have to do this. I'll clear this away later."

"What else is there for me to do? I can't go up to him. It helps to keep busy." She leaned in to blow out the candles. "I think that's what'll help my brother too, if he'd only try."

She started into the kitchen, Angel at her heels.

"He did this before, when he was in high school. Our parents were off on a mission, I was staying with him in Sunnydale, because I was separated from my husband then. He took an overdose. Afterwards he swore it was only an accident and begged me not to tell Mamma and Papa. I promised, not so much because he asked me to as because I couldn't imagine they'd find anything to do for him that wouldn't make things worse. That sounds bad, I know, but, I gambled that less drama, rather than more.... I wanted to think he'd scared himself good and wouldn't do anything like that again." She set the plates on the counter with a clatter.

"That must've been so hard for you."

"I'm used to looking after him. I've been looking after Johnny all my life. Maybe if I'd done it better, he wouldn't be so -- " She started back towards the dining room.

"Hey, no." Angel stepped in front of her. "Jemima. None of this is your fault."

"No, of course it isn't, I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was. I was only saying -- " She started to sidestep him, intent on getting the rest of the uneaten food off the table.

Angel caught her shoulders. "Wait a minute. Wait. Everybody always says I'm slow, but I see what you're doing."

"What I'm doing?"

"Remember, I knew another little girl who was Miss I Can Handle It All By Myself of the late twentieth century."

That hit her like a thump between the shoulder blades. "Of course, you were one of the things she had to handle."

"Yeah. And I'm still trying to make amends in the world for all that trouble I caused her. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to know about you. How are you?"

He looked at her so intently, his heavy face wide open in a way she'd never seen it yet. With a whoosh of the mind, she understood what had eluded her until this moment -- Angel wasn't just being nice to her because she was Buffy's daughter, because she was bereaved, and a guest in his house.

He was, in his clumsy way, flirting with her.

The realization made her blaze; she raced back over everything she'd said and done in his presence so far, the heat rising up into her face. The barrette, which she hadn't taken off except to wash her hair. How could she have missed this when he gave it to her? What man gave a gift like that to a woman for no reason at all?

Everything they'd said and done in each other's presence was remade. Yet, with comprehension, came the understanding that his attention wasn't unwelcome. She liked his touch, wanted to fold herself against him and disappear in those big encompassing arms.

As if he could read her mind, he drew her in; slowly, giving her ample opportunity to resist. She didn't resist. She wouldn't have made a peep if he swung her up off the floor.

"Jemima. Do me one favor. Don't do it with me."

"Do -- what?"

"Try to be what everybody needs, at the expense of yourself."

How could he know? She was voicing her denial, the words stumbling out, when Angel tipped her face up and touched his lips to hers.

She just had time to taste the winey, meaty undercurrent on his breath from the blood soup, before his mouth was abruptly withdrawn, along with the encircling arms and the chest she was already leaning into. She teetered.

Angel retreated to the far side of the table, snatching up the ratatouille.

"What was -- ?"

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have -- I'm sorry." He disappeared into the kitchen, the swinging door flapping. Her heart fluttered like a hummingbird on amphetamine. Her mind, moving much more slowly, was stuck on what just happened?, a question that went round and round without finding a resting place. There was a strange urge to laugh.

If he'd only said what he'd said, without taking her in his arms, she'd have thought he was displaying an extraordinary sensitivity, the sort of thing she usually associated with Papa, who often seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of what made her tick and what she needed to hear.

But he had kissed her, or at any rate started to -- a kiss whose resonance made her feel airy inside, like she was on a swing.

Like she might have a bad fall.

She didn't want to wonder if this was how her mother used to feel when kissing Angel. Or if he was trying, with her, to recapture any of that long-gone sensation. She didn't think so... thought he'd probably forgotten, despite his mentioning of her just moments before, that she was Buffy's daughter. Maybe it was remembering it that made him pull away with such confusion. That, and her status as a widow-for-a-week, and who knew what else.

Except if he hadn't pulled away, she thought it quite likely she'd be kissing him still. She was all lit up inside, churning and unnerved as she hadn't been in... too long. She wanted to dash after him, make that swinging kitchen door really flap. Which couldn't be good, could it? After Milo, she shouldn't make such another bad choice. This soon after Milo, she shouldn't be choosing anyone.

When the time came... after a suitable interval... maybe she'd meet someone new. Someone who would be hers, without reference to anyone else in her family. Not Mamma's first lover, not Johnny's mentor or boss or grandsire or whatever he was.

The swinging door opened; Angel looked through. "Jemima, are you -- ?"

Her face was hot. She had to force herself to look at him calmly. "I'm feeling a little headachey. I'm going back to my hotel." She gestured to indicate the half-cleared table. "Sorry to leave you with all -- " This mess. We're all a great big mess. Snatching up her bag from the sideboard, she walked out. The effort to be measured and dignified as she left the Hyperion made her sure she'd turn an ankle, stumble and fall.

But she didn't.

"Been fuckin' Angel, since we got here."

Buffy's heart rose up in her chest like a ball through water, rushing past incredulity and horror and jealousy and anger to pop up high into the clear bright air. Suddenly it was the easiest thing there was, to look at him. She hadn't been able to before, but she could now.

Because one thing, at least, was over.

Gone, gone gone, his towering superiority. He'd given up his high-ground with an enormous swan-dive that brought him right down here, right down to her, where she could gaze into his face with nothing to deflect her. Saleem had stood between them for months, but he wouldn't be holding that over her anymore.

"Didn't do it to get back at you."

She could imagine a time when hearing him say that would've enraged her, but now she just believed him. If he was going to lie, he wouldn't have brought this up at all. "So why then?"

"He's my sire. I needed his help."

"Help. So, what -- Angel's price for helping you was getting into your pants again?"

"No, it's not like that." He crooked a dry smile. "That's what Johnny thought too."

"Johnny?"

"Vampire. Could smell it on us."

"God, right. Your undead noses get you guys into all sorts of trouble." Her mind whirled like a camera on a pivot. Imagining what she hadn't yet confronted fully: what it was like for Spike, after she walked out on him via nasty note, to have to deal on his own with Johnny's catastrophe. She knew what it was like, to learn that some unthinkable series of events was in train, powerless to stop the worst, desperate to control the damage.

"So this help. Is it helpful?"

Spike looked away. "Some, yeah. I came here in a white-hot rage. Wanted to pin the whole thing on Angel, for makin' Drusilla and abandoning her out there. First thing we did was have a big punch-up -- I started that. An' then he -- "

She touched his shoulder. "You don't have to tell me the details."

Spike looked up at her. His expression made her re-evaluate again. She sucked her lip. He'd listened when she told all about Saleem, though it tortured him. "If you think it's important, I'll listen."

Spike's eyes flitted from her face to her hands and back again. He shrugged. "Just don't be angry at Angel. He was only taking care of me. That first night, I needed -- needed some seeing to."

She saw it in his eyes, and the way he sat in the chair like he'd been collapsed into it. What he must have needed. Solace, reassurance, support. What she hadn't been there to give, and which he might not have been able to receive from her even if she was. They'd slid so far away from each other.

"Go on, tell me."

"Little later, after we finished with the Conduit, had our souls, Johnny scarpered. I was feelin' the weight of my sins. Easy enough to say, an' impossible to describe, Buffy. Jemmie was with me, so I had to hold myself together for her. After she'd gone to bed, I got drunk. Angel was there. For the first time we understood each other. We could... converse."

"And this conversation... it's still going on? It's going to continue?"

"The sex is over. We broke it off."

"Oh. So does that mean..." She didn't want to have to ask. Thought it might not be the time, either. But she couldn't stop herself. "Are we still together?"

Spike didn't even blink. "Listen, other thing I done... left Milo to die. Maybe he could've been saved if we'd rang for an ambulance, but I didn't give a toss, I just wanted to get the babies away from there."

She was more struck by the way he said the babies than by this fresh confession. The last time she'd seen Milo, he'd been rude to her. He'd never done more than make a thin effort to veil his suspicion and contempt in all the years he'd been in her life. She couldn't bring herself, in the midst of everything else, to work up much indignation over the manner of his death. But she saw it pricked at Spike, and that disturbed her even more than the news about Angel. It was the first indication she'd seen of the soul within him. It pointed to a change -- changes -- she couldn't begin to anticipate.

She didn't know what it was going to mean for either of them.

What it meant at this moment was that he was no longer looking to her to see if he'd done well or ill. As long as they'd been together, he'd mimicked her sense of right and wrong, and like an exceptionally talented parrot who seems to carry on a real conversation, made it seem, most of the time, that he steered by his own inner compass, as finely-tuned as her own.

It took his acquisition of the real thing to point up the illusion's perfection.

"I think I'd have done the same."

"No you wouldn't. You'd have summoned the bloody ambulance even at risk of gettin' caught by the coppers or the Council. You wouldn't have lied to Jem's face to hurry her off, telling her the fellow was already dead when you knew he wasn't."

"Spike, you did everything for our son that I would've done. I can't thank you enough. I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

He gestured dismissively.

But she didn't want to be staved off. It felt important to tell him. "Look -- "

Johnny's groan interrupted her. Spike was up like a shot. Buffy hung back, watching as he murmured to their woozy son, checked the bandaged wrists, propped him up to sip at the blood from the thermos. She realized she didn't know why Johnny had hurt himself. Was it remorse for what he'd done earlier in her room? Or did it have nothing to do with that at all -- another thing that wasn't really about her?

She was lost here. It wasn't merely that she'd missed the main event and its aftermath, so that they all were leagues ahead of her in the new world Johnny's turning had made, while she was still toiling away in the old. She'd been lost for a while, since before she ever saw Saleem. The way she lost herself over and over since she was first called to the mission. The life of the Slayer and the life of Buffy Summers ran in parallel tracks, but she never had been able to stay on top of them both at once. It was always at being Buffy that she failed.

"Mamma."

Johnny was gazing past Spike, focused on her. He held out a hand. His wrists looked so thin and fragile, wrapped in white gauze.

"Baby, I'm here."

"Mamma, I'm so sorry." Tears tracked down his wan face. "Please say you don't hate me. I don't know why I did it."

Spike made room for her to lean in close. She hoped he didn't understand what Johnny really meant. Kissing his cheeks and forehead, that were cool and dry where they should've been warm and clammy with fevered sleep, she said, "Of course I don't hate you. I never could. Put that out of your mind."

"I'm so glad you're both here. Please make up with each other. I need you to be together. I need you...."

"No one's going anywhere, sweetheart."

Johnny's lids fluttered; he was nearly asleep again already.

She followed Spike out of the room. At the other end of the long corridor, outside his, he stopped with a hand on the knob and glanced back at her.

She wanted to put her arms around him, to coax him back to her in the way that almost never failed. But remembering what he'd done in London when she offered herself to him, she stepped back.

If he didn't know himself now, how much less, then, did she?

The Hyperion lobby was shadowy and empty. Crossing it, Buffy briefly considered turning around and searching out Angel. She wasn't sure what she would say to him if she saw him, but she felt the promptings of a strange curiosity, as if he would appear differently to her now.

Knowing what she did about Spike's past with Angelus, It was rape an' it wasn't, he'd told her after she'd seen the old pictures in his metal box, what it always was was complicated, didn't do much to prepare her for their coming together again. She could only imagine what Spike meant by taking care of me, unless it was the same thing as when he took care of her, an experience most inadequately summarized by the verb fuck.

Spike had come down from his angry pinnacle all right, but trust him not to merely return her transgression for transgression. This thing with Angel was something else. It reminded her -- and apparently she needed reminding -- that he was his own person, not merely her faithful undead side-kick.

Spike with a soul... Spike with other options... this Spike might leave her. Here was an opening all ready for him, complete with a shiny and important new Mission, a son who'd need his supportive presence for a good long while, and plenty of room in his sire's big brass bed.

Angel might even fight to keep him. This development had to be the first break in his long long loneliness since... well, since he'd loved her.

Spike called it a conversation.

Conversation. That was a big scary word. The conversation of two long-lived vampires, sire and sireling, both imbued with souls, felt like something much bigger and tricksier and more complex than she'd ever been able to offer him.

Spike had started to love her in an enigmatic fashion, and she'd come to rest on his love as on a featherbed underlaid with steel. But what was to say that love might not evaporate just as mysteriously as it begun?

Buffy hastened out into the cool evening air, as if escaping a crucible.

At the hotel, she found Jemima waiting up for her. A flash of suspicion made Buffy look at her hard; did she know about Spike and Angel too? Her body was still bruised and sore from the battle in Nepal, but not so much as her mind was by the repeated lashings of the last day. There was no time to absorb and mourn one before they were on to the next.

"Do you want me to brush your hair?" Jemima said.

"Yeah, that would be so nice, baby. Afterwards, I'll brush yours."

Sitting on the bed with her back to Jemima, she tried to relax into the rhythmic strokes. In the mirror over the dresser she could see herself and her daughter, both sallow-faced and solemn. Jemima seemed disinclined to talk, but Buffy couldn't achieve anything like a quiet mind. After a while she said, "So, you've finally met Angel. Is he anything like you imagined?"

The brush tumbled from Jemima's hand and bounced onto the floor. She dropped down to retrieve it, leaving Buffy alone in the mirror, a small tired woman huddled cross-legged on a bedspread, the corners of her mouth downturned.

"Sorry to be so clumsy," Jemima said.

"It doesn't matter, sweetheart. So, Angel."

"Oh, he's been very nice to all of us."

"That could describe any insurance salesman."

"Well, you know him. I had to be firm with him at first, because he didn't want to take me to where Papa had gone with Johnny. But once we were over that, he's been... nice."

"That word that doesn't mean anything."

"Of course it means something. It means... nice." Jemima applied herself diligently to the brushing for a minute, then said, "I think he's been so kind to me because of you. Because you're my mother, and maybe I remind him a little of you."

"Probably. Of course Angel's always been very susceptible to pretty girls."

"I don't think that describes me, really."

Buffy glanced up at Jemima in the mirror, then turned and pulled her into her arms. "Baby, I am so glad you're finished with Milo."

"I didn't want him to die. But I'm not all that sorry. It's terrible of me to say that." She took a deep breath. "I didn't go to the funeral, but I wonder how many of the people who did really were sorry." Jemima raised her head from Buffy's shoulder, looked into her face. "Mamma, why did you come back here? I thought you'd stay with Papa."

Buffy had been dreading this question, and had no glib answer ready. She was getting tired of dissembling; the privacy of it, the intense need to appear well to her children, no longer seemed as important as it did even as recently as the night before. "I told you, your father and I are... look, I don't want to add to all the things you've got to be unhappy and worried about. But you already know things aren't right between us."

Jemima's face took on an expression so like Spike's own wounded one, that it hurt her to look at it. "You don't have to tell me."

"Last spring, I had an affair." A sharp laugh escaped her, because that sentence was so banal. Anyone could say it. It didn't seem to have anything to do with being the slayer, bearing responsibility for the continued existence of this entire dimension.

Jemima gasped and drew back. "You didn't!"

"With a mage named Saleem. He was centuries old -- though he didn't look it -- and unlike anyone I've ever known. He was the only one who had the power to help me avert the apocalypse. Which is... how we met. But that wasn't why I seduced him."

"Oh Mamma! And Papa knows about it?"

"He does." There was no way to hide it from him. Even if he'd lacked the sensory confirmation -- which the good bath she took before seeing Spike after the final battle did nothing to expunge -- her grief and confusion at Saleem's sacrifice were obvious enough. Anyway, she'd blurted it out before Spike had time to accuse her. Imagining that somehow she was sparing him the extra pain of feeling he'd been lied to.

She forced herself to go on looking at Jemima, even as Jemima, with no forcing at all, looked like her father, all wincing incredulity.

"I can't believe it. You two have always been -- "

"We've always been," Buffy repeated. "Is that how it's seemed to you? That we've always been, and always would be?"

"Mamma -- "

"When I started my relationship with your father, I was barely alive. All I wanted was to go back to being dead. When I finally fell in love with him, my vitality came slowly back. I hoped I might get to have a year with him before the next time I'd be slaughtered. Imagine that, a whole year! Remember, I wasn't used to thinking more than a week or two ahead. I'd already died twice. Hell, I'd already lived longer than most slayers."

"So is that what made you do it? You were bored, after thirty years?"

"Not bored. Never bored. Not for a second." That was something Spike had liked to brag about -- that Drusilla never bored him, that she never did either. Boredom with him was a sign of inferiority; he always spoke of it with contempt. Better to burn out than fade away, Spike sometimes said. She knew it was a quote from something, but she didn't know what. Vampire and Slayer, lovers who shouldn't be, they'd lived at a pitch of excitement -- stimulated not by the Mission but from within themselves, a song of call-and-response that never ended, a dance with no let-up. That love bore her up, it was the entire armature of her life.

A life no other slayer had had. Years in which she grew stronger, mightier, even as the foes she had to defeat burgeoned too.

A slayer didn't expect peace, or rest. Her rest came at the end, when she was finished.

There seemed to be no threat, no guarantee, of a finish for her anymore. Immortality opened out like a space so vast it could have no meaning. It terrified her.

She'd never put this together in her head. All the times when Spike begged her to explain to him why she'd done it, she couldn't find a way to articulate why she'd turned to Saleem.

"This wizard, I needed him to augment my power, as I was going to augment his. But the aspect of him that attracted me... moved me... it was his incredible stillness. He was so serene. Transcendent with a capital T. There was this resounding peace about him, and... it pulled me like a magnet. God, I wanted to just crawl inside of him and be."

Be the way she'd been when she was in heaven. Coupling with Saleem seemed to offer that same static ecstatic tranquillity. She couldn't tell that part to her daughter -- there seemed no way to say it that she wouldn't hear as Buffy wishing she was dead again. Death wasn't what she'd sought, but some undefined relief from rich incessent life.

"I... I see."

She didn't see, of course she couldn't see. Jemima looked shattered.

"I'm not trying to excuse it. I got lost. I let myself get lost." That peace she'd sought in Saleem's arms never quite materialized. Over and over in those intense, desperate days, she'd chased it, harder and harder the more elusive it proved. Saleem's joy also peaked in the very first encounter, never to resurge in the same way, until by the end she knew, though he remained courtly and decorous, that he was sunk in confusion and disappointment after forfeiting his long solitude.

That was probably why, after he was sure they'd saved the world, he didn't try to save himself.

She'd dishonored all three of them.

"Spike thinks I don't love him anymore, and that makes him suspect I never did. He's wrong on both counts. But he can't hear me when I say it, and when I try to show him... except I don't even know how to show him anymore. I've messed that up so badly."

Jemima's eyes were fixed on her face, even as tears coursed down her cheeks. "Oh baby, don't cry. You don't want to know me this way, see me this way, clumsy and thoughtless and don't-know-my-own-strength. I should've learned to be more graceful by now. But it's what I am. I'm so sorry to burden you with this."

"No, no," Jemima murmured, bowing into her, encircling her in her arms. "I don't judge you, Mamma. How could I? How could I ever understand what it's like for you, what you have to be and do?"

"Don't let me off the hook. I made a vow to Spike, and I broke it. That's all. I know that."

"Papa has always forgiven you."

"Maybe he shouldn't have, though. Maybe he shouldn't this time. He has a soul to steer by now. That's got to change his perspective. Make him see -- " That it's not all about me. I get it now, Spike. I get it, just in time for it to not matter for us anymore.

Jemima raised her head. Her eyes were red and pleading. "What? You think the soul could possibly change how he feels about you?"

"Baby, don't you think it should? Don't you think it should change everything?"

"Not Papa's love. I know nothing can change that."

PART FIVE

Laughing, Rita pulled the darts out of the board and spun around. "Rematch?"

"I'm in," Darryl and Noel chorused.

"Me too," Johnny said, sipping at his beer. "I'm warning you though, I've lived in London the last three years, so I'm good at this."

"Oh, like you were last round? Yeeeah."

"Was lulling you into a false sense of security before I came back to slaughter you."

"Nobody's slaughterin' anybody," Spike said, sliding in amongst them with a lightness that belied the eagle-eye he kept on his son. This pub outing was his idea, to get Johnny out of his room, get him started integrating with the rest of Angel's group.

"Do you play darts?" Buffy asked, slipping into a chair beside Angel.

It was easier to look at Buffy, to be in the same room with her, than Angel would've guessed. All these years he'd been in the habit of thinking of her as someone he still wanted if not for the impossibility of ever having her. She existed in a special compartment of his mind, where all that was holy and precious was kept away from the rest of his everyday concerns. Now she was here, sitting so near him that he could feel the vibration of her body, fill his lungs with her familiar scent, Angel could summon up every detail of his obsession with her, except for the obsession itself.

"I have done." This was a place Wesley used to like, for the English beer on tap, the darts and snooker tables. Being here pointed up his absence.

He told this to Buffy, who looked surprised. "I'm sorry. I didn't know he was so sick."

"Where did you think he was?" As soon as he said it, Angel wished he hadn't. Buffy had obviously not thought of Wesley at all, and really, given the circumstances, it wasn't fair to rate her for that. Anyway, he wasn't someone she'd ever held a fondness for.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "Maybe I could visit him...."

Angel could just imagine that. Tongue-tied Buffy, there out of some sense of obligation to see a long-discarded watcher she'd never respected. Wes would just find it tiring.

"Probably... not such a good idea."

"Okay," she agreed quickly. The whole time they were talking, sitting side by side, she hadn't taken her eyes off Spike. Even when it was one of the others shooting darts, it was Spike she watched, with a light of longing in her eyes. Her son... everybody else... might as well not have been there. Once she managed to catch Spike's eye, and a vague smile from him that she rewarded with one of her own set at highest beam. He thought she would get up then and join him, imagined her slipping in at his side, slipping her hand into his. But she didn't go. Only sank more deeply into her chair, crossing her pretty legs, chewing on the slim straw in her drink.

Jemima came up behind them; Angel was aware of her even before she leaned in to thread her arms around her mother's neck. In doing so she touched his shoulder lightly with her body, a touch that made Angel feel warm all over, which shouldn't have been possible. He swallowed some beer and tried to look as if it was nothing, her proximity, her scent. He hadn't spoken to her since the attempt at kissing. She'd run away, but he hoped she wasn't angry. She wouldn't be standing like this if she was. She must realize how he could feel her....

"Who's winning over there?"

"I don't know," Buffy said, still staring, "I'm not paying attention."

Compared to Buffy's flashing attractions, Jemima, with her darker hair and more hooded eyes, was so much more sedate. You had to really look at her to see how lovely she was. Like Buffy, she exuded strength and determination, but quietly, quietly. There was a softness to her that she could afford, Angel thought, because she'd never had responsibility for the safety of the world on her small shoulders.

"You two are getting caught up," Jemima said. "It's been -- how many years since you've seen each other?"

"We haven't been in a room together since before your brother was born."

It startled Angel to hear it.

"So you have to tell him about us." She gave Buffy a squeeze, whispered in her ear, "Make sure you tell Angel how proud you are of me and how smart and good I used to be."

"Used to be?" Buffy said aloud.

"You know, when I was a kid."

As if, Angel thought, he cared about that! Except, yeah, he did. He cared about everything about her.

"We talk, Jemmie. We've stayed in touch. I've bragged about you all along, ever since you were born."

"Have you? Good. Oh, look at Papa. He's made five hundred."

The others were applauding Spike's performance. Johnny stood just outside their half circle, his expression bleak.

Angel was about to go speak to him when Buffy herself started up. She looped one arm around her son, pulling him in, and the other around Spike, who gave her a raised eyebrow that was dry but not unfriendly.

Jemima came around and took Buffy's chair. She was even nearer now -- the two chair arms were touching -- but he'd lost that little bit of perhaps unconscious contact. "I hope you don't think I've been avoiding you the last couple of days."

"I -- no. No, why would I?"

"That's good. Because really I wasn't."

He had a profile view of her rippled nose, hard little chin, the long line of her thin cheek. The barrette he'd given her glittered like a signal. She wore one of her new dresses, whose blue made her skin appear milky. It was almost transparent in the curve of her arm. He fought an urge to place a finger there, to feel her tripping pulse.

"Jemima."

She looked at him, her lips curled into not-quite-a-smile.

"I don't like to ask you a favor -- because I think you always say yes, even when you might mean no."

"Do I really seem like such a pushover? I'd better work on that. What favor?"

"I have a friend -- my oldest, closest friend -- who is very sick, in the hospital. I go to see him every other day or so. I tell him what's going on, he says it gives him something to look forward to. He was your mother's watcher long ago, for about five minutes. He's been through a great deal, since."

"And you'd like me to come along on a visit. You call that a favor?"

"Wes has cancer. He's... not easy to look at anymore. But he's very interested, in Johnny and you particularly. I don't think it's a good idea to bring your brother there, but if you -- "

"Of course. I'd like to meet any friend of yours."

"Tomorrow around seven, then? We can't stay with him long. Maybe afterwards you'd let me take you out to -- "

"Hey -- you need to get in the game."

Johnny yanked her up so hard and hurriedly that Jemima squeaked.

"C'mon, play darts. We're waiting for you. C'mon."

"All right, but just don't pull me like that." She rubbed her wrist where he'd grabbed her.

Angel started up. "That's no way -- "

"She's my sister. This is how we are. Jem, tell him."

"Don't ask her to make excuses for you. You know she will. That isn't the point."

"We're in the middle of a game. She should be with the rest of us, and play."

"We were talking."

"Yeah, I noticed that." Johnny's eyes flashed just the briefest hint of gold.

You puppy. Angel didn't say it. He said nothing. Spike and Buffy were there now, each doing whatever it was they did to smooth their children down; squaring themselves off in the process, moving en masse back towards the dart board, so that Angel found himself abruptly alone.

As much claim as each of them had to be lonely, unhappy, disappointed, those four were a family. None of them was entirely turned away from the others, not really.

Jemima didn't so much as glance around at him. She was absorbed back into her unit, absorbed apparently in her two parents, talking from one to the other as if she was a friendly interpretor, or a maker of introductions. Such hope and beseeching in her face, with pride and pleasure when Spike's arm went around her. She took her turn, displaying a cool eye and a precise throw, landing her darts right where she wanted them. When Johnny shot, she gave him her full attention, applauded and cheered louder than anyone.

Angel felt he could watch her forever, and never want to look away. Yet just watching her afforded a frisson of guilt. She was off-limits, to the likes of him.

He'd take her to see Wes, because he'd already arranged it, and promised Wes he'd bring her if he could.

But after that, no more. He'd been forgetting himself, but he remembered now.

He left them all there, and went away alone.

"Hey! What part of stop that are you not getting!?" Rita's voice, loud but calm, cut through the music and chatter.

Buffy was in time to glimpse Johnny's yellow-eyed snarl before he let the game-face go and turned away with a sneer.

Shit. She pushed through the crowd at the snooker table, reaching him just behind Spike, who was already in the act of hustling him towards a quiet nook in the back.

"What the fuck were you thinkin', flashing fang at her?"

Johnny threw off Spike's restraining hand. "Nothing. I was just trying to talk to her. I don't know why she had to be so touchy."

Spike eyed him suspiciously, his head on one side.

"Girls used to like me," Johnny said. "Christ." He glanced at Buffy. "Look, I don't really need the both of you ganging up on me."

Buffy had been here before, courtesy of those demons who'd imprisoned her in their dimensional dead-end. Then it was Jemima, the only child she had. She'd been forced to see her as a beast, lashing out with hideous glee, her delicate loving mind reduced to selfish venom.

It occurred to Buffy for the first time, confronting Johnny's hard, challenging stare, to ask herself, why? Why should a soul be a guarantee of anything? Plenty of evil got done by people who were born with souls and never lost them. Just because the soul made Angel change his ways didn't mean it would have the same effect on Johnny.

Standing with them in that small space, her slayer instinct pricked her, and not for Spike. Misgiving made the tiny hairs rise on the back of her neck.

She had to raise her voice a little to hear herself above the music; there was a speaker mounted to the wall above their heads.

"St.John, do you feel remorse?"

"Course he -- "

"Spike. I'm not asking you. I'm asking him."

Johnny shifted his weight, dropping back against the dark paneling. He couldn't meet her eyes. His gaze sought Spike's, but Spike was looking at her.

"I haven't really heard you say it," Buffy said. She remained fixed on him, while the little spot at her nape that told her of danger felt bright and cold.

Johnny's head drooped, slowly, as if his neck was made of putty stretched too thin. He sank down the wall. She couldn't hear his sobbing over the driving music, but she saw his shoulders shake. He covered his face with his hands. Spike moved to kneel beside him, but Buffy held him back.

"Don't."

"What d'you want, Slayer?" Spike's whisper was harsh against her cheek. "He's doin' best he can."

"I don't see it," she said. "I don't see remorse here. Do you?"

Spike pulled free of her and crouched down beside Johnny.

Tears aren't remorse, Buffy thought. "Sorry" isn't either. I gave out plenty of both to you, Spike, and I wasn't feeling it either. How do I know? Because I feel it now.

Startled, she couldn't venture into this realization; it would have to wait for a calmer time, when she could talk to him alone.

Johnny tipped his head back, blinked up at her through eyes glassy with tears. "Mamma, you want to stake me because I growled a little at a girl?" His voice was reedier than usual, boyish and incredulous, and she couldn't tell if he was feigning or not.

Anger flared in her like a struck match. "I don't want to stake you. But I need to trust you. I can't trust a vampire who gets fangy the second he's frustrated."

"God, you're harsh."

"You are a vampire. All there is between you and a dusty death is your soul. And if you really have one -- "

"If!" He rose, plaintive hands splayed on his chest.

Buffy stayed steely. "If you really have one, I should see it in your actions. There's only ever been one vampire with a soul before, and I knew him with and without it. I could always tell which was which. But you -- "

She couldn't read the look he gave her. The cast of Spike's face was enigmatic too.

"Papa never had a soul."

"He's..." How could she say, he's different? Except that he was, Spike was unique, which was how she'd come to love him at all. And he had nothing to do with this, because he didn't make her feel in her sinews that any little thing might set him off into violence. She'd long since given up trying to explain to herself why it was that Spike could curb his demon through love. But she'd never made the mistake of thinking he was anything but the exception to the overwhelming rule. "We're talking about you here."

"You're freaking me out. I can't live with you watching me every second!"

She searched his face, his stance, silently begging him for some crumb of reassurance. Something seemed broken.

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe no souls had been meted out at all. Maybe it was only a cruel hoax on the part of the Powers, and her son's demon was in the ascendent. Maybe it was some sort of test -- she was supposed to stake him, or be found wanting.

Johnny shrugged. "I'm gonna apologize to Rita." He slipped out of the alcove without looking at her. She had to clench her hands to keep from catching at him.

Spike caught at her, his hand going around her arm without tightening. He stood just behind her, so she couldn't see him as he said, "Let him go an' say his piece, an' then I'll get him back to Angel's. He won't do any more wickedness tonight."

Buffy stared after Johnny, following his sandy head as he wove his way among the tables towards where Rita and Darryl sat at the bar. "I'm not sure you see what he is now."

"I saw him with Milo's blood dripping from his chin. But he's my son." Spike paused. "Had to try to save him from himself. Anyway what he is now is a souled being same as you are."

He slipped past her to head towards the bar. Buffy wanted to pull him back, but her mouth had gone dry, her heart pounded in her throat.

She imagined Spike back at the Hyperion in a little while. He'd go to Angel. She doesn't understand what we are. Well, why should she? But you do. They'd stretch out together, they'd talk, in the easy way she'd never actually heard but which was all too easy to imagine, men who thoroughly knew one another. Spike must finally feel equal to Angel, or nearly so -- she suspected he never really liked feeling entirely equal to anyone he made love to.

They'd talk about how it was too much to expect for Johnny to make good with the slayer breathing down his neck.

Spike had reached the bar now; Rita and Darryl were gone, and Johnny was standing there on his own, drinking yet another beer. They conferred; there was a minute struggle over the bottle, but Spike's persuasion held. Leaving it there, Johnny followed him out.

Now they were gone, she wasn't sure anymore what she'd felt, what she'd seen in her son's face. How could she be so eager to find the worst? He'd come on too strong with Rita, been rebuffed, let off a growl. Bad behavior, but you wouldn't kill a man for it.

He was so young, and he'd always had that awkward streak. How much more awkward, to be what he'd become?

Spike was right.

He must be.

They walked back to the Hyperion, two vampires on the stroll in a city of cars. Moving through the deep layers of human smells, echoes of everyone who'd trod the sidewalk or passed in a vehicle for the last few hours, Spike recalled when that was new, when the world was changed from just the world into a stewpot he was swimming in. Everywhere smelled like food. Every person he glimpsed could be his if he wanted him. Every night could be a spree.

It wasn't easy, changing your mind about that. He couldn't remember when he'd changed his -- it took the chip to pull him out of circulation, but even after he fell in love with Buffy -- even after she accepted him -- he still had his appetites, his fantasies. Still gloated over vivid memories of his most satisfying kills. Loved killing demons not so much because they were evil as because he loved killing, the visceral all-or-nothing of it. Loved too what his violence, when he patterned it on hers, won from Buffy. Her trust, her tenderness.

It wasn't until Jemima was born that he came to dwell more on life than on death. He'd never imagined loving a child, caring for one, but that love nearly defeated his demon. After that, the killing he did at Buffy's side was about keeping the world right for Jemmie to live in. He thought less and less of the pre-chip past, yet shame was still something he remembered feeling as William, but never as William the Bloody.

Since the visit to the Conduit, shame was real, shifting and spreading, dogging him as a dark demonic shadow. He'd been moving too fast so far to let it thoroughly engulf him, but it flapped at his heels now, unshakeable. He didn't want to turn and confront it, lest it swallow him whole.

That kind of shame was nothing he needed. He'd stopped being a threat to the world long ago. It was his son, the blood of innocents fresh on his tongue, who required the attitude adjustment.

Which was happening. Buffy was being premature. Hell, what chance had Johnny had so far to think anything through? If that idiot episode in the bath the other day wasn't a sign of burgeoning conscience and its relentless sting, Spike didn't know what was.

"Might be a good idea to have a calm chat with your mum later, really open up, you know. Shock of it hasn't sunk in for her yet."

"Open up. Oh yeah."

"Yeah. Tell her what happened to you. Your sister filled her in, but you owe it to her to tell her the tale, an' listen to whatever she'll say to you. She's not going to hurt you."

"She's itching to run me through."

"No. She just... she's got a job to do. An' she needs to know you're firmly on the right side of the line."

"You keep saying she loves me, but what does that even mean? You think she really cares about either of us? Nothing gets ahead of being the Slayer. Not even you."

"Let's not go there now, yeah? We're almost at the Hyperion."

"If you thought there was anything left with her, you wouldn't have crawled into bed with him."

"You know nothing about any of that. An' it's none of your concern."

"Remorse. What does that look like? Does it look the same as eat-your-vegetables? Or get-home-by-midnight?" He shrugged. "She doesn't have a clue who or what I am, and she never has. She never has."

"Johnny -- "

"Nick. For chrissakes, at least call me by the name I picked. At least give me that much of a fucking say in my fucking shit existence."

"All right, Nick. Listen -- "

"Tara was more of a mother to me than she ever was. Even though it wasn't her job. Only she moved away, and then all I had was Jemmie." They were at the hotel door. "I don't even have her anymore."

"Think you're bein' a little overdramatic there," Spike said, following him through.

Johnny groaned, and in another moment, crying out, was on his knees. Angel appeared, catching his shoulders before he pitched over altogether.

"What is it? What do you see?"

Johnny spoke, holding his head, the words coming out on gusts of pain. Helpless, Spike watched. When the vision passed, Johnny staggered up. "That's all I can tell you. So you two go and fight."

"No, I want you along. You and not Spike. C'mon. Grab a weapon out of the cabinet, we'll go out the back."

Spike opened his mouth to question this, but paused. The sooner Johnny stood on his own two feet in Angel's operation, the better.

He glanced around at him, seeking reassurance like the little boy he'd been. "Now's when you let the demon out," Spike said. "Fists an' fangs, unleash 'em an' do it."

Johnny smiled uncertainly, as if he was indulging Spike's optimism, before he followed Angel out.

Spike was left alone with a few good hours of night ahead. He could go out again, get liquored up, find some sort of some company of the meaningless variety. Or do a patrol, find some vampires to hassle.

He was so unused to being on his own.

At the door to his room on the fourth floor of the Hyperion, he heard her voice, as if she was right there. We're not all right, are we? She'd said that the other night, following him here from Johnny's bedside, so quiet and hesitant. He'd barely thought of it, how quietly she'd taken his confessions. As if convinced she had no right to be angry. How unlike that was to the Buffy he'd fallen in love with, the pretty little Wrath of God.

Spike went back down and out.

She looked so small and fragile, curled up on a chaise by the pool. The table umbrellas were shut, the floodlights off; no one else was out. The water, lit from within, shimmered, throwing reflections on her huddled form. Standing in the doorway leading out from the empty bar, Spike waited for her to move.

She didn't. He walked towards her. When he was nearly close enough to touch her sloping shoulder, he cleared his throat.

She started. "What -- ! Oh."

"Thought you'd have gone to bed. It's late."

She shook her head, her gaze still fixed unseeingly on the moving blue shadows of the pool. "I'm thinking about Johnny. I wonder about the kind of person he is. Even without a demon. I don't think we noticed enough."

"He's overwrought, yeah, but think you might be makin' more of it than -- "

"We failed him. We've failed him so many times... what if it's too late?"

He sank down onto the chaise beside hers. "No such thing."

"No?" She squinted at him. "Do you mean that?"

"Bout him, yeah." Spike wished he had a cigarette, though he'd given them up long since. "Even if I didn't believe in him 'cause he's ours, he's got the visions. Must mean the Powers're confident about him."

"... I guess so. Maybe he'd do better without the Slayer around."

"Maybe so." Like her, he was becoming absorbed in the shimmers of the water's surface, the dancing dappled light. It was difficult to focus on but so much easier than trying to look at Buffy's face.

"You want me to leave Los Angeles?"

He had no choice but to take this live grenade and hold it, ticking. Her body was flushed with apprehension; he could feel the strain she put herself under, not to reach towards him.

"It's not about what I want." This answer, being neither 'yes' nor 'no,' might be a mite less ruinous. He didn't know what he wanted.

It was the first time he'd ever been near Buffy and not known that. It gave him a rushing sense of falling, the kind you awake from in a dream with a jolt and a cry.

She was quiet, her cheek resting on her drawn-up knee. The breeze stirred her hair. He listened to her breathing, the heightened pulse of her heart. Above their heads in one of the high-floor suites, Jemima, the best thing he'd ever had anything to do with, slept her hopeful sleep.

"I don't want to go away from you all. But if it's what Johnny needs... the pressure of me is too much for him, I think."

"I know that's hard for you," Spike said. "I keep remindin' him that you love him. Of course he knows it. But he feels you all the time, it riles him up."

"Many vampires have mentioned that to me -- right before I take them out."

"Yeah, it's a thing."

But I'm glad you've stood up for me with him." She paused. "You always have."

"Boy's got to respect his mother, or else he's nowhere."

"I told Jemima about what I did."

This stirred him. "Why?"

"I didn't want her to think you had no good reason for treating me the way you have. And I couldn't stand her thinking I'm better than I am." She sighed.

"You didn't tell her -- "

"About you and Angel? Of course not. It's not for me to say."

"So how did she react?"

"Oh Spike, how would she? You know her. She couldn't quite believe it at first, and she cried, and then she assured me that you would forgive me because you always always always do." She sprang up then, her back to him. "I told her that I didn't think you should this time. I told her that now you have a soul, you may think differently, you may want different things. You can get what you need elsewhere."

"Buffy -- "

He felt her tearing up, although she didn't sob. She spoke with a strange intense earnestness. "And I think that's a good thing for you, Spike. God, just let me take back the stupid shit I said about your soul the other night -- as if I know anything about it. I don't! I don't know what you're going through now, what the soul is doing to you, and -- "

"Buffy -- "

"If Angel is who you need, then stay with him! I don't want to stand in your way! He's always been there and he'll be here when I'm gone and I don't presume to understand the bond you have with him and I've ruined what we had and now you're someone else, so you can go! Really, I give you my blessing, I don't want to hold you if you want to go." She was weeping now, her voice high and tremulous like a child's. When his hands closed around her shoulders, she leaned back against him, shaking. "Spike, I hurt you so much, and I'm so sorry. I'm so so sorry. You don't owe me anything. I don't want to make you unhappy any more."

"Ssh. Ssh. We're both unhappy." He passed his arms around her, rocked her slowly from side to side as she cried. She was warm and moist and smelled so completely like love, that he couldn't at first understand why he didn't want to take her. "Don't worry about forgiveness. That's all done now."

"What -- what do you mean?"

"Not angry at you any more, Buffy."

She snuffled, her hands wrapped around his forearms, giving herself with a voluptuous sadness to the gentle rocking. After a while she whispered, "You've stopped loving me, haven't you?"

His arms parted; she stepped away. He couldn't think what to say, the water's shimmer had somehow got into his head, making his thoughts into an incoherent jumble.

"Here we are," she murmured, "quiet as two mice. I thought it was supposed to be better to burn out than fade away. What's that from?"

Spike blinked. "Neil Young song. You know it -- " He was on the verge of reciting the lyric when it washed over him, what they were saying, and doing, the cottony nothingness of it. Numb suspension. He'd never been numb in her presence before. He couldn't understand it, it was like succumbing to a drug.

"I didn't think it would ever happen, let alone like this. But let's not talk about it."

He struggled to follow her. "Nothin's decided, pet."

Her pulse didn't leap. "But I should go from here."

"You should get some kip, anyway." He took her arm, tugged her gently. "I'll walk you in."

He brought her to the elevators. In the mirrored doors, she stood alone, even before he squeezed her hand, and let it go.

"Is Jemima Summers with you?" Wesley said, craning his neck to see past Angel to the doorway of his room.

The wording struck him; he almost said She's not with me, she can't be with me."Not yet, I wanted to have you to myself a little first. She'll be here in a few minutes."

Wes's smile was a rictus. "Do you think she'll dominate all my attention?"

Angel smiled back, hoping his expression didn't betray how difficult it was to look at Wes's wizened head, his wasted body. "Well, she's so lovely... and I know what an eye for the pretty girls you have."

"Ah, yes. For all the good it's done me."

"Either of us," Angel said, dropping into the chair at the bedside.

"I have hope for you yet," Wes said. "I hope you won't go on being alone."

"I have my crew. As for anything else... you know I can't. What's the point of talking about it?"

"But you've been thinking of it, I know. Why this change?"

"Wes, c'mon. New subject."

"Well, what about the boy? How's he shaping?"

"Last night he had a vision of a couple of Dhogan beasts nesting in a warehouse. I brought him along and he killed one while I was just getting started."

"That's an improvement, isn't it?"

"Yes and no. He's angry at the world. I told you about the stunt he pulled with the wrist-slitting last week. Since then he's been all edge. He can barely suppress the demon. I can feel his hunger, his dissatisfaction. I've tried to get him to open up, talk about it a little. Told him what it was like for me, and how it got easier when I found my mission. I don't think he can hear me."

"He feels trapped by circumstances."

"We're all trapped by circumstances."

"Yes." Wes let his eyes close, and without their light bringing animation to his face, Angel could see how close he was to nothingness, and what an effort he put into seeming alive for these visits.

"Listen, if you're too tired -- "

The rheumy eyes popped open. "You will not deprive me of my rightful glimpse at the pretty girl. Meanwhile, tell me the other news. What about Spike? Do you continue to... comfort one another?"

Angel shook his head. "Not since Buffy got here. Not that he's gone back to her either. I don't know what he's doing, exactly. There's trouble there. What we did together isn't making it any better." And it's another thing I have to renounce.

They were all staggering around like people struck blind, confused and in pain. It was a state Angel was used to, having been in and out of it so often, but he was sorry to see Buffy and Spike and their children there too; he'd always thought of them as uniquely fortunate, their love, their unbroken family an expression of hope in the midst of the always uncertain Mission.

Before Wes could answer, he was aware of her approach, hearing the click of her high heels on the floor of the corridor, the floral lilt of her perfume. Jemima appeared in the doorway of the room, empty-handed save for her small purse. She seemed to understand that Wesley was beyond any need for flowers or grapes or reading material; instead she'd made herself into a sprig of flowers, in a flowy pink sleeveless dress with a curved, ruched hem, bare legs ending in daintily pedicured feet in strappy sandals, her hair twisted up off her slender neck.

Her appearance surprised him. He'd thought of her beauty as something secret, something he was sensitive enough to perceive where others -- maybe even Jemima herself -- overlooked it. The glimpse of her trying on clothes at the mall didn't prepare him for the full effect of her making an effort. She barely resembled the tense tweedy girl with the dangling hair and tired eyes he'd first met.

Smiling nervously, she came forward, extending a hand. Whatever shock she felt at Wesley's appearance, she hid. "Hello, I'm Jemima." She squeezed Wesley's crabbed fingers with no sign of distaste. "Angel has told me about you, Mr Wyndam-Pryce, and I'm so glad you wanted to meet me."

He told her not to call him mister, and that he'd gone to school for a time with Milo's father. For a little while she answered questions about names from the old Council days that Angel had never heard and was surprised Wes remembered or cared about. That gave him time to notice that Jemima had put off her wedding band and diamond ring. The garnet barrette he'd given her winked at the side of her updo, sometimes obscured by a quivering lock of hair as she moved her head. Her arms and legs were pale for Los Angeles, but she looked more aristocratic than wan. Wes blatantly drank her in.

"And how are you getting on at the Hyperion?" he asked.

"My brother and father are staying there, but not me. But Angel cooked for me when I arrived."

"Did he?"

"And very well too."

They were both looking at him now. Angel shrugged.

Then Wes, saying he must not be remiss as a host either, offered her a cup of a tea. "Or a coffee. Whatever you like. I'm sure Angel won't mind fetching it from the canteen."

Wes's eye, suddenly sharp, veered onto him, and Angel realized that he was being got rid of so that Wesley could say things to her that Angel wished he wouldn't say.

Maybe Jemima would refuse any refreshment. Maybe he could stretch the visit another five minutes with more idle chat, and then take her away. She was looking at him now too, and there was something in her expression that confused him. An uncertainty. Her hand wandered up to her head, fingers slipping in her hair until they found the barrette, assured themselves of its location. Her gaze returned to Wesley, her smile soft like her voice. "I don't want to stay too long."

"My dear, you are a tonic to me. Please don't go yet."

"All right. A Coke, then. Angel, would you -- ?"

Striding out of the room and down the corridor, Angel strained to hear anything they were saying, but it seemed the two kept silent until he was well out of earshot. He wondered whether Jemima was aware of a significance to his diversion, or if she only thought Wesley was being elaborately polite.

There was a soda machine in the lounge at the end of the corridor, but Angel bypassed that and went all the way to the hospital canteen anyway. He didn't think anything Wesley might say to her would make any difference; she'd already made it clear when he kissed her that it wasn't right. And he'd made up his own mind that there could be nothing there, for a hundred thousand reasons.

Wes didn't want to believe him. But Jemima would gently, tactfully, put his hopes to rest. In that certainty, he lingered a few minutes in the cafeteria, avoiding the sunny windows, before he bought a Coke and started slowly back.

Seeing her pacing slowly up and down outside Wesley's closed door, Angel broke into a run. "What happened?"

She put a hand out to steady him, then hastily pulled it back. "Nothing, we spoke for a few minutes, then I could see how tired he was, so I said goodbye, and decided to wait for you out here."

"He's -- "

"He's gone to sleep. That's all. I'll wait here if you want to look in on him."

"N-no. It's okay." He remembered the cold soda can in his hand, thrust it towards her. "Do you still want this?"

"Oh, yes! Thank you." As she popped the top, she shook her head as if to toss back her hair. The gesture reminded him strongly of a gesture of Buffy's when he first knew her, awkward, graceful, girlish. Embarrassed, he looked away.

"I guess we should go, then. Thanks for this. He was so interested in seeing you." They were moving slowly towards the elevators. Angel took care not to walk too close to her. All her small movements wafted her scent to him, not just the perfume but the more intimate aromas of her body that he wished he didn't have to know, since he couldn't know them better.

They were quiet until they reached the car, parked in an underground garage. When she was settled beside him in the front seat, her little purse in her lap and the Coke can still in one hand, Angel said, "I'm sorry if that stressful for you."

"Not at all! He was lovely to me. I was glad to meet someone so important to you. He's very concerned about you." She swallowed audibly. "I'm sorry. I could see that he loves you dearly, and you love him, and it must be so terrible for you, watching him die. And knowing nothing like that can ever happen to you -- which ought to feel like a good thing -- but I can see how it isn't only. I'm so sorry."

"Thanks. Yeah. He's... Wes and I have been through incredible things."

The key was unturned in the ignition. His hands were on the steering wheel. They each stared ahead, like spectators of something not to do with them. Jemima smoothed her skirt towards her knees. "You're too polite to ask me what he said. But I'll tell you if you want to know."

The pressure of this was only bearable when there was no speaking. How had his feelings become so intense so quickly? He'd only just met her, what, ten, twelve days ago? Whatever he thought he knew about her was only his own fantasies. Whatever he thought he'd find by knowing her better was fantasy too. As for what he imagined he could give her that could possibly make her happy --

"You don't have to -- "

She let off a soft laugh. "One thing he said was that you certainly wouldn't ask me anything. He said you would look like a big sad silent Newfoundland dog. Which you do."

He couldn't help being acutely aware of the white ovals of her knees beside him, and how smooth and cool and then warm they would be if he fitted his palms to them.

She sipped her Coke. "He also said that you like the ballet and the drive-in and that you should get out more."

He would've fled the car, except he couldn't move.

Staring at her lap, she whispered. "Wesley was very anxious that you shouldn't be alone. He said that you were a very good man, and that if that was of interest to me -- of course he could see that it was -- that I shouldn't be afraid of the curse. He explained to me how susceptible you were when you were involved with my mother, because you'd been alienated for so many decades, and had never known love at all. He was certain that, having given way once, the curse would always hold, because you're a very different man now, one who could never again lose himself in such a singularity. He added that despite that, you were likely to be devoted and a passionate lover, and that you would also always be kind to me."

Her blushes almost made the air shimmer; her heart was a rushing bird. Angel couldn't believe Wesley would be so presumptuous. To try to sell him to Jemima as if he was a paid matchmaker! What if she believed he'd put Wes up to this?

And could Wes really believe all he'd said? He had no doubt Jemima was quoting him -- those were his sort of phrases. But could he really be confident that the risk from the curse was so much less, just because his responsibilities now were more complex? How could Wes forget that it was precisely love that tore his humanity out. Wouldn't love -- the kind that roiled him now, just because she was sitting near him -- destroy his soul again? How could he take the chance?

"I know he wouldn't have talked to you like that if he wasn't so sick."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jemima nod. "I know!" She sounded on the edge of tears. "I shouldn't repeat these things to you, I know it embarrasses you -- and I don't quite know what I mean by it yet either. But Angel, even with everything that's been happening, I think about you all the time. I think about who you are and what you do and I wonder who helps you and I'm really starting to wish it was me."

When he turned to her, she shied. He pulled his hand back into his own space. "It can't be you. Not like that."

"Then why did you kiss me? Why did you give me this?" She touched the barrette.

Unease was like rising water. "Because for a little while I let myself hope... but then I remembered. And I'm sorry. This is what happens when I start to think... what I shouldn't think. You deserve so much better."

He put a hand on the key, ready to turn it and get them out of here, but her hand fluttered out and stopped him. Her fingers were hot and dry.

"Angel..." She peered shyly up. "Show me your game face."

"What?"

"Show me. Then I'll have seen -- well, not the worst, I know that. But I'll have seen what you're afraid for me to see, and we'll be at least that much ahead of things."

When she said we'll, he filled like a sail in the wind. He fought the feeling.

"There's no one around. Show me."

He couldn't quite tell what was fueling this request. Did she have some sort of odd interest, borne of seeing Spike's from an early age, of being the slayer's daughter? Or was she really only trying to put him at his ease? There was only one way to know. He fanged out. Jemima didn't cringe or blink. She looked directly into his eyes.

"Seen enough?"

"Yes. Thank you." Her voice was soft, he felt what an effort this was for her, and yet he was sure she wasn't the least bit intimidated by the sight of his bumps and ridges. He shook it off.

She was quiet then for a few moments, as if spelling a break from that subject to the next, turning the Coke can in her hand, then setting it on the dashboard. "I wish you'd kiss me again."

"Jemima, Wesley means well, but I'm not a big sad Newfoundland dog. I'm a man."

"I should hope so."

"And a monster."

"Sometimes. Not lately."

She moved then, sliding across the expanse of seat, her hands coming up without hesitation to take his head and turn it towards her. "Excuse me," she breathed, "but it's my choice too, I want to." Her mouth, small and soft against his, yet had nothing hesitant about it. Their arms tangled as they tried to embrace each other. He pulled her in close: small, warm, fragrant, pulsing. The kiss broke and renewed, once, again. She laughed quietly in the back of her throat, and let him go.

"You are... wonderful."

"You too." She slid away, buckled the seatbelt. Again her hand went to her hair, to touch the barrette. She picked up the soda can, and pressed it to her cheeks. "I'm kind of warm, can you turn on the air?"

Angel hadn't said anything about the expected frequency of the visions. Maybe he'd never kept track. There was no way to tell, that was pretty obvious. It could happen out of the blue, like a migraine or an epileptic seizure. It felt hard to get down to anything knowing that at any moment his mind would be invaded, and he'd be too sick to stand. Not that there was much of anything to get down to. He couldn't go out and pick up a woman under these circumstances, could he really? As for work, what work was there? Angel's people could run the business end of things with no help from him. Anything he might start on -- like writing his memoirs, an idea that was only ridiculous on the face of it -- felt too tough to concentrate on, not with the prospect of the next vision hanging over him.

He could read. Angel had given him Wesley Wyndam-Pryce's log books for the last twenty-five years, detailing every case they'd dealt with in that time. He must've assumed that going through these would fire Johnny up for The Mission -- he found it sort of pathetic the way they all kept speaking of The Mission as if it was some precious thing to be revered, like a Russian ikon or the Virgin of Guadalupe. All he was getting out of these records was the dispiriting sense that of fighting evil there was no end, and no fun, and nothing to look forward to but more of the same. Certainly the only real triumph Johnny could discern in all this was that they'd managed so far not to get killed.

It hardly seemed like living.

Of course, his life had hardly seemed like living, either. The first time he really felt alive was when he became a vampire.

Mamma had wanted to know if he felt remorse.

And he did. At least, there was a sick sense of being haunted, at the edges of his vision and his thoughts, by Penelope and George and the others. He was angry at them for it, for leaving him with their mewling faces and the pleading sounds they'd made, dirty memories he couldn't dispense with.

That must be remorse. It was mixed up with other feelings, cravings and desires that he couldn't imagine weren't shared by Angel and Spike, though they pretended to be so far above their demon selves -- though not too far that they didn't jump on each other as soon as they were alone together. Just thinking about that made him shiver.

Johnny heard the elevator open, and footsteps along the corridor. Darryl. Who'd watched Rita accept his apology in the pub the other night through narrowed eyes. Johnny didn't wait for the knock. "What is it?"

"Letter came for you, man."

A letter? Who would write him a letter? Nobody wrote letters. "Slip it under the door." He rose from his chair, waited in the underlit gloom for the white edge of the envelope to show, before walking towards it. Darryl was already receding back towards the elevator. He sat down again at the desk, opened it beneath the lamp.

The plain number ten envelope was addressed in neat, anonymous looking block capitals; there was no return address.

But when he opened it, the paper inside was thick and creamy and smelled faintly of a familiar -- an exciting -- perfume. The handwriting, in a pale brown liquidy-seeming ink, was all curlicues and strange shapes and no punctuation, and he knew at once whose it must be though he'd never seen it before.

My Nick -- You have seen a sad lot of trouble since we parted, I know -- Do you like it there with Daddy? -- I suppose not, he is so tiresome anymore -- I cannot come there to see you, but you may come to me, and we will try if you are ruined or not -- I think not you are still going to be my good bad boy -- I will wait for you five days do come and when you come we shall go off together -- Your own D

There was a Los Angeles address under her scrawled initial. Johnny leapt up. She'd followed him! He should've known she wouldn't just abandon him, not Drusilla. She'd taken so much delight in him, given herself to him so thoroughly. He read the letter again, imagined her writing it like a child, her belled sleeve sliding up her ivory arm, her pretty mouth pursed with the effort.

She believe in him and wanted him, she loved him. He was already aflame for her, ready to fuck her until she screamed, ready to follow her anywhere, do anything. She had to be right, he wasn't ruined. He was a vampire, and he could be a vampire. It was the only thing he could be.

Fuck Angel, fuck The Mission, fuck remorse, fuck being vision boy, tied down to this forever. He'd be free. He'd go to her right now. Glancing around, Johnny thought about what to take. He had hardly anything -- the things he'd rescued from his London flat were still in Dru's London digs, and probably lost, unless she'd taken care to store them. Since he got here, he'd acquired only some new clothes and toilet articles. It felt silly -- human -- to pack a bag. Like a little boy running away from home.

He'd just walk out. All he needed was her letter. All he needed was her. He would bring her a present, though, something beautiful and intimate to crown their reunion.

He made it to the elevator before he remembered his sister. She'd gone with Angel to visit Wyndam-Pryce, but before that she'd spent the long hours of daylight with him. They'd played a few rounds of Spite and Malice, a card game Tara used to play with either of them when they were laid up sick as children. It was like he was an invalid now, except that the illness he was waiting for the end of had no ending, and it was she who was dying -- only in the usual way of any human being, but that way was now foreign to him.

She was looking, oddly, prettier than she had in some time, but he still felt, regarding her across the spread of cards, that compared to him and their parents, she was teetering on the cusp of nothingness. Time felt meaningless now, like everything else. How could you love someone who wouldn't last?

She'd looked into his stare with a questioning smile.

He'd wanted to tell her then, about the millstone of loneliness, and his fears that he couldn't be what they all expected, but he hadn't. It would be absurd, to tell a woman of thirty that he dreaded her leaving him in death. And it would be unanswerable, to say that having experienced both states of being, he preferred not to have a soul.

Or thought he did. Could he do it again, what he'd done with Drusilla? Take a life, take it into himself, through his teeth, his mouth, the palpitating body hot and panicked against his own? The mere thought of that roused his hunger, but with it a twinge of disgust. Wrong.

He would talk to Jemima, instead. She must be back from that visit now. He'd show her Drusilla's letter, and that would remove its power over him, the power of his sire's summons. He'd be honest with Jem, listen to whatever she said, beg her to help him as she always had. He'd stay on the right side of the line. He'd stay where, as Papa said, he could look good people -- look Jemima -- in the eye.

He just needed her help, that's all.

The lobby was empty, but he heard sounds in the garden.

They'd barely spoken to each other on the drive back from the hospital. In the car she'd wondered whether she'd done the right thing -- it didn't exactly feel wrong, and she didn't regret it, either. She enjoyed riding with him, and the silence felt easy, maybe even easier than it should, as if they'd agreed on all points between them after long and fruitful discussion. Which was odd, because they hadn't talked much yet at all, not about anything very substantial. Still, she felt comfortable at his side.

But not merely comfortable. The sight of his vamp face, leonine and fiercer, somehow, than papa's, excited her. It was an excitement that felt like cheating; it wasn't supposed to be about that. She wasn't supposed to be like that. (Though Milo had probably believed she was.) Her attraction to Angel wasn't about him being a vampire. Well, not exactly, though it was impossible to imagine him otherwise, and she didn't care to try. Nor was she attracted to him because of his history with her mother.

His goodness, so hard-won and perhaps precarious, stirred her. He made more difference in the world than all the stuffed shirts of the Council, with their procedures and their record-keeping and their received dogma, and he did that good out of a constant resistence against its opposite. It was that in particular she liked. Angel deserved help, especially because he thought he didn't. He needed the kind she knew she could give, the kind Milo hadn't known how to accept.

She wanted to look after him. It was something she thought Papa would understand, because he always got what drove her, which was so different from what drove Buffy, or most of the girls she'd gone to school with, or the other women she'd met, working for the council. Not that she could tell Spike about this, she knew that. Not yet anyway. He might understand, in his heart, but he'd still fly into a rage about it, call Angel out, make a fuss.

Mamma wouldn't like it either. And she wouldn't even try to understand.

As they'd left the parked car, she'd planned to say a quick good night, and go up to knock on Johnny's door. But Angel gave her his arm to walk her inside, and once in the lobby steered her towards the garden, murmuring something about it being a nice night.

Out here in the enclosed space, the breeze didn't reach; the air carried a rich earthy scent of growing things, intermixed with wafts of sweetness. She took a deep breath and turned to him. She couldn't see Angel's face; he was only a looming black shape beside her, outlined by the filtered orange light coming from the lobby windows. "Everything smells so nice."

"It's supposed to. The plants were chosen for their fragrance. Like this one." He broke off a sprig, brought it to her nose. "Night-scented Stock. Hesperis Tristis."

"Hesperis tristis, huh? Okay, now you're trying to impress me."

"Is it working?"

"Oh, maybe. So who does the gardening here? Not you, I guess."

"What, you think I can't garden?"

"No, just... you know, it's hard to garden in the dark."

"It's not dark. You think this is dark?"

She giggled. "Uh, yeah, I'd say it's a little dark. I can't see a thing."

"I can see you just fine. Your eyes are this really beautiful color -- " His hand came up in the dark, the thumb grazing her chin.

"They're hazel."

"No, they're the color of the undersides of leaves on a stormy day, with streaks of something darker, golden brown."

She'd never heard him talk this way, and suspected that hardly anyone else ever had either.

He dropped into a whisper. "I noticed you, Jemima... right away. When you first came here."

"Can you really see me right now?" She knew he could. When she was a child Spike used to read to her in bed at night without a lamp on, the room completely dark except for the outline of the drawn shades, and the thin pencil of light from the hall in the gap where the door didn't quite meet the jamb.

"You're smiling."

"You have the advantage of me." She pulled the lighter from her bag, lit and held it so it cast a deep-shadowed glow up onto Angel's face. "Ah, there you are. Like an Easter Island idol." She let it go out with a click.

"That looks familiar."

"It's Papa's Zippo, of course. Mine now. He gave it to me when he finally gave up smoking altogther. When my brother was b -- " It hit her suddenly, a boot to the gut. Why she'd met Angel at last, why she was here in LA at all.

"It comes back on you when you least expect it," Angel said. "Here, sit down." He guided her to the stone bench.

"We've all been so busy, trying to... make things right... but my family is all broken up."

Her parents, who had always been as constant with one another as sunrise, were far apart and might never come together again. They'd both left LA, Buffy to seek solace with her sister at a spa a few hours up the coast, Spike retreating for a couple of days with Xander. It wasn't these visits that were dispiriting, but that they made them separately.

"You don't know that."

"I know that when they should be helping each other cope, they've gone their separate ways. That's not like them. I've seen them fight but I've never seen this... nothingness between them." As she talked it seemed worse; she realized how much energy she'd been putting into keeping herself on an even keel, when in fact nothing was even anymore anywhere. "And my brother's never going to be the same again, is he?"

"He's still with you, he's still himself."

Lighting the zippo again, she met his eyes. "Do you believe that? He's so strange now. I try to tell myself I'm imagining it, but...."

"But what?"

"Nothing. Nothing, I shouldn't talk about him."

Capping the lighter, she thrust it back in her bag and rose. "I'm sorry, I've ruined the mood here. I'm not a very good flirt."

"I don't want you to be a flirt. I'm sorry you're hurting. What can I do?" His hand closed around hers, pressed it gently. It was, like Papa's, like Johnny's now, still and tepid. It occurred to her that almost everyone she cared for was either some sort of immortal, or quite a bit older than she was -- that much closer to death. With Angel's hand wrapped around hers, his unshrinking mass beside her, she felt more alone than she could remember since the most barren depths of her marriage.

She pulled away and rose. "Help him. Help me help him. You know what it's like to be him. I don't anymore."

"Aren't I helping him?" Angel said.

"You are." At the door, she paused, then came back to him. Angel was still seated on the bench. She lit the Zippo again so she could see his face. "Please don't think I've been making up to you only because of my brother. You don't think that, do you?"

She couldn't get a read on his expression; his eyes were in shadow, but his gaze stayed steady on hers.

"I'm not like that. And I wouldn't do... I only do this..." leaning in to kiss him, she was thrilled and relieved when his mouth opened beneath hers, "... because I really like it." The flame went out; she straightened up. "And I'd like it some more, but I'd better go look for him now."

"I can't cry anymore," Buffy said. "Tell me something good, Dawnie."

"Well... work's been good. Xander's good. Things are good." Buffy heard the frown in her voice, and felt guilty. She knew she'd dropped a bomb on her sister, Hello, your only nephew has been turned, and then almost immediately followed it with But we're not gonna talk about it. She knew what she was doing wasn't fair or right. And lying in a mudbath listening to piano glissandos at this expensive spa really wasn't going to make her feel better.

"Tell me about work."

"Buffy... you don't care about my work. I have students, my latest eye-crossingly dull book is in press, I'm preparing a paper for the next Ancient Languages Congress, which will be in sunny San Juan Puerto Rico, by the way, so Xander will probably come with if he can afford to leave the site. That's it."

"I never said your books are eye-crossingly dull."

"You don't read them."

"C'mon, that's not fair. I don't... I'm not much of a nonfiction reader. They're academic books. I mean, we all know you're a good writer. Spike reads them."

"So Spike -- "

"And how is Xander really? I haven't spoken to him in a while."

Dawn sighed -- some things never changed, and though she was in her mid-forties, she still had that teen-girl, eye-rolling exhalation down.

"He's good. He's a good boyfriend. We... we have some nice times."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. He can be, y'know... some times it's better to leave him be for a bit. But he's been pretty okay lately, and... look, don't ask me again why we haven't gotten married. We're not going to. We're just together."

"I wasn't going to ask."

"I wish someone had called me sooner. I'd have liked to know about Johnny. I'd have liked to help."

"Don't be angry at Spike or Jemmie. It seems like things were happening so fast there was barely time to think about letting the rest of the family know. They were overwhelmed."

"Yeah."

"And you can help. I'd like you to go visit them, if you can. Especially since it looks like I have to stay away for a while." She wanted to rub her eyes, scratch her nose, but she had to stay still beneath the mud. At least it was easier to talk to Dawn while they couldn't look at each other. "Sometimes I really hate being the Slayer. I just want to be a mom, and I can't. I have to think about -- "

"Are you and Spike really breaking up?"

She'd dreaded this question, which she knew Dawn would have to ask sooner or later. In filling her in, she'd told everything, including Spike's confession of his affair with Angel (which made Dawn go wide-eyed but otherwise passed without remark). But she was very careful not to make a pronouncement about their last conversation, or her decision to leave Los Angeles without him -- a decision that felt less like a choice than an imperative. She'd been careful, in fact, to show as little emotion as possible, because if she let go of her control, she wouldn't have been able to talk at all.

"I don't know. We haven't actually said so."

"It doesn't always have to be said. Sometimes you just know."

"Well, then I still say I don't know. I don't know anything." She couldn't stand the mud another second. It wasn't time to get up, but she did anyway, pulling her limbs out of the sticky, hardening clay. For the first time it occurred to her that this "treatment" was too much like being interred alive -- why had she chosen it?

At least there was no box to keep her from digging out.

"I'm going to shower this off. I might go for a run, after. Shall I meet you for lunch?"

"I thought we were supposed to be spending time together."

"We are. We are spending time together."

"I just get the feeling I'm annoying you. But I don't know how you can expect me not to need to talk about this."

"Dawnie, I realize that. You're not annoying me." She sat on the edge of her sister's tub. Dawn's eyes were covered with a cloth, but she lifted it off. "Here I am, okay?"

"Spike is never going to leave you, unless you force him to. Or you leave him first. I hope that doesn't happen."

She didn't want to hear about Spike. Everything was always Buffy and Spike, the children relegated to afterthoughts, and that was why they were in this mess. She'd wanted, since getting to LA, to concentrate on Johnny. Except that hadn't worked out too well, and now she was exiled from all of them, powerless to help because she was the Slayer. All her mistakes of the last thirty years were bursting open now, in this.

Walking away from Angel was hard. Her whole body resisted it, wanted to swerve around and taste him again, take time to really experience the slinky tactile shimmery feeling he gave her. She carried a pulsing knot between her thighs; knowing that he could scent her excitement was embarrassing but not as much as she would've thought. It was a secret message, one only he could read.

Except -- not.

Johnny was waiting for her as she stepped back into the lobby, and she saw it in his face at once. Whatever Angel could scent or sense about her was open as well to her brother's own preternatural faculties.

"What were you doing?" His voice was a low croak. He was staring, not directly into her face, but at her head. With a nervous dip in her belly, she lifted a hand to her hair. Was it slipping down? She touched the barrette, and realized that in the short time she'd owned it, this had already become one of her habitual gestures.

"I was talking to Angel in the garden."

"Oh Jem."

She walked briskly past him, towards the elevator, and gestured to him to follow; if this was going to be a confrontation, she wanted it to be well out of Angel's earshot. When she pressed the lift button, then pressed it again, suddenly madly impatient, she realized that in the last few seconds she'd moved from absorption into the heights of rage.

In the car she rounded on him. "Don't you dare question me! First of all, I'm an adult and I can associate with whom I please! And second of all, you killed my husband, so... so... you have no right to pass judgements about what I do!"

"Don't tell me you're in love with him!"

"And third of all, you will not talk to me like that! I am older than you and I expect you to respect me!"

The elevator car was a cauldron; she was vibrating. Johnny's look continued sullen. The door opened onto the dim, empty corridor. She stepped out without turning her back on him. "It's none of your business if I make friends with Angel -- or anybody. I'm only in LA for you, because I'm always there for you, I'll thank you to remember, and at this point frankly I could use a little more cooperation and a little less overstepping the bounds!"

He smiled then, and held up his hands in a gesture of peace. But there was no peace in the smile.

"Don't you mock me!" Before she quite realized what she was doing, Jemima hit out at his upraised hands, and found herself, in the next breath, pressed against the wall by her wrists.

She feigned a calm she didn't feel. "I can't believe you're using force on me. Let go of me right now, Johnny."

He stepped back. She resisted an urge to rub her wrists. It was easy to forget that his reedy figure concealed a demon's strength.

He said, "We have to talk. Come into my room."

She followed cautiously, suspicion warring with her natural tendency to give him the benefit of every doubt.

His room had a depressing transitory air. Window shaded although it was night, bed unmade, books and clothes scattered around. At least his London digs had taken on an impress of his personality, and there was an attempt at actual decor lurking beneath the mess. Here it was just musty, reminding her how he was now forever shut away from sunlight.

Somehow that seemed tragic in his case whereas it never really did for Spike. For Papa, it was just the way things were. They'd always managed, even so, to keep an airy, well-lit house. So much so that she even had childhood memories of things she knew were impossible -- Papa playing outdoors with her in the daylight. Spike never dwelt on what he couldn't do, he just made the most of what he could.

Johnny's wasn't the room of someone engaged in making lemonade.

"Why are you getting involved with Angel? Smelling him on you... it's sickening."

"You're so out of line."

"You don't know anything about him. If you did -- "

"What don't I know? I'm sure I know more than you do! I know about Angelus. And I know about him and Mamma. Which was a long time ago."

Johnny cocked his head, regarding her with a bug-under-glass look. Two sandy elf-locks dangled nearly to his eyes. A minute ago he'd been savage with her, and now he most resembled the little boy he'd once been.

Sounding reasonable, he said, "So -- what? You love him? You're going to be his mistress?"

"I wouldn't say that." She drew herself up, spoke more forcefully. "No, it hasn't gone that far. Not that it's any of your business. Johnny, you're not doing yourself any favors with me by -- "

"He's been with Papa."

This sentence made no immediate sense. Yes, Angel was with all of them, and they were with -- oh. Been with. Been with. That was dizzy-making, but it was over in a second, because she knew this one. "That's not exactly a secret. I've worked with the Council for my entire adult life, I'm aware of vampire social structures. Very strong family bonds exist in the old orders -- and yes, they're incesty. So I know that in the 19th century, when Papa lived with Darla's family, he -- "

A slow smile burned across Johnny's face. "Last week. Angel was fucking Papa last week. And he'd probably have fucked him last night too, if Papa hadn't gone to visit Uncle Xander."

Last week. Oh. She groped back for a steadying touch of the wall. Johnny smiled wider at that. He was full of perverse pleasure, his look probing her for shock and dismay, ready to feed on it. She was determined to give him none.

Johnny moved in closer. "And it's not just my own senses that told me that, in case you don't want to believe me. They both admitted it." He paused a moment to let that take hold. "Angel's been all over him since we first got here. Multiple times. I don't suppose he mentioned that to you, while you two were smooching it up."

Squaring her shoulders, Jemima said, "It's true, he hasn't mentioned it. He wouldn't violate Papa's privacy like that."

"His privacy! You're unreal! When are you going to get angry! Everyone deceives you and jerks you around -- "

"Johnny, I'm not going to go off in a swoon because you've told me that two vampires with a long long mutual history have come together and done... what it's natural for them to do. In the ancient undead orders, profound attractions exist between vampires and their sires. Needs that transcend hatred, or love, or dependency. You might as well fault a child for going to his mother, as fault Papa for going to his sire when he had nowhere else to turn. It's not our place to play gotcha! over relations that are so long-established and deep and... outside our experience." She struggled to speak calmly, to pull reassurance from her own explanations. She might as well have been writing out a blue-book for a Council exam on what she'd absorbed in all her study. It was true to the best of her knowledge, and she believed it, and yet when she tried to picture what had passed between her father and her erstwhile lover these last nights, her imagination seized up.

Johnny gave her a look of jeering incredulity. "You can explain anything, can't you?"

"I can understand, which is more than you ever attempt. Considering how much pain Papa is dealing with, between you getting vamped and Mamma -- "

"Oh, yeah, it's all my fault Papa's cheating on -- what about Mamma?"

He didn't know. Well, how could he? She only did because of Buffy's confession. Spike wouldn't breathe a word against Buffy to either Johnny or her, not even with a stake to his heart.

"They've been... going through a rough patch for quite a while. Mamma had an affair with someone else, a few months ago."

Johnny's face fell. For a moment she hoped that this would deflect him. "I don't believe you."

"I wish it wasn't true. But Mamma told me herself."

"Shit." Johnny dropped onto the bed, cradling his head in his hands. "Shitshitshit."

"Papa would never have done it first. You know that, Johnny. His coming to Angel... it's not the same thing. It's really not."

He gave her a bleak look. "You sound so reverent, speaking about Papa and his sire."

"Not reverent, just... respectful. There's strength there, support... trust. It's a different kind of family, but it's family all the same. Family older than ours."

"Eternal, yeah," Johnny mused. "Old and permanent and mysterious."

Old and mysterious, yes. Angel was so old and full of secrets, she was mad to think she knew him because she'd read through the Council's files. And mad to think she could carry on a flirtation with him, an affair. He was an elephant to her mouse, enormous and incomprehensible; even if he didn't mean to, he could squash her flat in a moment.

She felt nearly squashed right now. "I'm not sorry you told me about this. But I've got to go." She didn't pause to see if he'd try to detain her. She realized when she reached the lobby that she'd been holding her breath, and let it go in a gust.

She didn't pause to listen for any sign of Angel lurking in the shadows. She wasn't ready to see him. Outside she drew the air down deep into her lungs. She'd been with the undead, and, poor Wesley!, the nearly dead, for hours and hours. She couldn't stand it anymore, that choked, brimming darkness.

She drove her rented car with the top down, fast through the late-night streets, with the radio blaring and her unfurled hair whipping around her face, and was still driving at daybreak, when she stopped to watch the sun rise, because she could. She could sit in the sun all day, and that's what she wanted to do.

Her nostrils flared, her pretty little nose curdling as he moved in to kiss her.

"My boy smells of dreadful animal blood, all foetid and weakening."

"And you smell like heaven. Don't turn your head away from me."

"They tried to undo you."

"But they didn't. I'm here, aren't I? Kiss me."

Drusilla gave him a hooded stare. "I can smell the soul. It smells like rotten flowers and broken promises."

She was making him impatient. "I'm here, aren't I? With my sis's blessing, even. She says there's nothing should be more important to me than my sire." Johnny shoved her hard against the wall, making sure her head got a good crack against the brick. Dru laughed at that, as he guessed she would, and gave a happy shriek when he shoved his knee between her thighs. "Pull up your dress and show me your cunt."

She was smiling now, and obeyed slowly, her hips stirring to the beat of her internal music, eyes locked on his.

"You'd better be wet for me. That's what I expect."

"For you, lover."

He drove four fingers into her, pushing at her clit with his thumb at the same time, receiving a gratifying gasp as she tightened on him. Her body shook in orgasm; flinging her arms around his neck, she drew up her legs so all her weight hung on him. Bouncing her lightly, he kissed her hard. Swarming her tongue into his mouth, Drusilla fanged out and bit at his lips.

She growled and spat.

"Put me down! You do taste dirty."

He didn't put her down, but pressed her tighter against the wall of the abandoned warehouse where she'd made her temporary nest. This was the moment of truth. He'd walked out on the Hyperion, leaving Angel and his sister behind, and he'd have left the soul behind too if it was as easy as that. And why shouldn't it be easy? He didn't want it, it was a constant irritation, like being aware of your tongue. It made him think of his five victims and hate them because they were beyond help or recall.

The thing to do about that was to up the numbers. If there were so many more, he wouldn't recall all their faces, all their sounds. They would blend into one undifferentiated mass of nonentities, cows for his sustenance, and that would be fine. That would be perfect. He could do it. It would be easier than trying to be what Spike and Angel expected, living like a servant, without power or love.

Power and love were here, with Drusilla.

Who shoved at him, struggling to get back on her legs.

"Don't be a bitch, Dru. I need you."

"And I need you. Not some tamed pig-swiller. What will you do in the open air, my Nick?"

"What'll I do? Hunt. Kill." He swaggered back to her. "Let's go right now. I'm ravenous."

"Ravenous?" She grinned and growled.

"As anything." He yanked her arm. "C'mon, I'll show you. Let's paint the town."

"Ever feel sorry you didn't have children?"

Xander scratched at the smooth moist sand with a stick of driftwood. In the moonlight he looked younger than he did in the house, but his age showed in the slack line of his chin. They'd walked far up the beach, and sat now cross-legged above the lacy edge of the surf, both bare-chested, their trousers wet.

"Not really. I used to think about that a lot with Faith, but after I lost her... not so much. I never thought I'd be any good at the father thing."

"You? That's bollocks."

"Yeah, well. You didn't know my father. But I've got him in here." Xander tapped his breast-bone. "Thing is, since her birthday Dawnie's been experiencing some why-didn't-I-have-a-baby remorse. She's talking about adopting. And she thinks I don't know this, but she's stopped using birth control. Maybe thinking she still might strike it lucky even at forty-six."

"Huh. So, you along for that?"

"Sure, I will be if it happens."

"The adopting, though? Kind of have to sign on, don't you?"

"I'll do whatever makes her happy. She's the one."

"Forty-six. Bloody fuck, I remember her when she was, what, eleven?"

"Except you don't really. And I've got memories of her that go back farther than yours." Xander chuckled. "Ah, it doesn't matter. She's my girl."

Spike watched the moving water, watched it creep slowly up the shingle. He'd come to Xander, his plain-talking friend, thinking he could clear his head for a day or two before going back into Los Angeles, into what felt more and more like the road paved in good intentions. For a creature who didn't need to breathe, he'd felt half-strangled for days now, struggling against a sense of impending doom he didn't want to look at too closely, lest admitting it make it so.

He felt he shouldn't be sitting here on this beach, that he'd abandoned his post. At the same time, he was afraid that his presence just made Johnny more skittish and angry. He wasn't sure he could blame him; without the ballast of thirty-five years of abstinence from real vampirism, the sudden influx of the soul would be unbearable for him too. At least the last victims he had to remember all had bad nineties hair.

"Speaking of our girls," Xander said.

"Love hurts."

"So what's going on... you two taking a short break from it?"

"From love?"

"From each other, I meant."

"'Spect so." Dunno how short.

Xander went on drawing figures in the sand. After a while he cleared his throat, and Spike braced himself. "One thing I want to say on the subject."

"Say on."

"About trust. I know that's your sticking point."

"Yeah. Not that it's a bitty thing. I don't think it is."

"No, no, of course it isn't. But here's something I know about that. I told you about how I tried to stand by Faith when she'd gotten herself in trouble. This is when I was in high school. The others had already written her off, but I thought... well, you know, she was my first, so there was some sentiment there. Only on my part, of course. Anyway, she responded to my overture with attempted murder."

"Yeah."

"She got herself a lot deeper into the shit too, before the next time I saw her. Giles got her parolled from prison when Jemima was born, she came back to Sunnydale all jittery and brittle and scared, still without a real friend among us. I wasn't sure she was any more truthworthy then than she ever was, but she needed someone to trust her. Trust isn't anything until it's tested, see?"

"Yeah."

"So that's my point. I took the leap of -- well, ha ha. I just decided to trust her as if she'd be trustworthy. And she built it back. We built it back together. The whole mutual trusting thing."

"She broke up your marriage."

"I broke up my marriage. And Anya was subsequently much much happier with Giles."

"Just sayin'."

"Don't bring a lot of sticky little details in to gum up my meaningful life lesson, here, pal."

"Right."

"I'm saying that you and the Buffster still love each other. I know she loves you, Spike. She talked to me about you when she got here, before she and Dawnie took off together. I wasn't supposed to repeat this to you, but fuck that. She's afraid you're never going to get past this, that she's lost you, and it's tearing her up."

"She does feel it, I know."

Xander was quiet then, making exes and zeroes in the sand. "... since when are you so hard? I mean rigid. You've always been so good to her. Why can't you flex a little now? Especially now? This thing with Johnny should bring you together, not...."

"It should, shouldn't it? But I can't feel what I can't feel. Ever since she came back from Saleem, I've been trying to shrug it off, but all that happens is I get further an' further from her. An' when I look at her or think of her, something smoulders inside me, gives me no peace. I've tried goin' on in the usual way, hopin' the emotion would catch up with the action. It's a neat theory but that's all it is."

"I can't believe it."

"I'm takin' no pleasure in torturing her."

"Is that true?"

"Christ, you better know me by now."

"I thought I knew both of you. My immortal super friends with the all-enduring love. I found it kind of comforting. Something I could quietly rely on, like the annual apocalypse, only on the positive side."

"I'm not proud of this."

"I know, I know."

"Doesn't make my existence any more comfortable, believe me. She's my home. Hell, she's my entire world. What the fuck am I gonna do if I'm not at her side. But when we're together, it's not right. I can't... can't even explain it to you." He got to his feet. "Gonna go in for a swim."

"Time," Xander said.

"What's that?"

"Time changes things. I've got to think it'll change this situation. I can't even imagine what kind of pain you're both in, over the kid. How helpless it must make you feel."

"You're a brick, Harris." He stepped out of his trousers, started towards the foaming surf. "Comin' with?"

"You always go too far out. I'll wait for you. Look at the stars."

Spike paused. "I hope you an' Dawn pull it off. It's terrifyin', yeah, but there's no kinda love like that you feel for a kid of your own. 'Specially... 'specially when you never ever thought you'd have one."

Spike didn't answer his mobile. When it went to voicemail, Jemima hit the off button without saying anything. It was just as well; she couldn't ask him about any of this, not on the phone; nor could she chat to him like usual while pretending she wasn't swimming around in this new knowledge, like Alice in her own tears. So she turned her own phone off and spent the whole bright day driving up the coastal highway, light bouncing off the glittering sea into her face, stopping once in a while to pee and gulp bottled water, oldies on the radio.

Various ideas and memories popped in her head as the hours slipped by. She found herself going over her abortion experience, telling it in her head to some imaginary listener, maybe someone about to do the same thing. Later, the song playing was one Papa sometimes crooned to Mamma at sentimental moments: Oh, since the day I saw you -- I have been waiting for you -- You know I will adore you -- Till eternity -- For a little while, without turning her head to give it the lie, she pretended Milo was in the seat beside her, that he was restrained and silenced and had to listen to her tell him that she'd come to hate him, that she wasn't sorry he was dead, only sorry she'd given him so much of her life. Mentally she wandered the chilly rooms of their house, hearing rain dripping from the eaves, peering out the windows into an endless static grey Sunday, opening a can of beans in midafternoon to spread on toast for Milo's tea, wondering why she'd stayed for so long with someone who routinely ate such revolting food. Why she'd chosen to marry someone who so disliked her family. In anyone else it would've been an act of rebellion. But she'd never been a rebel, never even went through a phase of being embarrassed by her mother, let alone by Spike. She'd gone with Milo because he'd so ardently wanted her to, and she'd never been able to refuse anyone who said he needed her.

When she was fourteen she'd overheard Papa say to Uncle Rupert Our Jemmie is such an old fashioned girl. She thinks like my sisters used to think. Not like girls now. And Uncle Rupert had solemnly agreed. Spike's tone was far more admiring than critical, and so she'd felt complimented and not even bemused. Now she wondered where that came from -- who had taught her to be that way? Not her mother, certainly.

It was late afternoon when she pulled up in front of Tara's house, feeling she'd just barely won a race with exhaustion. The porch steps looked like Everest. When Tara opened the door and cried out at the sight of her, Jemima's knees folded.

She came to in the house, the magic used to waft her up and in still tingling on her skin. She was lying on the sofa in the front room, Tara sponging her face and arms with a cool wet cloth. "You've got sunstroke. What were you doing driving around like that without sunscreen? You're burnt to a crisp."

Jemima had cried, and talked, and cried again, and, painted pink with calomine, fallen asleep on the guest room bed. Tara, who liked to think that nothing much could shock her anymore, was only mildly surprised by the tale she'd told. Spike, Buffy, and Angel were passionate people, so large that their emotions were practically weather systems. That these storms would cause them to get lost and take shelter in all sorts of unwise yet expeditious places wasn't astonishing, nor was it a surprise that Jemima was overtaken by the flood and nearly drowned.

It was Jemima's attitude that Tara found a little unnerving. She'd known for years that where the girl loved she was capable of infinite and convoluted understanding -- and rationalization. It was hearing that almost painfully convoluted understanding applied to Angel as well as to her parents and her brother that showed Tara the state of Jemima's emotions. When asked, she denied being in love with Angel, denied it thoughtfully, hesitantly, in a manner that showed Tara the disconnect between her impulse and her consciousness. Yet she spoke of Angel with such admiration -- he'd gone out of his way to help Johnny, wasn't put off by her brother's obnoxious outbursts and violence. He was tender and attentive to his friend Wesley, and kind to Spike, though she knew their history was by no means one of friendship and respect. He was a complex man, living with immense pressures and obligations -- she couldn't presume to judge him. He'd been immensely good to her as well, and of course he was right not to speak to her about her father, that was none of her business, absolutely none.

Wild crying was the closest Jemima could get to the anger she couldn't begin to permit herself at any of them. Tara realized as she listened that not only couldn't Jemima even approach resentment of her mother for her absence, her father for being her romantic rival, or Angel for his deception, but she was so far from being angry at her brother that she almost blamed herself for his predicament in being turned and murdering her husband.

Perhaps though, there was no rage. Was Jemima so pure of heart -- or free of ego -- that her love had no flipside? Those were the traits of a saint. It hardly seemed likely that Buffy the vampire slayer and William the Bloody would produce a saint. More likely that in her own unknown recesses, Jemima feared that even righteous rage at these betrayals would obliterate her.

Tara knew the pain that came with loving those who are infinitely more powerful than you are. She'd failed at it, but she suspected it might be different for Jemima, whose outlook was so unique. There was an intelligent common sense lurking beneath the girl's mildness that glittered, when Tara glimpsed it, true as steel.

Jem's perceptions of the people she cared for -- call them illusions or not -- might well be her super-power. The last thing Tara wanted to do was shatter them.

Her mobile, ringing in her purse on the bedside table, startled her awake. For a moment she couldn't think where she was, and scrabbled in the dark at the unfamiliar linens, frightened by the strange heat and tenderness of her skin. Then it came back to her, and when she answered the phone, she was calm.

"Where are you, Pudding? Angel said you weren't at your hotel."

"Angel said -- ? Oh, I'm at Tara's. I missed her, so I came up here. Where are you? How's Uncle Xander?"

"He's all right. Sends love. I'm headin' back to LA. So's your mum. Seems your brother's gone walkabout, so we're gonna try an' track him down."

"Since when?" She glanced at the illuminated clock on the far bedside table. It felt like the middle of the night, but it wasn't even ten. She was logy with sleep and fever.

"No one at Angel's has seen him for twenty-four hours now. Has he been on to you?"

"... no." Questions piled up in her head, but she couldn't bring herself to ask any of them. It didn't surprise her that Johnny wouldn't want to remain at the Hyperion after their conversation the night before. But she couldn't tell Spike what he'd said, what she now knew. It was one thing to understand and accept it; quite another to mention it out loud. Just thinking about Spike and Angel making love brought a blush to her already flaming cheeks. "He probably just needed to take a little break. You don't think he -- "

"Oh no," Spike said, "nothing like that." His tone was so reassuring that she immediately tensed. If they weren't particularly worried about him, why were they rushing back to hunt for him?

"You should give him a little space. Show him you trust him."

Spike was quiet for a moment. "You think so, sweet?"

"I do. The more he feels like he's a prisoner, the harder he's going to struggle."

"S'true. It's just, you know, can't really afford to make a mistake here."

She wanted to say, It's too late for that! Didn't you realize he'd know? Didn't you realize he wouldn't understand?

"I don't think it can be a mistake to treat Johnny as we'd like to be treated. He'll certainly get in touch if he has a vision."

"Sure he will. Still, it's time I was gettin' back there anyway," Spike said.

To Angel? For all she knew, they'd resume where they left off when Spike went away. She knew nothing about the dispensation of their affair. Spike's tone when he said your mum was unrevealing.

"He might need a bit of help, now that Wesley fellow's looking like buying it."

"Now -- what?"

"He's not supposed to last the night. Least that's the word Angel got. He was out looking for your brother when they called him to the hospital. So I said I'd be on hand. One souled vamp's as good as another, yeah?" He paused. "For some things."

"Wesley is going to die tonight?"

"Could do, so Angel said."

"Oh." Her thoughts rushed to Angel in a straight trajectory, like a bird's. "His best friend."

"I know. That's why it's no time for our Johnny to be creatin' aggro. Anyway, you stay there with Tara long as you like. I'll be in touch."

"Johnny will come back."

"Yeah."

"Tell Mamma I love her. Kiss her for me."

"You tell her yourself. Ring her if you like." Spike sounded detached now; he wanted to get off the phone. She imagined him, driving, always going just a little too fast, and eager to listen to something loud and relentless on the car stereo.

He wouldn't promise to kiss Buffy, not even for her.

Lying back, she let the tears spill without wiping them away. They felt cool tracking down her burned cheeks. After a minute, she pressed the speed-dial button for her brother's number. It rang seven times. The voice that asked her to leave a message sounded subtly different from the vampire's who'd taken him over, but she left him one anyway, with her love.

Angel had looked death in the face plenty of times. But not this kind of death. Not the slow, hollowing-out sort, where the violence of it was all the body's doing on itself. Wes was so exhausted, so steeped in morphine, that he was barely conscious, but once in a while his fingers twitched in Angel's grasp in a way that seemed to indicate he welcomed the touch, wanted to hang onto it.

The nurse had told him when he arrived that often the sufferer would, whether consciously or not, cling to life until some significant moment was past -- a birthday, anniversary, particular visit or some such. Did Angel think there was anything like that in Wesley's case?

He didn't know. Birthdays had never meant much to him, and there weren't really any glad anniversaries to mark. There were deaths he quietly noted each year, but those black letter days -- Fred's, Lilah,'s Gunn's -- were hardly ones to inspire him now.

Angel could barely hear him breathing. Wesley's heartbeat was slow, labored. Physically, there was nearly nothing of him left. Swaddled like a premature baby in the knitted cap, the thick comforter pulled up to his chin, he still shivered. Angel grieved, amid all his other griefs for Wesley, that he had no warmth to share with him.

He wanted to tell him the news, but it hardly seemed fair to unburden himself on his friend when death was in the room. There would be nothing comforting for Wesley in his last hours in Angel's burgeoning fear that his indulgence with Spike had put him at a permanent disadvantage with Johnny Summers, who'd done nothing but try to escape since he'd arrived, despite Angel's impassioned talks about the Mission, Wesley's log books, and the key role bestowed on him by the visions from the Powers. In the time he'd spent trying to find him before the call came from the hospital, none of his usual sources had anything to offer. One had suggested that maybe the kid had just gone out to the movies, and would be back after the bars closed. Which was probably the case, except that Angel had a bad feeling. He was used to his bad feelings bearing bad fruit.

Except maybe the bad feeling was all about what was happening right here in this darkened room. Wesley was nearly his first friend -- in his souled wanderings he'd made none before Whistler's appeal. Angelus had wanted no friends, and Liam in his short life had managed only drinking buddies, and few enough of those. Doyle was a friend, but he'd lost him so early. Wesley knew him as no one else did; housed Angel's secrets and hopes and gravest disappointments. Helped keep him honest. Believed in him when belief was in short short supply. Wesley had, in too many ways, stifled and stunted his own life in order to be at Angel's side. He'd leavened his work with no wife or lover, no children, no other close friends. He'd never spoken of regrets, but Angel didn't kid himself that there were none.

He wished he could tell Wesley something good about Jemima. He'd have liked to describe the sweet way she flirted with him in the garden, lighting his face with the flame of the silver Zippo, saying he looked like an Easter Island idol. Except for the understanding that seeped in when he'd called her at her hotel, only to be told she hadn't been seen there.

She knew. Johnny had told her -- told her, certainly, in the most crude way -- what he'd done with her father. What else would explain her withdrawal? He'd tried her cell phone a couple of times, but she'd never answered.

The mobile purred in his pocket. Spike. Just getting into town, wanting to know if there was news. No, none. His eyes fixed on Wesley's grey face, Angel murmured a question about Jemima. Yes, he'd spoken to her -- she'd gone to San Francisco. Just as well, maybe.

Just as well, Angel agreed.

Wesley's hand had gone slack in sleep. He rose and went out into the corridor. Still no answer from Jemima, but this time he left a message, feeling his way to the words as if over broken ground. "I know this isn't the right way to say this -- if I didn't have to stay here with Wesley, I'd drive up and see you right now. The way you heard about it... wasn't right. I should've told you myself, when we were talking before. It's over, and it's separate from what I feel for you, what I hoped we could... I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry my timing is lousy. You took me by surprise, I didn't know you'd be so... so dear to me. Jemmie, I can't talk into this thing anymore, but I wish you'd come back to LA."

The nurse came up; Angel snapped his phone shut and followed her in. "He's sleeping."

She reached to check the IVs, the monitor. "That can only be good."

Angel didn't know anymore what was good. When it first became clear to them both that the cancer wasn't going to be curable, and that the time left was to be counted in months, he'd thought, in a horror-striken way, of turning Wes. Once there must've been some intimation of this reluctant fantasy in his face, because Wes had said, in a way that implied they both knew what he was speaking of, "Don't. I shouldn't like it. And it would end by making you even more unhappy."

"I know," Angel said. "Of course I know."

Johnny tossed his mobile onto the puddled clothes beside the bed, and pulled Drusilla tighter against him. "Messages messages messages. They're all looking for me. Lassie come home. Only I won't."

"You're home an' all," Dru crooned. "Right here with me."

"Right here in my loving sire's arms." He gnawed at her neck until she laughed and kicked him with her sharp little foot. They'd had a very good night. Starting with a veritable feast of homeless teenage rent boys, then on to a couple hours of dancing and drinking in an after-hours dive, and back here to a surprisingly cozy nest for some energetic fucking -- Drusilla had a knack for making herself comfortable anywhere, it seemed, and now they were together again, Johnny expected he'd learn how she did it.

"You're not being silly," Drusilla said, approvingly. "Daddy went all silly and dull when he got his soul, but you are different."

"I'm not like Angel."

"No one is."

He wasn't quite sure if he heard, even so, a tinge of regret in her voice, but when he pinched her breast she giggled, and it was gone. He couldn't stand it if this didn't work. He needed her; and he'd thrown away his other chances forever, by answering her call. This was the only place he really fit: he couldn't be like Angel, a champion, tireless in the never-ending struggle between good and evil. He couldn't be like his parents, a hero -- he was just a guy -- a demon-guy, he wanted pleasure, he wanted not to be set apart, deprived.

"You were fierce," she went on, her voice dreamy.

"That was what I needed. Getting stuck in again. Being natural."

The killing, it turned out, was laughably easy. He'd felt a little pang at the first approach, not so much of conscience as of confidence, fear that he might bollix it up, that the victim might fight back and make him look bad in front of Drusilla. But once he'd tucked in, once the power of real live human blood was flooding through him, appetite took over, and everything became possible. Drusilla crowed, dancing around him happily as he drained his victim. The high salty stink of the kid's unwashed hair, his untrammeled fear, was lurid and delicious.

"Fierce and terrible," she said, "with those poor dirty little boys that no one cares about."

"You liked them too," he said, beginning to sense a tone of criticism.

"Oh, I like them all." She was using a lock of her hair to tickle his nose. He pushed her away. "But I need to be sure of my sweet beautiful prince... can I really be sure of you? I cannot bear disappointment, you know." She sat up, turned to straddle him, dipping her moony face in close, her swirly eyes fastening on his. She lifted his hands to her breasts; her nipples were tight and pebbly against his palms. "Will you satisfy me?"

Her hair trailed against his face. She dipped in close to kiss him, a deep tender kiss that seemed to promise every possible excitement and comfort, if only he truly deserved them.

"I will," he said. "I'll satisfy you in everything."

She smiled, a smile like moonrise, and patted her hands together. "Oh goodie. I know just what I should like."

"Then I'll like it too." He tumbled her off and pounced, driving into her again. She gave an enraptured little scream, and pretended to faint, though her hips rose to meet him.

What Drusilla expected of him, he would do.

By dawn, Buffy had endured the hairy eyeballs of a lot of things that didn't have eyeballs at all, or else were nothing but eyeballs. She'd slain half a dozen vamps and a couple of demons, was bodily thrown out of one joint down by the waterfront, and had the beginnings of a black eye. But no one she'd spoken to would admit to seeing a vampire anything like Johnny.

When she got to the Hyperion, after a stop at Starbucks for the largest, sweetest, joltiest thing on the menu, Spike was already there, slumped on the pouf in the lobby. His posture told his story -- same as hers.

"We need to bring in magic if we're going to find him," she said. "I'll call Willow, see what she can do."

"Sounds good." Spike was staring, but not at her. Buffy wanted to drop down beside him, snuggle into his side for a little comforting time out from this whole mess. But she was afraid if she did that, he'd just get up and start to pace, and she'd feel worse than she did right now, if that was even possible. Far worse than her son being missing, was Spike's absence even as he sat right in front of her.

"I'm thinking he might've taken off after Drusilla."

That name hung in the air between them like a bad smell. She expected Spike to protest, but he only sighed.

"But no one's seen her either."

"Like they'd tell you, if they did," Spike jeered.

"Well, did any of them tell you?"

"No. If she's here, she's layin' low. I asked, an' I checked around every place I could think of that she used to like. But she could've sent for him, from anywhere. It's a wide world."

"You really think he'd go to her? The soul -- " Soul, soul, vampire with a soul -- it was supposed to be the big panacea, the safeguard. But they really knew nothing about it. Angel was the only demon with a soul, and you couldn't draw conclusions from an N of one -- even Buffy knew that.

"Do I think he'd go to her? Lonely an' pissed off as he is? At this point, I'm thinkin' shit yeah, he'd go to her."

"Do you think she'd still want him, though?"

"Christ, how should I know? No. No, I'm pretty sure she won't like the smell of that soul at all. But she won't have known about it. She talks a lot about havin' the sight, but that doesn't mean she knows everything that's going on all the time."

"So maybe when he gets to her she'll reject him."

"Probably. An' if she doesn't stake him, perhaps he'll come back to us then, our little lost lamb, waggin' his tail behind him."

"Do you think so?"

He frowned up at her. "Fuck no."

"Oh."

"I didn't ask for this. Was his life I wanted to get back. Clean slate for him. Shovin' a soul in him, just makes him aware of how he's ruined himself. You know how he's always been, so all or nothin', he's gotta be thinkin' there's no going back. That he's all ruined an' irretrievable."

"That isn't how it is for Angel. Angel's been -- " She stepped closer to him. "Spike, is that how you feel now?"

He sprang up. "Need a feed an' some kip. Let me know what Willow says."

"Spike -- " She touched his arm. "Don't walk away from me."

He stopped. He was just like her husband William in this moment, in the rigid line of his back, that icy studied politeness he could show to a woman that masked disdain not just for her request but for her sex. She moved to face him.

"Is that how you feel? That you're ruined? Or that we are? It isn't true. You're a good father and a good man, Spike, and there's no one I want the way I want you." Saying this to his cool face, she trembled, anticipating rejection, but unable -- unwilling -- to hold back.

"Failed that boy from the moment he was born. Loved him, yeah, but was prejudiced against him. An' then he falls into Drusilla's way, which I could've prevented an' didn't, an' I try to give him back to you, an' what happens? Fuck him up worse."

"Spike, please, don't talk like that, like it's all your fault -- it isn't true, it isn't!" She was in tears now, and wished she could draw them back, because she knew he'd feel manipulated by them, and that wasn't the effect she wanted. Crossing her arms, she stepped away. "Just... please don't think I'm blaming you. I'm really really not. I just want us to be together in this. Our child is in trouble, we should pull together. That's all. I'm going to call Willow now."

He ducked his head, as if the toes of his shoes were suddenly fascinating. But he threw himself back on the bench instead of leaving her. "Wait to hear what she says. Don't think I could sleep now, anyhow."

"C'mon, let's use the speakerphone in Angel's office. Maybe after we talk to her, we could... lie down together." It tore at her, how the simplest things that once were taken for granted between them -- cuddling with him in bed -- were turned into minefields.

Spike said nothing to that. He followed her at a distance.

There was nothing now between them that lacked distance, a harsh glaring distance she tried to squint through, though it made her wince.

He did it. He did it again, and again, and once more for good measure. To show her, his wicked, exacting princess. To show himself. That he was a vampire. A demon whose appetites couldn't -- shouldn't -- be suppressed. To demonstrate that remorse -- that troublesome thing his mother set such store by -- might touch him, but couldn't hold him. With every victim he took, he became more himself, the self he was now. Each kill killed Johnny -- Johnny the fumbling, stumbling, ineffectual, confused, insufficiently loved. The vampire Nick would have no such problems.

He did it different ways. Ripping the throat was best, because feeding was the most amazing sensation, as different from eating regular food as great sex was from scratching. But there was something to be said for breaking necks -- there was a necessary neatness to it, you had to get it just right to hear that satisfying crunchy snap. It was a maneuver that made good use of demon speed. You could get in, do it, and get out in a wink of the eye.

Moving like the wind, they left corpses on every level of the galleria; by time the ones at the top were beginning to be discovered, the police flooding in at every entrance, they were already slipping past the cordon as if they were invisible.

When they were well away, they fell about laughing. Johnny pulled her into his arms, pressed kisses to her mirth-rounded cheeks, her open mouth. "God, I love you. And I need a drink."

"If you take too much courage, you'll wind up with none."

"That's very profound, my love. Very profound. Let's find a nice bar."

He ordered a double, slammed it back, ordered another. Drusilla was wrong; it wasn't courage he wanted, or oblivion. He just liked how it felt, the high, the smoothness borne of booze. It took so much more now to get him drunk, and he wasn't drunk, not really -- all his senses were sharp, his movements and thoughts precise. He knew precisely what he'd promised, and what he'd do, and could even guess how he'd feel afterwards, at least, how a part of him, the smaller, weaker part, would feel. There would be pain, regret. But Drusilla was correct to exact a test; it was a test he wanted to take, a trade-off he was more than willing to make. Having chosen his path, he'd follow it on. Maybe, like Angel or Spike, he'd have to turn to something else in a hundred years. But for the first hundred... he preferred to be happy, rather than right.

"Bloody hell."

She roused. Spike had brought her into his room, and even lain down with her on the big bed. She'd thought she would watch over his sleep, or his pretending to sleep, but it was she who'd dozed, and he was sitting now at the foot, looking at the television.

Buffy sat up. "What is it?"

Spike was staring at the local news program. "They're callin' it Mass Murder at the Mall. I'm callin' it vamps. Big showy vamps."

"Johnny?"

"No way of knowin', is there? Anyway, they'd be long gone, whether or no. It's nine in the morning."

"Willow hasn't called?"

"Not yet."

She crawled down to the edge of the bed, knelt just behind him. The reporter was interviewing witnesses, except that none of them had actually seen anything.

"How many?"

"Eight adults an' a couple of kiddies. Surprised it wasn't more of those -- Dru likes the little ones."

"Oh God. Oh God, Spike. But we don't know it was them. It might not be -- LA is full of vamps. Maybe Johnny's gone off alone to think. Or maybe something happened to him, he's trapped, or, or... dusted. We don't know, do we? Not really."

He glanced around at her, his face impassive, but then he reached an arm back to circle her shoulders. Gratitude went through her in a spasm; she huddled against him.

"He knows we love him. He has a soul. That has to mean something." She didn't know how much longer she could cling to this idea; Spike, who until recently was the one ready to foster every benefit of the doubt, seemed now to have given up hope.

He stroked her hair, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "This's what comes of sleepin' with the enemy, yeah? No good. Catches you up, sooner or later, an' ups the body count." He rose and went into the bathroom, so quickly that her What? No! bounced off the shut door.

How could he say that? How could he think it?

He'd never have talked that way before... before he got a soul of his own. She leapt up, pounded on the door. "Spike -- !"

No answer, just the sound of running water. She drove her shoulder against the wood. But the door wasn't locked; she fell into the room.

Spike was leaning over the sink, crying.

She caressed his sob-wracked back through the smooth teeshirt, and wondered if he was wishing for someone else to be holding him instead. Jemima. Or Angel. It wasn't a thought she'd ever had to have before, and it made her angry -- not at him, but at herself. But there wasn't room for that anger to exist as a separate thing in the midst of this overwhelming grief and horror.

Should've staked him when I caught him with Milo dripping from his fangs. He didn't say it, because she'd only try to let him off in this abject new way of hers, her eager rush to forgive him everything he'd ever done or ever would do, in the hope he'd forgive her too, give himself back to her. I'm no prize. Forgiveness seemed so beside the point now. Everything about the two of them was beside the point, the point now being that he was steeped in violence, inescapable: it would out, like the curse in a Greek tragedy. He could change his nature, marry the slayer, help her defend the world, but all that came out of it was more murder. Johnny was a killer because he'd been a killer, and Drusilla, and Angel, and Darla, and back and back and back.

Now he and Buffy had to hunt their perverted child like an animal. By loving the slayer, he'd only made her a party to the evil she was sworn to oppose. Plunged her into muddy bloody water, so she'd clung to him to keep from drowning.

Her hands were warm. He wanted to shrug her off, push her away, but he lacked the strength. He couldn't stop crying. Fanging out, he bit through his lip, and still the sobs came. "Brought this on you."

"Spike, this isn't your fault. It isn't. And blame isn't important here."

"Was bound to happen, this. Bound to. Good never comes out of evil. Shouldn't have given in to me, Slayer. Should've staked me first chance you had, back in the day."

"Stop it. I'm not listening to this bullshit. You're my best friend, Spike, my lover, my husband, my partner. I'm not letting you push me away. We'll get through this. This isn't going to break us."

"Hey! Hi! Uh, sorry -- interrupting here -- "

They wheeled around at the bright sudden voice. Willow stood just outside the bathroom door. "The teleporting, not always so discreet. I was aiming for near you, but not right here with you. Sorry."

Spike saw her take in his tear-streaked face and wince; he turned to the sink and began to wash. Behind him, Buffy was talking about what they'd seen on the news, steering Willow away while she made her low noises of dismay and commiseration. She could say they weren't broken, but what was the last six months, except proof they already were? After thirty years of suppressing her natural revulsion at him, a demon, of course she'd wanted the mage, who was infinitely pure and good and lofty, like she was, or ought to be, before she'd stooped for him.

She must've felt, in her bones, that their union was impure, unstable, and would breed monsters.

"What are you smiling about like that?" Tara took her eyes off the road long enough to catch her, having checked her voicemail for the fifth time since they'd set out for LA, press the silvery mobile against her cheek, as if it was a kitten.

Blushing, Jemima slipped the phone in her bag. "Nothing. Just... nothing."

"That's a lot of nothing. You keep checking the messages, but I haven't heard it ring, have I?"

"No. I was hoping I'd hear from Johnny, but I haven't."

"So -- ?"

"Well, I was just listening to Angel's message."

"Again?" Tara laughed.

"He sounds so sad. His oldest friend is dying, and he's worried that he hurt my feelings. I don't want him to feel bad about me. I was a little thrown, I guess -- well, oceans of tears thrown -- by the thing with Papa, but I know it didn't mean he wasn't being sincere with me at the same time. And Papa couldn't have imagined I was mixed up in it in any way, or that I'd ever find out about it. He wouldn't want me to be hurt either."

"So you think Spike will be supportive of... whatever is happening between you and Angel?"

"Supportive? No, he'd hate it. So would Mamma. I'm not so besotted I don't realize that. Which is why I don't want them to know anything is brewing. Especially because I'm not sure myself. It may come to nothing." Saying this made her feel like a child disappointed by a grown-up's broken promise. But she hadn't promised herself anything, and she couldn't -- or at any rate, mustn't. Not yet. Angel was appealing as a prince in a fairytale was appealing, or... as her father was to her mother. But she wasn't her mother, not a superior being, not immortal, and not, most of all, irresistably drawn to adventure and peril.

Maybe what she felt for Angel was nothing more than the stirrings of her long sensual deprivation. He made her throb, but if that was all there was to it, then... "I don't know. I don't know!"

"You don't have to know," Tara said. "It's okay to just, you know, take it one day at a time."

"I don't want to hurt him."

"Oh, Angel's a big boy. I think he can look out for himself."

Willow was concocting spells to find them; Spike had no patience to wait, for that, or for nightfall. He plunged into the sewers with one of Angel's battle-axes, heading towards the hospital where Angel was with Wesley. Would pry him out of there, and somehow or other they'd track her down. Angel made her; his instinct would lead them to her. Drusilla would pay.

This underworld was, anyway, the right place for him to be now. The darkness, the heavy wet stink, dripping and scrabbling of rats, absorbed him, like to like.

Leaving the axe in a remote corner of the hospital sub-basement, he made his way up, finding the note of sire-scent in the air and following it to the room on the seventh floor.

The sick man seemed to be unconscious; his heart beat barely a suggestion. Angel held one of Wesley's hands in both of his, head bent over them as if in some sort of prayer. Spike stood in the doorway, giving them another moment. Then he cleared his throat.

Angel glanced up.

"Heard the news?"

"News?"

He strode nearer. Strange, how the diminished man in the bed made Angel look smaller beside him, rather than larger. "S'been a massacre. Think it was my boy, an' Dru." He described what they'd heard on the news. Angel stared, his mouth slack. His grip never loosened on Wesley's hand. "You know her late haunts better than I. Need you to help me find her. Gonna kill her."

"Spike... I can't leave him. He's...."

"He's nearly gone, yeah. But 'til we find those two, they'll kill an' kill. People who've got life before 'em, not like this one." He enjoyed the chance to be harsh, to see Angel flinch.

He stared at those conjoined hands. Knew what Angel dreaded the end of, because he was caught too, in an unbreakable tangle of loss. His whole nearly-human life was ruined. The life he never should've dared in the first place.

Angel looked at Wes. His face was grey, the skin dry and runneled like drought-land.

Suddenly the sunken eyes opened, the lids lifting only half way, like broken blinds. A puff of speech, almost too low for even the vampires to hear.

"Go."

"Wes, I don't want to leave you alone."

With great effort, he repeated himself. "Go." The hand that was barely more than bone stirred, too weak to break the bond of Angel's grip, but signaling that it must be broken. "I... will wait."

Spike thought Angel might burst into tears. The halo of solemnity around that bed made him feel small, and lost. He withdrew to the door. Behind him, Angel kissed his friend.

They'd kept the radio off during the drive down, but after Buffy called, Jemima and Tara turned on the TV in the hotel suite, flipping the stations around until they found a report, and stood hugging each other as they watched it.

"We don't know it was him," Jemima said, turning off the TV. She trembled in Tara's arms. "This city is lousy with vampires."

"Honey, maybe you want to lie down."

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

"Mamma said Willow is here. Will you see her?"

Tara recognized this attempt at self-distraction. "Of course I'll see her. Why wouldn't I?"

"How long has it been?"

"Oh... let me see. Six years? No -- seven. But that time was very brief. We didn't have a chance to talk. It was a gathering of white witches. Business, you could say."

"And you didn't make time to talk to each other?"

"I was there with Allegra. We were in love."

"I remember her. What... what happened with that?"

Tara stroked Jemima's hair. "What happened is what happens. We were in love, and then we weren't."

"And since then, haven't you -- "

"Oh, there've been women. Just no one I introduced you to."

Jemima raised her face to her, her gentle smile breaking through the tension. "Is there a woman now?"

"Maybe. It's a little too soon to say."

"I hope so." She shuddered then, and pulled away. "We always say that it's better to be together, that love is more important than anything, but then so many of us choose wrong, and there's so much pain. Maybe it's better to stay apart!"

"Sometimes it is better. For a while. You have to know for yourself."

"It's hard to know. Or you know, but... you're still tempted."

Tara couldn't quite imagine the girl with Angel; when she tried, it was as if she became doll-size, and disappeared into his arms. Which was strange, because despite her history, Tara thought of Jem as always distinct, strong, her own person. Her attraction to Angel seemed more like a symptom of the change her life was undergoing, than an authentic beginning of love.

Or maybe that's just what Tara wanted it to be.

"I don't want to think about it now," Jemima said. "I will lie down. Maybe I'll sleep. Could you sleep? That was a long drive."

Tara walked her to her room. "We can't know it was Johnny," she murmured. "I'm sure it wasn't."

"I hope you're right."

"I know I am. I'll see you later." Jemima kissed her.

"So? Where's my son? Is he with Drusilla?"

Willow frowned. "This isn't so easy. The geographical area is so large -- and it's not just that it's large, but it's complicated, because it's not all on one level. The... the tall buildings confuse matters."

Buffy couldn't believe this. With everything Willow was capable of, she couldn't find one little vampire in a major American city? "I thought you were, like, all-powerful these days."

"Well, you thought wrong. I need some time."

"But when it gets dark, they'll be able to move!"

"I know. Of course, they can move now. In the sewers. In a car. They may not be in the city anymore at all."

Sighing, Buffy got up and paced. They probably weren't here any more. Johnny was foolish, but he wasn't exactly stupid -- or like his father, in the sense of wanting nothing more than to tangle with a Slayer. Johnny had done his big show-offy thing at the Mall, and having gotten away with it, he'd just want to get away. Somewhere he imagined she'd never find him.

As Spike had told her that long ago night in The Bronze: all that power, and nobody to worry about except for one girl. Or, as the world was now, two.

Any vampire less stupid than dirt could have a fine time indefinitely, for all the slayer could do about it.

"Can you find Spike? Because I think he's gone off the rails too." Saying it brought the tears to her eyes again. "William Grieves said this would happen. He was convinced the children would be corrupted -- and I just thought he was being a boring old chauvanist. Maybe... maybe I should've let him keep the baby. Maybe Johnny would have lived longer -- "

"The Boer War."

"What?"

"He'd have been just old enough to die horribly in the Boer War."

"Some people fight in wars and come back and live for another sixty years."

"True. But I can't believe you're wishing you didn't have your kid, just because you might've lost him now. Might've, because it's by no means certain -- "

"... I've lost Spike. I'm afraid I've lost Spike."

Willow craned around from her magical cookery to stare at her. There was a glint of recognition in her eye that Buffy suddenly didn't want to face. She turned her back.

After a few moments of what felt like a dropped connection, Willow said, "I know you love him more than you love anybody else. It isn't shameful, it just... it just is."

"Don't say it!" Buffy slammed a fist into the wall. "You can't say that. You can't...."

"I think you're lucky. That you have someone you feel that way about. So many people... don't really ever have that at all."

"Stop!" Buffy cried. "We don't talk about this! It isn't true! Find my son!"

All day they'd wended their way from possible hide-out to possible hide-out, through the subterranean, broken-down, abandoned cityscape, while Spike, seething, knot-faced, maintained a fiery, uncharacteristic silence. In that silence, Angel was free to think of Wesley's last hours seeping away in solitude. Whenever they came up into a place that had cell reception, Angel called the hospital, and was always told the same thing. The patient was asleep. In no particular pain.

He was waiting.

He'd been wanting to tell Wesley, for days now, that he shouldn't try to hang on anymore, not for him. It was terrible to Angel to think of Wesley prolonging his own suffering because he sensed that his friend wasn't really ready to lose him. He'd never be ready, but Wesley, what little was left of him, was clearly ready, in every other way, to die.

Angel wanted to go to him and help him do that.

This search was futile. They'd found vampires, fought and questioned and slain them, but learned nothing about Johnny or Drusilla. As the hours passed and the trail grew no warmer, Spike clenched tighter and tighter, body and mind one hard fist. When Angel spoke to him, he didn't reply. It was Angel who made the calls to Buffy and Willow, who had no success to report either.

In a crumbling disused factory, all cement and old iron and long beams of late-afternoon light streaming in through the broken west windows, Angel turned to him. "They're probably long gone."

Spike, who'd been checking behind every rusted hunk of equipment as if expecting to find his son huddled there, looked up now at Angel.

"You think?"

"Spike, I'm sorry. There are other things we can do, but this... this isn't getting us anywhere."

He shrugged. "Sure. You're thinkin', s'not my boy. Buffy's not my woman. S'got nothing to do with me, really has it? 'Course, it is you. It's you who began this, an' condemned us all, you fucking cunt." He swung the axe so that the flat of it connected with Angel's head.

When the darkness gave way, one eye was filled with blood; the crunch of his shattered cheekbone was loud as he fanged out; he growled and grunted, pulling himself to his feet. Spike hit him again before he was half way up.

"Spike -- I'm trying to help you, what good is this doing?"

"Help? You've ruined everyone you ever touched! You ruined Buffy's life the second you laid eyes on her! An' it's her children pay the price for what you began! You're the bloody cause of it all!"

Angel staggered up; Spike shoved him. He fell into the light, it scorched his skin, the way Spike's invective, and the mad pain in his eyes, scorched his heart. Angel rolled before the flesh ignited, but Spike was there, bringing the flat of the axe down on him again.

"Bugger souls! Bugger atoning! Nothin' makes up for the wrong. Those poor beggers my boy killed -- they're on my head an' yours. What's ruined is ruined, an' what's done is done. You an' me an' Dru an' the boy -- we're a pestilence."

This wasn't like the fight they'd had when Spike arrived at the Hyperion, his grievous rage the hard crust over an infinity of hope. All he'd needed that night was to be throughly tired out in order to become reasonable again.

That was before he'd learned that even a soul wouldn't put his son back on the good side of the line. Somewhere in the last day or so, hope had deserted him, leaving in its place this burning despair. Opposing Spike's onslaught was like opposing a speeding train. Blood poured into Angel's eyes, his body ached all over. Spike had gone silent now, except for the low effortful huffs as they wrestled on the dusty cement. All Angel's energy went into just keeping Spike from dragging him into the golden strip of light that would immolate them both. Despair gave Spike new strength -- despair meant Spike didn't care if he died himself.

Suddenly Angel understood: it was his own death Spike wanted more.

He stopped resisting. They tumbled together into the hot glare, Spike heavy on top. He heard the whoosh that was Spike's flesh turning to fire, and a second later, his triumphant yelp.

That's when Angel gathered himself, and shoved with all his might.

"Help me -- Jemmie -- help! I need you, help!" She tried to run to him, but her legs were stuck in something like tropical mud, and as she watched the fire was consuming him, his limbs, encased in flame, flailing, his face melting even as he continued to cry out to her. The air was as thick as the mud, she tried to cry out to him, but no sound came out. Her heart was exploding, the air so hot that she had to turn her face away, and still he cried out "Jemmie -- Jemmie -- please -- !"

Then Johnny's cries turned into a wordless high-pitched alarm, terrifying and full of doom, that shook her so she screamed.

Her face was pressed into the pillow, beneath which her mobile was ringing and vibrating. Jemima snatched it up. The movement made her dizzy; the dream's grip was still strong. "Yes?"

"Oh thank God! I was afraid you wouldn't answer."

"Johnny! Where are you? Everyone is frantic -- "

"Jem, I know. I know they are. They think I did that killing at the mall, I saw it on the news. But I didn't. I had nothing to do with it."

"You... you didn't? Really?"

"Of course I didn't. Jemmie, did you really imagine I could have -- ? Jemmie, it's me. I have a soul, I wouldn't -- "

Her heart rose up, she could've burst into song. "Oh, I knew! Of course I knew you didn't! Tara and I both said to each other -- "

"Are you with Auntie Tara? Where are you?"

"At the hotel in LA, you know. Where are you?"

"I... I'm in LA too. Look, you have to help me. After we talked the other day, I was upset, and I did something stupid -- I left the Hyperion without telling anyone. I was angry and confused, I needed some time on my own, not boxed up in there, to clear my head. But now this thing has happened and they all think I did it -- if I go back there, they'll stake me."

"I don't think they would. Johnny, no one wants to stake you. They're all looking for you."

"They're sure I did it. They're searching for me so they can put me down. Let me come to you, and you can tell them that they're mistaken. They'll listen to you and Auntie Tara. You can bring us together again."

"It's really true? That you haven't been with Drusilla? You didn't kill those people?"

"On my honor, it's true. And I haven't heard from Drusilla -- if I saw her, I'd slay her. You know that."

"Yes. I know. Oh Johnny, it's so good to hear your voice! I was so afraid -- !"

"Please help me. I know you'll help me, darling Jemima. You always do."

"I always do. Come right away. I'll tell Tara."

He'd summoned Darryl and Noel with the truck to get Spike back to the Hyperion. Willow, Buffy and Rita were waiting in his room, ready with the first aid kit. At the sight of Spike, most of his clothes burned away, back and arms and face blackened and blistered, Buffy let out one groan, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"It looks worse than it is," Angel said, his own burns making him wince. "Remember, it can't get infected, and it won't scar. He just needs rest and blood."

"But it must hurt like a bitch," Rita said.

"Sure, it hurts." His own face and hands were raw and oozing.

"How did this happen?" Willow asked. "Were you attacked?"

Rita was already wringing out clean rags in a basin of cold water. Buffy touched her arm. "I'll do this. You help Angel."

"We... got into a scuffle in a bad place," Angel said. He watched Buffy, her face fixed in that wide-eyed blank stare he'd once known all too well, laying the wet cloths on Spike's back with gentle hands. He was either unconscious or pretending to be -- although Angel was pretty sure he must be out. He was burned from head to heels, and wouldn't be lying on his back for a few days yet. Buffy bent over him and whispered in his ear.

If Spike imagined she'd stopped caring for him, Angel thought, then he was an idiot.

Still, given his state of mind, he might see it as worse that she did. He was so sure of his own taint -- by loving him, Buffy lowered herself in his eyes.

He'd try to talk to him about that, later. There was enough pain to go around, without that bit more.

Rita led him into the bathroom to bathe his wounds. She clucked sympathetically as he gasped. "Poor boss. And I guess no sign of the kid of the hour."

"None."

"And Wesley?"

"Still alive last time I checked, about -- two hours ago, I guess. I want to get back there."

"I'll bandage this up, and you can go."

He was grateful to her for her competence, and for not asking questions. Willow, though, was hovering in the bathroom doorway, her eyes full of query.

The sight of her was a little off-putting. She'd sheared some fifteen years of age off her appearance not by the usual LA method of plastic surgery and heavy physical training, but with a light glamour she applied like the perfume or the floaty chiffon scarf she was never without. None of the humans noticed anything odd about her, but there was something in the magic that tickled Angel's nose in a sort of spiritual hay fever.

For a moment they stared at each other. Then Willow shrugged and dropped her glance. "Either they're not in the region at all, or she's got some kind of mojo working that's masking their presence. I've got nothing."

"You tried." Rita was winding bandage around his hands. "Anything you can do for him?"

"I can go down to the kitchen and heat up some blood."

"Did that already," Rita said. "It's in the thermos on the bedside table. There's a straw too, I thought he'd need one."

"Oh. Well, there might be something else... I'll go see."

Angel was impatient to get back to Wesley. The adventure with Spike was a bust -- the only consolation in it being the thought that perhaps, had Spike not insisted on his coming along -- he'd have done himself in where there was no one to rescue him, or even witness his passing. Angel could imagine Buffy's frantic grief if he just failed to come back. His own contusions, broken bones and burns would heal up in a day or two.

When Rita was done with him, he passed through the bedroom again. Willow, standing behind Buffy, held her shoulders between her hands, while the slayer's rested on Spike's cloth-covered back, and chanted in some magical language Angel had never heard before. The air around the bed crackled as Willow's spell forced Buffy's strength into Spike.

Angel doubted he'd accept this gift, if he was capable of rejecting it. Buffy's eyes were closed, and her lips too were moving. A tear tracked down her cheek.

Spike's body jolted. He came to with a long moan. Willow stepped back. Buffy knelt at the bedside, near Spike's face. His slitted eyes, the blue weirdly bright against the blackened skin, stared dully. She glanced at the thermos on the bedside table, but instead of taking it up, she put her own wrist close to his bubbled lips. "Sweetheart... drink."

Angel left the room.

Jemima checked on Tara, who was still asleep. She decided not to wake her; she wasn't sure when Johnny would arrive, but once he did, she imagined the three of them would be sitting up late.

She considered phoning the others, to call off the search. But if she did, they'd descend on the hotel, and things might, as Johnny feared, become confrontational and even violent. On the phone he'd sounded so afraid of that, begging her to intercede for him. It would be better to wait, to let him talk quietly with her and Tara. She could ease his qualms, and then they could call Mamma and Papa together.

She moved around the suite, light-headed and nearly giddy, fidgeting with the sofa cushions, changing the water in the vases of cut flowers, aligning the books on the end tables. It was only now that she felt how frightened she'd been; her body ached with the cessation of tension. Everything would be all right now. Johnny had done the right thing by contacting her, putting himself under her protection. He'd be over the worst now, he'd settle down as a member of Angel's team, and learn to live his new life.

He might even turn out to be an ally for her with their parents, if she did get involved with Angel... although she probably wouldn't. She thought she shouldn't. Not now, anyway. It just wasn't a good time for embarking on anything new, especially with....

When the knock came, she paused to regard herself in the mirror. It seemed important to welcome her brother with a cheerful, confident demeanor.

When she opened the door, there he was, two large sheaves of bright flowers tucked under one arm, looking spruce and nervous. His eyes were moist and a little bloodshot, as if he'd been crying recently.

"Oh Jem, I don't know what I'd do without you...."

She took him in her arms, the paper around the flowers crinkling as she hugged him, drawing him inside. "It'll be all right, darling. Come here, sit. These flowers are wonderful."

"Some for you, and some for Auntie Tara. Where is she?"

"She was lying down. I'll go tell her you're here." She pressed him tight again, looking up into his face until he showed a tentative, sheepish smile. She felt proud of him, for admitting his mistakes, for continuing to try, although he was so unhappy. "I'll show her these. Wait here a minute."

Tara was emerging from her bathroom when Jemima came in. "More flowers! Who sent them?"

"Johnny. He brought them. He's here."

The expression on Tara's face made Jemima blush. She hadn't expected to see alarm and fear from the always queenly calm Tara. "Here! In the suite?"

"Yes. He phoned a little while ago -- Tara, he didn't do it." She whispered, suspecting that even so Johnny could hear them perfectly well.

"Have you told the others?"

"No -- ! He wants us to help him, he's afraid Mamma will slay him -- don't look like that! He's fine, he's innocent, just like we knew he was!"

Tara looked at her then, looked hard, and touched her cheek with one soft palm. "You're sure of that." It wasn't a question.

"I know my brother."

"Yes. Well, let's not keep him waiting."

Jemima, still holding the flowers in her arms like a baby, followed Tara out to the suite's living room. Johnny rose from the sofa when Tara appeared, his brow in an anxious furrow. "Auntie, please don't be afraid -- the last thing I want is to frighten you -- " He held his arms open. Tara didn't pause before walking into them -- Jemima would've blamed her very much if she had.

"You've made us worry."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." They hugged. After a moment, he put one arm out to draw his sister in. She pressed herself between them, much as she used to do with her parents, and like them, Tara was soft and warm, Johnny harder and still and tepid, but that almost seemed right, because he looked like Spike and so should feel like him too.

"You're back, you're back, you're back... Johnny, don't scare us like that again."

"I won't, I promise." He smiled at them both, his arms still around them, pressed kisses to their cheeks. "You two are a sight for sore eyes. My two best girls. Thank you for this. Thank you for taking me in."

"Of course," Jemima said, blinking tears.

"We have to tell Buffy and Spike you're here," Tara said. "They're frantic. Let me call them. I can persuade them to stay away a while so we can talk."

Johnny frowned. "I don't think... well, all right. I guess they must be pretty worried."

"I'll go put these flowers in water, and then we can talk. Do either of you want a drink?"

Tara shook her head no. Johnny said, "Lager, if there's any."

"Are you kidding? The mini-bar here is stocked." Full of triumph -- trust was rewarded -- Jemima carried the flowers into the kitchen.

With a vase in either hand and a tall can of Carlings tucked under her arm, Jemima returned to the living room. "Johnny, will you take this from me, and I'm going to put these others into -- what's the matter?"

She stopped. It took a moment for her to grasp what she was seeing: had Tara fainted? It was lucky Johnny had caught her before she could fall; she might've hit her head against the coffee table, and that would be -- no.

No.

No.

The vases hit the plush carpet without breaking, splashing her legs, filling the room with the heavy green smell of the wet cut stems. The heavy can bounced off her bare toes and made her gasp.

As Johnny let Tara's slack body slip from his embrace to the floor, she glimpsed blood on her neck through the veil of thick hair. Some of it soaked into the pale carpeting as Tara lay, her hips and shoulders twisted in different directions, heavy-lidded eyes slack, staring.

"Johnny. What -- what -- what have you done -- ?"

He smiled mildly out of his human face. "Oh Jemima. When are you going to learn that you can go too far, even with forgiveness?"

"Wes, I'm here."

Except that he could feel the minimal pulse of his diminished body, Angel would've thought Wesley was dead. He took his hand slowly, mindful of startling him with the touch of his own gauze-wrapped paw, although he didn't expect any response.

"I'm sorry I had to leave you. I won't anymore."

Angel was amazed to see Wesley's eyes open, and focus. He even started to smile, before his mouth opened in an O of shock.

"I guess it looks pretty bad," Angel said. "I couldn't see for myself, obviously."

Wesley's watery gaze filled with compassion and inquiry. "We didn't find Johnny. Spike was upset. He... well, he did this to me, but... there were mitigating circumstances. And you should see him. Or -- better not."

Wes sighed. When he spoke, he didn't have enough breath to aspirate; Angel read his lips.

"No, like I said, we didn't find him. I don't think he's here anymore."

Wes spoke again.

"The girl... I don't want to lie to you." Angel did want to lie, he wanted Wesley to feel satisfied for him, so he could let go. But after all they'd been through together, he couldn't do it. "I think you'd better forget about Jemima. The way things are going... that isn't going to happen. Even if she still wanted me, which she won't... I know I wouldn't be good for her."

The moist eyes blinked rapidly, the lips working as if he was trying to expel something. Angel saw the word "loss." And the word "sorry." He absorbed them for a few moments, like poison. So much loss -- some of it people he'd only just met and yet didn't want to lose -- even Johnny. He wanted Johnny to grow into a comrade, he wanted Jemima to stay with him, to be his mistress, confidant, advisor. He wanted too not to lose the new intimacy he'd established with Spike. They'd never been friends, but they'd become friends these last weeks -- the attack of that afternoon didn't change that, it just made Angel wish he could do something to ease Spike's distress.

What he wanted, though, was meaningless against what was. What had to be.

"Wes, I've been meaning to tell you, I want you to understand... you don't have to worry about me. You don't have to, you know... hold on, just for me. I don't want you to suffer anymore, if you're ready to stop."

The eyes seemed to blaze at this, and Angel wasn't sure what he was seeing: indignation, or promise, or merely the stoical bearing of a mental agony that Wesley had borne now for decades.

"You are my dearest friend," Angel whispered. The burns made it difficult to talk; every little facial movement stung. A smile would've been impossible. "You have been my partner and helper and support. My gratitude to you will never end. I will grieve for you every day for as long as I go on. And I will go on. By your example. D'you hear me, Wes? Do you understand?"

The tiny pressure on his bandaged hand was a fulsome answer. Angel leaned in to kiss him, and then remained, resting his head on the pillow beside Wesley's. After a while he recognized that the odd low sound issuing from Wes's throat was meant to be a little tune, crooned to comfort him.

Jemima opened her mouth to scream, and found it stuffed suddenly with a ball of something dry and ridgey -- a dish towel. Hard small hands with talon nails gripped her upper arms; craning around, she saw Drusilla's yellow-eyed face snarling an inch from hers.

Rippling with revulsion, Jemima tried to pull away, but Drusilla was planted, her strength absolute.

She spoke, but not to her. "Come, my knight, here's your quest nearly fulfilled. Come and show Princess that you're still and always hers."

Johnny stepped, slowly and deliberately, over Tara's body, and came to stand before her, still smiling, still looking like his old human self. He tipped his head to regard her, his lips slightly parted, in a gesture so like Papa's it made her wince. She struggled to spit the towel out, but Drusilla had jammed it in so far that her jaw already ached, and she had to draw breath hard through her nose to keep from passing out.

"Jemmie, my pretty sister. Well... not so pretty, really, are you? You're actually kind of plain. Mamma and Papa and I, we're the pretty ones. You, you're just... serviceable."

"Ah, now, I think she's quite sweet," Drusilla said. Her speaking breath blew cool and sibilant against Jemima's neck. "Looks aren't everything, are they, Petal? Inner beauty counts, doesn't it? And she's so much of that, so much lovely trust in everyone. It's touching, it really is. She makes me think of myself... before I met Angelus."

Johnny touched her face then. She reared back, and received a good shake from Drusilla.

He laughed. "And she was all over me with the hugs and kisses five minutes ago." Leaning in close, his lips near her ear, he said, "Tell me, Jemmie. Shall I turn you? You could be like all the rest of us, then. And my Dru could use a lady's maid. Someone to dress her and brush her hair."

"A hundred strokes, every night," Dru crooned.

"Would you like that, Jemmie? You enjoy taking care of people. You could take care of the two of us, forever. Of course, we'd go somewhere far away, where the Slayer wouldn't find us, where your lothario Angel wouldn't either. You wouldn't want him to find you, anyway, because you know he'd only stake you."

His lips grazed her neck, right beneath the ear in that sensitive place that went straight to her groin. She groaned, tried again to pull away. The fear was so intense that she couldn't feel her legs; her body seemed to be one big thubbing heart.

"Or should I just drain you, like I drained Tara? Tell me which you prefer." He pulled the towel from her mouth, with the sort of flourish of hand that a magician uses to pull scarves out of unexpected places. He was close enough to her that she could see his fine beard stubble, and the streaks of gold in his blue eyes -- not demon gold, just the gold that was always there, gilding the lily.

"I didn't know you hated me."

"Hate you? I don't hate you, Jemmie. I'm only doing what you said was natural for me... I've gone back to my sire. I've accepted her guidance."

"They say we always end up hating those we've wronged. It's true."

"I don't know what you're talking about. You're supposed to be answering my question. I really need to know what you want, Jemmie."

All at once, she stopped being afraid. Dru held her tight, but not in a way that prevented her slipping a hand into the pocket of her skirt. "I don't care what you do. But stop talking and do it."

Drusilla giggled into her hair. "Yes, Nick, do stop talking and make an end. Or else Princess shall think you're stalling, and be quite vexed."

"Stalling? I'm not stalling -- I promised you I'd do this, and here I'm doing it."

His move was so sudden, so swift, that it seemed his fangs were sunk in her throat even before he'd finished speaking. Jemima screamed -- it wasn't the pain that shocked her so much as the intense intimacy of the invasion -- and Dru thrust her a little forward, as if she was feeding her to him. Jem drew her hand from her pocket, and in a moment Drusilla screamed too, releasing her grip. The heat flared at Jemima's back, accompanied by the harsh outdoor sound of something flammable going up fast and hot, and she knew she'd succeeded -- half way. Startled, Johnny raised his head, and for a moment she saw, as he gaped over her shoulder, the reflection of the flames in his pretty eyes. Jemima wrenched away from the pillar of fire that had been Drusilla's long white dress, shoving Johnny against her as hard as she could. He caught Drusilla in his arms, and for a moment it was almost as if he was going to rescue her; she looked at him, gape-mouthed, pleading, silent, her face curiously still white and pure above her garment of fire. Then her hair was alight, her features curdling and melting; he cried out and pushed her off. She fell, exploding into ash. But his clothes were already on fire; his dash towards the kitchen made the flame engulph his body. A string of curses poured from his black mouth.

Jemima threw herself in his way, one arm raised to shield her own face from the heat, the other wielding the silver lighter. She jabbed it at his head, saw the spark catch in his hair, the flames spreading across his head like a cap he was pulling on. The smoke alarm on the ceiling wailed, louder than Johnny's own dying scream. He grabbed for the lighter, for her arm, but she leapt aside. In the next moment all that was left of him was a long scorch mark on the suite's pale carpet showing where he'd burned to ash.

One hand clapped over the torn wound on her neck, the blood seeping through her trembling fingers, she crawled towards Tara.

Whose chest was, just slightly, slightly, rising and falling. Jemima scrabbled for the phone.

Angel found her alone in a curtained cubicle, perched on an exam bed, bandaged at the neck, bleary and disheveled. She'd called, her voice tiny and breathless, saying very little more than I'm here where you are and I need you.

He'd promised not to leave Wesley's side again, but that wasn't a promise he could keep. Mercifully, Wesley was sleeping when Angel let go of his hand and slipped out, descending from the lofty silence of the cancer ward to the crowded frenetic emergency department.

When she saw him, she started, staring. He remembered his blackened, broken face. "It's nothing, Jem," he said, keeping his voice low and calm. "Don't think about it."

"Oh," she said, glassy-eyed. "Okay. Johnny thought he killed her, but Tara's alive."

"Tara -- ?"

"I slew him with this," she said, thrusting something at him. He caught the silver Zippo as it slipped from her fingers. She stared at it on his palm, and burst into ragged sobs.

He pulled her against him. She wailed into his neck, pummeling his arms with her tiny fists. She couldn't speak, and he didn't try to question her. The details, at the moment, didn't matter. He felt frantic at the thought that, while he'd sat in Wesley's room, she'd undergone her own mortal struggle, all alone. He wanted to rescue her, to do the violence for her, where she wouldn't have to see it, know about it. But it was too late, it was already done, and his part was only this, to hold her.

He was amazed by her summons, amazed that she didn't recoil from his undead touch.

Her fingers twisted into his shirt front, Jemima sobbed into his chest.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened, that it happened to you. That I wasn't there to help you. And that I failed your brother. I should've worked harder with him. I didn't get through -- "

She just shook her head. Tears seeped from her eyes, squeezed shut as if in rejection of a sight too horrible to face.

"Where's Tara? Do you want to go to her?"

"They took her... she's in... I don't know! I don't know where she is!"

"Ssh, ssh. I'll ask. I'll just ask, and they'll tell us." He led her out to the desk. She clung to his arm like a child, still weeping.

Tara Maclay was in the ICU. He brought Jemima there. At the door, she let go of him. In ending her tears, she became distant, brittle. "I know you want to go back to Wesley. Tell Mamma and Papa where we are. I don't think I can talk on the phone right now."

"I will. Call me again if you need me. I'm right upstairs, on the fifteenth floor."

She nodded, scrubbing her hands through her hair, which was already messy. Angel noticed that the barrette he'd given her was there, slid down to dangle behind her ear. He couldn't resist retrieving it, and fixing it in a better place. She let him touch her, without acknowledgement, staring through the square of reinforced glass at the ICU corridor.

"He knew we all love him, but it didn't seem to matter to him, somehow. It wasn't only to do with becoming a vampire. I don't understand what made him that way. I just know I'm going to be trying to figure it out for the rest of my life." She pushed through the swinging door without a glance at him. Angel watched her float slowly up the ICU corridor, her skirt swirling unheeded around her legs, towards the nurses' station, getting smaller and farther away. He didn't move until she wasn't in sight anymore.

When she was little, in a storm of tears because she'd been caught out doing something naughty, Mamma sometimes said to her, If you don't stop crying, you'll make yourself sick. That admonition always seemed rhetorical -- until now. Now she was crying, and she'd been sick twice, spewing up boiling hot acidic vomit, so violently that her neck started bleeding through the bandage. Her head ached and the pounding in her chest made her whole body vibrate in a rhythm of misery.

She couldn't go back to the bedside of the aunt she'd almost killed with her naive belief in a vampire's sincerity. Huddled in the bathroom, shaking and sobbing, a wad of toilet paper pressed to her mouth, Jemima rode out the horror that kept coming in spasms, nausea's emotional twin. This must be what they mean by a delayed reaction. Like a flashbulb going off, bits of what she'd just experienced kept coming back on her: the sight of Tara's limp form slipping out of her brother's arms. The shock and physical insult of Johnny's body pressed up against hers, his fangs sinking into her flesh. The reflection of Dru's flames in his eyes. And the angry, incredulous cry, the grasping at the air, that spelled his last moments.

She'd trusted him, loved him, looked after him all her life, her baby brother. And he'd forced her to kill him or be killed, and now she'd never forget what it felt like, to set her own brother on fire. The sight of that, the stench. Jemima leapt up from her seat on the toilet lid, and was sick again.

Someone knocked on the door. She turned the sink taps on full force. Another knock. "I'm in here!" she called. "Go away!"

"Jemmie, it's Mamma."

She spun around. The room was tiny -- sink, toilet, pull-down baby-changing table on the wall. No window, no escape. She couldn't open the door. She couldn't face her. She'd hurt Tara so badly, she'd made so many mistakes. She'd killed Buffy's favorite.

"I didn't mean to hurt him! He began it! I couldn't help it!"

"Baby, let me in."

"Mamma, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Oh baby, you don't have to say that. Just open the door. Please open the door."

Her knees gave like Playdoh, she sank to the cold tiles. The pounding behind her eyeballs was too much. Everything was too much.

"Jemmie, let us in."

The new voice made her start. They were both there! Both of them, just on the other side of the door. Papa and Mamma together.

"Sweet, come out now an' talk to us. Your mum an' I want to see you."

"Papa? Oh Papa, I didn't want this to happen. I didn't. I was stupid, he tricked me. It's my fault Tara's so hurt. Everything is my fault."

Buffy said, "Baby, do you think we're angry at you? We're not. We need to see that you're all right. But no one can tell us what happened but you, and we need to know. Please come out."

She tried to rise, but her legs were useless. She reached up to the door lock, tried to twist it open with jelly fingers. It took a long time; the metal felt impossibly slick, and then she was blocking the opening. Spike's hand curled around the door; his fingers were red and blistered. She screamed, and tried to slam the door again. On the other side, there was some scuffling, Buffy's fierce whisper, Let me, all right! and then the hand was Mamma's, and she saw a sliver of Mamma's face in the gap, one big moist eye.

Jemima reached for her, crying, and then she was wrapped in Buffy's arms.

The parting from Jemima, Angel thought, as the elevator glided up, felt like a goodbye. Even as she clung to him, he'd sensed from her a rejection -- probably unconscious still, but no less real for that -- of everything he was. She couldn't love a vampire -- not after this. Not even though she still loved her father... and Angel wondered what this experience would do to that love. Whether Johnny hadn't managed to inject poison even there, by teaching her with such vivid crudeness what happens when you trust in a vampire.

The doors opened on the false peach and beige serenity of the cancer floor. Not all the flowers and Monet prints and natural light in the world could mask the cruelty of pain and death in the air here. Angel moved slowly back towards Wesley's room -- more slowly for all his eagerness to see him again, his hope that perhaps Wes would be awake, might even be capable of some further little conversation. Angel decided he wouldn't tell him about the boy's death. No point telling about it, it would only distress him. Not a lie, just an omission.

As he passed the nurses' station, someone called his name. He paused, glanced in at the white and grey space, brightly lit and crowded with desks and file cabinets. Serena, the senior nurse who looked after Wesley, rose from her chair with eyes fixed on him. Her movements seemed slow, like a film shown at half-speed. She didn't smile as she usually did at him, and he knew.

He knew. Stopping, he waited for her to reach him. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun; she wore pale yellow scrubs, her ID pinned to the collar, her name written in gold script glimmered at the base of her throat. She was menstruating, and wearing two different perfumes, which suggested she'd spent her lunch hour at the Galleria, where she was spritzed with something new. She smelled sorry too, and he wondered how she bore it, how all the nurses and doctors bore it, the constant sorrow or performance of sorrow or deliberate suppression of sorrow.

She was right in front of him now, looking up. "Just a half hour ago. I really don't think there was pain, he was sleeping when you left him, and just slipped off without awakening again."

"I... yes. I see."

"He was such a lovely man. He had grace even at the times when his dignity was threatened, and when the pain was bad. He was always so kind and considerate to us."

"He is that," Angel said. "Thoughtful. He doesn't like to hurt anyone, because he knows...."

The tune Wes had hummed before, something Angel didn't recognize, something that was barely music at all, recurred in his head; he wanted to follow it, catch it, do nothing but listen to it forever.

"Would you like to see him once more?"

"Yes, please."

She led the way to the room, whose door was closed now. "Take as long as you need."

"Thank you. It won't be long. I know you'll want to... to move him. I just want to... I want to be sure." Hollowed out, filled with silence, Angel opened the door and went into Wesley's room.

His every sense showed him that Wesley was no longer there.

The last time her daughter had shuddered like that, she'd been two, with a crazily spiking fever. Buffy hadn't thought of that night in years, and was amazed to find it popping into her head now, when the here-and-now should have absorbed her completely. She could see them so vividly in the upstairs hall, Spike holding their curling, squirming, squalling child snugged to his chest, moving fast and smooth from her disordered crib to the bathroom, where she'd already started the cold water running into the tub. Rushing behind, she'd been on the phone, to whom? Not the pediatrician, not at that hour. Who else had she known who had small children? Perhaps she'd been talking to Giles, who was always good for advice on all subjects. Spike, more tolerant of extremes of temperature than a living person, climbed into the tub with her, dunking her with deliberate gentleness, speaking to her all the while in his comforting sing-song. Her screaming stopped as soon as the water touched her, and for a long moment she'd looked wrenchingly bewildered and indignant, like -- like a small child plunged into a cold bath. Buffy remembered how Jemima's skin, bright red, hard and too-smooth as an over-ripe fruit, paled and seemed somehow to deflate. Spike handed Jem back into her arms, to be wrapped in a big towel, and held. He'd held them both, his wet jeans legs soaking her nightgown, making her shiver, but they'd giggled, heads together, because Jemima was cooler, and quiet. They kissed her and each other and didn't want to move, even to put her back to bed, and change into dry things.

They were both holding her now; Jemima clung to Buffy, weeping into her neck, but she had one arm flung around Spike too. Buffy glanced at him, to see if the weight of that arm hurt him where he was burned -- thanks to her efforts, he was already much better, but even so, she had worried when he insisted on getting up and dressing. But if he felt it, he didn't say or show anything. When their eyes met across Jemima's head, he looked completely unmindful of himself; there was a deep yearning in his eyes, towards their daughter, towards her. Buffy lifted her hand from Jemima's hair, and stroked his cheek.

Even though Angel had said, when he called, that it was very likely that Jemima had slain Johnny and Drusilla, Buffy wasn't ready to believe it. It was a theory, only a theory, and probably Angel was jumping to conclusions -- he'd said she was pretty incoherent. Buffy couldn't imagine her daughter doing that . If she allowed herself to fully imagine it, she'd have to feel Jemima's terror, and her own enormous sense of failure at not being there to do it herself.

Because she was the slayer. Not Jemima. Jemima wasn't supposed to have to go through such things.

But it was true. Little by little, blaming and reproaching herself in every sentence, Jemima shivered out her story. She sounded not like a grown woman but like a child who'd made a terrible mistake, and knew it. As she took it in, inhaling the reek of fear and distress from her daughter's skin, Buffy felt herself split in two. One part, dumbstruck, turned in a circle, arms dangling empty, wailing in grief over her only, her irretrievable, her precious twice-murdered son, consumed by fire, dying in agony. The other kept a stubborn focus on the two dear ones right here. She couldn't break down in front of them, not now, when Jemima needed her to be strong and calm.

Spike, though he hadn't actually moved, seemed broken off, drifting apart. Jemima's narrative had wound down into sobs and hiccups and whispered pleas for forgiveness.

Forgiveness. Buffy, with a realization that startled her, found she wasn't angry, at any of them. Only at herself. She could've stopped this all, if she'd been a better mother, a better wife, a better woman.

"Baby, none of this is your fault. None of it. We're just so glad you're safe."

"I should've called you when I heard from him. I still think -- we might've reached him. I might've. If only I -- "

"No, no, stop this. Spike, tell her it isn't her fault."

Buffy begged him with her eyes. He met her gaze with reluctance. His cheek twitched, and twitched again; his nostrils flared, the skin white and transparent. He looked ill, miserable, and caught somehow, between two states -- as if on the verge of fanging out.

When she saw that Spike couldn't talk, she said, "You saved Tara, and yourself, and that's all that matters."

He moved then, getting to his feet too quickly. His face was a mask. "Gonna... have a quick look at Tara. See if... see if she's awake."

Jemima got up too. "Wash," she murmured, hastening towards the bathroom. Alone, Buffy was adrift. She couldn't think what to cling to -- the last few times she'd seen her boy were all terrible -- rebuffing his advances. Staking him. As a vampire, they couldn't relate at all, everything was twisted up and cruel, bad sensations and urges and instincts.... Yet back in London, the last time she'd seen him alive -- had she really seen him? Had any idea what he was thinking or feeling? He'd been so angry with them both, and she hadn't quite bothered to find out why, had she? She'd been more annoyed, than anything else, at Johnny for ruining his own birthday dinner, for picking fights with Spike. She didn't want the distraction of his aggressive feelings, while she was trying to convince Spike they were still a loving couple, a functioning family.

Jemima was away a while. When she came back, her eyes like two bruises, but hair and clothes smoothed, she said, "Where's Papa?"

"I guess he's still with Tara. Maybe they're talking." She rose slowly. Her bones ached; for the first time ever, she fully felt her age. "Let's go see."

"I don't know how I can apologize to her. I was so foolish, I -- "

"Come, let's see her."

They went, arm in arm, back into the ICU. Tara was awake, but Spike wasn't with her. He hadn't been there at all.

"Are you sure?" Buffy said. "Maybe he looked at you while you were asleep, and -- "

"No. I'm sure he wasn't here."

A fresh terror raced through Buffy like fire up a rope. She checked at the nurses' station, then hurried back towards the lounge where they'd been sitting. As she burst out the door, she ran straight into Willow, Xander and Dawn. They caught her, and there were a million questions, but she couldn't wait. Had they seen Spike as they came up? No? She broke away, took the stairs down, rushing towards the parking garage.

The car wasn't where they'd left it. Spike was gone.

Filling out forms was almost comforting. The task was nearly mindless -- he'd long since memorized Wesley's various numbers and addresses and funeral wishes, and could unload them onto the clipboarded pages Serena gave him without having to think much. Yet the job kept him from thinking about anything else. So when the phone rang in his pocket, he answered with a stab of annoyance. He didn't want to talk about this yet.

"The Conduit. Tell me how to get there."

"Buffy?"

She was hard black vehement impatience. Wouldn't have to tell her about Wesley, which was good. "I don't think you should go there."

"I don't think I should go there either, but Spike's already gone, and if I don't get to him in time I don't know what'll happen. So. Tell. Me. Where. It. Is."

It didn't occur to him until a full quarter hour later that he should have driven her there himself, or tried to contact Spike. He didn't understand what was going on -- voices in a different room, their tones low, words garbled -- wasn't really ready to engage with them. Wesley's death, after so much friendship and so much pain, ought to be allowed a still space for respect, repose.

That's what Angel wanted.

But he knew how much inaction would disappoint Wesley. Leaving the forms on Serena's desk, he made his way back down to the ICU.

"I can't believe it. I can't believe it, Sluggo's gone. And yet now it feels like one of those things that was always going to happen." Dawn stared out the window, eyes mindlessly fixed on the tops of the palm trees below, tossing in the breeze. "And I hate that. I hate it."

"Right there with you."

She turned. "Xander. This isn't right. Your children aren't supposed to die before you do. I mean... okay, Spike and my sister, probably immortal, but he shouldn't have died before me. Before us."

"Yeah. And Jemmie shouldn't have been the one to slay him. God, remember how she used to tote him around everywhere when they were small?"

"Yeah. She used to remind me of that picture from Alice, where she's got that baby and it turns into a piglet and she'd holding it. She was such a little mommy. And then when she was a teenager and he was a little pill, she was always so patient with him. Not like Buffy was with me."

"She really adored him."

Dawn folded her arms. "And that's what nearly got her killed."

"So what're you saying, Dawnie? That we all should all love each other less, because -- "

"No! No... but I don't get it. He had a soul. That was supposed to make him safe. Like, like Angel is safe."

"And like Idi Amin was safe, and John Wayne Gacy, and -- "

"All right, all right, we don't need to review the serial killer hit parade."

"I don't know why the soul works for Angel and didn't work for Johnny. Maybe because it came with a curse? Who can say? And I don't know why Spike has been safe all these years without one, even after the chip died. But they're the only two vampires I've ever heard of who weren't like all the rest. Vampires are monsters, Dawnie. We can't forget that because we have one for an in-law."

"Plenty of people's in-laws are monsters. God. God." She tapped her forehead against the window glass. "Quipping with us is a disease."

"We quip in the face of death."

"Speaking of which, we have to make the funeral arrangements. I told Buffy we would -- Shit. Shit." She began to cry.

Xander drew her into his arms. "I love you, Dawn Summers. I love you so very much."

"Hey. Uh -- Hi."

They sprang apart. "Angel!"

"Dawn. I'm so sorry."

She embraced him, watched as Xander, steeling himself with a nearly invisible wince, shook Angel's hand.

"What can I do to help here?"

"Well, we were just saying -- "

Behind them, Willow appeared with Jemima. "They kicked us out of the ICU for the ni -- Angel."

"Hello Willow."

He spoke to Willow, Dawn noticed, but it was Jemima he looked at. Well, a vampire would want to keep an eye on a proven vampire killer.

"Where did Mamma go?"

"I thought Buffy was with you," Dawn said. "Sitting with Tara."

Willow shook her head. Jemima began to pace. "Something bad is happening, isn't it? Where did she go? Where's Papa? Why can't we all just stay in one place? I feel safer when we're all in one place!"

"I'll ask someone to have her paged," Xander said.

"She's not in the building." Angel stepped up to Jem. "I ran into them in the lobby, they needed to get out, to... to talk. They wanted me to tell you."

"Oh! Oh...."

"This must be so hard for them," Willow said.

"So, Jemmie, we'll drive you back to the hotel." Xander took Dawn's arm; she felt his eagerness to quit the hospital, to breath the open air.

"I... thanks, but Angel will drop me. It's on his way."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather come with us?" Xander said. "We're going to get some dinner. You should eat."

"I'm okay. I just want to go back and have a little alone time." She went to each of them in turn, bestowing kisses and hugs. "Auntie Willow. Uncle Xander. Auntie Dawn. I'll see you all in the morning, back here."

At the end of the corridor, before the turn for the elevators, Dawn glanced back. Angel and Jemima were still there, in the lounge. They weren't touching, or even looking at each other, but there was something... noticeable... about their juxtaposition. She couldn't say what it was. Maybe only that she'd never imagined Jemima and Angel would meet. Buffy had been so careful, all these years, to keep her family, and Angel, at a distance.

"You lied," she said. The fluorescent lights made her blink as she gazed up into Angel's face, reminding her she was wrung out, dehydrated, verging on numb. But she pushed the fatigue away. "My parents didn't go somewhere to talk. Did you really think I'd buy that?"

"No, but I thought the others would. Buffy suspects Spike went back to the Conduit. She asked me how to get there, and took off after him. I didn't want to tell you in front of the others, I didn't think you'd want to have to get into it with all of them. The fuss."

"The Conduit? Oh no. NO. How could he go there again?"

"Well... I don't know for sure that he did. But Buffy seemed convinced, and she... she knows him."

Jemima did too. Pressing the speed dial button on her cell phone, she already suspected Spike wouldn't answer. But listening to the seven rings gave her a chance to take a couple of deep breaths, to reel herself in. How many times in a day could she be wound up to breaking point? She'd never have guessed how many. "And you didn't go with her? To help?"

Angel's mouth opened. His glance darted from her, to the corners of the room, and came back to rest on a point beyond her shoulder; on nothing. His large face was all brow and downturned lines.

Even through her own misery, she sopped up his. Shame made her cheeks burn. "I understand. I shouldn't presume that our sordid troubles are all you have to deal with. You... you didn't need to come down here now. Go back up to Wesley, Angel. I can call a taxi."

For a frozen moment, he didn't seem to have heard her. "No, I'll drop you off. You must be so tired." He offered her his arm.

They drove in silence. As they neared the Bel Age, Angel roused. "Wait. You can't go back to the same suite where -- where it happened."

"They'll have moved our things to another one. The manager said so before, when... when the ambulance people came. Because, you know, of the smoke damage, and the cleaning." That's what her brother's whole life was reduced to -- an extra fee for steam cleaning a carpet. "Actually, though... could I... could I stay at the Hyperion tonight?"

They were stopped at a light. Angel stared at his hands on the wheel, glanced into the rearview mirror. Looked everywhere but at her. The light changed, and he turned into the Bel Age entrance. She thought he was going to refuse her. But stopping, he said, "Maybe you want to go in and get your things?"

A doorman approached to help her out of the car; she waved him away. "Angel, I don't want to keep you from Wesley. I can see how anxious you are. I can get a taxi from here. Really. Rita or someone will be there to open a room for me."

"He doesn't need me."

"What?"

"He isn't... isn't waiting for me anymore."

"Oh. Oh!" They fell into place, the clues in his demeanor that she'd been too absorbed to take up before, in the hospital lounge. "Angel. I'm so sorry. When... when did he die?"

"A little while ago... when I came down to find you...."

"I took you away from him."

"No... no, he would've insisted I go to you. Jem, he was so taken with you. I'm glad you got to meet him, before... before... of course you didn't really see him. The real Wes, my best friend. Was already gone."

"Angel. Oh, I am sorry." She stretched her hand out, clasped it over his on the steering wheel.

"I don't think I've taken it in yet... I don't know what I'm going to do without him."

His bewilderment seared her. "Let's go on now. There's nothing I need that I can't find at the Hyperion."

Without question, he put the car back into gear. She watched him, scrupulously keeping his eyes on the road, maneuvering as if he was in a good-driving instructional video. She wasn't tired or bleary now; the events of the day were withdrawn somehow to a manageable distance, like a root-canal appointment postponed for a week. She even felt a little bit high, and wondered if this was some effect of brain chemistry, a defense against too much bad news all at once. How much could the body bear?

Some people, she knew, detached altogether. Angel might be one of those.

In the Hyperion lobby, he walked a little ahead of her. "I'll open a nice room for you, one that'll be sunny in the morning."

"I don't want to be alone. I don't think you do, either." She caught at his arm, stepped around in front of him. "Angel, let's go to your room."

After miles on a road winding through scrubby half-desert, she saw Spike's car, parked in a field, and pulled off.

Buffy felt, the whole way, like she was driving through aspic. Yet the roads were miraculously clear, Angel's directions good. Every glance at the clock on the dashboard showed she was making good time. But Spike had the advantage of her, was sped by some miasma of guilt and rage and misguided conviction that he could fix the situation by attempting another insane, unreasonable bargain.

She just might kill him herself, if she could reach him before the Conduit got the chance.

Which might not be so easy, because the entrance wasn't exactly outlined in neon. Buffy ran forward, hoping to stumble through it even if she couldn't see it. She darted back and forth, feeling at the air. Nothing.

Shit. What if she was too late? The Conduit might have swallowed Spike already.

Throwing back her head, she screamed, "Slayer here! Let me in!"

All around her, the air rumbled, shimmering. A cosmic laugh, deep and terrible. Then she felt herself born up, up and into something hot and moist and deeply repugnant, the maw of some unseen being that had all the halitosis of the universe concentrated in it.

"Spike! Spike!"

"He's here, Mamma."

She couldn't see, the air -- a word which dignified it too much -- was so thick. But she knew her son's voice. He could've been right beside her; she flailed out, but touched nothing. "Johnny?" No no no! I can't be too late, I can't, this isn't the way I want it to go! "Where? Let me see!" She stamped her foot, and the ground rippled under her feet, nearly felling her. "Don't fuck with me!"

"We're both here."

She saw him then. Not the sly-faced vampire who had pressed his thigh between hers, breathing hard against her neck. It was her boy... her little boy, seven years old, brown as a nut, radiant as a sunflower with his curly hair, light-over-dark, clustered around his face. "Mamma." He beamed up at her, his arms upraised.

She wanted to grab him up the way she always used to, feel him wrapped around her like, as they used to say, a funny little monkey. He'd kiss her over and over on both cheeks, on her nose, giggling out in high clear joy.

She didn't touch him. "Spike! Where's Spike!"

The child pouted. "I told you. Here's right here. You always want him more than me."

"That isn't true!"

"Don't lie," the child said. "I saw you. I saw who you loved more."

"I'm not discussing this with you. Spike! Where are you!"

He became visible then. He was suspended over their heads, just out of arm's reach, staring right at them, but she wasn't sure if he saw them or not. Buffy jumped, tried to touch him, wanted to tear him down. "Give him to me! Let him go!"

"You can have him," little Johnny said. "You can have him... or you can have me."

"You're not... you're not my son. You're a trick."

"What trick? I'm Johnny." He was twenty-one again, dressed in the same old tweed jacket of Giles's, the round gold-rimmed spectacles, that he'd worn for his birthday dinner. "You can have me back, Mamma. I can have my whole life again, if that's what you'd like. Your sweet little boy back again? They always say children grow up too fast. I could grow up with you a second time. Or... I can be like this. Grown and made innocent too. I can know you love me... really love me."

"And what -- ? Spike stays here?"

"Don't worry about him. He'll be fine."

"I'm not bargaining with you. I came to talk to Spike! Spike -- let's get out of here. This isn't right."

"Spike's already given himself, so you could have your son again. Because he knew I'm what you need, and he's always given you what you need. You can have that assurance to remember him by. When we walk out of here, you'll have that, but you won't have to feel sad. You won't have to feel anything bad, because we'll be together, and it'll be all right."

"No!" She turned her back on the Johnny-thing. It was a meat-puppet, a manipulation. She craned up towards Spike, pleading with that blank face to recognize her, speak to her. "Spike!"

"Mamma, aren't you ashamed?" The high piping voice startled her. He was before her again, head thrown all the way back to look at her, eyes wide and adoring. Round baby face. Four. He'd been absurdly beautiful at four, people used to flirt with him in the supermarket, passersby would turn to watch his progress in the street, at the park. "Mamma, don't you know a mother loves her child more than anything else? After all, you made me. I lived inside you. I nursed at your breast. Through me, a part of your mother still lives. I belong to you. Who's he? Undead. Unclean. And not even a relative."

She hurled her fury up at Spike. "How dare you do this? How dare you force this on me!"

"Believe me," Johnny said, "It's better this way for him too. He hates himself. He hates everything he is, and he's only too grateful for a chance to give me back to you, sweet and unsullied and untouched, in exchange for his own quietus."

"You're lying. This isn't about quietus. Which is a stupid pretentious word. Who says quietus?"

"He did."

"He did NOT. Spike!" She grabbed the child, shook him. "Let him down! Let him speak!"

"You can have him," the child said. He rubbed his face against her arm, smiling shyly up at her. He'd done that, all the time. Pressed his lovely face to her skin in his excesses of affection. Such a loving little boy. Always wanting to sit in her lap, wrap his chubby arms around her neck. Peppering her face and neck with kisses. Singing to her, telling her stories in his prattling voice. He was delicious, irresistible. The sweetest little Johnny in the world. "You can have him, leave with him. He'll hate himself and you forever, and I'll endure eternal punishment -- beatings and burnings and rape and mutilation, over and over -- in the lowest circle of hell. If that's what you want, you only have to say, Mamma. Or you can have me, all clean and new, my crimes undone. That's what Papa wanted. He agreed. But now you're here, the choice is yours." The little boy reached for her, arms uplifted, his hands two starfish. It was the pick-me-up pose, and she yearned in every cell to do that, to hold and cradle him and go back to the beginning, so it could all be different.

Now you're here. Buffy looked at him. Her sunny, beautiful son. Whom she'd loved, with all the love she had. Love which somehow wasn't enough, or... or wasn't the right kind. She knew that, was ashamed of it. But that was beside the point, now.

She shoved him aside. Threw her voice up at Spike, sure he could hear her, whether he could let on or not. "This is false! Not real! Innocence doesn't get restored, broken things aren't made whole! We made what we made, we lived what we lived! Now we have to live with this! Our son made his choice, and when he got a second chance, he chose the same! You can't undo that, Spike! And you can't evade me, our marriage, what we are to each other -- not like this!"

"He can," Johnny said. "He is."

"He isn't! He's made a mistake. He's forgotten that he has a job to do, with me, a job that's nowhere near finished. He's forgotten how courageous he really is, or else he wouldn't retreat here, give up. It doesn't take courage to give yourself over to hell, Spike! The courage is in living! Remember? You reminded me of that once. You've reminded me of that every day since."

"He thinks this isn't the same," the child said, in a helpful tone, like an interpreter.

"It is the same. He's forgotten that I love him... more than anything, or anyone. I can be the slayer without him. But I can't be happy if he isn't with me. I can't be content. Maybe I am a bad, unnatural mother, maybe I should prefer my children to my husband. But that isn't the way I am. I'm not going to pretend I don't need what I need."

"You'll send me to hell, Mamma." Johnny's cheeks were hot now, fear in his bright wide eyes. He snatched at her hands, her clothes. "Don't make me go there! I'm afraid! Mamma, don't send me there!"

Buffy knelt, held his small hunched shoulders in her hands. "Baby... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't protect you better. I should've made sure Drusilla could never touch you. That's my fault, that you had to die that way, and I will never forget it, never not hate it. But... getting turned... you chose that. And going back to her after your free will was restored... you're responsible there too. It isn't me sending you to hell. And it isn't in my power, or your father's, to keep you from it."

"Mamma, I'm just a child! Look at me, I'm just a little child!"

She snatched him close, breathed deep of the clean smell of his baby body, pressed kisses wildly to his hair, his face. The last time, the last. Her precious only son. He clung to her, sobbing, tried to shimmy into her lap. Memory flashed on her, of that last run, that dive off Glory's tower. How glad she'd been then, to take the pain, the sacrifice, onto herself.

But this was different. She put Johnny firmly back, pushed his hands away, rose.

"Spike! It's time to go. It's time for you and me to deal."

The foetid miasma of the Conduit roiled, convulsed, squeezing the breath out of her. Then it was gone. Buffy found herself sprawled in the sharp dry grass, under the black moonless sky. Spike lay beside her, his back to her. She reached for his arm, pulled him around. His face was convulsed with tears.

She punched him.

"You bastard! I can't believe you did that again!"

He couldn't quite believe what she was proposing. Now? Now, at the end of this Day of Death, when they were each so broken up and stunned, she wanted to give herself to him?

"Oh, you're thinking. Please don't think, Angel. Just kiss me."

Her mouth, claiming his, tasted of fever and sweetness; she groaned when he pulled her into his arms, her own tightening around his head. Angel wasn't quite ready for the hunger of her kiss, her tongue questing into his mouth, or the way she pressed herself against him, straining up on tiptoe. Her body's smallness, softness, its pulsing heat disoriented him for a moment, so different were they from the last person he'd kissed... her father.

They hadn't talked about that.

They hadn't talked about anything. They should talk. This wasn't something to rush into.

"Jemima -- "

She wriggled against him, as if she wanted to burrow in, or climb him like a tree. "Angel, I don't know what I'd do if you weren't holding me right now."

She was the most desirable woman he'd ever seen.

But there was the bandage on her throat, the spicy salty smell of the wound reminding him that he was the second vampire that day to crowd in on her, to touch her with his mouth on the way towards going inside her. How could she want him, after that? Not just tonight, but ever?

This was dangerous.

Damn Spike and Buffy -- they should've been here, with their girl, instead of haring off after magical loopholes. It was them Jemima needed. Her family.

"Is this hurting?"

She touched the bandage, her eyes widening. "You know... for a minute I forgot." She blinked rapidly. "It's so odd... how you can be all freaked out, for hours and hours... and yet the reason why can slip your mind." Her expression changed, became somber. "Does it bother you... I don't know, tempt you... that my skin is broken here?"

It did bother him. Not in a wanting-to-rip-the-bandage-off-and-bite-her way, but because the scent of blood made her even more appealing, and because he didn't want that to be any part of his desire for her. A desire he really shouldn't be indulging anyway. "It should bother you."

Suddenly he couldn't bear to touch her. He was angry at himself -- for sleeping with Spike, for falling for her, for being undead in the first place. He was angry at Wesley for putting the idea into Jemima's head, that anything with him was possible. Wesley shouldn't have done that -- done that and then died.

He wanted to take care of Jemima, but he was the last man who had any right to attempt it. Sidling off, he threw himself onto the pouf, rubbed his eyes.

Wesley was dead. Wesley was dead. Wesley was dead. And he hadn't cried yet, or told anyone but her. All that was still hanging over him.

"Angel." She followed slowly, until she was leaning against his knees. "I want you very very much. I'm not at all afraid of you. You won't lose your soul with me. You're nothing like my brother. I'm not repelled because you're a vampire. Then I'd have to hate Papa too, and that couldn't ever happen. As for what you two were doing a little while ago... we can talk about it later, but I don't care now. I guess that covers everything."

His feeling for her -- already palpitating -- surged. "It doesn't cover anything. For God's sake, I don't want to hurt you, but -- that's why I don't -- "

"I'm being dreadfully forward, I realize that. But I wouldn't say all of this if I didn't know that we're going to be together. Angel, we are. Why shouldn't we begin now, when we both need so much to be comforted?" She slipped a hand into her pocket, and came up with the silver lighter. "Anyway, I still have this, and I know how to use it." She was brave, beautiful, the tears welling up in her eyes even as she smiled a wavery smile. "If you don't take me upstairs right now, I'll -- I'll -- oh God, I'm already crying."

Angel wasn't sure what he'd expected her to be like. He hadn't actually gotten so far as to fantasize about making love to her, beyond knowing that he very much wanted to. It would've felt... impertinent... and presumptuous... to mentally undress her. But her usual manner, demure, dignified in a way that made her seem older than she was -- between the flashes of nervy verve that marked her out as her parents' daughter -- led him to suppose she might be diffident, at least at first.

Arched over her in his bed, Angel didn't want to think about Jemima's father, whose smooth, creamy white skin he'd passed on to her. Didn't want to think of her mother, whose small, pink-tipped breasts were reproduced on Jemima, along with her way of tossing her head as he kissed them. Didn't want to think about Johnny, with his fangs sunk in her neck -- right there a few inches from his own lips -- so that the scent of her blood mixed with her perfume, and the musk of her skin, and the intoxicating aroma of her pussy when she parted her thighs.

Didn't want to think about how culpable he was in the disaster that was Johnny. There were so many ways, it was like a reflection in a four-faceted mirror.

He wondered about her husband, the miserably-murdered Milo. It was too easy to imagine that a man whom he loathed, though he'd never seen him, was a needle-dicked no-hoper. But Jem's responses to his every move were those of a woman unused to being satisfied. She was the opposite of passive, even as her confidence seemed to have come off with her clothes. How many other men had she had? He knew she'd paired off with Milo young -- remembered Buffy's late-night phone call with the news of their elopement, when the girl was just eighteen -- but could she really never have slept with anyone else since?

There seemed no way to ask.

He wanted to be good for her, give her what she needed. He had no clear idea what that was. Before Spike, he'd gone... he counted hastily... nearly eighteen months without sleeping with anyone else, and the last time was with the madame of that demon brothel, paying in kind after he retrieved her daughter from kidnappers. They'd done things that... that they'd both enjoyed, but were nothing like what was going to happen right here, nor should be, even leaving aside that Jemima didn't have a tail, and only the one set of genitals. Jemima deserved to be cherished, and pleasured, and made to feel as precious and beautiful and unique as she was -- not to remind him, with every kiss, of Buffy. It wasn't her fault that she was Buffy-shaped, Buffy-sized, that her smell, her essence, was a sort of echo of her mother's, that she'd somehow picked up her mother's questing way of kissing.

The bed was full of these other people he'd loved and wronged, when he wanted to be alone with Jemima.

She stirred beneath him, her small hands traveling up and down his flanks, exploring his contours with avid curiosity. His cock, in retreat from the anxious barrage of thought, was only at half-stand; she hadn't touched it yet, and he felt oddly shy about directing her attention there.

As if she'd been reading his mind, she said, "I'm not as experienced as you're probably going to wish I was. My best trick is getting myself off, I'm afraid."

"I don't want you to be any different than you are."

"Don't worry about making this first time amazing or anything. We're both tired and grieving. I just... I just really want to have you inside me, and holding me, and... you know. For you to come and for me to come. That's what I want." She didn't meet his eyes, and her blush heated the air around her.

"That's what I want too."

"And you won't be too happy. Don't be afraid of that."

"Probably not tonight, yeah. But I have to think of it."

"Nothing bad will happen."

"I want this to be good for you," Angel said. "I'm going to take care of you."

"Okay, yes." She touched him then, her palm sliding across the head, warm fingers grasping his heft. He jerked and gasped, hardening in an instant, thrusting into her hand. Her smile was sun through clouds. "Oh my."

"You... you see what you do to me."

It was all right after that. They kissed some more, and her kisses weren't like anyone's but hers, and weren't for anyone but him. Despite her caution, she was a good kisser, and held him like he belonged to her, touching him everywhere with no more shyness. When he lowered himself down her body to address her quim, she cried out and squirmed and came hard within a minute, and he knew then that she trusted him. He stayed there for a while, learning the taste of her, trying what made her gasp and groan and even grunt, a low babyish grunt that delighted him. She was small and flushed and pretty there, the dark curls unmanicured. He was free to imagine she'd never had a lover who cared to serve her all her potential pleasure.

When he went into her, she held him tight, looking stunned and glad in a way that couldn't have flattered him more, until she undercut it with a wide yawn.

They rocked softly together along the tide-line between release and sleep. He made sure she got there first, tensing into a long shudder, before he made his few last thrusts and spilled.

"I'm glad you're with me," she murmured. "I'd be too sad and scared by myself."

She was out before he could answer, even with all his weight on her. He shifted off, drawing her in against him. She pillowed her heavy head on his shoulder, her pulse already slowing into deeper slumber.

Somewhere in the midst of this laconic and ill-considered act, they'd crossed over into a state of ease together, as if there'd never been any doubt about their union at all.

Angel didn't drift off. He didn't want to miss this, the first experience of holding her while she slept, with complete abandon, in his arms. She'd been right, that there was no danger to his soul, tonight at least. Not with Wesley's death and all the suffering that surrounded Jemima foremost in his mind. But his conscience still pricked him -- what right did he have to try again, when his first foray into love brought forth nothing but carnage and misery? The pain he'd cause Jemima if he pushed her away now would be nothing to the agony that would follow if he lost himself once more.

She was so confident that wouldn't happen. Was that only because of Wesley's reassurances? And what made Wes -- who had seen him at his worst -- so sure?

In her sleep, Jemima sighed and hitched closer. One leg was thrown over his, an arm encircling him, as if he was a bolster. They might have been sleeping together for years, so relaxed was she.

She seemed to know what she was doing. Perhaps he could just trust her.

Through half-shuttered eyes, he saw the glimmer of her silver lighter on the bedside table, and the blue glow of his cell phone. A text message had come in; he reached for it.

It was from Buffy. Found Spike. All OK.

OK could mean anything. Would they be seeing Johnny again? Angel hoped not. He texted back: OK here too.

PART SIX

I don't get it, Spike. How could you come here again? How could you make a unilateral decision to -- to -- to throw yourself away -- "

"To give the boy another chance! To give him back to you! I'm the one that fucking broke him, so it was my responsibility to fix -- anyway -- I'd have been better off in there."

"In hell? How d'you figure?"

"S'what... s'what I deserve. What I've bloody well earned."

This was the effect of the soul. The soul, which had failed to restrain their son.

She'd never wanted Spike to have one. At least, not since way back at the beginning, when she was still looking for reasons not to love him. She'd long since made her peace with his casual attitude towards his own past violence. He didn't worry about what he'd done before the Initiative chipped him, and that was that. But since, his hands were clean.

"That is so full of shit I'm not even going to explain why."

"Don't you get it! His kills are on me! Had to make good on that, any way I could! S'too late for me to ever be clean again, but not for him -- !"

"Spike... what he did, he did. Yeah, everything happens because something else happened first, and yeah, we were both monumentally stupid about letting Drusilla be out there loose all this time. But Johnny killed those people, not you. The people you killed... you've been atoning for, more than thirty years. And you'll go on atoning for them. You've saved so many lives, Spike. Maybe more than you ever took, by now. Mine first among them. You don't belong in hell. Not on his account and not on yours."

He sneered. "Who appointed you St Peter?"

"I don't have to be St Peter. I'm the Slayer. That gives me dominion over the demons, pal. I say who walks."

"You'd have had Johnny back. My filthy existence for his precious life."

"Oh God. Oh God. Spike, I don't want that. I only want you. I always want you."

Her head was full of bees, enraged killer bees on the attack. She hit him again, because her muscles were singing with unexpended energy. Spike sprang to his feet to get out of her way; she leapt up and went after him with fists flying. "You -- stupid -- vampire -- don't -- don't -- don't -- take -- yourself -- away -- from -- me! GODDAMNIT! I need you!"

His roundhouse sent her sprawling in the dank dry weeds. They were scratchy, and dusty. She sneezed.

She could imagine pounding him into pulp, if she didn't stop now. She stayed down. Started to cry. He stood a ways off; she felt more than saw him, it was so dark. "I remember what I said in London -- that you should punish me -- but not like this. Please. I am sorry I went with Saleem, but I was never going to leave you. If you leave me, I will die. I will die."

"Christ, Slayer. Didn't come here to punish you."

His voice was hollow -- almost disinterested. It terrified her.

"I don't know that. I don't know what you are. You won't talk to me. You have a soul, and I see that it's -- it's tormenting you, changing you. Making you think things about yourself that are wrong. Spike, we need you, Jemmie and I, we need you."

He was crying, but when she came near him, he hit out again, so she spun around and fell, her face hot and shocked. It was years since he'd struck her.

"I don't want to fight you. What's that going to accomplish? I want to comfort you, Spike, I want you to comfort me, our boy is really dead now and we need to mourn and yet you take yourself away from me without even saying anything!" Getting up was a struggle. He didn't come to help her. In the past, she'd never have had to wait to be pulled into his arms.

He didn't love her anymore. The other night, when she'd said it by the hotel pool, and he hadn't contradicted her, it wasn't quite real. She might've only meant, you don't like me very much right now or you're numbed out from your feelings about me.

But after this, denial was fraying.

Spike said, "He deserved another chance. He could've made good, if...."

"Spike, he already had another chance. He got a soul. And what did he do with it? He went back to Drusilla, he staged a massacre, he nearly murdered Tara, and -- "

"I know! Because we didn't -- "

"We didn't what? We didn't lecture him enough? We didn't lock him up? ... I'm afraid he might've been, I dunno... a bad seed." Saying this out loud made her want to vomit. How long had she thought so? How was it possible? Yet it was true. Her child had chosen to be a savage.

"I'm the bad seed. Me. Everything I sow, it's rotten...."

"Will you stop this!" She stamped her foot, to keep from hitting out at him anymore. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself! It's not true, and you know it's not true! What about Jemmie? Who could be sweeter and better than her? She adores you and takes after you -- even if you don't care about me anymore, could you imagine what it would be for her to lose you now?"

He didn't answer. "I can't believe that a soul would make you selfish. But that's what it is, when you decide to throw yourself away like this."

A breeze kicked up, wafting the stink of the weeds, and an echo of the horrid stench on the far side of the portal. In the silence, Buffy heard the sound of her ragged breathing, and his. He had to breathe to cry. She drew the air down deep into her lungs, and hiccuped.

"Buffy... I'm afraid."

"I know you are. Oh Spike, I know."

She crawled to him. He didn't resist when she pulled him into her arms. He smelled of The Conduit, the meaty smell of fear and despair.

"I don't know how to live with this." He struck himself in the chest.

She took his fist in her hand, pulled it away. "Don't do that. There's too much pain already."

"I deserve it."

"No. No, Baby, you don't."

"He's dead an' damned. Why him, an' not me?"

"Because when he had a soul, he chose evil."

"You sound so bloody sure."

"I'm not. I'm not sure of anything. Except that we should get out of here, and never return." She rose, pulling him up with her. "C'mon."

She'd come in Xander's car, which he'd lent her. Afraid to let Spike out of her sight, Buffy left it. Someone could come back here later, in the daylight, to retrieve it. Not either of them.

As she drove, Buffy couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't some variation of I'm sorry. How had this happened? It was easy to say she hadn't loved her son enough -- or that Spike had somehow never managed to find the right way to be with him, once he hit his teens, a way that didn't make Johnny embarrassed or angry. But there had to be more -- or maybe less to it -- than that. That he'd fall in with Drusilla, knowing what he knew, didn't surprise her much. It was what came after the return of his soul that burned her deep inside like a flaming brand. To have that lodestar within oneself, and deliberately ignore its guidance. She couldn't understand it... the mere idea shamed her.

Maybe it shamed Spike, too. Maybe that was why he'd tried to choose oblivion, to undo that stigma. On Johnny and on himself.

"He... he came on to me." The words slipped out before she'd really decided on saying them.

"Eh?"

"Johnny. Came on to me. Said... gross things. I told him I'd never tell you, but... that doesn't seem to matter now. He... there didn't seem to be anything inside stopping him. From doing whatever vile thing occurred to him. He wasn't like you, Spike. There's no comparison."

"He was my son."

She wasn't sure what he meant by that. A refutation?

"He was ours."

Slumped in the passenger seat, Spike flexed his empty hands. They felt parched. His joints ached, every muscle knotted. The burns he'd sustained a day ago were only half-healed; the skin itched and crawled and stung. Inside the maw of the Conduit, he'd been like a fly in a spider's web, immobilized, shimmering in an agony that allowed for not even the merest twitch or groan. It was nothing to pay, to watch his son's reconstitution, soul and body and mind fused back together. The young man was about to step out into the world when instead, the slayer stepped in.

Stepped in and dashed his hopes.

That she was right -- absolutely and irrefutably right -- didn't make it any easier to let go. He'd wanted to give her back the little human boy she'd grown in her womb, not the vampire incubus, foul and riddled with guilt, who'd tainted her life for too long already.

But she'd chosen the incubus, and now she was dragging him back into the world -- a world where he couldn't blink without experiencing the sense-memory, visceral, compelling, of some atrocious act -- a world where all that was left of his second child was a bottomless sense of failure -- a world where his marriage was in shreds and any love coming to him was as repulsive as sunlight.

She'd called him selfish, and yeah, fucking right, he was. Exhausted, confused, steeped in self-loathing, selfish.

And hungry.

The urge to feed was like the gloating of his demon: you'll never transcend this. Never be anything more than a bloodsucker, tormented by a soul.

He could understand it, what made Johnny bolt.

Buffy pulled the car over abruptly, cut the engine.

"What're you doing?"

She turned to him, slipping out of the seat belt. "I should've brought blood for you, but there was no time."

He held her off as she tried to climb into his lap. "No."

"You drank from me yesterday, when you were burnt."

"Only because I was too out of it to refuse when you shoved your arm into my mouth. Christ, I can't be swilling slayer blood at every turn, it'll make me into -- "

"What?" Her eyes snapped. "What will it make you into? C'mon, Spike, you think I don't see that you're hating yourself, and that you're well on your way to hating me because I'm not sharing the loathing? Can't we skip that, and get to the part where we pull together and forgive each other and mourn?"

"Can't fucking skip it."

"... yeah. Well, thought I'd ask. Because...." She broke down again then, her face silver with tears in the dashboard light, until she covered it with her hands, hunching into the steering wheel.

It wasn't an act, he knew that. She wasn't trying to manipulate him into pulling her into his arms. She wasn't crying for him, or at him: she was grieving because she was a mother whose child had died after sending others to hideous deaths.

He remembered how she'd cried that night in London, after Johnny's birthday dinner that hadn't come off. She'd offered her neck to him then too, and when he'd refused it, she'd offered the cask of her quim instead. He'd pleasured her then, with disdain, because she imagined that he was so heartsick for her that such a thing could overcome betrayal.

That was just a few weeks ago, and while the enormity of the betrayal as a thing in itself was no less, yet it seemed to have happened to another Buffy, another Spike. A pair who had the luxury to build elaborate card-houses of suffering for one another, because their lives were so very static, so comfortable.

He'd relished his cruelty to her then. The look on her face when he refused to look at her, the smell of her chagrin when he walked away.

Curled beside him now, her slender back trembled as she wept into her fists. What point was there, anymore, in being unkind? It was himself he condemned, not her.

"Petal. Sssh." He stroked her hair, and when she looked up, awash and bewildered, he reached for her. "Come here. Come to Spike."

Awakening was like walking out of shelter into a choking fog of rain that was her sadness. Jemima tried to hold her mind very very still. Her heart was beating so hard she wondered that she'd slept at all. She was aware of Angel, large, cool, unbreathing, lying behind her, not quite spooning, but near. Her thighs were stuck together, she ached all over. Her whole body felt heavy, half crushed. Had she really made love with him a few hours ago? Had she really set her brother on fire? Had she really been pregnant just a few weeks ago, and ended it? Inside of herself, she was still the eight year old girl who was entrusted by Mamma to hold her infant brother, to walk him up and down while he fussed. Johnny had been a colicky baby. She could feel herself, small and skinny, lying in her narrow childhood bed in the early morning, hearing the radio playing below in the kitchen, Mamma singing tunelessly with it as she assembled breakfast. She would wait for Papa to come in and wake her up, even though she was already awake. More awake than he was at that hour, a vampire resisting his nature.

They were happy then, all of them. The bad time, when Mamma lost her leg and ran away from home, was over. In her memory, those days of her brother's infancy were steeped in gold. School was easy, she had lots of playmates, and when she came home Papa was always waiting for her on the porch. No one had a father like hers, or a mother who was a superhero and gave her eskimo kisses in bed after she returned from patrolling.

Maybe a happy childhood was, in the end, a liability. Early happiness didn't toughen you up sufficiently for what came after, so that you'd find yourself at thirty with your guts ripped open, adrift amongst those who were so much stronger and better equipped than you were.

Milo used to say that her parents shouldn't have been parents at all. Even as he claimed to love her, to be her rescuer, he could talk by the hour about how her birth defied all the laws of the supernatural universe; she was a prize given to the wrong party -- Spike and Buffy were cosmic cheaters at the Great Game. Not really good, and so not really deserving of the good.

He'd only courted and married her because he wanted to take something away from them, something they'd miss.

Thinking of him now made her cringe inside, but it was still easier than thinking about her brother.

She should think about Angel, whose bed she lay in, but her mind shied from the enormity of what she'd done last night, with such apparent ease. It might be another of the many many mistakes she'd made, one after the other all her adult life, like someone who can't take a step without tripping and falling. Probably it was a mistake. She didn't seem to know how to do anything else anymore. Her psyche was all bruises.

Headache tightened behind her eyes. She had to get up, go to the bathroom. But that would mean talking to him, and she wasn't ready. Little by little, she recalled the things she'd said to him -- bold as brass. Committing herself. Oh God. The government should issue a warning: Trauma and grief were like alcohol. When you had too much, you lost all your inhibitions, and did stupid things.

He shifted then, and his cool lips touched her shoulder. "Good morning."

She stiffened all over, and winced when she realized he would feel that, could feel her tension, smell her misgiving. He could probably almost read her mind. Tears seeped from her eyes.

Angel said, "Jemima, it's all right."

She didn't know what he meant. Nothing was all right, not from any possible angle. If her parents knew she was here, they'd be incredibly angry. Not like when she went with Milo -- a million times worse, because Milo was only a mistake, compared to Angel. Angel they would see as a... a... a perversion.

She slid out from under the sheet, without looking at him, and stood, wobbly and naked. She didn't want to be naked in front of him, but short of snatching the sheet off him and wrapping herself in it, there was nothing else to do.

Crossing to the bathroom, she wondered if he was watching her.

When she came out, wrapped in a damp robe, he was gone.

She found a note on the dresser. Heard from yr mom, she and Spike are OK. Sent Noel to the Bel Age to get your luggage -- you'll have it shortly. Don't stay here if you don't want to -- you may want to go to your aunt. We'll talk later, but don't worry about us meanwhile.

This was undeniably kind. He'd made the bed, which was kind too; either he was just very neat, or he realized she didn't want to be re-confronted with the evidence of their lovemaking. Sitting gingerly at the foot, Jemima checked her messages. A text from Buffy saying they'd be back that night. Messages from Dawn and from Willow, about meeting later at the hospital.

The luggage came. She dressed and went back to see Tara.

The room was shoddy and smelled funny. They'd made love in a lot of little holes like this over the years, as if theirs was an illicit affair rather than a marriage. Spike didn't want to be here now, but he couldn't not follow Buffy's lead. She yanked the slippery bedspread down with one sharp tug, started shedding her clothes, as if they only had the room for a few minutes.

Her eyes were large, hungry, full of foreboding. He didn't know how he could touch her. The unfathomable bitterness towards her that had clogged his mind for months and months was gone, replaced by a sense of his own futility and error. He wanted to leave and drive into the sunrise. He could see that she felt it, his reluctance and revulsion large as a house, and that it terrified her.

"I need you. Spike, I need you so much." Sitting on the side of the bed, she drew him to her, opened his jeans, took his limp cock in her hand. "Please. Please be with me." She kissed the head, drew it into her mouth. Buffy never lowered her eyes from his; her face was white, shocked, eyes pleading so he was flooded with shame, even as he went hard between her lips.

She should have loved the mage Saleem, with his white magic and his purity of soul. But Spike understood in that moment that she'd only ever been intrigued by him, the way one is intrigued by a seemingly insoluble puzzle. But she'd never loved the bloody bastard, and never could, because Buffy couldn't love what wasn't dark at the center. She'd learned on Angel, and practised to perfection on him.

She could love him, though it was impossible that he love himself.

Luckily he didn't need to, to do what she expected right now.

They strained togther, bumping and bruising. She was wet, swollen, at a peak of desperate arousal though he'd barely touched her before they came together. Sweat poured off her as she thrust up into his downstrokes, her whole body sensitized, singing like a wire. This was their reunion, what she'd been waiting for, begging for, and it wasn't working. Spike was in her, but not really there. She ground harder, grunting the way she did in childbirth, caught in a similar effort of trying to achieve something that would not respond to her will alone. She needed to break through to him, to pull him with her into climax, and so into being hers again. He shied away from looking at her. She shook him.

"No! Be with me! Please -- !"

She squeezed until his body bucked, then froze. Spike convulsed, biting her neck with blunt teeth, letting out a long lowing cry that she'd never heard him make, and never wanted to hear again. She flushed, caught in a rush of heat and stink that made her shudder. He pulled away, staggering up. A moment later he was being sick in the bathroom. She lay still on the wet sheet, her arousal already turned to cold glue, listening to his retching, followed by the running of the shower.

She went and got into it with him. They washed without speaking, backs turned.

There was still enough of night left to get back to LA. At the hotel where Dawn and Xander were, they took rooms on different floors, and parted.

Sunlight streamed in the windows of her hospital room. The light made Tara feel safe, even as she chided herself for being afraid overnight. The worst had already happened. But she still felt weak, and faint. This was too close a call. The kind of thing that made you question your life, even as you clung to the miracle of it.

The bite wound itched, and the rest of the day was going to hold a lot of tiresome talk -- or tiresome silences -- leading up to Johnny's funeral that night, and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce's the next. These people, the former Scoobies, were her friends of years, of course. But distant ones, now. She seldom left San Francisco; Johnny and Jem were the only ones who'd visited her with any regularity over the last decade. None of them knew her friends, her concerns, the patterns of her days. She missed her not-quite-girlfriend, wanted to get back home and turn that affair into something more solid.

She was far from home, and tired. There was nothing quite so likely to make you feel old and fragile than being nearly emptied out by a vampire who used to be someone you loved.

Here was Jemima in the doorway, her face nearly obscured by the enormous vase of pink flowers she carried. She didn't seem too steady on her pins. "I brought you these. Are you better today?"

In that first glimpse, she saw Jemima with a fresher -- more critical -- eye than she ever had. And it occurred to Tara, with a strange turning in her mind, that she was angry.

Tara had always appreciated Jemima's soft, affectionate nature. They were alike that way, and she appreciated how, despite the troubles Jemima stumbled into, that sweetness never hardened. But this trouble -- this wasn't making and clinging to an ill-fated marriage. This was life and death -- Tara's own. How could the girl -- except she was not a girl, she was thirty, old enough to know better -- how could she be so fond, so foolish, as to bring a vampire of such dubious motives in among them without calling for help? She was the slayer's daughter -- she of all people should've known the risk.

"I'm better. I'm all right really. They're going to release me in a little while, after a last check."

"Are you really okay?" Her voice rose, quavered. She hesitated at the foot of the bed, the flowers a large and silly impediment. "I'm sorry I was so stupid."

"Well," Tara found herself saying, "You were."

Jemima clearly wasn't expecting such straightforward agreement. She stared, frozen, and for a second it looked like the vase of flowers might come crashing down.

"I know... I know I was. You're right to be mad at me."

"You know what they used to say, trust but verify. You didn't verify."

"Everything I was taught about what it means to have a soul...."

"Yes. That's why I let him into my home when he came there. But this time -- " Tara sighed. "You just refused to believe the evidence."

Jemima set the flowers on the windowsill -- there was already an arrangement, sent by Dawn and Xander, on the bedside table -- and fussed with them, her back turned. Her mortification was a sickly-colored aura.

"I still love you, though." Admitting her anger eased it. The last thing she wanted now was to quarrel with those who remained. Anyway, she didn't have the energy. From head to toe she felt delicate, friable as old newspaper. "Jemima, I forgive you. You're a loving body, and that's still better than the opposite."

She turned slowly. How pale she was, how furtive and unhappy. Tara held out her arms. "Come here. I haven't said yet how sorry I am about your brother's death."

Jem gave herself to the embrace with the fervor of reprieve.

"I think Papa went to try to stop it again. Mamma went after him. She sent a text saying they were all right. I think that means Papa failed."

"That's better, don't you think?" The sternness of her own voice surprised Tara a little. All of this reminded her why, though she loved these people and considered them family, she'd had to put some geographical distance between herself and their ever-cropping dramas.

"Of course I do. I couldn't lose Papa." She shivered into tears. "Oh Tara, I shouldn't burden you with anything else! But I didn't go after him like I did the first time! I... I stayed with Angel." Trembling in Tara's arms, she lifted her face. "Papa will be so angry about that. And Mamma too."

"Because you didn't follow them to the Conduit? I think neither of them would want you to be anywhere near that place ever again."

Jemima shook her head. "No -- they won't like it that I stayed with Angel."

"That you -- oh. Oh. We're talking stayed in the sense of -- "

Her blush was more blotchy than girlish. It was then that Tara associated the girl's swollen mouth and tired eyes with something besides a sleepless night of worrying about her health. Well.

"You're regretful."

Jemima didn't answer. She drew away, composed herself, took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and dabbed at her face. "If they're letting you out today, where will you go? You can't drive back to San Francisco on your own."

"I'm not going home yet. There are the funerals."

"Oh yes." The reminder seemed to stun her.

"Willow will take me in. She has an apartment here. She's dealing with some of my paperwork now."

"Staying with Willow, while you're still feeling punk!"

Tara laughed. "Oh, don't forget, we're old friends."

"I wouldn't have brought these flowers if I knew you were leaving already. I thought they'd keep you here another night."

"Maybe I'm too strong for my own good."

"Oh Auntie Tara, that couldn't be!"

"They're beautiful flowers, Jemmie. Why don't you give them to someone else along the hall?"

"That's a good idea. I'll do that now." She picked up the vase again, and pretending to inhale the aroma of the blooms, murmured, "I'm in love with Angel."

"I thought you might be. You sound worried, though."

"I'm not worried that either of us will be too happy -- the others will hate it enough! Except that I... I am very happy. In the middle of all this... terrible... misfortune. Last night... he made me so happy." She was in tears again, the inconsistent fall of a spring rainshower. She looked at once bewildered and exalted, her wet lips quivering. "Here you were in the hospital, and my parents gone off to -- and that's what I did. Made love with Angel."

Impossible to resent this. It was life -- it was life reasserting itself. Tara wasn't surprised.

"Will you support me, Auntie?"

Jemima hadn't called her auntie in speech this way for years and years. It was telling. "I support you, if he's what you want. What do you want?"

"I want to be with him. I want to be necessary to him. I haven't really thought about it beyond that yet." She was at the door. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Left aone, Tara smiled. Amidst her apologies, Jemima had been rather ruthless about asserting her own concerns. It was charming, even refreshing, to see her behave like any other young woman in love. Tara's own heart was stirred. She'd tell Kate about this; it would make a thrilling story, and a good prelude to her own plea that they end their uncertainty, and just plunge.

The nurse had changed her dressing for a smaller, neater one. She was on her feet, combing her hair, when Willow appeared.

"You look just fine."

Tara turned from the mirror. "Not as good as you."

"Hey, who's making comparisons?"

"Do you ever let anyone see the real you? Do you ever see her yourself anymore?"

"What are you talking about? This is the real me."

"I guess it is, by now, at that." Tara said. Did Willow's girls have any idea how old she was? The question suggested its own answer. She put the comb away, glancing around for anything she might have forgotten. "I'm ready to get out of here."

"You're supposed to go in the wheelchair. I'll get the nurse."

"I can walk."

"You know they won't let you, so you might as well sit down, and let me wheel you out like the Queen of Sheba."

"Jemima is coming right back. I want to wait for her."

"Oh? So what am I, chopped liver?"

"Of course not. I told her I'm going to stay with you." Tara seated herself, holding her chin up at the requisite queenly angle, in the wheelchair. "But I need her to strew the rosepetals in our path."

Jemima returned to the Hyperion in mid-afternoon. Her footsteps sounded loud in her ears as she crossed the lobby. The place seemed deserted; she scanned the loggia, wondering if Angel might be watching her from the shadows. She'd seen her mother for a few minutes at Willow's, where Tara, Xander and Dawn were gathered to wait out the time until the funeral. Mamma's eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. She'd barely spoken, and when Jemima asked her about Papa, she only said, "I think he's asleep. He wasn't feeling very well." Her hug was detached.

No one came out to intercept her. Despite what she'd said to Tara, Jemima wasn't sure of her welcome here. She wasn't sure of anything. The world was prickly, outsized, menacing. She didn't feel firmly situated in time: memories lashed her like rain-squalls -- her brother's sulky voice. Milo, imploring her to come home. The flat white light of the abortion clinic's treatment room. Angel's big hands on her body.

She ached all over, with a congested soreness between her legs. Last night she'd liked how small and delicate and full she felt beneath him; now she couldn't quite believe what she'd done. Given herself to someone who'd had her mother, her father. The last man either of them would want her to touch, to look at. And how could she love him when she didn't even know him?

In Angel's suite, she opened her suitcase. The bright new clothes she'd bought in Los Angeles were wrong for funerals -- they felt wrong for her at all, too bold, too assuming.

The thought of shopping for something new literally floored her. Sinking down beside her strewn suitcase, she began to sob.

Then he was there, pulling her into his arms. "I didn't want to crowd you, but it killed me to hear you in here crying all alone."

She curled against him, her heart surging. She couldn't speak, but it didn't seem necessary. He demanded nothing. She remembered how much she liked him, how comfortable he was. His big arms were bulwarks.

After a while, calmer, she put a hand to his face. "You make me feel teensy."

"You're what they used to call a Pocket Venus."

"Who's they?"

The massive brow furrowed. "It's a thing fellows used to say in London... couple hundred years back or so."

"Oh. I'm not usually like this."

"Teensy?"

"Distant. And obscure. Like I was when we got up. I'm not in the habit of making my lovers sorry the morning after. My... uh, purely theoretical lovers."

"I couldn't be sorry for last night, not even if I had to be. I just thought... you might be. You've got plenty of reasons, I know." He shifted as if to separate from her, but she held on.

"It's just that... when I woke up... I remembered everything. I wished I could sink back into oblivion, but it doesn't work that way. Life just comes on fast."

"Maybe too fast," he said. "Jemima, the last thing I want is to hurt you."

"I don't think you have. I was only crying because I have nothing to put on for the funeral." This was only a small fib. "It's just... it's just all too much."

"I think I can help with a dress. Wait here."

He went out, and returned a few minutes later with six black dresses on hangers. "I hope you don't think this is too morbid -- these were Constanza's. She had the visions before your brother. She'd certainly have lent you something to wear, if she was here."

She began to look at the dresses, to cover her embarrassment. Three of them were low-cut vintage 1950s cocktail dresses of watered satin, silk, tulle. Two more were gothic constructions dripping with lace -- Miss Havisham as a flamenco dancer. The last one was a Capezio shift with a stand-up collar, three-quarter sleeves, high waist. It was short, but at least it was simple. "Thanks."

"You should keep all of these if you like them."

"I don't know... wouldn't it be odd for you, for the others, to see me in her clothes?"

"She loved collecting them, wearing them. Talking about them. She'd wouldn't want them to languish unworn."

"I'll think about it. You should tell me about her some time." Now. Now would be a good time. She was ready to grasp at any distraction.

"Have you heard from your parents?"

"I just saw Mamma, at Willow's. They're all there, except for Papa. I don't know what's going on. Mamma said he didn't feel well. Maybe he got injured at the Conduit. Or maybe he just can't deal, and wanted to be alone until we start for Sunnydale, for the funeral." A new worry rose to uppermost. "He's going to know about us, though. Papa will know."

Angel dropped his gaze, stepped back from her. "Yeah, he will. But it can just be... we can decide it was just... a thing. That won't have a sequel."

He said we, but she realized, looking at his carefully guarded face, that he meant you. Under that impassive mask, he was already committed.

And still trying, at his great expense, to be kind to her.

All her misgiving of the morning was gone, like mist burned out of a valley. The thought of denying him, of walking away from this sweetness flowering so unexpectedly in the midst of their mutual crisis, made her cry again. "Do you really think I would say yes to that? Do you really think I would go to bed with you if I wasn't sure it meant something to me?"

Angel wore his look of a Newfoundland dog. "It might mean something one day... and something else the next. That wouldn't make you a bad person, under the circumstances. After what you went through yesterday...."

"No. No. I am not like that." She didn't go up to him, because she needed the distance so as to look into his face without throwing back her head. That made her feel girlish, and she needed to impress him now as an adult. "I'm sorry you had to feel that, even for a few hours. Oh Angel, I am sorry for this morning. When I woke up, I did regret... but it didn't last long. And I don't think it'll recur. I would have liked to make love to you again, and lie there with you and talk. That would've been so much better."

The tension went out of his shoulders. "We could still do that. There's a few hours before we have to leave...."

When he heard the knock on his hotel room door, Spike rose quickly, hoping it would be Buffy. He'd given up on any hope of falling asleep, and wanted to talk to her. He couldn't think of anything except how destroyed she'd looked when they parted a few hours ago. He hadn't wanted the sex, but he had meant to comfort her, certainly not to add to her desperation. Yet when they got into it, something physically happened to him that he didn't understand. He still felt the after-effects.

It was Xander at the door. Disappointment bloomed and died in a moment.

"Buffy said you weren't feeling well, but the undead don't get headaches. So I thought maybe you might want to talk, mano-a-mano."

Xander wore a suit, ready for the funeral which Dawn and he had arranged. His handsome face drooped, and he carried his shoulders high.

"Yeah, c'mon in. Fancy a drink?"

When they were sitting with their glasses, Xander talked a little about the preparations, and what they might do afterwards. Johnny's remains -- which were to be represented by a small, empty urn, as there weren't any -- were to be interred next to Joyce Summers in the cemetary in Sunnydale. Dawn had negotiated with the cemetary management to have the service after dark. Since none of them lived in Sunnydale anymore, there was a question of where to go after the service at the gravesight.

Xander moved his glass around so the ice cubes clinked. "Think we'll want to get liquored up? Or will we just want coffee?"

"How did Buffy look just now?"

Xander started. Spike noticed, as if for the first time, how though his hair was full and dark, his sideburns were more than half gray. He was getting on. After all, the boy had just turned twenty-one. Twenty-one, that significant birthday, after which one was supposed to be a man. Why twenty-one? Why not twenty, or twenty-two? Something to do with three times seven, no doubt. Seven was one of those mystical numbers. There was a song about being the seventh son of a seventh son, how that made one invulnerable. Being the son of a slayer ought to make one stronger too, but it hadn't worked that way.

"How did she look? She looked... gutted." Xander squinted at him. "Like you do."

Spike meant to say, it's nothing, but it came out "I'm nothing."

"Don't talk like that."

He frowned. "Xander... something happened. I wish you could tell her I didn't mean it. I couldn't control my...."

"What?" Xander rose and came to sit beside him. Spike was grateful for that closeness; Xander wasn't touching him, but he could feel the warmth of his body. Spike felt in his soul that everything alive ought to revolt against him, but he was still glad that Xander was here.

"I don't know how to live with any of this. I tried to get the boy back, and she came an' stopped it. She was right to stop it. Suppose she was. Then afterwards... I humiliated her. Didn't mean to -- I swear I didn't! She wanted... she wanted me, an' we were in bed... something happened to me, I don't know what. I came over all queer an' ill, I sicked up... she thought it was because of her."

"Christ, Spike."

"She already thinks I don't love her anymore. Whereas... I think I love her more than ever. But it's no good, because of what I am."

"Hey, listen," Xander said. "You're grieving. You've had a terrible shock, the worst... I think it must be the worst thing, to lose your child. Now isn't the time for you to be passing judgement on yourself. Why not put that aside, and be guided for a while by the people who love you?"

"No one should love me."

"You sound like me now, circa 2000. Xander the vampire hater, hating the idea that Buffy loved you. But I changed my mind about you, and I've never for a minute thought about changing it back. You'd better just trust me now, Spike. Getting your soul back can only make you an even better person. I get that it hurts. But don't cast yourself out."

Xander was... Xander, all kindness. But he didn't understand. "What happened when I was with her -- was like my soul -- an' the whole bloody universe -- tellin' me to get off her. Felt this flash of heat, like I was on fire inside, like I was gonna be torn apart. Sure seemed like proof to me, that I'm not right with... the world. Or the Powers That Be. Or, anything." Describing it made the sensations almost come back; his vision darkened, blurred, and he shivered at the memory of that weird heat. "I was tryin' to give her what she asked for, poor girl thought I was still angry at her, an' I'm not." He rose, began to pace. His muscles felt jerky, he was missing his usual sense of his own physical grace. The force that animated him, that was always so smooth and full and strong, was blocked, staticky. "Xander, will you tell her? Will you tell her I'm sorry? For everything?"

"I think you should tell her yourself. Let's call and get her over here. There's still time before we go, you two can talk."

"I can't talk to her. What, make excuses? I'm sick, I'm sick inside, an' I can't do anything." This was it, the soul-sickness he'd read about in old novels. It wasn't entirely unfamiliar -- he'd suffered it before, at Cambridge, at home in London, before his death. Terrible pangs of self-conscious shame and revulsion at his failures. But what then had he really had to regret? Little, little things, nothings. Whereas now.... "I can't stay here. I've got to go."

"You're going to walk out on us? On her?"

"Please tell her... tell her she had nothing to regret, that she did nothing wrong. None of you did. Tell Jemmie too. It's me that's wrong, an' can't be a friend, or a father or a husband."

Xander was on his feet now too, blocking his way towards the suite door. Spike laid his hands gently on Xander's arms, squeezed them. "Don't. I know everything you'd say, an' it's all a credit to you, heart an' head, but I can't. I know I'm a coward -- she said so too. But I'm no good to her or Jemmie or myself." It was right, it was better, for sick things to crawl off alone. He wasn't sure exactly that he wanted to die -- he wasn't sure of anything, except that he couldn't face Buffy again, or his daughter, or stand through the funeral service and the gathering afterwards. If he was to wrestle with his soul, he had to do it on his own, with no one near to impart useless consolations.

"Spike man, don't do this." Xander's eyes were large and sad. "You're in no condition to be by yourself now. Stay with us."

"I can't."

"Look, if you don't want to go to the funeral... I'll hang here with you. We can get toasted and talk about Johnny. The others will understand that. Afterwards, you and Buffy can -- "

"No. No. Please, Xander -- " He imagined the one good roundhouse that would drop Xander like a stone, leave the way clear for him to walk out, leave the way clear for Xander to say, He really is the same nasty fuck he always was. Instead he pulled him into a hug. "Tell her not to worry. I'm not gonna do myself in. I just... I need time. Can't figure out what I am with all of you around me, believing you already know. Do you see that?" He drew back, looked into his friend's face.

For a moment, Xander wouldn't meet his eyes. When he did, he looked miserable, his mouth a thin line. He was making such an effort to be fair, to see all sides, that the lines of his face looked queasy. "Yeah, I get it. Only you know Buffy will blame herself."

"Say I said not to. Say I know she'll be unhappy, only it'll be worse if I'm there, whether she thinks so or not. I know. Tell her I don't want her to be hurt anymore."

"Spike, I wish you'd think this through a little more. If you still want to leave, you can leave tomorrow."

"Don't let her go back to Reykjavik on her own, if you can help it. Bring her to stay a while with you an' Dawn."

"Yes."

"An' tell her I'm sorry for it all. Every last bit. Tell her."

Xander's eyes were red. He lifted his hands in a gesture half violent, half resigned. "I'll tell her."

"Are you in there?" Smiling, Angel brushed the tousled hair from her eyes. "There you are. Ah, look at you." He drew her up to him, kissed her swollen mouth, her fluttering eyelids. "Lovely Jemmie, the belle of... of..."

"Not of York, please, though it was my last address. I'll be the Belle of the Hotel Hyperion."

She heard a hint of brogue in his voice that she'd never detected before. She remembered a high school girlfriend telling her that if you once gave an Irishman a blowjob, he'd be yours forever. Well, he's mine now. She smiled back, and curled her hand around his cock. It was half-hard again already, though he'd come twice in less than an hour; it excited her the way she remembered being excited about toys as a little girl. Certain playthings were so involving that she could not be pried away from them for anything -- not for meals or baths or sleep.

"You like that, do you?"

"It likes me." She could still scarcely believe it. Holding it in both hands, tugging gently, caressing the tip with her thumb, Jemima watched it rise and fill.

"It does. I do. You're a sexy little thing." His own hand found its way between her sticky thighs, pressed the good spot that made her wriggle. He caught her again in a kiss, then lifted her to straddle him.

They'd fucked once already, not waiting to undress or pull down the bedclothes. She'd come almost as soon as he was inside her, her whole body jolting in surprise, and went on erupting in deep ripples of pleasure, wrapped tight around him, flexing and panting, as his own movements went faster, wilder. Something about his great size and strength -- he held her as if she weighed nothing -- freed her from all self-consciousness. Her desire for him seemed to spring from a deeper place than any she'd ever felt before. Orgasm fed it, like an underground well, leaving her, after pleasure, satisfied, yet wanting more.

She'd never yet in her life had as much of this as she wanted, and the intimation that now she might, with him, made her dizzy.

Sat on his belly, she looked at him, stretched out beneath her, with awe. Knowing that this same view, and all the others, were shared by both her parents, she wondered if they could have experienced this level of titillated delight and adoration. A little voice in the back of her mind still warned her that this was wrong, he was wrong, because of his past, because of her parents, because of all sorts of things she didn't even know about. But he was smiling at her, one hand tucked behind his head, the middle finger of the other working in where her splayed pussy met his own smooth taut skin. She pressed down against it, the smallest movement making her bubble.

"You should see yourself," Angel said. "Pretty Jem -- just the sight of you makes me hard." She flushed with pleasure at this praise. Then she heard, as if he was right there with them, her brother's insinuating voice in her ear: ... not so pretty, really, are you? You're kind of plain. Mamma and Papa and I, we're the pretty ones. A wave of confusion washed over her; she closed her eyes. Then Angel was sitting up, his arms coming around her to hold her there. "Don't. Whatever it is, don't. Stay with me."

She opened again. "There's so little time."

"No, there's all the time." He stroked her hair. "There's all the time, and it'll get better. I promise you."

She was grateful that he seemed to know her thoughts.

Beneath her, his erection sprang tight and hard against the seam of her body. She shifted, taking it in her fingers, guided it to the slick place that wanted it. As she sank down, with an exquisite sensation of stretching and giving way inch by inch, Angel lay back again. He took her hands, held them up and apart. "There you are, radiant as a fairy queen on her finest charger."

She felt like one -- at least, a queen who'd never tried to straddle such a large and spirited horse before, and was caught between exhiliration and panic. She exhaled a giggle. "Remind me to tell you some time, about the first time I tried to ride a horse. Or -- or maybe not."

"Ride me now. Gallop me hard, girl." He shifted under her, thrusting up. It was like a massive carousel starting; Jemima hung on tight to his hands and laughed out. Everything was just a little too much, bigger and more intense than she thought she could handle. She had no control. Except that in the back of her mind she knew that she could curb him with the smallest look, and this sensation of being filled to bursting, off-balance and overwhelmed, was what she wanted most in the world right now.

It was over too soon, and then the clock said they could only lie there a few minutes more. The air smelled of the sea-foam of their exertions. She wanted to grasp onto each minute as the digits melted into each other.

"You're glowing," Angel murmured.

"I'm never going to ask you if you love me as much as you loved my mother." The words came out before she realized she was saying them. She wouldn't have been able to speak them at all, except that she was lying with her head on his chest, and couldn't see his face. "And I'm not going to ask about your affair with Papa. I think I understand it, and if I don't... I'd rather not talk about it anyhow. But I know it's over and that it doesn't matter to us."

"Jemmie." He held her face now in his hands. "Look at me."

"I see you." His palms were so cool against her burning cheeks.

"Maybe this isn't the right time to say this... but I want to now, before... before we see the others. You know you're not the first woman I've loved... and I can't promise you'll be the last. But I love you with all my heart."

She felt this assertion in her body, a suffusion of joy that flowed through the grief and worry like ink in water.

"Now I've dared that much, I'm ready to dare it all. I want to give you everything I have. I want you with me every day. Will you stay with me? Live with me?"

"Oh Angel. I -- "

He put a finger to her lips. "On second thought, no. Don't answer now, Jemmie. Tell me later. I want you to feel free."

She knew he meant, free to change her mind against the onslaught of disapproval that would come when her parents learned about this. "I don't need to feel free. I'm -- "

"Sssh. Not yet. Hold it here," he said, cupping a hand over her chest where it vibrated with her thudding pulse, "and tell me later."

Bathed in the calm fervor of his tone, understanding suffused her: what her husband had for her all those years was not love, because this was love, and she'd never felt it before, not from a man to her as a woman. Passion like this was something that Mamma and Papa had, and that most other people only fantasized about. She'd always imagined it wasn't for the likes of her -- she couldn't quite remember when it was that she'd decided her lot in life wouldn't include it, but it was an old feeling, so old she'd never questioned it. Now it was here, she was almost afraid she'd drown in it.

The clock ticked over to the top of the hour. With an effort, Jemima sat up, twisted around to kiss Angel's mouth once more, and rose, unsteady as a newborn fawn. On her feet, the rest of her life crashed back on her, with a hard cold slap of a massive wave breaking. This new happiness would have to coexist, maybe for a long time, with sadness and mourning and loss.

In the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror, trying to see the radiant fairy queen. She saw only herself, lips swollen so they were almost pouty, the skin around them reddened by the force of his kisses, blotches of same on her neck and shoulders and jaw, hair all everywhere and eyes misty. She could still feel his hands and mouth on her tender breasts, her pussy throbbing with a soreness that was an echo of pleasure.

Had Johnny not been turned, all this would never have come in her way. She closed her eyes and her fists against that realization, which felt like a blasphemy, pushed it firmly out of her mind.

After her shower, she carefully did her hair and make-up, seating the garnet barrette at the side of her parting like a totem. As she stroked on the mascara, she realized that she knew something she hadn't known a few moments ago. As she blinked at herself, she knew it more firmly, in more detail.

She came out, still wrapped in the damp towel. Angel had showered elsewhere, and was back in the room, half dressed. There was a thrill in seeing him, barefoot in his dark trousers, rummaging in his dresser drawers for a clean undershirt, his moist hair stood up with gel. She slipped panties and bra on under the towel, laid it aside and pulled the Courreges dress on over her head.

"Zip me?" She blushed as she turned her back to him, felt his hand at the nape of her neck. There was an intimacy to this dressing together that was deeper to her even than making love. It seemed like the right moment to speak, as he planted a kiss behind her ear.

"Some kind of very large demon with three tusks sticking out of its head is going to give birth to a whole bunch of other demons with three tusks, and they're going to want to eat people to get strong. In Venice Beach, it looked like. Thursday night."

Angel caught her by the shoulders. "What?"

She turned to face him. "I just... that's it. I don't know how, but I feel very sure of it. I should be able to show you exactly where, if we go there together."

"Shit. Shit. Are you all right? Do you feel sick?"

"Why should I? I'm fine." He looked so thunderstruck; she took his face in her hands and kissed him. "I'm fine."

"But you had a vision." There was a pleading in his voice, as if he longed for her to contradict him.

"Did I?... oh. Do you think so?"

"Does your head hurt? Do you feel off-balance? Like you might have a seizure? Pass out?" He was holding her now as if he expected her imminent collapse.

She shook her head. "No migraine. No seizure. I just... while I was in the shower, it just... came to me. Like something I remembered."

"Jemmie, my God. This isn't what I wanted for you. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? ... oh. Does this mean I'm The One With The Visions now?"

"I think so. But it's supposed to hurt."

"Oh, but I can see those things, remember? Mystical openings. I have since I was seven. Maybe that's why."

"And you're really not in pain?"

"From the vision? No. I've got enough else...."

He was kissing her again, hungrily and sadly, as if he could extract this new detail by sucking it out, like a poison.

"Angel -- it's all right. It's all right. It only means I'm meant to be here, doesn't it? It means my place really is with you."

"This doesn't change what I said. You're still free to choose -- "

His earnest anxious face made her smile. She caressed his cheek. A flare of fear rose in her: in a little while this affair, so delicate and personal, would be opened up to her parents. Opened up at the funeral of her only brother, amid their already crushing anguish. What would happen? She shied from imagining. It was too late to change it. It was too late when she came back here with Angel after Wesley's death. It was probably too late before that.

"I've chosen. The choosing's done. I mean -- hello? How could I give you up now?"

To fill the place left empty by Spike, Willow and Tara rode down with them, instead of in Willow's car. Dawn, still treated by them all like the youngest, with the fewest privileges, had to sit in the middle of the back seat, but there was plenty of room between her sister's slender haunches, and Willow's. All the way there, Buffy held herself apart, as much as she was able, her head close to the window.

Jemima had called to say Angel would drive her down. Dawn wondered about that a little -- Angel hadn't explicitly been invited to the funeral, but then, why wouldn't he come? Johnny's last home, if you could call it that, was the Hyperion, and Angel was completely involved in all this mess. Recalling how the two of them remained behind in the hospital lounge the other night, standing at an odd angle to one another beneath the harsh fluorescents and yet appearing, in that glimpse, to be at ease as if they'd known each other for a long time, Dawn wondered how it could be. Her niece had never met Angel before all this trouble began. Though Buffy still considered him a dear friend -- and confided in him, as Dawn knew, things she didn't even tell to Spike -- nonetheless she'd kept him carefully on the outside margin of her life. But now Jemima spoke of Angel as of someone accustomed, I'll be coming there with Angel. It struck Dawn as odd, though when she passed it on to Buffy, her sister didn't react at all. Not that there could be anything between Angel and Jemima. Dawn was embarrassed at herself for even thinking of it, at a time like this. And she knew that neither of them was at all likely to be attracted to the other, even aside from all the other considerations.

No. Angel was acting out of friendship to Buffy, to the family. He must feel a sense of failure over Johnny's fate as well. Spike came to him for help, and Johnny slipped past them all.

Getting out of the car at the cemetery, Dawn took deep breaths of the sweet evening air. All the way down from LA, she'd felt stifled in the heavy silence. Her sister didn't speak a word or make a sound; her face, carefully made up, was nevertheless grey and still. For the first time ever, Dawn thought she could see Buffy's fifty years etched there. Spike's absence was a palpable hurt. Dawn couldn't remember a time since they'd moved on from Sunnydale when her sister was so shot full of holes.

As terrible as it was to lose their mother, Johnny's death, Dawn could tell, was worse for Buffy. None of the other losses in the years between: their father, Faith, even Giles, devastating as that was, came close.

Xander squeezed her hand as they walked through a light drizzle to the gravesight. They could see it from far off, because a couple of lights on poles were set up there. Dawn squeezed back. Her other arm was hooked through Buffy's, who was supported on the far side by Willow.

When they were near enough to see the stone, and the opening in the ground -- a small black square, just wide enough to accomodate the urn, that yet seemed to yawn like the mouth of some terrible animal -- Buffy stumbled, dragging on their arms. A high, terrible wail rent the air. If not for them holding her, she would have fallen to her hands and knees.

But they couldn't hold a slayer who wanted to get free; she broke from them, and flung herself on her knees near the hole, digging her two hands into the small pile of earth. They hurried after her; Dawn got there first, grabbing her shoulders. "Buffy, don't! Don't do this!"

Her sister craned around to look at her; her eyes so wide that white showed all around the iris. "There's nothing left of him! My baby boy and there's nothing!"

"That... that isn't true. We all remember him. We all think of him, and that's what's important." Dawn didn't know that she believed this, and was amazed at herself for coming up with it so smoothly. She tugged. "Buffy, please stand up."

"He's gone. He's gone... gone," Buffy babbled. "Spike left me. Everyone always goes... am I so terrible, am I really so terrible that I drive them all from me?" She started. "Where's Jemima? Why isn't Jemmie here?"

"Here she comes now," Xander said. He'd opened an umbrella, was holding it over them as the rain came down more heavily.

Dawn turned, in time to see Jemima break from Angel's side and start running towards them. Her face and legs glowed, and she seemed to bound along, very light and quick. Dawn wasn't sure why she noticed this so much, but it struck her. Then Jemima reached them, kneeling beside her mother and pulling her into her arms. They swayed together, Buffy weeping and Jemima silent, until Angel reached them. Then Jemima looked up, not at Angel but at the rest of them, and asked for her father.

"He's... uh, not here," Xander said. "He asked me to apologize to you, to both of you. He -- "

"Your father can't bear the sight of me," Buffy said, her wide mouth curdling as she spat the words out. "My touch is repulsive to him. He's left me."

"Wh-what? What?" Jemima looked up at each of them in turn, her eyes full of horror and questions.

"That's not it," Xander said. "No. He's... he's in a bad place, and... I told him it wasn't true, but he felt it was better all around if he not be here with us. He has to figure himself out. He's in a very bad place." Xander stumbled over the words, as if he didn't really believe them, or was making them up on the spot.

"And I'm in a very good one," Buffy said. She rose so fast that she almost knocked Jemima back, and threw herself with sudden force against Angel. He caught her, astonished. "You left me first. After my father. You left and got it all started."

"Buffy, that's not true!" Willow stepped forward, stretching a hand towards her, but Buffy retreated, pressing herself against Angel. The others chimed in too, saying that it wasn't true, Spike hadn't left in the sense of never coming back, and weren't they all here with her, closer than ever after all these years, and wouldn't it be better if she tried to calm down? She hid her face in Angel's shirt, sobbing and shaking. He held her, but tentatively, as if he wasn't sure what to do or how to do it. Dawn saw him look towards Jemima, and saw Jemima turn her face away.

Which was odd.

Next she spotted the minister they'd engaged to say a few words, standing off to the side under a large black umbrella held over them both by a cemetery worker. He was shifting from foot to foot, and when he saw her looking, gave a questioning gesture at his watch. She nodded, and turned back to Buffy.

"Sweetie, we have to get started now." There was something as terrible to Dawn in seeing Buffy's retreat into Angel as in seeing her plunging her hands into the dirt a minute ago. The sight of Buffy's distress, her weakness, frightened Dawn at a level below speech, below conscious feeling. Buffy was the strong one, so when she was broken, anything and everything might break in a moment.

Jemima's voice, wavering, then strengthening, spoke across them. "If Papa isn't here, I'm sure it's because... because... he's doing the best he can. So are you, so are we all. Mamma, we're all hurting. Let's not be angry at each other."

Buffy allowed herself to be drawn away from Angel. With one arm around her daughter and another around Dawn, she let them position her by the open hole, as the minister stepped up and greeted them, his book already open in his hand.

Xander put an arm around her from the other side. "I wish he'd written it down," he whispered. "I mean, when he told me what he felt, it made sense. But I just made a hash out of telling it."

"It's really okay, honey." A surge of love for him came over her, so that tears pricked at her eyes. Xander Harris. Xander Harris. Xander Harris. He steadied her. Made life sweet.

The service began. Apart from an occasional hiccupping sob from Buffy, they were all quiet, listening to the minister, or probably not listening to him. Dawn didn't listen. She thought about Johnny, how when he'd come to visit them for a week last summer, he and Xander got into a video game tournament that ate hours and hours of daylight every day, while she tried to roust them out to go do something in the sunshine, for heaven's sake. The pair of them had cackled like evil hens over their play, as the beer bottles piled up on the coffee table. They'd really enjoyed themselves.

Suddenly she found herself remembering Buffy's wedding. That crazy wedding -- she'd surprised herself and all of them by the vehemence of her objection, when Buffy and Spike first announced their intention -- but vampires can't get married! They'd all stared at her like she'd grown a horn. In the silence she'd felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck, until Spike said, in his inimitable low growl, "Big Bad always does just what he pleases."

And he had. He'd put on a dark slim-cut suit, and real shoes, and worn a flower pinned to his lapel, and looked prouder and happier than she'd ever seen him when Giles walked Buffy towards him, arrayed in that clinging white chemise, flowers in her hand, her hair and skin shining as gold. She'd still had the artificial leg then, but you'd never know it, so smoothly did she glide towards him, borne by happiness, and the dress was slit up the good side, so her shapely tanned leg flashed out of the white satin. They'd married themselves, like Quakers, speaking their vows while the witnesses stood around them in a circle in the open air, the treetops stirring so the moonlight dappled the glade where they'd gathered.

They'd all danced afterwards for hours, there in the park, while Jemima ran in and out of their small crowd, laughing and tripping over her long dress. A couple of vampires tried to crash their party, but Buffy slew them with the wooden sticks she'd worn to fix her french twist, and didn't even muss her dress.

It was that night when something happened as she danced with Xander, though she'd been dancing with him, one way or the other, for years -- the monks had given her memories of standing on his shoetops, gripping his hands hard as he pretended to waltz her around the Summers living room, when they were still new in town, and he was a tenth-grader. Something happened, something sultry and mysterious, and when the party broke up, she went home with him, and there it began.

In all that time, she and Xander hadn't wanted to marry. Maybe it was that they each came from homes where the marriage was broken -- or should've been. It felt luckier not to take the risk. Buffy and Spike had promised each other the usual things, although because of who they were, the vows they'd exchanged had a tinge of the miraculous to them. To love and cherish, come what may. To take care of one another, respect one another. To be faithful. To be one another's best confidants. To be inseparable.

And they were, Dawn thought, they were all those things, for a long time, as their children grew and Buffy's face and body stayed impossibly girlish, time washing past them both without erosion. Then something broke. And in a mad rush, as if an airlock opened, they were swept apart, and everything was tumbling around, bruised and torn.

Dawn tuned back in to hear the minister say, "... would like to say a few words about StJohn Grieves Summers?"

"I would." Tara stepped forward. "I... I just want to say that I don't think I could've loved Johnny more if he was my own. He was a lovely, intelligent, affectionate boy, but he was someone who maybe found things harder... harder to accept, to cope with, in his life than... than some of us. He... made some bad choices, and I'm not going to pretend they weren't choices. We all have darkness within ourselves, and most of us resist it. Johnny, for reasons we can't really fathom, couldn't, or wouldn't resist. But... I just want his mother -- and his father, though he isn't here -- I want them to know that for my part, I forgive him. I forgive him, and I'm thankful I had him in my life, these last twenty years. I'm going to remember him not as I last saw him, but as he was when he would come to stay with me in San Francisco. I like to think about him, romping around with my dog in the backyard, healthy and energetic and happy. He'd play with Hecate and get her all worked up, and then come in and eat me out of house and home." She smiled then. "I'll think about what a miracle it was that he came to be, that we had him with us at all, and be grateful for that."

Buffy was crying again. The others spoke one by one, and Dawn tried to think of what she would say when it was her turn, but she was fixated on Spike, on what must be going on in his head that could be bad enough to keep him from his son's funeral. She remembered how he'd been the summer after her sister's death. Coming to the house almost every night to sit with her, and how often she'd see him cry, and how unself-conscious he was about it. So that he was the only one she could talk to about Buffy. She'd ended up telling him all about her that summer. Things she was sure Buffy would've hated him knowing, but it made it better to talk about her, and Spike's eyes shone through tears as he listened.

She wished she could be with him now.

Suddenly they were all looking at her.

"What? Oh! I... I'm not ready. I... I loved Johnny... like you all said..." She looked around at their faces, but because of the umbrellas, and the starkness of the one pole light, all she could see were glimmers of eyes and lips. It was eerie. Dawn's heart churned. She squeezed tighter on Xander's hand. "... he's gone, and we won't let him out of our hearts and minds... so he'll always be with us as long as we're here... and we're all alive, so... we need to live... and maybe I shouldn't say this now, but... I want you all to remember it's not just death. There's death, and there's also life. New life. I... Xander and I... I just found out for sure. We're going to have a baby."

Spike hadn't ridden the boxcars since long before he'd met Buffy, but some things never changed. The decision to travel the vampire way -- and thereby re-enter the twilight world of demons he'd stepped away from so long ago -- came with a pang. Failure hung 'round him like the fogs of his London youth, impenetrable, seeping into his every sense. And the last time he'd secreted himself on an empty freight car, Drusilla was with him. She loved the ever-changing scenery seen through the half-open car door, loved preying on the hobos, who sometimes defended themselves amusingly with knives, and whom no one missed when they were drained. The endless rocking of the car always made her amorous; they'd while the daylight away fucking to its rhythm, and she'd smile into his eyes, immersed in happiness.

She was dead now too, and as he got settled in the darkest corner of an empty car, Spike found a little sliver of sorrow in himself for that. Much as he hated her, and wished he could've had the slaying of her himself, his lover's heart couldn't altogether forget what she'd been to him, for so long. Ripe, wicked plum. He raised his bottle of vodka to her memory, and took a long swallow. He'd fallen into her hands because he was a fuck-up, and she'd overseen most of his fuck-ups since. Was kind of fitting, that.

As the train moved south into the night, he got drunk. Hunger started as a gnawing in the belly, creeping out to his extremities. He made no move to sate it, though he was aware of rats sharing the space with him -- and already knew that rats would be his only food on this journey. He deserved to be empty and weakened and humiliated. The more he was, the better.

From the cemetery, they ended up at a diner on the outskirts of Sunnydale, near the freeway on-ramp. There were large booths in a side-room, meant for six; the waitress placed a chair at the end of the table for the seventh. Jemima found herself against the wall, with her mother beside her and Tara, Dawn and Xander across. Angel, always the odd one out with the Scoobies, wound up in the only chair; huddled on it, he looked outsized and gravely awkward. Jem tried not to glance at him too much, which meant she barely glanced at him at all; judging what was too much was beyond her. The combination of grief and her delicate new happiness overwhelmed her; she could barely keep her eyes open, and her head ached. She hated herself for being glad that Papa wasn't there to learn her secret. She wanted him, but knew that he wouldn't have been in any frame of mind, knowing about her affair with Angel, to offer or take comfort from her. Apparently he was in no frame of mind for that anyway. She couldn't remember when she'd ever felt so separated from him.

Each booth had a jukebox selector set into the wall; as they waited for the waitress, Jemima looked through the choices, which were on cards that flipped by turning a knob. Some of the song titles were printed, others hand-written in faded ink. "This must be very old. I've never seen anything so... mechanical... like this."

The others were chatting, and didn't seem to hear her, but Buffy, who had been staring at the paper placemat, which showed various lurid-colored alcoholic drinks with umbrellas and celery stalks and swizzle sticks blooming from them, turned and focused on it.

"Oh, I remember this. It was here when -- " She stopped.

"When what, Mamma?"

"When..." Buffy raised her head and looked around the room. "... when Spike and I..." The tears brimmed over her eyelids; her face twitched as they dripped down her cheeks. She kept looking around, her mouth opening and closing. "Oh baby, it was here, right here, where we made our plans for you."

"For me?"

"We talked about bringing you here to show you, but I guess we never got around to it. When I was pregnant with you, and we were afraid to go ahead and have you, you know, we've told you this story over and over, we were afraid because -- because we thought it would be too dangerous... Spike thought all the demons in the world would try to get you." The tears came thicker, but she spoke without sobbing. "While we were hashing it out, your father brought me here, made me eat when I thought I wasn't hungry. And then the next day, when we'd finally made up our minds that we couldn't bear to part with you, that we'd take the risk... we came back here again, and we were so happy. You can't imagine how happy."

Jemima squeezed her mother's hand, and thinking of how she felt about Angel, all her excitement and turmoil and pleasure, said, "I think I can."

"Some time you'll know," Buffy said, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "You'll have a child, and you'll feel that too." Her fingers combed through Jemima's hair. "Baby, I hope you'll have a happy life now. It's very important to me. You've had such a hard time. I'm so sorry for how things turned out. That you had to -- "

"I -- I'm all right." Jemima blushed. She didn't want Buffy to have to refer to what she'd done, how Johnny tricked her, how she set fire to him. She glanced at Tara, who gazed at her steadily, with her large calm eyes. Tara knew about the new thing in her life, a love that sprang up green out of a burnt-over field. All the time she looked at Tara, and cuddled with her mother, she was aware of Angel at the end of the table, sipping at a cup of coffee and talking to Willow in a low voice. Their conversation contained lots of pauses. Sometimes Xander put a word in, but he was still stunned by Dawn's news. They were all stunned and awkward. Johnny was gone and would never be with them anymore, and there was this new person forming, who would be with them in the future, whom they didn't yet know. This made them all feel as if they were floating in time. For herself, Jemima was ashamed of her secret. She should have been thinking of nothing else but grief, but instead her mind shied away from that, and she thought greedily of Angel, of when she could next be alone with him. She was looking forward to showing him where the demons would rise.

Buffy was still smoothing her hair, looking at her with wide, sad eyes. "This is pretty," she said, touching the garnet barrette. "I see you've been wearing it every day. It suits you."

Jemima blushed harder. "It was a good find." She was amazed that Buffy could notice such a thing now, but she supposed her mother was as eager for distraction as she was. The terrible grief hovered around them; Jemima knew it couldn't really be bypassed, she must experience it. Yet she tried to push it away, and felt that her mind was divided, between sorrow and joy.

Xander had an arm around Dawn, and her head rested on his shoulder as she picked with a fork at a piece of cheesecake, spreading the strawberry gel on top down the sides and onto the plate. She was smiling absently, her eyes unfocused and far away. Was that how Mamma looked, Jemima wondered, when she sat here with Spike, thirty years ago?

She'd missed that pleasure in her own pregnancy.

And there would be none of that with Angel.

This occurred to her for the first time, with a jolt. Again, she shoved it aside, to think about later. It wasn't important now. Nothing was important except him.

"Where are you going to go now?" Buffy asked. She wiped her eyes with her napkin. It was obvious that she was trying to pull herself together, to appear normal by talking, even as her eyes filled again.

Jemima stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"You're not going back to Yorkshire, are you? Will you come home with me for a while? to Reykjavik? I'd like to have you there."

"I think Papa will come back," Jemima said, her voice sounding too loud in her ears. "I really don't think he'll stay away from you -- us."

"I'm talking about you," Buffy said. "What will you do? I want us to be together."

Xander leaned across the table then, put a hand on Buffy's wrist. "Spike hoped you'd stay with Dawn and me for a while. We'd like that. Don't go back to Iceland. Iceland is the last kind of place you need to be right now."

"So Spike left instructions before he abandoned me? That's nice." Buffy's lips curled. "What other instructions did he give you for me?"

"Buff... it wasn't like that. He was distraught. Look, you know I'm the last guy who's gonna cut anybody any slack for hurting you... but he... I think he was really thrashed. Sometimes... sometimes there's just nothing a man can do but...."

Buffy sniffled, swabbed at her eyes with the crumbling napkin. "I know. I know. Anyway, I brought this on myself."

In the parking lot, Jemima didn't know how to detach from her mother, and didn't want to, so she got into Xander's car with her, and let Willow and Tara go with Angel. He didn't come near her, but when they were exchanging goodbyes all around he stepped forward to hug Buffy, and then he hugged her. "Call," he murmured. She nodded against his chest, and stepped back.

"That was quite the Anya move," Xander said. "I had a little flashback, there." He was in bed, watching appreciatively as Dawn moved back and forth in front of him, from her suitcase, to the dressing table, into the bathroom, and out of it again in her silk nightgown, hair brushed and teeth cleaned.

"I had no idea I was going to do that. I know it wasn't the right time. I just couldn't suppress it. But you're glad, aren't you?" She flashed a smile that showed she wasn't really in any doubt of it.

"You are an amazing woman." Xander held his arms out; she sprawled across him. "When did you find out?"

"Yesterday. The stick died. I mean, the rabbit turned blue. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. It's so soon, and I'm so ancient... maybe it won't work out."

"I defy pessimism." He combed her hair with his fingers. "You're not ancient. I mean, the glowing green energy part of you is..."

"I'm forty-six. I'm amazed I even got pregnant without help."

"Without help? What was all that in-and-outing I did, then?"

She gave him a light playful slap. "You call that helping, do you?"

"Hey, I live to serve."

Dawn frowned. "What if it goes wrong? I mean, what if our child turns out like Johnny? I don't think I could bear it. Could you bear it?"

"Don't think about that. You don't know what'll happen, but this is a good thing. Now that's it really happening, I've got no doubts. How do you feel?"

"I feel terrific. I feel like I dropped twenty years. And I'm all juicy... are you juicy? Or do you want to go to sleep? Maybe it's not right to fuck after a funeral."

"Are you kidding? That's when a lot of quality fucking happens. This I know." He curled a hand around one breast through the silk. "Not sleepy. I'm up... I mean, I'll be up, uh, shortly. Hey, are these going to get bigger?"

"I think they already have." She smiled, leaning into him. "They're tender, so play nice with them."

"If they hurt -- "

He took his hand away, but she put it back, brought his thumb to rub over the nipple.

"This feels really good. Really good." She wriggled in his lap.

Xander caressed her, and mouthed the other breast through the cloth. "I'm so lucky. We're so lucky. It feels kinda wrong, right now."

"But you're not turning it down, right?"

"Hell no."

They kissed; she prodded her thigh against his burgeoning erection.

"So -- " He broke, taking a deep breath into his lungs. "Do you think we should get married?"

Dawn started. "What? Really?"

"I know we've never wanted to, but, I dunno... with a kid and all. I'm willing."

"We don't even live together."

"I think we should certainly do that. I don't want to commute to see my baby. Don't you think so?" A wave of emotion came over him; he pulled her in tight, rocking her against him, kissing her forehead and her hair. "You knock me out. You just... God, what did I do to get such a girl?"

"Oh, you only went with me because you couldn't get Buffy." This was an old joke between them; her eyes sparkled as she said it. They joked about it because they both knew that once it might have been true, but that now it wasn't, and couldn't be. It was their way of congratulating themselves, for what they found in each other.

"So, what do you think? Should we dah dah de dah, dah dah de dah?" Xander said, singing the Wedding March against her ear. Dawn shivered, and giggled.

"You're right, it's wicked for us to be so happy -- Buffy's crying right now, and here we are -- "

"What about it?"

She sobered, and looked into his eyes. "Of course we'll live together now. But can we... sort of table the marriage thing for a while? I mean, you and me forever, no matter what, right? But I need to think. Anyway, it would be more fun, if we decide to do it, to wait until I'm scandalously huge, right?" She puffed out her cheeks and made a belly shape with her arms outstretched.

"Sure," Xander said. "Sounds good."

"It's all good."

They kissed some more. Her hand slipped beneath the sheet, curling around his rising cock. Xander rolled them over.

Suddenly Dawn said, "Do you know, I had the funniest feeling before, that there's something going on between Jemmie and Angel. Isn't that strange? Why would I feel that? It's impossible, but I did."

"Angel and Jem?" The mere suggestion was a buzz-killer. "Nah. She wouldn't go for him. And he... he wouldn't dare. I mean... would he?"

"That's what I thought. I dunno. I must've been making it up. I kept thinking I'd see Tara and Willow giving each other the glad eye, too. Which is stupid -- I mean, they broke up thirty years ago, and I've never stopped wishing they'd be together again. Like I used to wish my parents would get back together. I knew they never would, and that it'd be rotten if they did, and yet -- "

"It would be rotten if Jem looked at Angel. Was she looking at Angel? Did you see her looking at him? Was he looking at her? Because he has no stinking right to look at her. She's Buffy's little girl."

"Hey." Dawn laid a finger across his mouth. "Don't get all worked up, honey. Not like that." She prodded him with her thigh. "Forget it. I was just seeing stuff that isn't there, as usual. Let's do the thing now."

She sat up, raising her arms so he could pull the nightgown off. "I like doing the thing with you," he said.

"Yeah? Is that so?"

"Yeah. I'll like it when you're big as a house, and I'll like it if you're Mrs Harris, or if you're not, and I'll like it when we have to do it really quietly because the kid's asleep in the next room. I'll always like it."

She lay back, arms and legs open, beckoning. "Well, goodie for me then."

"Goodie," Xander said, moving across her, "for us."

Angel's suite already felt empty because Jemima wasn't there, even though she hadn't had time yet to put her mark on the space... if she even would. Angel didn't want to make assumptions -- he'd long learned that when he believed he was sure of anything, that thing could dissipate in a moment that left agony in its wake.

And maybe... he looked around at the dark walls, the heavy, rather nondescript hotel furniture, the black-out blinds on the windows. How could she want to live here? A woman wouldn't feel this was a home -- at least, not a woman like her, who was used to houses, who'd grown up in a happy family. No matter how long he lived in the Hyperion, it always retained its air of transcience. As a vampire, he himself was transient -- that was one of the paradoxes of immortality, as he understood it. Everything grew and changed and moved and died, except for him.

Her suitcase wasn't here anymore -- she'd brought all her things to the funeral, transferring them from his car trunk to Xander's, so she could go with her mother afterwards. But the sheets smelled of her. Angel stretched out on the bed and breathed it in. The perfume of her skin, the smooth expanses of back and belly and arms, the musky dip of the armpits where he'd been delighted to find soft hair -- she'd apologized for neglecting lately to shave them, and was surprised when he asked her not to -- and the more complex aroma of her aroused sex. When he kissed her there she made low mews like an anguished kitten, that got louder and more overwrought as he wound her up to the edge, and held her off from it, only to wind her higher. She didn't say so, but he could tell she'd never been eaten out by anyone with the patience to do it up properly -- or the strength to hold her legs apart without other restraints, so she could thrash and buck to her heart's content. Her expression when he finished with her -- blissed out, almost vacant, her face pink, lips parted and gasping -- was beautiful. It made him proud. He'd done that to thousands of women over his centuries, but only once before with real love. And the day he'd pleasured Buffy like that, was a day destroyed, existing nowhere in time, but only in his own memory.

That wasn't going to happen with Jemima. He would love her over and over; she would lose that edge of anxiety, charming as it was -- anxiety that he would stop too soon, that she wouldn't get what she needed.

That he also would get what he needed didn't occur to him. Spike's friendly advice to him about taking a mistress -- or a boyfriend -- didn't recur in his musings. Jemima wasn't a mere girlfriend or mistress or anything that could be described by some generic noun -- she was Jemima. He would make love to her every day.

The phone rang in his pocket.

The sound of her tiny voice saying Angel sent a frisson of pleasure up his spine.

"Not asleep, Jemmie?"

"No. I finally got Mamma to drop off. I can't talk for long, she wants me to be lying down with her."

"Go on then, don't leave her."

"I know... but I wanted to say good night to you." She exhaled, and he imagined he could feel her warm breath against his ear. "I shouldn't have, because I'm worried about him, but... I was glad Papa wasn't there tonight."

Agreeing made him feel guilty, though he'd been in knots trying to figure how he could get through it gracefully. He wanted to own his new love to all the world, but the risk of owning it to her two righteous deadly parents was enormous. He was afraid not for himself, but for her.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"I'm all right."

"... I miss you already."

"I'll see you very soon."

"At Wesley's funeral, later. Tonight. I'll be there." She paused. "Actually, Mamma and the others said they'd go too. They all used to know him. I don't think any of them liked him, but they're all feeling very sentimental now."

This surprised him, but he said nothing about it. "I'll see you there then."

"But it won't be -- seeing you. I'm not sure when -- "

"We'll get together when we can. You don't have to worry that I'll forget about you."

"No, I didn't think that."

He thought he could hear her smile.

"But we have a date for that demon 'do in Venice Beach, right? Thursday."

"Right. Have you had any more -- ?"

"No more visions. Maybe... maybe that one was a fluke."

"Don't worry about it. We'll just see, won't we?"

"Yes, I guess so. Angel..."

He thought she might be about to say I love you, and realized he was physically bracing himself for it, a hand gripping the headboard.

But what she said was, "I'm thinking maybe I should tell Mamma. I mean, before Papa comes back."

"Do you want to? I mean -- by yourself? We could... we could tell her together. Or -- " He wanted nothing so much as to spare Jemima every possible pain. "I could tell her." He couldn't somehow imagine doing this, facing Buffy alone, but if Jemima agreed, he would go forth and do it. He'd slain dragons before. Just... none that was once his one true love.

"Oh no. I don't think that would be the right way. I'll do it. I... I already told Tara. She understood. But... " She sighed. "It's the wrong time to tell Mamma, but if I don't tell her, later on she'll be angry because I kept it from her. She'll be angry no matter what."

"Jem... if you think this is the wrong time... I mean, for us... we can wait. I'll wait for you. If you tell me to, I will. That way, you'll know for sure, without, without -- " He meant, without being caught in the cloud of phermones they were floating on, without the pressure of his confession of love, or of her grief that sought release in passion. "In six months. Or a year. When you're sure of what you really feel. You can let me know. And meanwhile, you'll be free."

Silence on the line.

"Don't worry about the visions. You can just, uh... call them in. From wherever you're living."

More silence.

"Jemima?"

"I... I understand." She sounded stunned.

"Uh -- I suspect you don't. I'm not trying to get rid of you. I'm saying -- "

"Angel. Six months away from you -- why? Life is short -- well, mine, anyway. Don't deprive me."

He breathed out, let go of the headboard. "I'm not sure when you got to be so necessary to me -- but you are."

She breathed into the phone, her voice dropping into an ever lower whisper. "You are so good to me. So kind. Don't worry. Whatever Mamma says -- or Papa -- I'm already yours."

Angel curled a hand into the sheet as if it was her hair. It smelled of her hair, but not enough. "Jem -- " It was name, description, endearment, plea.

"Oh -- I hear Mamma -- goodbye -- !"

Her hand was entwined with Jemima's when she fell asleep, but when she woke suddenly in the dark, Buffy was alone in the kingsize hotel bed. A halo of light showed through the half-open door into the suite's front room. She heard Jemima's whispering voice.

Who would she be talking to at this hour?

Must be Spike. He would leave her to flounder with nothing but second-hand words from Xander, but he'd contact Jemima directly. Nothing ever came between those two, they were always thick as thieves, no matter what. Spike never didn't forgive Jemima, she had him wrapped 'round her finger. Even when she married a man who hated him, Spike forgave her.

A choked sensation arose in Buffy's chest. It wasn't fair that Spike loved her more -- ! Wasn't fair that he'd contact Jemima like this, behind her back, after he'd left her heart for dead.

Buffy started up, racing silently across the thick carpet to stop just by the door, straining to listen through the gap.

Jemima murmured, "I... I understand." She sounded stunned. So it was Spike, no doubt giving her his feeble excuses for fucking off in the middle of this big disgusting mess. Buffy grasped the doorknob. She would go through. She would grab the phone away and tell him --

"Angel. Six months away from you -- why? Life is short -- well, mine, anyway. Don't deprive me."

Angel? What?

Buffy couldn't have moved then if she was shot through with fifty thousand volts. Even her heart seemed to stop, blown up to triple size and straining in her chest. What was this?

"You are so good to me. So kind. Don't worry. Whatever Mamma says -- or Papa -- I'm already yours."

What the fuck?

"Oh -- I hear Mamma -- goodbye -- !"

No. No no no.

Then Jemima was in front of her, touching her arms with gentle fingers. "Are you all right? I thought you were asleep."

"I -- I was. I needed to pee." Buffy stared. There wasn't much light, but even so she could see that Jemima was flushed, her eyes sparkling. Could she really be involved with Angel? Would he dare? It was grotesque, obscene -- not only had he failed her son, but he'd taken Spike. Bedded him and ruined him for her. And now -- as if all that wasn't already too much -- he wanted to possess her daughter! What other explanation could fit what she'd just heard. Whatever Mamma says -- or Papa.

How many more blows could she sustain? Johnny... Spike... her sister's annoucement at the grave -- she'd managed to embrace her and even smile, while her jaw tightened to shattering point, and she could've shaken her until she miscarried. And now... now apparently....

Buffy pulled away. Forced herself into the bathroom, where she didn't bother to turn on the light. She retched, but there was nothing on her stomach to come up. Dropping onto the toilet, she pressed her face into her hot hands. The tears were all dried up.

She had nothing left in her.

She'd have nothing left at all... if this was allowed to go on. Her mind raced through possibilities -- she would confront Jemima. Force her to -- no. Or -- she would call Willow, get her to -- Not that either. Oh God, she didn't know what to do.

Yes... she did.

Jemima was in bed again, her face turned away, breathing slowly. Buffy couldn't tell if she was feigning. She switched on the lamp and began to dress. After a couple of minutes, Jemima stirred, rolled over.

"Mamma? What are you doing? It's -- " She squinted at the clock. "It's three in the morning."

Buffy didn't look at her as she pulled on sweats, running shoes. "Go back to sleep. I can't lie here another minute. I need to go find something I can fight."

She blew through the Hyperion lobby, not pausing to look at or listen to Darryl and Noel, who sprang up from behind the desk when she entered, and seemed to want to tell her how sorry they were about Johnny. Angel's people sent a wreath to the cemetary, which, whatever. She took the stairs two at a time, barreling towards Angel's room.

The door wasn't locked. She'd have preferred it to be -- she'd have liked kicking it in. He was asleep in the dark. She leapt on him, getting in a good punch to the face. He grabbed her arm as she drew back for another.

"Buffy, what is this?" By his expression she could tell that he knew perfectly well.

She pulled out the stake. "I'm already yours, Angel. Whatever Mamma says. Well, here's what I say -- !" She was all volition, and yet there was no volition -- her arm moved of itself, stabbing down hard. He was already in motion -- she heard the hard snick as the wood drove against his collarbone, and then she was flying across the room.

The crash only stunned her a moment. Angel was on his feet now, the bed between them. That was kind of fitting. She launched herself at him again.

More quickly than her eye could track, he ducked and feinted and wasn't there. She landed hard on her hands, tumbling up.

"Buffy, stop this."

"You don't get to tell me what to do! Not while you're appropriating everyone who's mine!" Again she went at him, again he managed to deflect her, though they both went down.

"Stop!" Angel barked. "God Buffy... at least when your mother came and told me to leave you alone, she didn't try to dust me."

"My mother!"

"She never told you about that?" He rose slowly, one arm out to ward her off, or to plead time out. "Buffy, please. I know the timing couldn't be worse, but this isn't the same."

A deep throbbing ache started behind her eyes. "My... my mother told you to leave me?" She sat down hard in a chair as the room began to whirl, dropping her head down between her knees. This was so old, so old, so old, and yet it made her flare and stagger inside. It still mattered. It mattered without any still. Shit.

"When your mother came to me, I understood that. You were eighteen and you didn't know your own mind. Jemima's thirty, and she knows hers."

"She's only twenty-nine! And a widow for less than a month! Because -- because -- And you -- you have no right -- " Her head throbbed. She flew at him again. Now Angel didn't resist, let her beat him back until he was up against the wall, but she knew even before they reached it that she was pulling her punches, that she wasn't going to kill him. Sobbing, she pounded on his chest, her fists bouncing off like rubber clubs. "Fuck. Fuck you, Angel! First Spike, and now -- Why does it have to be her?"

He shook his head, seemed genuinely befuddled. "I didn't know she'd be... what she is. So wonderful, so sympathetic, and... I tried not to fall for her, but she was too much for me."

"No! Excuses! Bullshit!" She could barely see, her head throbbed so. Angel was solemn, still calm. He was always calm. Ancient, and calm, and slow to kindle. She knew him. He was holding her elbows now, his big hands lightly supporting her. She hated that he was like this, when she was so hot and disordered and bereft.

"Have you slept with her?" Hearing the pleading in her voice, she wanted to rip the sound out of the air.

Angel's mien slipped a little now; she saw that familiar Irish expression of suffering and doubt in his eyes.

"Buffy, I'm not going to lose my soul."

"Nothing's changed, Angel. The curse is the curse. A single moment of perfect happiness -- "

" -- is pretty much impossible for me anymore!" His eyes lit with an anger that almost matched her own. "Excuse me, but you really don't know me anymore! When I was with you... I had nothing but you. I was coming off ninety years of detachment -- I had no friends, certainly no lovers worthy of the word. I never had -- not as a man, not as a demon. Of course what I felt with you overwhelmed me. I was like a naive boy. That's... that's not me anymore, Buffy. Nothing for me is simple anymore, the way it was back then."

"I don't accept that." She grasped at her objections, bright deadly shuriken that would cut him to bits. "You... you told me once, that you had nothing to give me -- a real life, a home, children. She's just a normal woman. She deserves those things, with other human beings. She's not a hero, not a champion -- "

"Actually, I am. Well, not a hero. Or a champion. But -- the champion's helper, anyway. Official."

Jemima stood in the doorway. She was wide-eyed, but otherwise restrained. Buffy wasn't sure how long she'd been there. Her heart lurched, misgiving moving through her like some ectoplasmic presence. "... What are you talking about?"

"It turns out I have the visions now, Mamma. As of yesterday. Which means that the Powers want me to be here at least as much as I want it myself."

The room seemed to turn upside down. Buffy restrained an urge to grab the wall. "No! It doesn't mean anything! It means the Powers can manipulate us, that's all! And even if it's true -- it's no excuse -- no reason why you should throw yourself away!"

"Mamma, I'm so sorry this hurts you."

"Baby... you just got free, finally, from one impossible man. How can you immediately throw yourself -- "

She stamped her foot. "Not that! Mamma, that's too low!"

"What's low about it? Low is squandering yourself on someone who isn't appropriate! What Angel loves, he decimates."

"In the past. Not... not now."

"Can you imagine what your father will say when he hears about this? How it would break his heart? After what happened to your brother, I don't know how you can even think -- "

"You sound like you think this is just some childish act of rebellion!"

"No, I think it's your perverse talent for choosing the worst possible partner based on who you think needs you! Milo didn't need you, and Angel certainly doesn't! You never think clearly about what you need!"

"That's not true! You don't understand this at all! For the first time in my life, I'm in love with a man who loves me. I'm not going to let you take this away from me!"

By the sudden change in Angel's expression, Buffy realized he hadn't yet heard Jemima say love. His eyes lit, his lips curved into an unconscious and almost angelic smile. Jemima, all her attention focused on her, didn't see it, but Buffy took it in. It was expression she'd seen before, back in the time of her innocence. When she'd believed that look belonged to no one but her, nor ever would.

Buffy turned to Angel. "Maybe it's our punishment, Spike's and mine... that our children grow up to be just like us, only in the worst possible way. A vampire, and a vampire's mistress. That's kind of a hoot."

"Buffy, you shouldn't say -- "

She laughed -- a laugh that hurt her throat like a dry cough. "Jem, I don't want that for you. I'm not asking you to choose us or him, I'm asking you to remember what you are -- or maybe I mean, what you aren't. You aren't obligated to try to rescue these bad cases, just because... you should have a human life. In the light. Jemmie, think."

"There's plenty of light, when I'm with him. Just like there was plenty when I lived at home with you and Papa. The light that really matters. We don't choose who we love, or when or how love comes... maybe we should, but we don't... can't... it just happens, and then... oh Mamma, you know this! You know!"

These arguments... she knew them too well. Her daughter wouldn't even exist, except for the truth of them.

The fight left her suddenly, exhaustion rushing in on its wake. She had no power here. She had no power left, perhaps, anywhere. She couldn't make Spike love her again, couldn't make her daughter cleave to her, couldn't love her son well enough to keep him from rushing towards death. Bitter truth, that seized her with conviction. Everything she'd counted on was gone. But that didn't mean everyone else should suffer too. How could she force her little girl to be sad? Sadder than she already must be, after all this horror. None of it made sense.

She was so tired.

"I know." She pulled Jemima into her arms. With an uneasy mixture of petition and maternal scorn, she said "Baby, how can I let you go do something that's so wrong for you?"

Jemima shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know how you can." She was crying hard now, overheating, Buffy knew, with her competing impulses, of love, of loyalty, of sympathy for her mother and Angel and herself all at the same time. "And I don't know how I'm supposed to choose! To walk away from this wonderful new thing, this -- this gift that has me all lit up inside -- because you tell me to." Pulling away, Jemima paused by Angel, long enough that Buffy was sure she was going to throw herself into his arms. Instead she walked over to a chair in the corner, and sat.

With no one between them, Buffy and Angel regarded each other.

Angel dropped his gaze first. "This is an impossible position. I want Jemima, but not if means tearing her away from her whole world. I can't ask her to choose on these terms."

Jemima flew towards him. "No!"

Buffy, at the same time, said, no.

"For God's sake, that won't solve anything. We all know that. God, this is fucked up." To Angel, she said, "I'd like to just hate you and blame you and splash around in my anger forever." Her mouth wobbled; she crammed a fist against it. "I'm so angry at everything. I can't take all this loss."

They both came towards her then, but she warded them off with a sharply upraised hand. "Jemima, of course I'm calling the kettle black. Of course you'd throw that in my teeth. It's the one thing you can say that I've got no answer to. Do as I say not as I -- ? Yeah, right." How long ago it all was, that time when Spike was a controversy. "There were plenty of people to point out along the way how loving Spike made me a bad slayer, a bad human. The mission was what I was supposed to have in lieu of a life, a marriage, a family. Just like all the slayers before me. But I defied those rules. I had Spike. I had you. And I had my son. At the moment I don't seem to have a marriage anymore, and my son is dead. I was desperate to keep you. But... I can't keep you like this, can I? Confusing your life with mine."

"Mamma -- "

Again, she put her hand up. "I can't give you my blessing. I just can't. But... you're an adult. Your mistakes are yours, you have to make them on your own. I still think this is one, but... well, that's what I think." A gusty sigh escaped her. "I know what it's like to be in love, and God knows I know what it's like with him. How good it can be with him." She looked at Angel. "I really did come here to stake you."

"... I know."

"I didn't believe you loved her until you offered to walk away."

"I love her with all my soul."

"Of course you do -- I mean, look at her. How she shines. She'd be a prize for any man, if only she knew it. For you -- she's everything that was ever good about me and him both. She's sweetness, and she's innocence. She'll still be innocent if she lives to be a hundred. You like that."

Angel met her gaze with the depths of his own seriousness. "I love everything she is, that's all."

Jemima went to him, and offered him her hands. He swallowed them in his.

Buffy threw herself into a chair. "Of course, this will only play out all over again when your father decides to turn up. Except he may well go through with the staking -- he'll try at least."

"I know," Angel said. "I don't want to fight him."

"No more fighting!" Jemima looked like a trapped bird. "Oh -- I wish -- I wish we just knew where he is. Poor Papa. Why did he leave us?" It was her turn to go vacant, immersed in imagining Spike's reaction.

"Angel's right, though," Buffy said. "When you're thirty, you're not supposed to have to choose between your father's love, and your lover's. Even if your lover's been his lover too." Buffy watched for her daughter's blush. "But that aspect of vampire family life doesn't seem to bother you Jemmie, does it? I guess it wouldn't, since you're half vampire yourself. Half vampire and half saint. We named your brother wrong -- it's you."

Jemima stared. "Wh -- what?"

"Just reminding you, Daddy's Girl: your life is yours, not Spike's. Give him credit, he's never said otherwise either. Not that I have a hope in hell he'll smile on this."

"You'll talk to him," Jemima said, hope rising in her voice. "You'll talk him around. You can if you want to."

"I don't even know where he is. I don't think he's mine anymore. You seem to be on your own there." With a convulsive snap, she got to her feet. "Hang onto your man, Jem, while you've got him!"

She walked out before either of them could start offering refutations or condolences. Better for the broken-hearted--the just plain broken--to leave those who could love to get on with it.

So what did that performance make me? A good mother? A bad mother?

Maybe nobody's mother, soon.

Her daughter, deciding to bypass every living man on the planet, had plumbed for her worst possible choice. Once you go Undead, you never go back. Spike had said that to her once, when she was trying to get that stupid Amara ring away from him, and he'd been as busy insulting and propositioning her as fighting.

Punch-drunk on fizzled adrenaline and dried tears, Buffy skipped the elevator and dragged herself up thirty flights of stairs to her hotel room, hoping she'd be exhausted enough at the top to maybe fall asleep. Sleep seemed like the only refuge left.

But when she got in, she was barely winded.

In her pocket, her mobile whirred. The text, sent from a number she didn't recognize, said Check your email.

Dropping into the desk chair, she switched on the room's terminal.

She didn't use email much. Her account was clogged with advertisements. But the newest message in the queue was from William.Grieves@CoW.co.uk.

Her weary body couldn't generate any sort of start or lurch. As she opened the message, it was all she could do to focus on the screen. Her vision swam, scrambling the words into scurrying black ants.

Dear Buffy: You must be thinking now that you aren't anymore... dear to me. It's not so. You're what you've always been to me, my heart, my life, my queen. What happened with the mage, is off the table, far as I'm concerned. Forgotten. So why'd I bugger off on you then? is what you're asking next. Worst possible time, when our poor boy is dead and we should be helping each other.

Which is what I want to explain. Because I know what I promised you when you let me in your life, and I've never released myself from that promise. It's what kept me, frankly, from doing away with myself a time or two, recently. Angel will say he saved me, when I turned up flambéd, but thing is, I knew, back of my mind, that he wouldn't let me kill him, or myself, not really. You know how I like the big dramatic gestures. Need 'em, I do, once in a while -- releases the tension, like a good fight or a good fuck.

And here I am talking like I'm still the same fellow you know. When the whole reason I'm not there with you now is that I'm not anymore. Buffy love, this soul... this soul's a thing I cannot learn how to do with. You told me about a time you interrogated some minion by holding your crucifix in her mouth 'til it seared her tongue and she had to flap it. It's like that. Like some great crucifix steeped in holy water and shoved inside me, my mind and my body both, so I'm like a bug on a pin, jerking and shuddering and no relief for it. Someone said Hell Is Other People, but in my case, Hell Is Me. Hell is me, my deeds, all on me again in constant vivid memory -- every one of them from the little bloody matchgirl I did for in 1880, to our son whom I failed last week. I can't look at you, or be with you, except immersed in it. Which you got a too vivid demo of, in that motel room. I'm sorry for that. Wasn't you, wasn't your sweet body or anything about you, that made me sick. Know you think it was, but you're wrong -- was me.

I went because of that. And because of my promise, that I'd never leave you. Which, writing this, yeah, I'm a twat, sounds like I'm burning the village to save it and all. But what I mean's this: Soul burns, yeah, but it also shows me I can't get off from it by doing myself in. That would be a rush to a whole other brand of damnation, I get that. So I've got to live in this world, live up to the fucking soul. But, like I told Harris, and like he probably didn't tell you, because he wasn't exactly taking notes, I don't know yet how I can live without wanting every minute to die, I don't know how to be a man whose soul isn't in constant anguish. And I won't be able to find a way while I'm with you and the others, chivvying me up and trying to love me and expecting me to be this or that. And none of you can help it, because it's only human. And knowing you love me is keeping me sane, you're my lodestar, you always were, sweetness. But it's got to be from afar awhile, at least, while I find my way.

Not messaging anybody else, so give Jemmie my love the best way you can, and tell Harris hello. You needn't reply if you're too angry. Or say whatever you like. I know I'm letting you down, but I hope you'll wait for me. I don't know how long it'll take, or where I'm going exactly, but earth's round, so one way or the other, it'll always be back towards you.

-- S

She sat for a long while, blinking and rubbing her eyes, rereading the email. Her body seemed to be calcifying, getting hard and tight and stony.

If you leave me, can I come too? she thought. Because I don't know how to be a woman whose soul isn't in constant anguish. I should get to share this quest.

Too wrung out to rage, or even think, she clicked on reply.

Dawn's with child.

She told us at the funeral.

There's other stuff, but it's not for email.

I'll be back in Reyk by the end of the week.

Of course I'll wait for you. You've always waited for me. But hurry the fuck up, you bastard. I can't believe you walked out on me now.

-- B

Falling into bed, she fell asleep at once.

There was no clinch, not even a kiss, when they were alone together. Angel sensed Jemima didn't want to be touched. He doubted she'd stay.

Finally she spoke. "That wasn't me at my best just now."

"What do you mean?"

"I regress about twenty years whenever either of my parents gives me the hairy eyeball. I hate it when I lose control like that." She didn't look at him. "And asking Mamma to intercede with my father? I can't believe I said that. She won't, but that's neither here nor there -- I shouldn't have asked. That was a kiddy ploy."

"There's such a thing as being too hard on yourself. Life's been... eventful. No wonder you're wound up."

With a shrug, she raised her face to his. "I can't say I'm not really like that -- I wish I could. But you heard me."

She looked pretty terrible: hair messy, face still blotched, the tear tracks visible. Even as Angel observed all this, he still saw her as shining. Was more amazed than ever, that in the midst of this downpour of loss and strangeness, he'd made a connection that was real and solid. "I heard you say you were in love with me."

She blushed. "I did say that. Meant it, too."

They kissed then, fleeting, chaste. Sex, along with emotion and energy, was at an apogee. Angel sensed her fatigue, the deadening pressure of her banked sadness. Like his own. The split, between being the mourner and the lover, between grief and delight, flashed in his head like bolt-lightning, making everything feel uncanny and strange from one moment to the next.

He wanted to visit Wesley, to tell him all about this, tell him about her. Except that Wesley was gone.

And there was an impulse -- new, weird, and of course completely unworkable -- to confide in Spike. That brief flare-up of something like friendship was surely over now -- or would be as soon as he learned about Jemima taking a place in Angel's bed. He'd barely thought about Spike's disappearance -- some things had to drop behind others in the fast-moving jumble -- but it struck him deeply now, what it meant. The suffering that attended the soul, the wild urge to escape, the impossibility of evading what would always ride with you. What was you. He and Spike were the only two demons alive with that now, and instead of being able to help him, there would be, short of some miracle, only conflict and resentment.

He'd made so many wrong moves since Spike showed up with his son in that duffle bag.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to regret this one, that brought Jemima to his side. The visions seemed to confirm the rightness of it... or at least, made it easy to believe it must be right. If anything he did in love could ever be right.

"I'd better go back to the hotel with my mother. I need to sleep. And I want to be there if Papa comes back, or... or we hear from him." Fresh realization seemed to hit her too, that Spike had gone, that his status was unclear. She blinked and gasped, turning her face away.

Angel decided not to bring it up. "Of course. I'll drive you back."

They rode in silence. As he let her out, Angel said, "If it feels too much for you, if you're too tired -- don't worry about Wesley's funeral. You won't offend me by staying away."

She leaned in to kiss him, her hand -- hot, dry -- brushing his cheek. He watched her walk unsteadily into the hotel.

"Oh God. OhGodOhGodOhGod." She hissed, tensing, because it was so good, she wanted time and motion to stop so she could focus entirely on that single sensation, his wet clever tongue feathering just there. But time and motion wouldn't stop, and though she wanted to hold her breath, she was panting, sucking the air in big frantic gasps, each gasp boosting her higher, higher. She ground and swerved and he stayed with her, holding her legs apart with his hands, the thumbs rubbing gently back across the kneecaps, and her hands were buried in his hair that curled around her fingers. Tugging on it, surging, she cried his name.

The bed jolted under her as she came awake. Realized slowly that the bed hadn't moved, it was only her body, jerking in dream. Her quim swollen and slick at the tip of orgasm, her hitched breathing loud in her ears. She was alone.

"Oh, Spike..." Rolling onto her stomach, she wriggled against her fingers, bucked and dissolved into harsh gasps.

The sheets were unpleasantly warm under her sprawled body. Buffy sat up, pulled the hair up off her neck. She was in a feverish sweat, the room a hot box, airless behind the drawn drapes. She pulled them back, stepped out naked onto the balcony. It was late morning, the sun bright, all the sound and motion of the city spread out around her. A stiff breeze snapped the flags far below at the hotel entrance. It was a beautiful winter day in LA. Buffy let the air dry her moist skin, flutter her hair. Leaning on the rail with closed eyes, she touched herself again, slipping two fingers through the wet tangle of curls, between the lips. If he was here, and if it was night, he'd be right behind her, hands on her hips, sliding into her. Snug tight against her ass and back, he'd feel, from this angle, enormous inside. She'd beg him to fuck her, but he'd tell her to strum her little clit and come for him, come twice on his cock, give it a good squeeze and wriggle, and then maybe he'd fuck her. And she'd have to do it, pinned between his hard body and the cold rail, half bent over it, as his fingers plucked at her nipples and he hummed against her neck, game-faced, his breath cool and menacing, demon tongue darting out, fangs grazing her skin so it jumped and raced. She'd come, and come and come, and he'd laugh, say dirty terrible things to her about how she was his slave, his hot-cunted little slayer slave, while all the time he was impaling her, up inside her so she had to struggle just to stay on tiptoe, and it was filthy and crazy and wild and at the same time there was so much love, they were made of their love, flying on it.

Her feet flat on the floor, Spike in her mind, Buffy came with a long shudder. Far below, a siren raced up the boulevard. She licked her fingers, slowly sliding each one deep into her mouth. This made her know she was hungry, and had to pee, and that she should get a manicure. Then she remembered that Johnny was dead, and for a moment she couldn't breathe around the blunt force of it. How could she live, much less indulge herself, when he had suffered so, and made others suffer? The world was insane, life was insane in its incessent onward flow. It should stop, it should at least pause. When everything was wrong, scattered, broken, lost, it should pause, and show respect.

In the room behind her, the phone rang. There was a pause. She'd just had it, it made things better and worse at the same time. It was over now. Buffy breathed, and went to answer.

PART SEVEN

Days, low down in the hold with the loud metallic creaking of the ship, the scrabbling of rats among the enormous containers, Spike's remembered victims preyed on him as he'd once preyed on their living counterparts. Hour by hour, horrors worse than what lurked in a case of tequila sent him crying, crawling, pleading. Sometimes Buffy was there, whispering in his ears. You disgust me. You've ruined my life. I never want to see you again. Sometimes it was Jemima. Johnny was almost always near: never quite visible, but always speaking to him in that low insolent angry way he'd put on with adolescence. I only made myself what you are. Why did you turn away from me?Barely able to distinguish sleep from waking, he wasn't sure either which was worse. The passage of time was meaningless in the pitch darkness.

There were plenty of rats, but Spike grew thin.

Some nights he managed to get up on deck. In the single-digit hours when the vast ship was at its quietest, he shivered in the sharp wind, face upturned to the stars. Beneath the open sky, the storm in his mind calmed. He could think of her, his wife, see her pretty face peering at him out of normal memory, solemn, with a sparkle in the eyes that was only for him. He could recall -- always with a little start of surprise -- her answer to the message he'd sent before embarking on this voyage. Of course I'll wait for you. In those few hours snatched here and there from the maze of anguish, the clear cold air afforded him a grasp of his own sanity. But the dawn always came too soon, sending him scurrying back into the dark, where the ghouls waited. He went to them as a whipped dog to his only righteous keepers.

He didn't know how long he'd have to remain with them, before he could find a way out. Meanwhile, the ship steamed north.

Buffy meant to go back to Reykjavik, to the one home that was not a place allowed to her by the Council, like the London flat, but was hers and Spike's. They lived in that bleak country at its bleakest time, when the northern nights were long and sheltering. It was where their keepsakes stayed, where they had a few friends who believed they were eccentric globetrotters but had no clue they were vampire and slayer.

In Spike's absence, she wanted no other company. Certainly not that of Dawn, who was disgustingly happy in her early days of pregnancy. And not Jemima's. With her, Buffy was stifled, embarrassed, and self-conscious for feeling that way. She couldn't talk to her about her love affair, and there was nothing else to talk about with her; Jemima was suffused with the irrepressible glow of new love, of sexual fulfillment and pride.

Angel was making her happy, his soul still firmly in place.

Buffy couldn't leave Los Angeles fast enough.

She still meant to get back to Iceland soon, but, two weeks after that email message from Spike, she was in London, trying to clear out Johnny's flat. She had three piles going -- Trash, Oxfam, and Keepers. Every item in the apartment was charged with significance. The volumes of history and literature, so many of them gifts to her son from Giles. The half-full bottles of gin and vodka and scotch, obviously kept to entertain friends, and the empties of lager scattered everywhere -- on the dresser, the desk, under the bed -- that he drank alone. His clothes, that were somehow both conservative and scruffy and the opposite of what anyone wore in Southern California. She put them all on the Oxfam pile, except a few pullovers Tara had knitted; Spike might wear them, or Jemima might want them, or something. They were too nice, too personal, to give away.

The edges of the dresser mirror were stuck full of photos of his English friends. Buffy recognized the Honorable Penelope Leigh-Palmers, whom Johnny loved, and had killed. She'd seen her that day -- the one after Johnny's birthday -- coming out as she was going in. She'd spent the night, and probably broke up with him moments before Buffy encountered her.

There were other pictures too, a shoebox full of twenty years of snapshots, some Buffy had missed and thought lost: pictures of herself as a little girl with Joyce and Hank. Others of Giles and Anya, of Tara, of toddler Johnny with his big sister. A slightly blurry one of Faith sitting on Xander's lap, on the sofa of the Sunnydale house, the pair of them looking tough, and pleased with each other. Buffy wondered how it came to be here. Faith died before Johnny was born, and she couldn't recall that they'd talked about her much in his hearing.

Some Polaroids gathered with a rubber band proved to be of her. Shuffling through them, the heat rose to her cheeks -- they were stalkerish, badly-framed and intrusive shots of her in a bikini at the beach in Mexico, taken without her knowledge. The last few in the group made her gasp: nudes she'd reluctantly let Spike take some fifteen years back, shortly after her leg was restored. Johnny must have filched them from their bedroom. Buffy tore all the Polaroids into little bits, shoving them deep into the big plastic trash bag. She didn't want to know that her son lusted after her even before he was turned, and now she could never unknow it.

She gathered the other photos into a big manila envelope to take away with her.

In the next few weeks, grief zagged in like lightning bolts, jarring Jemima with guilty recollection in the midst of lovemaking, work, sleep. Her brother, whose last minutes gave her cruel dreams, whose dead silence left an absence, in contrast to their steady daily stream of texts, emails, phone conversations. Milo, with a sharp-toothed guilt at not missing him, not loving him, not protecting him. Wesley, whom she'd had no chance to get to know, and could love only in retrospect. She worried about the families of the people Johnny and Dru killed. She worried about Spike, and about her mother, who acknowledged emails and calls but didn't have much to say.

She felt she should do nothing but sit in sorrow for all these people, that they deserved her unremitting attention. But life was speeding along.

After the expedition to Venice Beach to pursue the three-tusked demons, which were right where Jemima had known they'd be, there were more visions, regular not in schedule but in her inner sense of their rightness. They came easily, like good ideas popping into her mind. Not all of them were as detailed and obvious as the first; the ambiguity sent her to Wesley's study, where the years in which she'd worked, at the direction of various stodgy Casaubons, in the Council archives, paid off in the reclamation of wide-ranging knowledge she'd never had a chance to apply to anything real. Wesley's workroom in the Hyperion, his desk, his chair, his books and objects, all seemed to be waiting for her, welcoming her. She slipped in among them without fuss or difficulty. In the well-organized volumes she found connections, made inferences that turned up good, got confirmation of own instincts. She had, all unawares, real expertise.

"I think," she said to Rita one night, laughing, "that Angel should pay me for all this!"

The next day, with a solemn expression, Angel presented her with a folded slip of paper, on which he'd written a sum of money.

Jemima looked up at him. "What's this?"

"Annual. But paid monthly." He paused, anxiety rising to the opaque surface of his face. "Do you think it's enough?"

"What, for me? But, I wasn't serious!"

"The work you've been doing is serious."

"Yes, of course it is. Your work. Well, ours now. But you don't have to pay me."

"You sound so sure." He gave her a cautious look. "Why?"

"Well, because I'm not doing it for money. None of us are doing this for money."

"No, not for money. But I pay Rita, Darryl and Noel. I paid Wesley." He paused again. "I'd like you to be independent."

She noticed, with some amusement, how Angel was keeping his distance from her while they talked about this. Not using the influence of his hands. "I am. I don't want to take your money. I have plenty of my own, from Uncle Rupert. And even more now, because... Johnny's half comes to me, now he's dead."

"Oh." Angel sat down heavily in the chair beside Wesley's -- now her -- desk. "You should still take it. I don't want you to feel you're not valued. You're on the team. I'd prefer you to be paid. It's more... regular."

She caught it then, his anxiety about this mixture of roles: she was his mistress, which none of the others were, of course, and she was the one with the visions, which was certainly important, but also, in a way, quite passive. She could be seen as a kind of hanger-on. Except that by stepping into Wesley's place as well, making it her own, she brought something that didn't rely on the favor of the Powers, or of Angel himself.

"Yes, that's proper, then. But it doesn't have to be so much." She wrote a lower figure on the slip of paper, pushed it back to him.

He held it for a moment, looking at it, at her. She couldn't quite fathom his expression.

"You needn't worry that I'm going to sponge off you. I can perfectly afford L.A. I can afford a spacious place to live, a nice car so I don't have to drive yours, a real California girl wardrobe, and when my books and things come from York, I'll make myself a beautiful home right near here."

Angel didn't return her smile, but he'd lightened. There was humor in his glance. "That's your plan, then? Live nearby? Work with me?" He leaned closer to her, so that his face, his eyes, were all she saw. "Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?"

Jemima couldn't stop smiling; his joke surprised her, gave her pleasure. She answered carefully, pulling the words up from memory. "If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening."

His smile widened at their shared recognition. "Oh, could you?"

"Well..." She rose from the desk chair, and let him, as she knew he would, pull her instead onto his lap. "You'd have to let me out of bed long enough to -- "

"You're not in bed now. What are you doing up, and dressed, and -- " His hand stole up beneath her hem, coasting cool along her thigh. " -- but you're not -- "

" -- entirely dressed, no." She parted her legs further, so he had room to curl his whole big hand around her bare sex. Angel pulled her higher into his lap, so she felt the hardening knot of him, restrained by his trousers. "But as I was saying -- "

"Don't you want to live with me?" He lifted her, as if she was light as a child, set her kneeling on the chair arms. Even as his hand went back beneath her dress, he gave her a solemn look, as if they were still carrying on their conversation of a few moments ago, but also not forgetting the joke, that he was Mr Rochester, and she was Jane Eyre.

At first she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out as he caressed her; Rita and the others must be nearby, outside the study. "Don't you?" Angel said. "Or I don't suppose you like living in the Hyperion. My rooms are dark, and impersonal, and the furnishings aren't what you like. Anyway, you want something that's yours. That's natural."

"Na -- natural. Oh God."

He'd undone his trousers. The tip of his tall cock touched her inside leg with a liquid kiss; she dipped herself towards it, thighs straining. Angel took her weight in his hands, raising her again, so her knees slid off their perch, and she hung poised above his erection. He kissed her, a light brushing of lips that made her shiver all over. "Fuck me?"

He always took care to obtain her permission.

"Oh God. Yes."

In the cradle of his big hands, he lowered her onto his cock. Jemima pulled up her skirt, to watch it disappear into her, but her attention was split between that sight and Angel's face. He was never very expressive, but she was learning to parse his subtle signals. Could see how moved he was by her. Could feel it in the way he supported her, sure and gentle, as she took him in.

"You all right?" he whispered.

She shook her head, because "all right" didn't begin to describe the sensations, the emotions: pride at his desire and her power over him, amazement at her own sheer greed for this, and at how fucking him put her into a state at once frenzied and serene; then she realized he couldn't know that, so she nodded instead. Nodded and laughed. "You stir me all up inside. Scramble my brains." She'd believed all those magazines articles, that size didn't matter, but it turned out they were bullshit. Bigger was better. The heft of his cock, his big corded shoulders and arms, the hands the size of bicycle seats, the impregnable bulk of his whole body compared to hers, had an indescribable appeal, afforded an intensity of pleasure she'd never experienced before. With him she felt free to do anything, move any way she wanted to, vocalize and fantasize, forget herself and be selfish all at once. And the awareness that she pleased him, that he was similarly fascinated by her inverse charms -- delighted and incited by the round little breasts Milo had never paid much mind to, the curves of belly and back and thigh, her small hands and sturdy legs, and most of all her pussy, which, in response to its starring role in her life, had developed its own personality, needs and will. It was always wet, always sensitive, always twitching in response to her idlest thought, to Angel's merest glance. They made love constantly, and still she found herself masturbating when she went to the bathroom for a pee, or after an hour or so of hitting the books. She knew that to him she smelled like a cornucopia of sex, he could sniff out the minutest details of her nearly-constant arousal, and this should have made her self-conscious, but she was beyond that already, coasting on pheromones a mile high.

Knees hooked over the chair arms, her own arms balanced on his shoulders, she took langorous downthrusts into his lap. Together they watched themselves, or looked into each other's eyes, or kissed, hard hurried kisses that gave way with gasps to looking once more at their union. With no reflection, this was the one best way for them both to see it. Angel seemed to need as much as she did this visual confirmation of their improbable piece of luck.

Bearing down, Jemima gasped, "I don't dislike your rooms."

"But you don't really feel at home. Like they're yours."

He passed his thumb up and down her stiff clit, slowly, as if feeling the texture of some finely made object. She clenched, panting, straining into that touch. "Do that... that... there... oh God...!" She wanted to say something else about the rooms, but she was coming, every thought draining out into her body's jerking. Purring encouragement in her ear, Angel rocked her faster, thrusting up so the chair back struck the wall. Bang bang bang bang and then a sharp jarring clatter as the front legs crashed back to the floor.

Vibrating, Jemima clung to him, face buried in his neck, taking deep snuffing breaths of his hair gel and the faint aroma of his body. She'd never understood why cleanly vampires had no smell, but then she also didn't understand how, without circulation, they could function sexually.

It wasn't something you asked your mother.

Boneless, she straddled his lap, his cock, softening, still inside her. He held her close, and she didn't want to move, even as her legs began to cramp.

"I was thinking," Angel said.

"No you weren't. You were sending me out of earth's orbit."

"Earlier. I was thinking earlier. That there's whole floors here we don't use. We could renovate. Build an apartment on the top storey. Have it any way you like. Tempered-glass windows like I've got in the car. Lots of light, views. A good kitchen, so you don't have to use the communal one down here. You could decorate it however you like. Be home."

"Home for just me?"

"It could be... whatever you need it to be. If you need your own space... we'd still be under the same roof. Or -- "

"Ohhh. Sorry, I need to get up. Give me a little boost -- oh. Where's a towel when you need one?" His trousers and the skirt of her dress were soaked. Suddenly the surroundings -- Wesley's tiers of books, the dark clubby Englishness of the furnishings -- embarrassed her. They should have gone upstairs.

"What do you think?" He set her on her feet.

There was a strangeness to living with Angel: he could be touchingly eager at times, touchingly thoughtful, as he was now. He could also, as the last weeks showed her, be obtuse, silent, morose, and inconsiderate, but Jemima found those episodes more reassuring than off-putting. He was a man, not a prince charming, and she was learning him.

They were learning each other. As Angel helped her claim her own sensuality, the sensations and pleasures that, from long denial, she'd schooled herself not to want, she discovered that he too had a secret naivete. For all his centuries of erotic experience, he'd never had the chance, with a woman he loved, to have her repeatedly. She sensed his anxiety, stronger some times than others, a dread that something would rip her from him, or that he might drive her off himself, by getting it wrong in some undefined way.

She wanted to allay it, but not too much. She took a wicked satisfaction, after a decade of Milo, in feeling herself mysterious, in not being taken for granted.

"Well?" he said. "Don't worry, I'll mop this up." He smiled. "Don't imagine nothing like this happened here during Wesley's tenure. This room could tell some tales." He paused, frowned. "Not, though about... Wes and me. I meant about Wes and... other people. You understand."

"Yes."

"So? What do you think of my idea?"

"I think it's what I'd like the most in the world."

A little girl was there. Her prattling voice sounded like Jemima, though the brown hair that fell to her shoulder blades wasn't straight, but wavy, almost curly. Still, sometimes Buffy would indulge the child by putting hot rollers in her hair on a Saturday morning, so it must be her.

Spike stayed where he was, lying on the cold bulkhead, and watched her. She sat with her back to him on the floor in the aisle formed by two hulking containers.

She said a great many things that he couldn't catch, things that didn't seem addressed to him. Again he wasn't sure, because she never turned in his direction. She seemed to be playing with something, he couldn't see what. Maybe a doll. Jemima always used to have a great deal to say to her dolls, remarks that he and Buffy found astonishing coming from a little child. They would stand outside her room listening, watching each other and repressing their laughter. Buffy's eyes would shine as she mouthed at him, Where did she pick that up? How does she think of these things?

Spike liked this new presence. She made the darkness less, and while he strained to hear what she said, he didn't have to listen to the howling wind inside him. He wished she would turn around though, so he could see her sweet little face. It was bothersome that she wouldn't. That she shielded her toy from his gaze.

He began to be afraid of her. Maybe she wasn't Jemima. Maybe she was one of his victims. He thought he remembered them all -- they'd shown themselves to him during the tortuous nights here -- shown him their empty faces, their wounds and bruises and spilled insides, reviewed their screams and pleadings and whimperings and moans. What if he'd forgotten her? What if this one was the worst of all? What if she wasn't turning to him because she had no face? Because he'd torn it off or stove it in, or -- He struggled to remember.

After a very long time -- or maybe it was only a minute, he couldn't tell anymore -- it occurred to him that he might speak to her. "Girlie... let me see you."

"It's not time for that, Papa."

Relief flooded through him; for a moment he was positively high on it. "Pudding! You here!"

"What are you doing, Papa?"

"I... I'm in trouble."

"Oh, I know that." Her voice went sing-songy. "You're on the way to Coventry. But who sent you there? What will you do when you get there? No one ever says what happens in Coventry."

"It's nothing to do with you, sweetness."

"That's a mistake. Mistakemistakemistake!" she sang. Then: "Don't go to Coventry. Go somewhere else."

"Why won't you let me see you?"

"You'll never see me, Papa, if you don't go where you belong."

Sadness rose up all around him, like water in an artesian well. He didn't know where he belonged. Crying, he covered his face. Sometimes he felt she was still there watching him, but the oppression on his soul was so great that he couldn't lift his head, couldn't check.

In Liverpool, it was raining. Spike slunk away from the ship in the early evening darkness, passing like a shadow through old brick streets, nearly lightless, deserted of people. The city felt unreal after the atmosphere of the ship, the atmosphere of his head. He'd been there for a month, wrestling with himself, but it felt longer; he was unmoored from time. As he walked through the downpour, memories of earlier disembarkations here layered themselves over what he saw now: traversing these same streets with Angelus and the others in Victorian times, when sickly gaslights flickered at too-great intervals over expanses of grey cobblestone. In the second world war, when the black-out made it an easy feast, though the air raids terrified Drusilla as much as they thrilled her. He'd last been here in the nineties, stopping off on the journey between Prague and Sunnydale. That time, because Drusilla was ill, they'd stayed for a few days in a demon hostel: an old, unplumbed, crumbling and glamoured house in a narrow lane near the port, run by something ancient that mostly took the form of a nondescript fat Irishman in carpet slippers. Spike bent his steps there now. Imagined himself in one of the tiny rooms filled almost completely by a sagging smelly bed, the wallpaper peeled into sinister patterns. He'd lain beside Drusilla as she twitched in fitful sleep, staring at the ceiling and smoking, waiting for nightfall so he could go out and get someone who'd tempt her to feed. He'd killed so many people in that week, out of his fear and frustration for her, that it made the papers.

He thought it might be an asylum again, from the world of the living.

Finding the street, he walked more slowly, though the rain was drenching. His boots squelched, water dripped into his eyes. He didn't remember the house number, but he'd know it when he saw it, smelt it. A place of demon refuge as old as the city itself.

But he reached the end of the crooked street without finding it. Turned and traipsed back, examining each house front carefully. He was certain he was in the right place.

There was nothing here. Nothing but human habitations, most of them abandoned, some reeking of squatters, junkies.

Then he understood. It was as the proprietor had said, in his silky whisper as he led them to their room: Exclusive we are here, an' cozy. Nothing with a soul knows about this place.

Nothing with a soul. Comprehension came with a sickening fall. He couldn't go backwards. There was no retreat into the dubious comfort of that sullen subterranean milieu.

A little while later, trembling as if he was proposing to step out into the sun, Spike walked into a hotel in the city center. The desk clerk, seeing a shabby, filthy figure, streaming with water and with no sign of luggage, stared, reaching for the phone.

Spike laid a credit card and his passport on the counter. "No need to summon the beaks. Got the proper creds here. Had a bit of an accident, but I clean up all right. Just need a room."

The clerk looked suspiciously from the passport photo to Spike's face. But it was all right, as it always was. The Council kept him in very proper British passports, issuing him a new one every year, with the birth date changed. He was always William Grieves, always thirty-two years old, five foot nine and eyes of blue, native and resident of London.

Accepting it and the credit card, the clerk at once became bland and accomodating. Fifteen minutes later, having tipped the bellhop to find him a clean change of clothes, Spike was soaking in a hot tub with a glass of scotch in his hand. He was ravenously hungry -- the last rat he'd brought himself to catch must've been days ago -- and disoriented, as if he'd been spun around very very fast and then let go.

The bleak winter rain kept up. It allowed him to go out in the morning, to walk the traffic-clogged streets to the public library. Along the way, at a public phone kiosk, he paused to send a text to Buffy. But he didn't know what he could promise her. Certainly not a date for their reunion. He longed to see her, to speak to her, but she was so entwined with the horror of his failures that he could no more ring her than he could swallow holy water. After staring at the screen for a while, fixating abstractly on the rattle of rain on the kiosk's roof, he typed Arrived England. Unable to say more.

At the library, where the reading room was lit with yellowy grey watery light from the tall windows, Spike sat at the end of a long wooden table, and read the accounts in the London papers of the murders of George ffolkes and the Honorable Penelope Leigh-Palmers.

Buffy found no diary, no computer. It was clear that Johnny had taken his most personal possessions with him after he was turned, and that these were now lost. Thinking of the photographs of herself she'd found, Buffy decided this might be for the best. She already knew too much about her hapless son.

The things worth salvaging from his flat filled one medium-sized box, which she sent to herself in Reykjavik. In a fog of efficiency, she'd arranged for the donation or disposal of everything else, and was about to depart for Iceland herself, when Mina's watcher called. Could she come at once to South Africa?

It was only half way through the conversation, which was more like a briefing about an imminent Big Bad Situation, that Buffy understood that O'Dowd had no idea of anything that had transpired with her since the end of the mission in Nepal. She was on the verge of telling him when she realized it was altogether better for him not to know. She could go where he and Mina were, immerse herself in the battle, and not have to talk or think about how spun around she was, or accept any commiserating looks.

She was on the verge of departure when the text message came from Spike. Unable to say more. There were so many ways to parse that, that Buffy decided not to parse it at all. Spike didn't have his mobile phone, or else he wasn't using it. But he could access his messages from anywhere if he chose.

Still waiting, but not waiting around. Off to S.A. tonight. Stay in touch.

Spike had never confronted any of his own victim's survivors. The closest he'd come in that department was telling Buffy, early in their relationship, that he was sorry he'd tried to kill her, although not sorry -- obviously -- that he'd met her. Sometimes he'd thought of saying something to Willow about that time he came to her dorm room to bite her, but considering what she'd put him through with that so-called impotence spell, he'd thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie.

As for the other Scoobies, he'd made no explict amends to any of them either, but trust and then affection had grown up gradually, naturally. He'd demonstrated himself, and they'd come to know him.

This wouldn't be like that.

It was still raining, and now darkening towards four o'clock, as Spike drove into the tiny Yorkshire village, which was probably a pretty place in summer. Now it was grey-green and water-logged, like something fashioned out of mold. He asked for directions in the only shop, which was also the post office. The woman behind the counter blinked and shrank a little. "You're not a journalist, are you?" The way she said journalist he thought she'd be reassured if he replied, No, just a vampire. "Because they don't need any more of those, hangin' about. Anyway, all that's over now. The police never caught nought. The family wants to be private."

"I'm nothing like that. I wanted to pay a condolence call."

The postmistress eyed him for a frozen moment before she unbent with a sigh. "Well, it's not a secret. It's a listed building." She drew a crude map on an envelope. When Spike thanked her, she just stared.

He didn't expect the Leigh-Palmers to be at home, or to let him in if they were. He wasn't sure what he'd say to them. Their small Georgian house seemed to crouch in its truncated stretch of greensward like a neat grey hare. Idling before the front door, Spike gazed up at it through the rainy windowglass of the car. The windows were dark. This was idiotic. What was the point? What could he say to these people? Their daughter had been horribly murdered, they'd never know by whom or how or why, and he wasn't going to be able to offer them any comfort.

His whole reason for being here was just thoroughly selfish, anyway.

Putting the car into gear, Spike was about to back out when the door opened, and a man gestured to him. He hesitated; one touch on the gas and he could be gone. But he didn't go. He rolled down the window.

"You've come about Penelope?"

Spike started.

"They rang up from the village, bit of a warning. They're like that about here. Protective, you could say." The man gave a humorless dry chuckle. "Or, put it another way, nosy."

"Sorry to disturb you."

The man shrugged. He was tall and solid, in country clothes, mid-fifties, Spike guessed, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair flopping half across his forehead.

"How did you know my daughter?"

"I... I never met Penelope. The thing is -- "

"Can't talk like this." The man gestured. "Why not -- "

Spike hastened to cut him off. "Don't invite me in! You shouldn't -- " The rain was letting up. He got out of the car, came up to the small porch. "Look, didn't mean to intrude. Just wanted to say I'm sorry for your loss."

"And you are -- ?"

"Name's William."

Leigh-Palmer's hand came up, and before Spike could consider, he was shaking it. The man's eyebrows rose. "My, you're chilled through. Hadn't you better come -- "

"No! No... don't want to trouble you. Just -- " Spike had to look up to address the man; not only was he taller, but he had a few inches' advantage through standing up a step in the doorway.

"So you weren't acquainted with my daughter... and you claim not to be a journalist... so just what can I do for you?"

"Nothing. There's nothing. I wished there was something I could do for you an' your missus, but... but...." Spike trailed off. This was insane. He had no idea how he was going to extricate himself from this. He had an uncanny feeling that part of himself had been scooped out, so that his love for Johnny, too late to be of any use, was exposed and bleeding. At the same time his son was standing behind him, sniggering. Belittling him, and the people he'd killed both before and after.

"Mrs Leigh-Palmer is abroad. She -- she lives abroad, actually. We're no longer married."

"Ah. Well then -- "

"Look here. Why did you come here? Do you know something about this? Do you know who murdered my daughter, is that it?"

For a moment the man's blandness, his good-mannered reserve, slipped. In his eyes Spike saw the hell of it, the violence, the loss. How it just hung there in the man, ruining everything. He could share that, the sheer gobsmacking wrongness of one's child being dead. But for Leigh-Palmers it was worse: he had no reason, nothing he could understand about, that might let the hole start to scab over a bit. Penelope's death was an unknown that had the power to suck all of life into its maw.

He wanted to tell him everything. Explain it all to him, show his own game-face. Hand him a stake and tell him how to use it. Johnny was beyond punishment now, but couldn't he offer this man the ultimate satisfaction it was in his power to give?

"... yeah, I know. Was a friend of mine. He was a student with your daughter at the university. He... he went mad. Hurt a lot of people, an' ended up dead himself. I couldn't get on with mourning him, knowing you were mourning too, and didn't even know who'd done it."

"A friend of yours? What was his name? Why -- why would he -- "

"StJohn Summers. An' I can't explain it." To you. "Something terrible happened to him, and afterwards, he wasn't himself. I'm sorry for what he did. I'm sorry his trouble brought trouble to your family."

"Good God." Leigh-Palmers had paled. Spike could feel him trembling. His hand curled around the doorjamb "But why -- why would he -- what was he -- "

"Your daughter never mentioned him?"

"She... she wasn't in the habit of telling me much about her acquaintance. She was a popular girl, always. Always busy. She was closer to her mother than to...."

"I'm sorry," Spike repeated. This wasn't working. "He loved her, or thought he did. I don't think she felt the same. But there's no excuse for what he did. I wanted to apologize for him, because... he didn't used to be evil. There was always a part of him that would've been appalled by what he did." Again Spike felt that heavy presence at his back. His son, his futility. He'd murdered Cecily Addams, who would not love him. Stolen her one irreplaceable life, murdered her children and her children's children. And here he stood, like a po-faced twat, trying to talk to someone who ought to be trampling him underfoot. "... there's no explanation. No excuse. There's nothing, it's just -- I'm sorry for your daughter. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Leigh-Palmers stared at him, blinking.

"There's no... no retribution you can have, but you deserved to know, her killer's not out living his life, enjoying himself somewhere. He's done, he'd gone. An' I'd better go now too. Nothing else I can say or do here, really." Without looking at the man again, Spike ducked back into the car. He still stood there in the open door; Spike could smell his rising tears and the sour outpouring of his sadness, as he rolled up the window. The dark sky spit more rain as he put the car in gear, backing out too fast, so the gravel crunched loud beneath the wheels. His own eyes flooded too; he rubbed at them with the heel of his hand.

When he'd driven for ten minutes, Spike pulled over and gave way to his sadness. Rain hit the windows in irregular splats. His hands, in the light from the dashboard, looked clammy and dead. How did they do it, the human beings, how did they suffer such rape and degradation and yet go on? After a minute he was aware of a presence in the back seat. It wasn't Johnny. It was smaller, much smaller, and just entirely different. It was quiet and still and patient. He felt that he might see it, if he turned quickly, or even if he looked into the rearview mirror. But he didn't look.

As his sobs slowed, a warm breath tickled the hair at the base of his skull. He pictured the child that visited him on the ship, but this time as he thought of her, there was no fear.

For the first time since leaving LA, he didn't feel alone.

He whispered, "You're a good girl."

"I may be." Her giggle, her breath on his neck, were impossibly sweet. Then they were gone, but the good they'd done him remained. He drove on.

By time Buffy got to Johannesburg, Mina was dead. O'Dowd was playing his cards close to his vest, which was fine with her. They drove in silence and scorching heat for almost a day out to the bush. It took three more to defeat the demon king and his hordes -- fortunately, the hordes fell to dust when he did.

That night they both got drunk on the palm wine that was the only thing available in the tiny local settlement. Now that it was all over, O'Dowd's facade began to crack. Mina was the second slayer he'd lost in five years. Why, he wanted to know, must it be like this? Buffy had lasted thirty-five years as a slayer, whereas Mina -- Mina --

Mina was eighteen years old.

"You know I'm an anomaly," Buffy said, wiping the sweat from her upper lip for the hundredth time since they sat down together. "You can't base your expectations on me." Huge insects whirred and battered themselves against the netting that shielded them, desperate to get to the thirty-watt glow of the portable lamp. "Anyway, I've been dead twice." She suggested it might be time he take a break from the field. O'Dowd, already too wasted to stand up, nodded.

Buffy escorted him back to London. He never did sober up. She kept her own griefs to herself. What would be the point in telling him about Johnny? O'Dowd had his own problems.

She found another email from Spike.

Dear Buffy: Do you think the boy was always evil? We sling that word around every day like it means almost nothing, when really we should keep it for the lowest of the low, should utter it only in whispers. Evil. Can't stop thinking about what he did after his soul came back. Can't help comparing that to the place I find myself. And not saying this to be aggrandizing, but I can barely swat at flies at the moment, let alone imagine killing anyone else with a soul. Why'd he do it? How could he? Those poor buggers in the mall. Sure, Dru egged him on, but that's nothing. He didn't have to go to Dru. I could understand when he tried to off himself, that makes sense, the way the memories oppress... but how he could attack his auntie Tara, who was never anything but his friend. How could he bear the pain of that? Did he think more death would erase the earlier ones?

What does it mean, a soul, if not to impose a conscience, and a check? That's how it was with Angel. 'Course, every human killer's all souled up from birth. I can't figure it, what went wrong with our boy. Was he going to be a murderer whether Dru got to him or not? I can't think that. He was a good boy. He had his troubles, and he could be bloody minded and stupid and obnoxious, but he was only twenty.

My soul is so heavy in me, I can't imagine it wasn't for him too. It's not the same, what I was before and what I am now. It's doing my head in, Buffy. I can't even describe it to you. It's like, everything I did to my victims, is now being done to me. Except that's crap, because no matter how much I'm suffering, I'm still walking and talking and quaffing beer, and it's that feels wrong. Yet at the same time, I know I've got to do it. I can't check out on all this.

I'm confused.

Is Jemmie with you? Kiss her for me. I miss her. But when I think of her too much, and of you, it hurts me, like I've got hold of some consecrated thing that's meant to burn me.

Oh love, I know this is none of what you want to hear. Try not to be too angry at me. Or -- bloody hell, who'm I to tell you what to feel? Please understand, I know it's bad, me being away from you now. But I know it would be worse still if I didn't stay away while I'm in this state. Be patient with me if you can.

Your
Spike

She read this in her office at the Council headquarters -- a room she seldom visited, but which was set aside for her nonetheless. The first paragraph, about Johnny, overwhelmed her, asking as it did questions she didn't want to dwell on. Spike was clearly trying to hang on to a son whose memory he could love. Whereas Buffy found herself, as the days slipped by, mourning not Johnny as he was but the boy she'd imagined him, for twenty years, to be. This distinction made her heart seize up with remorse. She shouldn't do that -- she shouldn't let anything about him, however awkward or horrifying, deflect her maternal love. But it did, and that, more than anything, disturbed her days and roiled her sleep. She hated her own fiery judgement.

She answered the email.

Sweetheart,

I don't know what to say about Johnny, I think about him constantly, like you, and there's no peace there. It tortures me too. Don't imagine that it doesn't. And the pain you're in now, it doesn't bring me any satisfaction either. Not that I think you believe it does, but... Spike, you've been a good man for a long time, atoning for a long time, and this doesn't change it. Getting your soul back doesn't make your past crimes worse, nor does it negate the good actions you've taken since, however it seems to you. Believe me. I love you and I need you. As the slayer and just as Buffy. You're my best friend.

Mina was killed in South Africa late last week. I'm in London waiting for the new slayer to be brought in. Still trying to get back to Reyk but it looks like it won't be for a few more days.

If you need me, call me and I'll come at once to wherever you are. I miss you so much. I hope you're getting enough blood.

All my love,
Buffy
P.S. Jemmie isn't with me, she's stayed on in LA, but of course I gave her your message.

In York, it went on raining. Afternoons, Spike got shit-faced at the pub near his hotel. Every night he went out prowling for vampires and demons, more interested in the fight -- the more knock-down-drag-out the better -- than in the kill. But his kill rate the first few nights was enough to get the word out. Some things fled the city. Others stepped up quite brazenly to the challenge.

Each hard fight for his life was crowned with that crazy vivid lusty feeling of triumph, sheer joy in existence, strength, cunning. In being Spike.

Each battle in a smelly back alley was another incremental battle with himself. I'm bloody well here an' here's where I don't hang my head.

That largeness didn't last. He crawled into the narrow bed each morning in the tatty damp little hole of a hotel with an ache on his heart, in his head. Dawn was his lowest time. The haunters were at their strongest then; they jeered him. You're just a killer. It's you killed the boy. And through him, everyone he killed, is on your head.

His dreams were convoluted and ugly. He couldn't remember them when he awoke, except for the overwhelming sensation of his mouth and throat being full of clotted blood.

One morning, springing awake before noon from a nightmare that made him cry out, the little girl was there. She was kneeling up on the chair to look out the window. The shade was still drawn; she'd thrust her head and one shoulder behind it, so pale wintery sunshine filled the far corner of the room. From where he lay, Spike saw only her body, and some of her brown curling elf-locks.

Whatever she was, she wasn't a vampire. The sun was full in her face. She was singing under her breath, the kind of tuneless song children make up as they go along. Spike listened absently, thinking of his daughter. He'd never been happier in all his living or undead life than during those years of her early childhood, when, for her, he was a different person than he'd ever been for anyone else. She'd known nothing about him but what he was in her present-tense. With Jemima there was nothing at all to live down. He delighted her nearly as much as she delighted him, and he'd found whole new superhighways of love in his makeup, for her.

Would he have fallen back into his old ways, without that child? The idea had never occurred to him. After all, it was Buffy he'd remade himself for, Buffy who was his most shining star.

But Jemima gave him what Buffy couldn't: innocence. Hers, and therefore, his own.

All illusion, falsehood, stupid stupid self-deception. Spike groaned.

The shape of the light shifted, expanded, and then narrowed fast into one intense pencil on the faded wallpaper as the girl moved away from the window glass, and the shade fell back in place. Spike was dazzled, and couldn't see her face, though she was looking right at him. He blinked, squinching his eyes, and then she was gone.

The day was so bright he couldn't, for the first time since arriving there, leave the hotel. He stayed in bed all afternoon, dozing and thinking of his daughter and his wife and what it all meant that he had been allowed to have these connections when he was dead and damned. The pencil of light moved and dimmed and died. When he got up to dress, Spike found that the dust on the dresser was disturbed. Some small finger had traced words in it. You know you must do it, so you'd better go now.

Just what I was thinkin', girlie. Just that.

While Rita wrestled with the big umbrella, Jemima, shading her eyes with a hand, glanced around. It was still early, so there were plenty of empty stretches between the little encampments. Some young men were surfing, others stood around holding their boards, chatting near the edge of the water, watching their companions ride in.

She hadn't been to the beach -- in the sense of showing up in a bathing suit, with a cooler and a book and a blanket -- for years now. She'd spent her twenties living like a middle-aged matron stuck in beleagured post-war Britain, where it rained all the time and there was a ration on sugar. At least, it seemed that way now, looking back on it, stale and drab.

"I'm pasty," she said. "Everyone here is all tawny and toned, and I'm..."

"Don't make me compliment you on your complexion. Your oh-so-lovely-and-enviable English rose thing."

"No, I'm pale, and -- I'm not English."

"You're half English," Rita said, still struggling with the umbrella in the stiff breeze. "The hottie half, too."

Jemima was used to ignoring other people's lustful remarks about Papa. "I want to be what I am. American. A girl of the golden west. But I'm not golden."

"Don't be golden. Really. Are you wearing enough sunscreen?"

"I think so."

"I'll do your back again. Stay under the umbrella until you go for a swim."

Rita had shown great friendship for her, and Jemima liked her too. But she wasn't quite sure yet whether Rita's attention was entirely genuine, or if it was about pleasing her boss. Or even if it was about following some directive of her boss's -- Angel might, for instance, have put her up to suggesting this Sunday outing, perhaps because he was afraid she was becoming too nocturnal, too tied to his side, and the dark rooms of the Hyperion. She couldn't ask Rita about this, it would be insulting.

She wanted a friend. She was hard up for them. Those from her married life were gone with Milo -- they'd mostly been his to begin with. She'd lost track of her old high school cohort -- twelve years out made them ancient history. And she hadn't gone to college.

The umbrella finally fixed, they stretched out beneath it and opened cans of Diet Coke.

"You look worried," Rita said.

"I'm fine. I was just thinking."

"I really don't think Angel minds. I mean... he must, on some level. Miss the sunlight, the day. But I don't think he dwells on it. He wouldn't want you to be here thinking about how he can't be here."

"Oh, I wasn't!" Jemima smiled. "I'm used to it. My father, don't forget...."

"How could I forget?" Rita said, smiling slyly.

"We used to take family vacations at this wonderful beach in Mexico," Jemima said. "The moment the sun dipped below the horizon, Papa would bolt out of the house and run into the sea -- he'd be this streak of white in the twilight, coursing across the sand." Even as she spoke about Spike, Jemima squinted at the surfer boys in their colorful jams, tanned and blonded by the sun. Johnny had done that one summer, after high school graduation. Spent two months doing nothing but surfing, baking himself with sun and hash. He'd never gotten very good at the actual surfing, but that didn't seem to be what he was after anyway. It was more, she thought, about taking a turn as something he wasn't: a carefree jock who never touched a book, never had a dark thought. By halfway through the summer, when she'd gone to visit him for a week, he'd been like these young men: brown as a nut, beautiful and vapid, with a thousand yard stare and a detached smile.

He'd always been strange, hadn't he? How could she not have realized that? There was very little she didn't know about him -- he'd been far more candid with her all his life than he ever was with Papa or Mamma. Yet she'd taken each incident -- even the overdose -- as an incident, a one-off in an otherwise usual adolescence. And maybe it was. Certainly if he was still alive, she wouldn't be thinking this now.

She couldn't think about him without seeing him on fire. That mental image, inescapable, ambushed her multiple times a day.

In her dreams, it was often Spike whom she set on fire. Or Angel. She'd scream and scream as they burned, until she woke up, to find she hadn't been screaming at all, that her hand was half-stuffed into her mouth. And Angel would look at her with such tenderness, as if he knew all about it, and draw her into his arms.

"My brother liked the beach too." She needed to practice referring to him in conversation, even though every time she thought of him her mind was flooded with conflicting emotions: sadness and anger and worst of all, the misgiving that she'd done the wrong thing. That she shouldn't have killed him, because that meant giving up on him. Why had she given up on him? Yes, he'd been in the act of biting her; the sense-memory of that, the wrongness of how he pressed up against her, of his lips on her skin before the fangs bit down, made her ripple with disgust. But she could've done something different. She had no regret for burning up Drusilla, but she needn't have pushed Johnny against her so he'd catch too. She could have waited, to see if the shock of seeing Drusilla on fire might've snapped him out of....

"What?" Rita said.

"Huh? What? What what?"

"I could knit a big scarf with all the wool you're gathering."

"I know. Sorry."

Rita hesitated. "... no, it's cool. I don't know if you realize this... I lost my whole family to vampires. That's why I'm with Angel. He gave me a home at the Hyperion, so I didn't have to fall into the clutches of social services."

"My God. How old were you?"

"At the time, almost seventeen. Almost old enough to be on my own. And I just really didn't want to be anyone's troubled foster child with the too-much eyeliner and the gang affiliation and the home-made tattoos and the waking up in the night with the shakes and the sticking myself with razor blades, and, you know."

"I guess I don't. That's terrible. About your family."

"Yeah, it was. We'd just moved to LA from out in rural New Mexico, my folks and me and my brothers and sisters. There were a lot of us, we were broke. I guess we were succulent and marginal -- not likely to be missed, y'know -- perfect vamp fodder."

"My God."

"They prey on the low-end sleazy motels, you know. Where people stay who are too poor to get together the money for a monthly rental. It's easy for the vamps, there, it's a public accomodation, so there's nothing to keep them out."

"Oh Rita... this is...."

"I'm not saying it so you can feel sorry for me. It was ten years ago, I'm... not over it, but it was ten years ago. I'm just saying, so you'll know, that I understand. That you've got a lot of thoughts about what happened, and that you can feel happy and sad at the same time."

"... yes. That's what I am."

"I see that." She touched Jemima's hand. "Angel didn't just take me in after he eliminated that vamp crew. He paid for me to go to college, up in Berkeley. No strings. I could've just gone off afterwards, blended back in with the know-nothings, but I wanted to come back, to work with him. He's my family now, and I can't imagine any work more important than what he does. What we all do. And it's a life I like."

"Thanks. For telling me."

"I'm glad it's you who got the visions."

"... so am I. Only I thought... when my brother got them, I thought it had to mean that he'd be all right. It had to. And then... it didn't."

"There are things everywhere that'll break your heart. Just break it."

Angel hadn't put her up to this, nor had Rita taken her on as some kind of project, out of ambition or charity. Jemima was sure of that now. Unable to look at Rita, she focused again on the surfers. Had their hearts been broken yet?

"Fortunately, you can live a big big life, even with a broken heart."

"I'm getting that." Jemima hoped her father would get it too, and come back to them.

The house looked like the worst sort of Victorian vicarage: charmless, crepuscular, its deep maroon bricks somehow punitive. Harsh conical trees grew up to block all the windows. The wintery garden was fiercely neat in an unloved way. It was the only detached house on the street of Edwardian villas.

Before he could lose his resolve, Spike pulled the bell. The trill was high and unpleasant. After a few moments a light went on behind the door, spilling out through the pebbled glass of the fanlight. A finger appeared, tugging for a moment at the taut lace curtain on the narrow window beside the door.

Then a voice spoke through the heavy wood. "You cannot imagine I'm going to ask you in."

"No. But I'd like to talk to you." He hadn't seen Prima Whidders in years, and their face time was never much, but he so loathed her that his fists were already clenched. He forced his hands open. "If you would."

"I suppose she sent you. That would be her temerity. You're wanting the key to my brother's house, to take away the things she fancies are hers. You shan't have it. All that is in the hands of the solicitors. And as she didn't even have the decency to come to her husband's funeral -- "

"Not here about Jemima."

Silence. Then the scraping of a chain, and the door opened a couple of inches. Enough to show him all he wanted or needed to see of her set and righteous face.

"How dare you come here? How dare you?"

How indeed? How had he imagined he could humble himself before this Miss Murdstone? That's what they were, Milo and his chalky older sister, a pair of Murdstones who'd tried to take Jemima over and break her into bits. Just because she was the daughter of the renegade slayer and the vampire who'd dragged the Council, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century.

The Whidders faction hated him long before that. The Chinese slayer Wu Xia's watcher was a Whidders.

"I've come to... this is... for condolences."

Her eyes opened wide at that. "I do not understand you." As if his words weren't plain English. As if he was something too far beneath her condescension to bother making inferences about.

Spike was self-conscious, standing here in the early evening gloom by a doorway he could not pass through. Cars went by, a few people on foot trudging home from the bus stop. The night was cold and clear, just as it was a couple of months back in London, when he'd last seen Milo Whidders splayed on the ground. When he'd decided he wasn't worth saving if it meant tangling with the authorities.

He'd gotten them all away, but he knew better than to think the Whidders faction of the Council remained unaware of the confluence of events -- Milo Whidders the victim of a vampire attack at just the same time that the slayer's son was turned. The Council had eyes and ears everywhere. If they didn't know before he took Johnny out of London, their agent in Los Angeles, who watched the comings and goings at the Hyperion, would've reported their arrival.

They knew it, and like so many things they knew, they'd hoard the information, keeping schtum until the time came when they could derive advantage from it. These old Council families liked to serve things cold.

None of that changed the fact, however, that this appalling bitch loved her brother if she loved anything on earth. She was entitled to her indignation. She was entitled to every hateful thought she had about him, about his son. Inside him, Spike's soul howled, cramping and writhing around the necessity of this terrible meeting. "Please," he said. "I don't want to come into your house, or harm you in any way."

"You have harmed me."

"Yes. That's what I want to talk about. Is there somewhere we could speak for a few minutes? Down the local, perhaps, or --

Her eyes, which had always had a slight bulge, seem fixed as she stared at him, the whites strangely reflective. The seconds crawled by. She might have been stone.

Then her gaze shifted; she glanced past him, at the houses across the street, as if she believed they were being watched. Maybe they were.

"Very well, vampire. There is a church in the high street, to the left and three streets up. I will come there in an hour, and hear what you have to say."

"In an hour."

"I will not, of course, come alone."

Bugger this. Well, had he really expected she'd consent to sit with him in a pub cozy, let him buy her a sherry and nod along as he poured out his soul?

Of course bloody not. He stepped back, dropped his gaze. "Thank you."

After keeping him waiting in the apse of the dank ugly Victorian Gothic Revival church for longer than an hour, Prima Whidders arrived behind two large black-coated operative types wielding hand-held crossbows.

"Those aren't going to be necessary."

"I don't think any of us are interested in what you think is necessary, vampire."

Spike shrugged, pretending to a Big Badness he didn't feel. They'd backed him up nearly to the altar steps. Miss Whidders stood behind her bodyguards, arms folded, hands hidden up the sleeves of her large black coat. In it she looked diminished, yet her righteous fury lent her strengh. Spike was pretty sure she was holding a stake.

"What then do you want?"

"To assuage my conscience."

Her expression could've curdled milk. "You have no conscience."

"You don't know what I bloody have, woman!"

The archers each advanced a step. Spike forced himself to hold steady. Mustn't lose his temper. He'd come here because the conscience Prima Whidders didn't believe in demanded it of him. He could go nowhere else, do nothing else, but this. She was his foe, and he'd wronged her, and now he must be in her power.

This was a lonely place, with the great cross hung up behind him, and these three stark faces turned in judgement before. The last time he'd felt at once so menaced and so penitent was when he was a little boy at Harrow, waiting to be caned. In those days he'd been punished for nothing. Since then, he'd done much and was only now coming to his punishment.

In a quiet, calm voice, Spike began again. "I came to tell you. StJohn is no more. He's dust. You'll think that's as it should be. Maybe it'll make what you have to bear a little less hard."

"You could not possibly know -- "

Not the time to protest that he did know, that his son was precious to him as Milo was precious to her. She probably didn't believe it and she certainly didn't care. "I also want you to know that before he was destroyed, StJohn suffered. His soul was returned to him, and he did suffer. But not... not, I suppose, in the right way. Not in any useful way."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Again that haughty contempt that made him wince. Spike shrank from her scrutiny as he shrank from the cross at his back.

"My soul was also restored."

One of the bodyguards gasped at this, and almost dropped his crossbow. Miss Whidders' eyes blazed up, full of pain and loss, as if by imparting this news he'd taken yet something else away from her.

"I stand responsible for what StJohn did. He attacked your brother. And I stand for my own decisions as well. I left him for dead rather than risk losing my son." Spike couldn't bear to look at her; he glanced up into the shadowed vaulting of the church ceiling, his eye tripping along the supports of the clerestory, as if some audience should be there, looking down at this scene as at a play. All the victims whose blood he'd consumed and spilled and wasted. But there was no one there. He was abandoned to himself. He closed his eyes, inhaled the air he needed to go on speaking. He hadn't been sure what he would say, until now. "So... I've come to you. To offer myself. I put myself in your hands."

He looked again at Prima Whidders. She hadn't moved. Still stood in that rather Oriental posture, hands up the opposite sleeves. Her gaze burned him, but he forced himself to hold it.

"Your soul was restored." Her mouth twisted with disgust as she spoke.

Spike nodded.

"You are despicable. Why? Was it a curse like the other one had?"

"Might've been more on the order of a practical joke. I don't know."

"And now -- what? You come to me, intrude upon me, and you expect -- where is the Summers woman?"

The abrupt question threw him. "She's -- not sure at the moment. She doesn't know I'm here."

"Do you not suit her... her queer appetites... anymore, now you have a soul? If indeed it's really true, and not some abominable lie?"

"Didn't come here to talk about Buffy. Or about me. Except inasmuch as I offer you whatever satisfaction you deem just. Whatever... that may be."

She shouldered past the two men, sauntered right up and thwapped him hard in the sternum with the heel of her hand. Spike rocked back a little. "Why is it that vampires so love to act the leading part in absurdist dramas?"

"Uh... was you picked this venue. I suggested the pub."

She grimaced, her mouth and eyes going blocky. Venom poured from her into the hushed grey atmosphere. Perhaps now she would stake him. The blow to the chest, right over his heart -- had she done it to gauge her strength, her angle? He wouldn't stop her.

"How dare you come here and disturb my mourning with your idiotic speeches? There isn't any possible satisfaction I and my family could have from you. I never want to see you again. You are loathsome."

She turned abruptly on her heel. The two men glanced at her retreating back, but stayed where they were, keeping him pinned.

When she'd reached the last pew, Miss Widders swayed, and grabbed its back. For a moment she just stood there, hanging on, her head bowed.

When she spoke, her voice was barely above a husky whisper. It was the acoustics of the sanctuary more than her own volume that made her audible. "Go back to the slayer and do -- do -- do what you have always done to help her in the work. What else is there but the mission? We are all warriors, but she is the foremost. You know it as well as I, you disgusting beast." She pushed off of the pew back, with a gesture as if it stung her. "You have saved more than you ever hurt. I think that's what is the most impossible for me to forgive."

The great door at the back of the church opened; a blast of moist cold air reached Spike's face as she went out. At the same time, the two men, without a word to him or each other, downed their weapons and followed her.

He was alone. His knees giving way, he sat down hard on the altar step, his head in his hands.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, or what he thought of. Consciousness might have fled altogether. Footsteps and a human smell alerted him to look up. A middle-aged woman in a clerical collar stood nearby. "Are you all right, sir?"

"What?"

"Only it's time for me to lock up. But if you're in some distress -- I can help."

Spike sprang up. "No, I'm off."

She seemed relieved, and didn't press, following him at a distance as he made his way up the aisle to the exit.

It was still early evening, but the high street was mostly shut, nothing lit up but a newsagent across the way, and the pub a little farther on. Spike headed towards it. As he passed the shop, its bright fluorescents making an interval of near daylight, he glanced in. The man behind the counter seemed unaware of the unaccompanied little girl examining the adjacent candy display. She wore a coat and woolly cap, her light brown hair curling and twisting down her back. She touched the bright wrappers lightly, longingly, taking small shuffling steps to the side as she systematically examined the whole gaudy array.

Spike paused, thrusting a hand into his pocket to close around the heavy pound coins there. He wanted to fill those small hands with Wispas and Flakes and Galaxys, and see the child's face at last, see her dazzled pleasure in all those treats.

But he knew she wasn't real. He could stand there and watch as long as he liked, and she wouldn't turn around to look right at him.

The man behind the counter did though, raising an eyebrow. Spike made a ta, mate gesture with his hand, and walked on. Outside the pub was a phone kiosk. He sent a text.

How soon can you come home to Reyk? Want you there. Leaving tonight.

O'Dowd was finished. He'd been a wonderful watcher to the last two slayers, although he'd dispute that, and, since the return to London, was disputing it quite vividly with bottle after bottle of single malt. He needed counseling and a long long rest. For the foreseeable future at least, he was done with field-work. Buffy didn't get an argument on that score from the Board of Directors at Council HQ. There were various factions though, each with their favorite candidate to bring forward to take charge of the new slayer, Luz, a Quichua Indian who'd never, in her fourteen years, left her tiny home village high in the Andes. Buffy wanted to make sure an adequate team was in place before they brought her to London, although she wasn't interested in meeting the raw recruit herself -- not until she'd had some time to adjust, anyway. Over the years she'd learned she wasn't great with the newbie-wrangling skills. She tended to frighten them, or else rouse such competitive feelings in the newly called girl that she'd do things too rashly and get hurt.

Mostly now, Buffy was in a hurry to get away. She'd helped O'Dowd, while all the time thinking of home, the clean-lined rooms of the Reykjavik house, the greenish-grey mist that hung around it in the dark mornings, the fresh cold air. There would be more daylight than a month ago, but the nights still began early. It was there she imagined she could get her head clear. She would make the house ready, make it all warm and bright and comfortable, and herself too. This preparation, she felt, would somehow hasten Spike's return. In their big bed at the top of the house, beneath the skylight that let them watch the stars as they lay together, they would talk, they would become lovers again, and they would heal one another. Thinking of all this, how she wanted it to be, how the clean rational atmosphere of Iceland would surely let this happen, Buffy trembled with longing and hope. Whatever Spike was suffering, whatever he was doing on his mysterious quest, her return to their winter home would have an effect on him. Their house would be his beacon, she would pull him towards her.

Then she got the text. It arrived in the middle of a tense meeting of the Council board, that looked like going on well into the night. There was a split over whether to leave Luz in situ or transport her to England. Much depended on who was ultimately to be named as the next Watcher-in-Charge of the junior slayer.

How soon can you come? The words lit her up inside. Tears sprang to her eyes. Buffy rose, wanting to slip out, but the others, oblivious to all but the matter at hand, went on talking to her, two factions each trying to enlist her agreement. She tried to interrupt a couple of times, but short of bellowing, she wasn't getting through. It was too late now, anyway, to start. She would fly out in the morning. But she was distressed at the thought of Spike coming there first. Nothing would be ready for him. No fresh blood on hand, no aromas of cooking, their bed still dressed in stale sheets, the rooms cold and unaired. He'd walk straight back into the undispelled atmosphere of their conflict over Saleem. They'd left in a hurry to come to London, as if London would make everything different. It had: it made it worse.

Still sitting at the big conference table, she tried to reach him. He'd abandoned his mobile when he left Los Angeles. She left a message for him on it, whispering as Lydia Chalmer's precise tones rang out from the head of the table. When she called the house itself, there was no answer before the voicemail kicked in. Damn it! This wasn't how she wanted -- needed -- it to be.

Lydia Chalmers was saying, calmly, "... not the first time we have had to take a girl from an alien culture and mold her into an effective slayer. We must remember that we cannot control all the circumstances. We don't know how the slayers are chosen -- many great minds on the Council have dashed their brains on the rocks trying to learn that, so they could control it -- but it is something belonging to the Powers. We have to do our best with what we are given. And we have to remember that it is our job to serve the slayer -- who in her turn is a servant of the Powers -- and not the other way around."

Okay, okay, Buffy thought, subsiding into the sleek leather chair, slipping the mobile back in her pocket. Que sera, we're stuck with.

The plane landed just as it was getting light, at nearly ten in the morning. In the taxi, traversing the neat toy-like city, Buffy was suffused with tension and tenderness. In the midst of her fear she kept thinking that when he was in her arms, it would all be good. But she was apprehensive. The sunlight struck fire off the water of the bay; her eyes stung as she blinked back tears. She tried to imagine what he was doing now. Though they only lived here in winter, when the hours of daylight were short, the house was almost all windows, made of tempered glass. Spike had certain spots where he liked to take the sun. A chaise in the main room where he'd sack out with a book, sometimes staying there for the whole duration of the sun's stay above the horizon, four or five hours. Other times he'd stretch out naked in the bedroom, not in bed but on the rug by the huge stone fireplace, where the long rays slanted in through the skylight and the windows that faced both east and west, with views of the water and lava fields and white-capped mountains. He'd doze like a cat in the warmth of the sun and a blazing coal fire. The intense light showed up how pale and fine he was, dying his white skin as it progressed into all the colors of the sky itself: purple, blue, pink, orange, red.

But he wouldn't be doing that, she reminded herself. Almost certainly not. He might still be full of trouble and doubt, he might be ill with it. The text he'd sent could be read different ways. How Soon...? Want you there. What did he want her there for? Maybe it wouldn't be what she hoped. Maybe he wanted her there so he could tell her it was impossible after all for them to continue together. Maybe he wanted her there but wasn't there himself. She might find someone else waiting for her at the house, some messenger with terrible news to be broken in person.

The taxi sped by the last of the built-up part of the city. On this more exposed stretch of road, the harsh treeless beauty of the landscape opened out on both sides, made her feel small, less than herself, yet at the same time pleasantly awed. She would never have come to Iceland, certainly not to live, if not for Spike. They were almost there now. Buffy gripped her own knees so tightly they ached.

Paying off the driver with half an eye, she looked at the house. There was a fresh trail broken in the snow up the front walk. The light glaring off the snow and the window glass was intense; she couldn't see inside the house, and when she blinked, pink and orange spots blinded her. It was so cold that her nose and mouth froze up at once, just in the time it took her to hop, putting her feet in the holes already there, to the door.

Inside, eyes still dazzled, she shut the door, dropped her bag. "Spike?" Her vision cleared. He was there, at the other end of the foyer, framed in the tall square arch leading into the main room.

She took him in, his form outlined in light, preternaturally still. He seemed to just perceptably float above the blond floorboards.

Buffy shrugged out of her coat, letting it drop to the floor, and rushed to him. They caught each other in the doorway, spinning partway into the high bright room beyond. He swooped her up so her feet only skimmed the floor; it was almost dancing.

Buffy squeezed him hard. It was all right. It was. She lifted her head from his shoulder, ready to kiss him, but Spike was already letting her go. He stepped back. His face, sepulchre-white, bore that expression she'd seen over and over on vampires she'd staked, right before they exploded into dust -- incredulous shock, a wild wish to reel back time. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Spike? Spike, what is it?"

"You... my God. You are."

"I are what?"

He moved further from her, and it was still like a dance -- or a duel, because he went sideways, slow and serpentine, turned so only the narrowest part of him faced her, no opening. His eyes burned with pain and suspicion.

"What? Stop this, you're scaring me." She approached; he feinted. He was at the window now, bathed in sunlight from top to toe.

He frowned, his head tilting. "No. No. I was sure you wouldn't do that to us again. You wouldn't, Slayer. Would you? An' yet here you are, with -- "

This was surreal -- what he was saying, how he looked at her. She could've collapsed at his feet, wailing. Was she imagining this? Hallucinating? "With WHAT?"

This made no sense, it was a dream in which all good order was extinguished. Yet there was no mistaking this, her further betrayal. There she stood with a microscopic lie burgeoning inside her.

There she stood, looking as though he'd stabbed her.

"Buffy, you must know you're pregnant."

Her face broke open. The eyes first, going wide, threatening to overflow their bounds. The mouth widening, wobbling. She went white, then green, and a laugh burst from her. A high hysterical laugh next door to a cry of despair. "Preg -- ! No no no no no no no -- ! It isn't true!"

"You are."

Spike! We're supposed to be done tormenting each other! Don't DO this!"

He didn't need to be touching her to smell it, everything about her was altered to his senses. He rummaged through every possible excuse or reason she might throw at him. Who, when, how, where, why?

She couldn't have given herself to some other man in the weeks since he'd left her in LA, then returned here to him. Two months ago, when he was sore and righteous, he'd been ready to believe anything of her, anything bad and weak and vengeful. But not anymore. He'd seen the depth of her contrition before he parted from her in California.

So, unable to believe in her wickedness, or disbelieve the evidence of his senses, he hung in limbo, staring into her stare.

She sprang into motion, waving her arms. "Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I know what this is! I know what happened!" She came to him, pressed her hand to his chest where the shriveled heart lay still. "I remember... when we were in bed together, after the Conduit... right before you were sick, I felt this... this incredible heat. And, a vibration, like, like a hard thready pulse. I thought it was me, reacting to you, the way you seized up on me. And then you were up and retching in the bathroom, I was distracted and forgot it." Her eyes bore into him, large and full of hope. "There was a smell too. A heavy musky hot stink -- that wasn't me. Do you remember? Do you know what I'm talking about?"

He'd nearly blocked it since, that shaming failure with her in the motel room. It flooded back now, the physical sensations like nothing he'd ever experienced as a vampire, of his body beseiged, out of control. "Yeah... like I was burning up. Stirred up inside."

"Spike. I think you were alive." She had tears in her eyes, her face wreathed at the same time in the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen.

"Christ. Was I?" He'd been sure the sickness arose from his own self-loathing, from his soul's revulsion at indulging himself with her. Yet now, as he remembered it, the hot, roiling intensity he'd felt before his whole system revolted... maybe that's what it was like. His dead body shuddering to life.

"For a few moments, yes, I think so. And it made you sick, but it also -- it also -- " She stopped, her brightness collapsing. She pressed her hands to her flat belly. "Shit. Am I really? Shit."

"How could you not know?" He counted back quickly -- it was more than six weeks that he'd been traveling.

"I'm always late when I'm over-stressed. And, lately, with everything... I didn't even notice I missed my period."

"But haven't you been... you've felt all right?"

"Oh, swell!" Again the frown modulated, into something inward-feeling, pensive. "Actually... yeah. I've felt fine. I've been sleeping, and slaying, and... mourning and crying and worrying. But... no... no up-chucky in the morning." She shook her head. "That is not how it goes for me."

"Yeah, well, me knocking you up personally isn't how it goes for me." Despite this perplexing new problem, his mood rose like a spark on an updraft.

"The Conduit did this." Buffy struck her stomach with a fist. "Boy, that thing sure had a field day with us!"

This was all moving so quickly, revelation after revelation, and no chance to think. She was like a complex weather system, changing every few seconds. He grabbed her hand before she could strike herself again. "What are you doing? Pet, don't hurt yourself."

"What do the Powers think we are? Puppets? Little marionettes they can dance around, la la la? What do they think I am? Now I'm a vessel for mystical babies?"

"Whoa, whoa whoa. Let's not -- "

He reached for her, but she pulled away, beginning instead to pace, grim-faced.

"Why couldn't you leave well enough alone? Why'd you go ask those tricksters for anything?"

"Boy didn't deserve such a grubby snuffing out."

"Deserve? Spike -- he made his choices. I don't see that he was blindsided anywhere along the line."

"Guess we differ there. Wanted him to have another chance. He could've been a good man if he just -- "

"He was finished, Spike. That... presence in there, that wasn't really our Johnny."

"Yeah, well. Guess not." He could barely look at her. That desparate second trip to The Conduit shamed him, yet he still couldn't imagine not going.

"Definitely not." She stared into his face as if into a bright light, before breaking into a manic smile. "But, hey! They didn't send us away empty-handed. They gave us a consolation prize! A life for Johnny's life. Big ha ha ha." She hit her belly again. "I wonder if it'll turn out as well as those crummy second-hand souls they gave out. I don't think those worked at all."

He dropped his gaze. "... mine does."

This hauled her back from the Bitterville Heights. "Oh God. Spike, I'm sorry." Her gaze flitted desperately around the room, taking in everything but him, alighting nowhere. "You're so thin. Are you hungry? Did you call about starting up the blood delivery? I wanted to cook for us, I wanted to make the place nice for you, before you got here. I'll make you something to eat now...." She wandered out of the room.

He collapsed onto the sofa. The sunlight that filled the high airy room seemed to pin him in place, though it had no power to more than warm him, through the special treated glass. He sat, eyes half-lidded like a cat, soaking it up, his mind drifting. He'd been asleep right before Buffy arrived, and was still oddly drowsy. Their meeting wasn't what he'd envisioned. By his own plan of events, they ought to be upstairs in bed right now, knitting themselves back together with slow silent love.

Dust motes floating silently in the sun's rays. The day was already at its zenith. It would be dark enough for him to go outside in another two hours.

From behind him to the left came a noise. A soft thwok, and something chinging. He turned slowly. In the corner formed by a blond paneled wall and another of glass, behind a large armchair set at an angle, a small splayed leg protruded, white, the knee dimpled, the calf squeezably plump. It ended in a sock and a red patent leather clog. He blinked. The thwok came again, and the hand darted out, snatching up the jacks that chinged, catching the bright ball. The low voice chanted, Onesies... twosies...

"No!" He was across the room vamp-fast, yanking the chair out of the way. But the nook -- the sort of cozy child-sized place Jemima used to appropriate when she was little -- was empty, the thin sheen of dust on the floor undisturbed.

PART EIGHT

In the kitchen, Buffy ran the water and cried. It was obscene, being used like this. The Powers treating her like a kid whose dog had died -- shoving a new puppy at her as if that would make her get over the loss, as if one life was interchangeable with every other. How could they be the Powers, and understand humanity so little?

Everything since her arrival was exactly wrong. She'd come here, apprehensive and eager for the reconciliation that, since his last message, seemed nearly certain. She'd wanted nothing harsh, nothing but comfort and compassion and softness between them. He mustn't be sorry he'd forgiven her, mustn't be sorry he'd come home. She'd go into his arms, they'd hold each other for a long time, soaking up that mutual comprehension and sympathy that underlay everything they were together. All the stupid pointless heartbreaking horrible circumstances would slide away for a little while. Arm in arm they'd climb the stairs to their bedroom, stay there all day and all night. There would be talk, and tears, and maybe even angry recriminations, but later. After they'd had a little time to be what they most basically were, wrapped in each other, skin to skin.

Instead there was this unimaginable new wrinkle, so that the moment he'd seen her he'd been plunged back into the worst of her broken faith. Never mind that it was only for a couple of minutes, she didn't want him to suffer about her anymore -- even for a millisecond. She hoped the Powers enjoyed that part of their sick joke.

And she'd already forgotten herself... shouted at him, said thoughtless hurtful things, spoiled all her sweet intentions.

If the water ran too long, Spike might wonder why. She blotted her eyes with a dishtowel, filled the kettle, and shut it off. There was nothing to eat except what was in the freezer and the cabinets. The shops were too far away, and didn't open early enough, for him to have made it there and back before the late winter dawn. Buffy retrieved some blood from the freezer, set a bag in the microwave. With jerky tremulous movements -- almost pulling off the cabinet door as she yanked it -- she opened a can of soup, though she wasn't hungry. It seemed important to keep Spike company. He might not feed unless she did.

As she stirred the soup, she felt him, with her slayer sense, move towards her from the other room. She counted the seconds until he was at her back, close enough that his breath would've stirred the fine hairs on her nape, if he'd had any. He hovered there for a long pause. She went on stirring.

Spike pressed his lips to her neck, just where the border of upswept hair turned into fine down. She sighed, and pressed back against him.

"I'll have some of that, if there's enough for me."

"I'm heating blood for you. This is just canned soup, it's not going to be very good. I wanted to be here first, I was going to make all your fav -- "

"We'll cook together, later. I'm so glad you're here, pet."

He held her lightly by the elbows now, as if they were going to start one of those slow back-to-front dances. The soup bubbled. She went on stirring with the wooden spoon. Once she'd come close to slaying him with the handle of a spoon just like this, in her mother's kitchen.

"I can't let the Powers take me over like this. It's just... I can't."

He didn't speak.

"You should hate it too. You've always hated being controlled, imposed on. When you got the chip -- "

She stopped. Yeah, he'd hated it. But he'd come to accept it. In some ways, even in the time before he fell in love with her, it seemed like he was almost relieved sometimes, to find himself restrained. At least, it felt that way in retrospect, and retrospect was wacky, but... he'd lived with that chip for a long time. He'd found peace with it.

Just as he'd found peace with her twice returning from his living counterpart's bed with a child in her belly.

"It's not the same thing, Buffy. But we don't have to talk about it now. What else you going to eat with that soup?" He went to the freezer. The microwave dinged, but he ignored it. Buffy wondered if he really didn't just want to feel the radiant cold bathing his face. He took nothing out.

They sat down at the kitchen table. It only sat four, but the distance to him seemed vast.

"Liquid lunch," she said.

"Yeah." He smiled. She was struck again by his thinness, and wondered where he'd been these last weeks, and in what state of mind. He was delicate and pensive and seemed to be holding his breath.

He sipped slowly at the hot blood. She watched him, the way she used to watch Johnny to make sure he drank his milk, during that period when he didn't like it. Spike seemed aware of this too, and applied himself with a grim patience to draining the glass.

"Eat up your soup, love."

"I don't want... all right."

Buffy looked small, tense, like a wary animal lapping at a watering hole. She sipped noiselessly from the side of the spoon, didn't clink it against the bowl. Spike tried to imagine what was going through her mind. Whether, like him, there was so much, and all of it so disparate, that he didn't know what thought, what mood, to settle on.

So much had happened to them, between them. Spike wished they could skip all of it, just take it as given, forgiven. But the pregnancy made it so that wasn't possible.

Probably it wouldn't be possible anyway.

The house was very quiet. His preternatural hearing brought him the low surging of the thermostat, the soughing of wind around the corners. He heard her heart beating. But these small sounds only comprised silence. She seemed to be holding her breath.

Buffy set her spoon down. The bowl was still half full. "Do you want anymore -- ?" She filled the kettle, put it on to boil for tea. As she returned to the table, he leaned out, caught her wrist, drew her to him. She stood against his leg, her gaze shaded. He wanted to say Tell me you love me, but instead he said, "So, Harris's been allowed to breed."

"Seems like it."

He drew her onto his knee. She gave off a fevery heat. He laid a hand over her breast, thumbed the nipple through the thin layers of cashmere and silk that covered it. Not to excite her or himself, but to see whether he was still to have this privilege, to touch her anywhere, to be familiar.

He was. She leaned into him, her breath catching. Reaching up, he unsnapped the clasp from her hair, so it tumbled down around her face, against his face, releasing a burst of her body's perfume. He spread his hand through the heavy rich silk of it. Already it was thicker, her breasts rounder. Holding her, he was seized with a hungry urge that made his fangs tingle to descend, despite the blood he'd just swallowed. A woman in early pregnancy was a prize, a particular delicacy Angelus had taught him to relish, tastier and richer even than a plump infant. He'd learned he could find what he wanted in that line among factory girls coming off their shifts, pouring out on their way to meet the swains they let fuck them up against alley walls behind pubs, or in the park on summer nights. Working-class girls whose first time being up the spout made them plump and glossy, not yet turned into the hags with packs of kiddies hanging off them who populated the warrens of streets around the works.

Spike's memories of those kills -- kills and other acts -- commingled uneasily with his pleasure and pride, also uneasy, in Buffy's fecund body. Unbidden memories flooded his head of how it was to fuck her when her belly was round and hard, her breasts swollen. Before Jemima came, they'd had themselves a time, and were so happy it was almost surreal.

Her cheek, hot, a little moist, lay against his forehead. Still making no sound, she began to cry. He knew she'd cried before, when she first came in here. He could smell the salt of the dried tears on her skin. Passing an arm around her, he crooned, "My queen, my queen, my queen."

That made her cry harder.

"Ssh, pet. ssh. I'm here. I've got you."

"I'm afraid."

How seldom she would ever admit to that. His own fear sprang forward, as if to meet hers. Sensing what she'd say next, and wanting to stop her, to hold it off, though he had no right to.

"I can't do this. I'm going to get an abortion."

He had no idea what to say. Jemima had done it, just, what was it now? Three months ago? Easy to forget, amidst all that rushed after. How sad he'd felt, though he understood, though he'd never have said a word against it. Maybe it was being undead that gave him this visceral reverence for sparking life. "Don't need to decide today."

"I haven't consented to this. This... thing growing inside me, I don't even know if it's good. Spike, it might be a monster."

He'd never seen the little girl's face. She'd never let him glimpse it. He'd thought she was Jemima somehow. An emanation of memory, guiding him back home. Buffy did used to put curls in Jemmie's hair sometimes. Not often, but he knew she had. "I doubt that."

"The Powers invaded you too -- why aren't you more upset?"

"I am. Just... s'just natural, innit, that a fellow should feel pleased when he's put his girl in the family way, specially when he's like me, an' never could before."

"Pleased? You feel pleased about it?" Buffy roused, stiffening in his lap. "At the time you all but vomited in my face!"

"... well, maybe pleased is the wrong word. Awed. Seems to me it's a solemn thing. Not to be taken lightly. This... could be a gift."

She wagged her head in sharp denial. "A gift is when they say 'we want to give you this nice thing,' and you can open it and see what it is, and if it isn't something you want you can quietly return it or stick it in the attic, and if it is what you want, you can decide when and how and where you want to use it. If it was a gift, we'd have had a choice. This isn't a gift, it's a -- a -- PHWOOOM.."

"Yeah, but the thing is...."

She wrenched away from him. "When do we get to mourn the one we lost? I've barely started that! We need to do that together! And I wouldn't think the Powers would be in such a hurry to give us another child to ruin."

He sprang up. "Ruin? Buffy -- who've we ruined? How can you say that!

"How can you pretend we didn't? There's nothing natural about us! We should never have tried to bring up children -- look what happened to them!"

"Johnny was unlucky. It's our fault, not his, that we didn't do for Drusilla."

"I found out... how corrupted Johnny was -- troubled and perverse -- and -- and -- weak. Oh Spike, I think he was lost even before Drusilla touched him!"

Spike recoiled from this with his whole mind. "He was only young. He was nothing I hadn't been before him."

"Do you think it was a coincidence that the son of a slayer and a vampire got turned as soon as he was twenty-one? Even his soul couldn't help him. He got it back, and what did he do? He went right out and -- "

"But Jemima -- ! Can't say she's not good as gold, an' always has been. Even when she married that pillock, it didn't change her!"

"Oh, she's not so innocent."

"What do you mean?"

The kettle began to whistle, the water banging in the pot. Buffy struggled to get herself under control. "See what this does to us? How it takes our autonomy away? You're already siding with this baby against me and it isn't even a baby! It's almost nothing, but it's running us!"

"She's not bloody nothing, I think I've -- " Couldn't tell her that. "Well, have it out, then! The Powers knocked you up for a lark, so no reason not to have it out!"

"How can I, how can I, when you'll resent me forever if I do?"

Darting past him, Buffy grabbed the shrieking kettle off the stove. In the sudden quiet, pivoting on one heel like a discus thrower, she hurled it across the room. The glass wall shattered with a sickening crash. Spike leapt out of the way of the untrammelled orange rays of the setting sun. The winter wind flowed in, absorbing the kitchen's warmth at once, making it frigid, desolate.

"Don't call it she. It's not a she." Buffy ran out. He heard her feet pound the stairs, a door slam above, then silence.

Supermarkets were the same all over the western world. Buffy found that comforting. Sure, there were local differences -- milk containers were oddly-shaped to her eyes, the names of laundry detergents couldn't be serious. Familiar things were mutated into colors and sizes that looked wrong. In some countries they had aisles and aisles of wine but no beer, and in some it was the other way around. In Reykjavik the market she patronized was scrupulously clean in a way that seemed to be kept up by elves rather than people. Most of the packaged foods seemed to come from somewhere else, England or other Scandanavian countries, or Germany.

As she pushed her cart -- grocery carts, like most everything, were smaller in Reykjavik than in California -- Buffy grew calmer. Markets everywhere were meant to make you feel calm and consume-y. This one, the local Bonus, so bright and cheery inside, was no different. She didn't fight it. After that scene at home, she was glad to sneak out of the house and take care of these mindless, not unpleasant tasks. She'd already stopped at the butcher to get the regular delivery of steak, pork chops and blood started up, and at the glazier to order a new sheet of the necro-tempered glass. Now she was contemplating shelves of little fruity yogurt pots, their zippy colors childish and appealing. Boysenberry, or strawberry, or greengage? She could never remember what a greengage was, exactly.

God, this whole situation was just creepy and gross and wrong, and Spike ought to get that, more than any man, because he'd endured being captured and getting an alien thing shoved inside one of his most intimate places, put there against his will to change him and control him. And, okay, the chip turned out to be a good thing for pretty much everyone except Spike and then it was a good thing for Spike too, because without it... without it she wouldn't even be having this conversation with herself, wouldn't be doing foodshopping in Reykjavik, wouldn't, almost certainly even be walking this earth.

For a second, when she'd figured it out, that his convulsion in the motel bed had to mean he'd been alive -- she experienced a rush of joy. With a six-pack of raspberry yogurt pots in her hand, she experienced it again, that glad surge. Some of it was relief that she had an explanation for the mystery, so he'd stop looking at her as if she'd staked him. But some of it was sheer unpremeditated delight at the idea of Spike being alive, even for a moment. That was the sort of thing she'd been fantasizing twenty-two years back, when she'd wanted to fulfill his desire for another child. Instead her wish and Willow's spell sent her across dimensions to William.

Still -- did the Powers really think that was a gift? To thrust this on them when they were crazy with loss and at odds with each other, so that all she could think was that she disgusted him, that he'd never forgive her for Saleem, never really want to touch her anymore. And what a cheat for him, to be stirred to life without warning or consent, only to lose control of himself. Where was the beauty, the dignity, in that?

Everything about this stank. For all she knew, this was a spell cast to implant a demon within her. Something that would eat her from the inside out and go on to ravage the world. She wasn't convinced the Conduit was a force for good. Sure, it gave souls to Spike and Johnny, but only as a trick. The Powers That Be were more interested in amusing themselves than in really doing anything for their designated warriors.

She put back the raspberry, grabbed boysenberry instead, and moved on towards the bread aisle.

He'd never been handy -- and vampires were more about tearing things down than building them up. But Spike asked himself what would Harris do? and finding some plywood and plastic sheeting in the shed, left there by the summer caretakers, managed to rig up a covering where the shattered glass had been. As he worked in the cold, walling himself out, he wondered if he'd live in this house much longer. It was the only house that had ever truly been his, man or demon, the name of William Grieves made out on the deed.

At the beginning, when living with Buffy still felt precarious and novel, he used to reassure himself sometimes that he would always have his demon to fall back on, like a trade. If things changed, if she tired of him or died again, he could always return to his transient vampire ways, living opportunistically, with no fixed address. He could leave America, find some way to get the chip out, be Big Bad again, older and wiser but fiercer too.

As the years passed he wondered sometimes if he wasn't getting soft, used to 500 channels, clean sheets every few days, and blood carefully warmed in the microwave. The sort of thing any man might feel, missing his wild years as he watched his children grow and trailed around the mall with his wife. Except that even in those dullest moments, he was sure there wasn't a man alive who loved and appreciated his woman and children the way he did himself.

That made a difference, yet the real difference was, he very well might live forever. His marriage to Buffy could be a phase. Maybe in another hundred years he'd find himself in some demon dive, telling a disbelieving drinking buddy about the time he'd lived aboveground with a slayer, a father to two live children who looked like him. Maybe he'd have a few carefully saved-up snapshots of Jem and Johnny he could pull out, to prove his implausible story.

The plastic sheeting, that filled in where the plywood stopped, flapped and bulged in the wind, like a live thing struggling for breath. The light from the kitchen filtered through it, casting a blue shape on the trampled snow. He was very fond of this house. Because, unlike the one in Sunnydale, it was theirs together. And it was beautiful inside and out, designed for the comfort of vampire and human both. In it he and Buffy could lie in bed and, barely lifting their heads, watch the Northern lights shimmer in a thousand colors on the horizon.

Tipping his head back now, Spike surveyed the black sky. It was still only late afternoon, but might have been the middle of the night, so clear and limpid were the stars, and the pretty slice of moon. The wind blew mercilessly, making his eyes water.

He wasn't sure if she still loved him. She probably thought she did, but that wasn't the same thing. Buffy just didn't want the child they'd made together. She'd convinced herself no good could come... from anything of his.

"Spike?" The house was dark and cold now, winter in the rooms. Buffy carried the bags into the freezing kitchen, saw where the wall had been patched. "Spike?"

She found him upstairs, cross-legged on the bed with no lights on, the phone to his ear.

"Who're you calling?"

"Jemmie. Just remembered she needs to know -- "

She sprang forward. "Oh, don't call her! I mean... the time difference. And... and... I want to talk to you. I want to say I'm -- "

"Buffy."

"Sometimes I wonder how you can go on caring about me when I'm so... so difficult. I know I'm difficult."

"I tried to fix the hole."

"I know! I saw! You didn't have to... you did a good job. The glass guys should be here tomorrow. I explained that we would freeze, and -- "

"So, did you make an appointment?"

"No, they just said they'd swing by as soon as they could -- I think that's what they said -- one of them only spoke Icelandic and the other one -- I'm pretty sure he promised they'd -- "

"For the abortion. Did you make an appointment?"

"Huh? No! I was shopping. At Bonus. I got you some Weetabix. Three of the big boxes."

The way he sat so still in the thin moonlight, the coolness of his regard, and how pared he was from his wandering weeks, reminded her of how he'd appeared to her in the beginning. That night he sought her out to make a deal about defeating Angel, he'd had this preternatural poise, this basilisk gaze.

"Buffy, you don't owe me anything."

"But... groceries... are for both of us."

"I mean, you don't owe me any more apologies... you don't owe me another child, or... even another minute of your...."

A wave of panic -- deep cold and black -- swept her up. "Spike, my God, what are you saying?"

He shook his head. "Could you..." He gestured vaguely towards the open doorway behind her. "I need to sleep. Feelin' too shagged out for any more... for anymore."

When he woke, she was watching him. The moon was high, its cold clear light filtering in through the skylight, casting a veil over the bed. She knelt beside him, her knees near his arm, almost touching. For the first time he was able to see her small round face in the frame of squiggly hair. Regarding him with a mild pensive gravity, she was fiercesomely beautiful. Spike longed to touch her, to tuck the hair behind her ear and cup her cheek in his hand. He was too awed to move. He loved her with all his heart.

"M'sorry, sweetness. I don't think it's going to work out."

Though he only whispered, it was as if his words filled up the room, and crushed him.

She said nothing, but her pretty mouth curved into a smile. He thought no child should have to show to a grown-up such an expression of forebearance and patience and comprehension.

"S'no good makin' eyes at me, pet. She... she's the slayer. The world-saver. She's suffered an' sacrified... It's down to what she can bear. An' she can't bear this. Not in... not in any sense."

Saying it out loud nearly broke him, but at the same time understanding dawned, visceral and real, of how impossible it was that Buffy could feel anything but violated by what the Powers had done. She wasn't merely being stubborn or petty. Some things were just too much to accept.

"Thanks for bringin' me back home, anyway." He could lift his hand now, and thought he might be allowed a parting touch, but the girl was already gone.

Buffy didn't know how long she'd been staring into the fire, huddled on the couch with an afghan draped around her. But she'd made a large blaze, and now it was a shifting line of orange embers she gazed into, her eyes wet and out of focus.

She felt Spike loom up into the doorway behind her.

"What did you mean," he murmured, "when you said Johnny was already corrupted?" He moved slowly into the room, coming to stand at the side of the sofa, out of her direct line of sight.

The glowing charcoal seemed to pulse, to change shape as she watched.

It took an effort, to break her own silence. "He was... he was twisted up inside. Over me. At the Hyperion, he came on to me. He said... gross, revolting sexual things, about what he wanted to do to me. He tried to touch me."

"Buffy, you know full well that vampires -- "

"He had his soul." She ground the words out through gritted teeth. "He had it, just like he had it when he massacred those people at the shopping mall. And he wasn't yet a vampire when he stole the naked Polaroids of me out of our room."

"What?"

"I found them in his London flat. Under his bed, with... with his porno mags. And there were other pictures -- snapshots -- he took of me, years back in Mexico, when I didn't know he was doing it." She wished she could forget the lust and anger in his gaze. It was no way to remember her dead son. "He wasn't what I thought he was. God, I think he was obsessed for a long long time. With me, with... us."

Whatever reaction Spike had to this news, he kept it from her. "And Jemmie? What did you mean about her?"

"Nothing."

"You can't hold it against her, for bein' unhappy about us. About what you did -- you told her about it, an' of course she was upset. But she loves you, same as she always has."

"Spike, it's not that. It's nothing. There's nothing about Jem, forget I mentioned her."

"How can I forget? Do you still think -- "

"Spike! I don't think anything! All I said was she's not so innocent. And she's not -- she's thirty years old, she's a widow. You still think of her as a little girl. That's all I meant. That's all."

She could feel him thinking, trying to smooth this in his mind, trying to believe it. Then he went to the fireplace, laid on more coal, poked at it until the flames flared up. She opened her mouth to protest at the destruction of her pretty field of glowing embers, but caught herself. It was cold in here. Spike sat down, not right next to her, but at the other end of the long couch.

Together they watched the fire.

"What made you ready to come back now?" she asked. "Where were you?"

"Spent about a month at sea, in every way. Came to England, learned... learned a bit about what I'm not anymore. Still didn't know what I was to be. Paid a call on Prima Whidders."

"Oh God. Why?"

"To offer amends." He shook his head. "Dunno if it was the right thing to do or not. She knew it was our Johnny did for Milo, but I told her my part in it too."

"What did she say?"

"She couldn't begin to say how she hates me. Us. She tried, but was too much for her."

"So?"

"Told me to pull my bleedin' socks up."

"In so many words?"

"In so many words."

The coal glowed like orange velvet; Buffy felt a weird urge to touch it, as if it would feel like that too.

"Is that all that happened? It can't be, can it?"

"It's all I can tell about right now."

Hugging her drawn-up knees, she shivered again. Spike couldn't warm her, not really, but she wanted him over here, so she could wrap the afghan around him too, and her arms.

"Maybe we should get to bed. It's really late."

"You go on."

"Spike -- " She bit her lip. She didn't want to do this, plead with him. At the same time, there was nothing else she wanted; she could've stretched herself at his feet, weeping and begging him to lift her, to hold her and forgive her.

He'd never be able to forgive her, no matter how much he wanted to, because there were some convictions that lodged deep in your soul, so deep that they were bedrock, and could not change. He might have been able to let the pain of her physical betrayal fall away, but this new thing she was going to do, this rejection of his miraculous lifeforce, that would be impossible for him ever to overlook, no matter how he might try.

She wasn't even sure she wanted him to. Maybe he wouldn't be the William she respected and loved, if he could do that.

The next time he awoke, the view through the skylight and windows was of mares' tail clouds spread out pink and yellow across the lightening sky. He heard the stamping footsteps, the gutteral voices of the two glaziers, pulling down his plywood patch, preparing to set in the new glass.

He lay listening to these cheerful noises as the room gradually grew lighter.

He'd never have imagined, during all his decades of loving Drusilla in the darkness, that there would ever come a time when he'd live so much in the light. Buffy made these homes for him, where he could safely drowse in the sun, where he could reflect with satisfaction on his years of inactivity in the realms of evil, as if that inactivity, or anything he did to help the slayage, really made him good.

Maybe it did. Buffy seemed to think so, and she was such a rigorous judge, although you could wonder if she'd have had a different opinion if he was ugly, if his key didn't so perfectly fit her lock. The Scoobies seemed to think so too, and their respect was harder-won, it was true. Though again, like most warriors in the field, they took their allies where they could find them, and without too many questions.

What was real goodness anyway? He'd never thought about it, before. But getting a soul made you quite the bore -- he'd seen that with Angel, who became a most crashing one. Now he could be tiresome on philosophical subjects all by himself.

All at once he remembered his midnight conversation with Buffy. For a moment he wasn't sure if he'd dreamed it or not. What she'd said about Johnny. The naked pictures... he'd have spared her that, except he was too wrapped up in own misery to give a thought to being the one to get to Johnny's flat and clean it out. Still, apparently those were the least of it. Boy had said things to her that she'd never be able to explain away or rationalize. And the murders. All those soul-defying murders, done... why else?... to defy the two of them, apparently. And he'd have killed his own sister too, maybe turned her, had Jemima not had that old lighter handy.

Buffy was right. The way he persisted in thinking of Johnny was ridiculous. He might've been a victim at first, but later on... with all the free will in the world, he'd plunged back into horror with both hands.

There was no satisfaction in feeling his own distance from that. Made it worse, really, to face the truth of their son, knowing he'd lacked the strength, or will, or love, or something, that Spike himself had mustered when circumstances demanded he change. What was wrong with the boy? Was it only that they hadn't loved him enough?

Buffy pushed the door open, sidling in sideways with a tray. "Good, you're awake. They're working downstairs, so I thought we could have breakfast here."

She was smiling, a wobbly smile that looked for one from him lest it collapse. He sat up and beckoned, reaching out for the tray. A warm flask of blood, pot of Earl Grey, some Weetabix and toast. Buffy sat crosslegged on the bed, near the foot, out of arm's reach.

"Did you fall asleep on the couch down there?"

"I did." She yawned, and scrubbed the hanging hair back from her face. "Don't look at me, I'm ghastly."

"No such thing. Come here, pet." He patted the space beside him. She crawled up to sit, as she had downstairs, with her knees drawn up tight, making herself small. He poured out a cup of tea, spread jam heavily on the buttered toast -- she was always denying herself sweet things -- and handed it to her. "Let's see you eat that up."

Obediently, she took a bite, the red stuff surging up over her lip. Before she could lick it off, Spike leaned in to kiss her. The jam and butter made her lips slippery. She sat frozen, her head at an angle, for a long moment, before her mouth opened against his, expelling a moan. He began to pull her closer, but she resisted, drawing away with a fake laugh. "Drink your blood while it's warm."

Though she'd pushed him away, he thought she looked pleased, her cheeks rosy as she concealed her mouth in the teacup. The miracle of her surged through him -- he'd loved her when she hated him, when he had no hope she would ever see him. Yet she did see him, she'd led him through an unimaginable transformation, into a life in the light, and here she was still, looking to him for his love.

It was suddenly so simple. His doubts of the day before were insignificant. Nothing was more important to him than she was. She wanted him, she wouldn't have come here if she didn't. His job -- his fulfillment and delight -- was to support her in every way. That was all.

"What shall we do today? Fancy a sauna an' swim?"

Her eyes opened wide. "Do you want to?"

"I'm hedonistic as ever I was." He offered her the toast again. She nibbled at it, peeking at him sideways in a glance half questioning, half flirty.

"Are you? That's good. What... what does it feel like, Spike? Having a soul."

"Like old Rupes at his shirtiest, watchin' everything I do an' think."

To his dismay, the joke didn't deflect her. She went on regarding him with an unswerving seriousness.

"I don't want to be a disappointment to you. I know I am. If I was a better person, I'd be able to comply with... I wouldn't have to... if I was better."

"No no, sweet. You're fine as you are. You always have been." This was wholly inadequate. There was more he wanted to say, but she shrugged, and leaving her tea cup nearly full, the toast half eaten, got up. "I'd better go see how the glass guys are doing."

Their favorite place to swim, a place they'd discovered on their honeymoon, the first time they came here -- although she'd always suspected Spike had visited it with Drusilla, years before -- was a hot spring outside the city limits. Compared to the purpose-built hot pools in the city, with their quasi-amusement-park atmosphere, this place was rustic, almost primitive. The crater in the lava rock was large and unevenly-shaped, fed by a constant natural upswell of hot water. A sulfurous mist, made of the steam rising into the cold winter air, covered the milky-colored surface of the water. Even when there were plenty of people there, it was easy to feel alone, shrouded in that mist. From the low log changing houses, one for men, one for women, you could run barefoot through the snow to fling yourself into the mysterious pool before you even had time to feel the cold.

It was here, more than anywhere, that she'd experienced what she'd hoped for when they came to Reykjavik after the wedding -- the sensation of being regular people, a normal honeymoon couple enjoying themselves. They blended in with all the other people swimming in the Icelandic night, floating in the water even as the snow fell. In the heat, Spike's skin was slick and warm, he almost felt alive. His expression was wholly alive, full of pleasure in everything, in her.

Spike was being lovely to her today, light and just solicitous enough without being irritating. Yet she couldn't recover that feeling of normality. It seemed inappropriate to be out, doing something invigorating, when Johnny was dead. Her body felt wrong, like her center of gravity was shifted. She could only think of the fetus inside her, growing without her knowledge and consent like a tumor. Why? Why did the Powers force this on her, something that, if it was possible at all, should be allowed to be special and solemn and joyous? What if they'd offered it as a real gift, not a fait accompli but an option they could accept and keep in reserve. So that, maybe... if things worked out between them, if they could get the trust back, the ease that seemed forever gone... maybe then they could decide to make another child. Making love to him, knowing that at the crucial moment he would spring to life... that would be sublime. If there was a mirror propped up nearby, would his reflection appear when it happened? How wonderful that would be, to see that!

And to give him that happiness, of making her pregnant. That would mean so much to him.

"All right, pet?"

She came out of her reverie to find they'd stopped. They were here. Even in the car park, the air held the thick smell of sulfur.

"I'm a million miles away."

"See that, yeah. You ready?"

He took her arm as they walked towards the entrance. She almost balked, overwhelmed again by the sense that they didn't belong here. They ought to be back home, having a very serious conversation, about... about everything. They needed to talk about Johnny -- not just his death, but his life. To... to talk about it for as long as it took to figure out exactly what they'd done, to make such a complete botch of him. Also, they had to talk about Spike's soul, she had to make him understand that she cared about it, that --

"Buffy."

"Huh? What? No. I'm fine!"

Again she'd been so far away, she didn't realize they were inside, paying their admissions. Spike handed her the plastic bracelet with her number on it.

"I'll see you by the water in a minute. Don't forget about me in there, while you're changing."

He was being so nice. Even nicer than... different than she thought of... was that the soul? Was he going to have an altered personality now? Angel was a whole other person than Angelus, but then... Angelus was never nice, whereas Spike... she couldn't figure it out. Passing through a door, she was startled to see all these women and girls, in different stages of undress.

Oh, right. Put on your bathing suit, go swimming. Get a grip, Buffy.

She emerged from the changing room, still plaiting her hair up in back. Looking insouciant and faintly bored as always, Spike stood waiting for her, naked except for the black slip of nylon, and seemingly impervious to the cold. That was the only thing that set him apart from the Icelanders, many of whom were also pale and blond and chiseled, and some of whom also liked to make a show of standing around as if it wasn't 0º C.

Securing the last loop of elastic, she let the braid drop against her back. The tiny metal grommet struck the skin like a lick of ice. Suddenly she was aware of herself, in a Speedo, standing out in the cold like an idiot, like a bad mother who could disport herself when she was supposed to be mourning.

Spike did the tongue thing, and the thing with his head -- the one-two whammie. "Pretty girl." He grabbed her hand. "Let's run now, slayer. Last one in's a -- "

He bounded forward, yanking her with him, dropping her hand at the last second as he leapt in. Buffy balked at the lip of the pool, so hard that her knees jackknifed, her behind hitting the ground hard. Spike's white head was already just a blur in the mist that covered the water. She stared after him.

How could he trick her like this? Bring her here so she'd remember so vividly, with such a sick shock, how they'd swum together in the cold Pacific, when she had Jemima inside her, when they'd decided at last to let her stay?

Tears, hot and acid, sprang to her eyes. Someone touched her shoulder; she was vaguely aware of a woman bending over beside her, and other faces bobbing nearby, asking her in Icelandic and in English if she was all right. Then Spike was there, emerging from the crater as swiftly and neatly as he'd gone in. He spoke to the people, the concerned strangers who surrounded her, and they parted for him, and he touched her. His hands were warm, from being in the hot water.

"Sweet, what's the matter?"

"Why do you always have to fight dirty?"

"You think I'm fighting? C'mon sweetness, let's get you inside, you're shivering."

He would've swung her up in his arms, except that she pushed him away in time, and ran back into the women's changing room. Her tears attracted a new coterie of worried strangers to fend off. Facing the wall of lockers, she peeled out of her swimsuit, hiding behind her dangling hair, her high shoulders. It's not working, it's not working, I can't do any of this. She dressed like flagellating herself, spent a long time at the sink, washing her face over and over, trying to make herself stop sobbing.

Turning the heater up high, he waited. As the car windows fogged, he rubbed at them with his sleeve. Tried to think what she'd meant, about fighting dirty. Usually he was pretty good at following her woollier trains of thought, but this one just eluded him.

Might ask her, or might just let it slide, depending on what she was like when she finally came out of there and got in the car. He'd been waiting twenty minutes.

Finally the door opened and she dropped in, her hands curled around her sweater sleeves, face averted.

"Go."

"You all right?" Knew this was the most inane of inane questions, but had to say something.

"I wish it didn't have to be this way, but it is. You know it is, Spike. So there's no use you being the Pregnancy Police. If the Powers want to run me, they can fucking well come out and say so. And then they'll see where they get off."

"Not... not trying to run you, Buffy. Thought we'd could both do with some exercise, that's all."

"Go."

Mystified, Spike put the car in gear and pulled out. Emitting low snuffling sobs, Buffy hid her face. Still no wiser about what caused her to go off that way at the pool, he drove, and waited.

Finally she raised her head a little. "You love them and you want them to be normal, and safe, and -- and -- but being ours, they were doomed from the start."

"Sweetheart, it's not quite what you're saying. Jemima's all right."

"She isn't! She won't be! She's there, in LA, and she's going to be in danger every night! She's -- she's going to get hurt! That's just what happens!"

"What are you talking about? LA's not that bad, long as you live regular an' don't go courting trouble -- "

"Live regular. That's a good joke, Spike. Her brother didn't just nearly murder her, you know. He also left her a nice little inheritance to make sure she never gets out of this filthy life. She's been highjacked too. Even if you don't care about it happening to me, I know you won't like it for her."

Swerving, Spike jammed on the brakes, threw the car into park on the shoulder of the road. "What are you talking about?"

Buffy laughed suddenly, throwing her head back. In the gleam from the dashboard, the line of her throat was girlish and pale, so vulnerable, like something fluttering in the dark.

"They gave her the visions. So now your precious baby gets every monstrosity that arises in the greater LA basin forced directly into her mind."

"Fucking hell."

With a surge of underhanded satisfaction, she watched Spike go gold-eyed and angry. Good. When he was all calm and understanding while she was in full-on melt-down, he made her feel so petty. And she wasn't being petty. Being unable to cope with a pregnancy that should have been impossible, that came when she was already fractured into a million pieces -- that wasn't petty. It was enormous, and she couldn't. She just couldn't.

"When did this happen?"

"After you took off."

"And when were you goin' to tell me? You mention your sister's up the spout but this development you keep to yourself?"

"Huh?" Her satisfaction melted as she realized he wasn't angry at the same thing she was.

Eyes flashing from blue to gold and back, like a coin tossed up into a spotlight, Spike regarded her with an expression she couldn't quite fathom. "So now you think bein' gifted with a prime role in the most important thing there is to do in this world is a curse on her? How's she feel about it? I bet she's bloody thrilled. She's always been brave."

"I can't believe you! You really want Jemima to be part of that? You want her job to be to experience unimaginable pain and obscenity over and over -- at least until some hellspawned thing rips her in half or takes over her body or exiles her to another dimension? Yeah, that's thrilling. It's an honor, in fact."

"It is an honor. An' she's always been part of it! Was born into it. Been workin' for the bleeding Council since she was eighteen with no encouragement from us! Now she's finally got a role that really means something, instead of bein' buried in a back room with a lot of dusty tomes."

"The darkness has already taken our son! Now it's got its hooks in her -- she's not like us! She wasn't made for it! You should hate that!"

"Look, our little family's taken a big hit, not discounting that. But I'm wondering... how you could've forgotten that the Powers are on our side. Might feel lately like they toy with us for their sport, but I'm thinkin' there's some method in it all the same. They know how strong you are -- an' she is -- an' they make us work up to it, yeah. Here you are trashin' the gifts of the Powers, like they don't signify anything. Like it's nothing one way or the other how we step up to them."

"What you're calling gifts don't seem very gifty to me! Giving my son a soul that drove him mad! Highjacking my daughter's brain -- highjacking my womb -- these are not gifts! And I don't even know what they did to you, because you are not the Spike I remember!"

At this, the golden light went out of his eyes. He winced. "... guess I'm not, at that." He stared out into the headlight beams that lit up an undistinguished swathe of lava rock, flat and nearly featureless. "I need the mission, Slayer. Need it bad if I'm gonna survive this sea change in me."

His manner, all weary desperate resignation, shot her through with terror. He had changed so much she couldn't be sure of anything about him. The love for her that underlay all his goodness... had his soul swallowed it up, made it pointless? More and bigger rocks rained down on her head as her fingers scrabbled and slipped and infinite space yawed beneath her.

"You may be welcoming the big spiritual experience of being the Powers' pawn, but that's not how it is for me. It's one thing to be the slayer, to fight. As long as I'm alive, I'll do that. But I've paid my dues. I'm not emotionally ready to have another child. Especially not when that child is only going to be co-opted in the big struggle between Good and Evil. I can't take that again. No more."

"Buffy, listen -- " Even in the overheated car, his hand felt cold as he reached to cup her face. "Wasn't going to mention this, because... it's my problem, not yours, yeah. An' no matter what you say, I'm not trying to coerce you. But I've seen her. Seen her an' talked with her."

The way he spouted these ideas about the Powers and the mission, he was like some stoned-out Jesus-freak on the Venice beach boardwalk.

This was too much. It was just too much.

"Spike, you listen. You want to know what's really going on in LA? It's not just the visions. Angel is fucking your little girl."

As soon as she said it, she wished she'd bit out her tongue instead. There was nothing in Spike's face -- not anger, not incredulity, not even comprehension. He trembled and stared at her and she wanted a winch to haul back time.

"No sooner did he get done with you, then he went on to her. Or maybe he didn't wait to be done with you. That's not real clear. But she thinks she's the heroine of quite the big romance. Of course she was terrified you'd find out."

Spike didn't breathe or blink. He remained still for one more long moment. Then he got out of the car and walked away into the freezing dark.

The cold air rushed in through the door left hanging open. It filled the car as if the heater wasn't on, made it -- and her -- just another part of the great frozen waste all around them.

If she stayed in this place, this drear, raw interior, she would freeze and die.

It wasn't easy making her way over the uneven, icy terrain. The wind was in her face, the stars overheard impossibly distant and unavailing. Her heart hammered in her throat. Yet somehow she found him. Curled around himself, his back in the thin leather jacket to the wind.

He was as frightened as she was. He knew the terrain they faced no better. His soul was the spit his heart turned on, roasting.

"I don't seem to know how to do anything any more except kill things and hurt you."

He turned. She could see the tear tracks glistening on his cheeks, but it was too dark to see his eyes, his expression. She wasn't sure if he was in game face or not.

"Oh Spike, I'm terrified and that makes me mean. I'm sorry I told you that way. I'm sorry I'm so desperate and lost."

She wasn't sure who was the first to reach out, to gather in. One moment they were far apart, the cold-saturated air sloughing between them, and the next they were close and tight, united at last in the same loss and fear and regret that had shaken them apart. He was so thin her arms passed too far around him, so that in embracing him she could imagine holding her son when he was still reedy-voiced and narrow-shouldered, his curly head fitting beneath her chin. Spasms of pity for Spike choked her, a bolus in her throat too big to swallow. It was a dreadful thing, this restoration of his soul, unfathomable and gargantuan, awesome. He should have folded, like Johnny, or shunned the world for decades, like Angel. But instead he'd held on to hope through the deluge of it, and come home to her. Even now she felt him grasping onto a thin string of hope as he grasped her body, shuddering against her, a mute anguished creature still daring to trust.

Her tears were freezing on her face, the wind cutting through her layers of clothes. She couldn't feel her hands, her feet. She felt him, his still, slight, cool body that was yet full of a fiery life that had warmed her all this time, made her live years beyond her expiry. He'd made her his mission, and she'd loved that in him, loved how he loved her.

That was past. That Spike, her intelligent wolf who lived only for her, who chose his actions by what she would approve, was gone.

In his place was someone infinitely more complicated. Someone who would lead as well as follow. Who might love her still but wouldn't lie down to be trod upon. Someone who at last had a destiny that could be detached from hers.

She could cut the moorings to appease her own ruthless terrors, and watch him eddy off and disappear, or she could choose, with what power she still had over his heart and mind, to hold him. And thereby to retain what was best in herself.

On the rocks, in the wind, cheeks stinging, Buffy held on.

The house was warm, but Buffy built up a fire on the bedroom hearth anyway. She moved slowly, favoring herself as if every inch of skin was a deep bruise. Behind her, Spike was already in bed.

Emptied of tears, chilled and hollowed out, they'd trudged in silence back to the car, and kept up that silence until now. There was so much to say -- to unsay, resay, gainsay. She could imagine he was as leary as she was, of beginning.

He held the bedclothes up for her as she slowly approached. She saw that he wasn't naked. She too, out of some unquestioned instinct, had put on her thickest flannel pajamas.

"I thought you'd want to call Jem."

"Not yet." He settled the comforter over her, guided her head to his shoulder. "Too soon."

"You must be tired." Glancing at the clock, she saw it wasn't even particularly late -- they'd barely spent any time at all at the pool -- but her body told her she'd been awake for days, and might yet be awake for a few more. She was vibrating at a precariously high frequency. A yawn took her, stretching her whole face, yet leaving her feeling even more open-eyed than a moment ago. Spike's sharp clavicle prodded her cheek. She shifted her head to find a smoother spot.

They lay together in an uneasy languour.

"Why did you say I was fighting dirty? Still not followin' that."

"Oh God. That was so unfair."

"Tell me."

"The day we decided to keep Jem... when I ran away from the clinic, and we argued so hard. At the end of it, we went swimming in the ocean. It was the first time we ever did that together. I remember that I was surprised, somehow, that you -- that the undead -- could swim. We were so happy, playing together in the water."

"We were. Never forget that."

"So I thought... I thought you brought me to the pool today to remind me of that, so I'd change my mind. That seemed like a really low-down dirty trick to play on me. But of course it was just in my head. You weren't thinking that at all."

"Yeah. Really wasn't."

"I know it now." The mumble of the fire was the only sound as their own silence sifted in on them. She wished he would fall asleep; sitting watch over his rest was something she could do, something with no risk of injuring him further.

But she knew he wasn't going to sleep anymore than she was.

"How many times have they shown you this vision of a child?"

He stiffened. "... six, seven different times."

"And how do you know you're not being played?"

"Because she kept me company when I was alone an' crazy on the ship. Not sayin' I wouldn't have gone to Prima Whidders if not for her, or come back here. But she showed up when I needed solace, guidance. Didn't know what she was, supposed she was some manifestation of Jem come to steer me home. Then when I found you were... y'know... it all came together."

"When did you see her last?"

"Here, in the house. She was playing in the sitting room. And once I woke up here an' she was looking at me."

"Oh Spike. How do you know it's not evil? We don't know that any of this came from the Powers, or even that the Powers are benign."

"'Course they're benign -- where do you think slayers come from? Anyway, was evil myself long enough to know it when I see it."

"Okay. This change you've undergone... I don't pretend to understand it, and it kinda scares me, because you're, like, spiritual now, which, coming from William The Bloody, is weird. But I get that it's real and profound, and I respect it. Only, Spike, I need to know you respect my reasons for refusing this pregnancy. I need to know my choice isn't going to ruin our chances to trust each other again. I don't yet, and it's scaring me."

"Don't want you to be scared on account of me, Buffy."

"I know it seems selfish -- "

"No. I do trust you, an' your reasons are good enough for me. If it doesn't feel right to you, that's all there is to it. You accept so much responsability an' effort you never quite agreed to. Can see how this thing's the one bit too much."

She could hear that he wanted with all his heart for her to believe this. He wasn't really aware himself that he didn't, so she forgave him the lie at once.

"It's not that it's yours, though. I want you to know that. I'm not rejecting it because of that."

"Yeah. ... Didn't... didn't think so."

"It's only that I just can't. Not now. Probably not ever... ever again."

"Sweetness, don't fret yourself anymore."

She was stunned and had to revisit, over and over, the huge outrage of it, even as her reluctance sounded more and more insignificant, the more she voiced it. Why couldn't she trust the Powers as Spike did? Why couldn't she just accept this new twist as she'd accepted every other one in her life so far? Why couldn't she love the life inside her the way she'd loved Dawn when Dawn was thrust upon her?

Why, after all the adaptation she'd done all her life, was she balking now?

Maybe the difficulty lay in how long she was past her sell-by date. What slayer was ever supposed to have a thirty year marriage? What slayer was ever supposed to live even for thirty years? She'd outlasted the oldest recorded girl when she turned twenty-five, and that one -- the very Nikki Spike had murdered in New York -- was a longevity record-holder herself, by a good couple of years. Slayers weren't built for loving and being loved -- for nurturing children, for seeing generations in and out. They were built to fight alone, and die. A slayer needed a supreme power of self to get the job done.

"Spike, even though I can't do this... I will try to give you what you need. I heard you say you need the mission -- you'll always have that with me. I'll always always need you. And I'm going to try to make you happy, too. We've been happy before and we will be again."

He gathered her closer, tucking her head beneath his chin. "My good girl."

The silence sifted up around them, but still she blinked into the dark. She should clarify the news about their daughter. Not leave him with the impression of those words chosen to make him suffer as she was suffering. "What I said about Jemima -- "

"Don't."

"What?"

"Don't... not ready to... just leave it."

She was aware of Spike breathing in tandem with her; he did it sometimes, he'd once told her, in order to stay awake, and at other times, in order to pretend he could feel alive.

She wondered which it was this time.

PART NINE

The acrid cigarette smoke streamed from his pursed lips into Spike's face. You are such an idiot boy, you're not even fun. You're just boring. What, did you really think I wasn't going to claim what's mine? She's mine. Everything you've ever wanted, or touched, or loved, or ever will, it's all mine forever.

Beyond the lowering bulk of Angelus, he glimpsed them, arrayed in the shadows. Johnny and Dru, growling like tiger cubs, licking at their fangs, at each other's red-stained fingers. Cradling their huge pregnant bellies in their bare bruised arms, Buffy and Jemima stared at him, contempt and hilarity in their dirty faces. Their ragged hair, ragged dresses, bare feet and legs were streaked with grime and blood. Dark blood was caked on their necks. He tried to catch their eyes, but Angelus moved to cut off his line of sight. The huge cold hand curled around his neck, lifted and shook his flaccid body. The chair rolled back a little as Angelus let him drop. He strained to fight, but he couldn't feel his limbs or move his mouth. He was a sack of bones propped in the chair. What should we do with him? Angelus grinned around at the others. His face was hideous, the bumps and ridges large and raw, thick saliva dripping from the long fangs. Jemima stepped forward, her eyes glowing crazily. Leave him. Play with me. I'm your new toy. Amidst the dark dried blood on her neck, a fresh line of red glistened. Angelus towered over her, twice her size. She stretched her slender arms up, like a child, a corrupted child who smiles at her tormenter. Angelus' laughing growl rolled through the whole factory, made Spike's numb spine awake to sing with pain. Snatching Jemima to him back to front, he sank his fangs into the open wound on her neck, and at the same time plunged the other hand up under her dress. Spike tried to cry out, tried to close his eyes so he wouldn't see. Then Buffy was there, blocking his view, leaning over him, her hands on the wheelchair armrests, breasts and great taut belly close to his face. In a confiding whisper, she said, He's going to eat hers when it's born, but mine will belong to him. She'll be his, when she's old enough. Like that -- She turned her body, so Spike could see them again, Jemima shaking and moaning in Angelus' jaws, squirming as his hand plundering her unseen sex. Buffy stank of dried blood and unwashed flesh. Grinning, she whispered, I can't wait to get this disgusting thing of yours out of me!

"You cunt, no! Let me go!"

"Hey, stop!"

Buffy sprang back, a hand to her cheek, big eyes glistening. "What was that for? Ouch."

He sat up. "Did I really hit you? I was dreaming." The fire was almost out, just a line of orange ember, the room nearly dark. He could see her though, huddled in her white pajamas, the hair pulled back from her face that was hot where he'd struck her. Yet she didn't seem as real as she did in the dream.

Buffy pouted. "You're all freaked." She took his face in her hands, pressed gentle kisses to his brow, his cheeks. "Was I in it?"

He wanted to lie. "Yeah. You, an'... everyone." He didn't want to describe it. He still had the odor in his nostrils, of the dank dusty factory, the dirt and blood on her. The pimpish depravity in her face, the glee in her words. The dream was the truth of his life. He was always robbed of what he loved. He never really possessed Buffy's whole heart. How could his daughter, his little darling, how could she allow Angel to touch her?

"Why didn't you put anything about Jemima in that email weeks ago? If I'd known sooner -- "

"How could I write that in an email? I knew it would be too much for you. You were suffering already."

"Yeah, but...."

"Is that what you were dreaming about just now?"

He couldn't say, but she seemed to derive her answer from his expression.

"It's not... it's not like you think. It's not like I said last night. I shouldn't have told you that way. They -- "

"Let's talk about it later." Clearly she wanted to tell him all the details, but he couldn't bear for the idea of Jemima with Angel to be any more real than it was. Buffy had to come first now, and if he dwelt on this with his daughter, he wouldn't be able to think of anything else. Drawing her to him, he nuzzled her neck, taking animal comfort in her smell.

"Go ahead," she whispered.

"Eh?"

"Do it, lover. Feed. I want you to."

In the dream her filthy neck bore a ring of scabby bite marks, none of them his. Shoving the picture from his mind, he kissed her there, and reaching around her, switched off the lamp. "Lay your head on my shoulder an' go back to sleep now."

"But don't you -- "

"Sssh. It's all right, Buffy. Holding you's food an' drink to me."

In the days that followed, they did the things they used to do, in happier times, Spike thought, the voice of some BBC narrator intoning in his head. During the brief daylight hours Buffy went out to do the shopping, met up with her two or three female acquaintances for saunas and swimming in the sun. After dark they went out together, made the rounds of the places they'd liked when they first came here on their honeymoon, the places where, as Buffy always said, they were just people together: the outdoor iceskating rink, the movie theaters, the nightclubs that had good dance music.

At bedtime they smooched, then slept spoon fashion. They didn't talk about desire. It was there -- sometimes in him, sometimes in her -- but as if by mutual consent, they only acted on it separately. Yet when they were together, which was for at least nineteen out of each twenty-four hours, they touched almost all the time. Watching TV, she sat on his lap, rested her head against his. They held hands in the car, at the table, in the movies. Walking the streets arm in arm, people smiled at them for being such a handsome, tender pair of lovers.

They didn't talk about Jemima. He postponed facing up to the news, even as the bad dream recurred, over and over. He managed most of the time to awaken without violence or noise, and comfort himself back to sleep with Buffy's heat and heartbeat. On the nights when his thrashing awoke her, she looked at him sadly, and tried, as she had to the first time, to get him to talk. She offered her neck, which he wouldn't accept, and held him until he fell asleep again.

He knew, because she left it up on the screen for him to see, that Buffy had contacted her, told her they were together again here. If there was an answer she didn't draw his attention to it.

Each day he waited for her to tell him that tomorrow she was going for the abortion. When they cuddled together, he was aware of the third presence, steadily increasing, though it was still, as Buffy said the day she arrived, almost nothing. Yet in his experience, great things could come of almost nothing. Almost nothing was what Buffy felt for him, when their affair was new. Almost nothing was the size of her will to live when she'd first brought him to her bed. They'd built their whole life together, his whole profound shift from the dark towards the light, on almost nothing.

Not that long ago he'd sat with Jemima in the London apartment, communing in what way he could with the grandchild she'd elected to end. Regretting that decision, but with understanding. And glad too, because it meant she was leaving Milo, taking herself presumably, to something better.

The extent of the bitterness that slammed down on him when he remembered that day, and his hopes for her, surprised him. He'd learned to like Angel, to even... almost... consider him a friend. But the bastard couldn't change his ways. He couldn't not trick and betray and despoil.

One afternoon, in the long orange rays of the setting sun, he closed his book just as Buffy came into the house, calling out to him. He rose to go to her, then heard a second pair of feet on the mat, a low murmur as the door was shut. Buffy said something in a voice too soft to catch, and then the footsteps came forward, through the hall. He froze, the book slipping from his hand to land on the chair cushion.

A head, brown plait swinging down, peered around the door into the darkening room. Her cheeks were ruddy from the cold, eyes liquid and questioning.

"Papa. May I come in?"

She'd never felt afraid of him in her life, but Jemima was afraid now.

With the last of the sun in her eyes, Papa was just a dark silhouette. She waited, nearly breathless, for him to move or speak. Mamma had gone into the kitchen, leaving her alone, undefended.

Then he was in front of her, pulling her into his arms. "Jem! Bloody hell, you're a sight for -- "

She'd known it might happen, but even so she wasn't really ready for the sudden way he let go. As if he'd grabbed the wrong girl, a stranger he'd mistaken for her. The rejection stripped her bare, robbed her even of breath.

Spike drew away. "When I saw you there, I thought you'd really come back to us... but no. Still in thrall to him."

Crushing, that he should, after all, treat her like this. Her heart hammered so hard she needed to cough to take a breath, so took no breath at all.

It was only when he caught her that she realized she'd begun to slide to the floor.

"Pudding -- hold up -- I've got you."

She clung to him, the air rushing in again through her open mouth. "Papa! You scared me -- !"

But her fear was already past. She was secure in his arms. "Don't listen to me, my Jem, my Jem. I'm a horrid wicked beast to talk to you like that."

Flushing with relief, she squeezed him back. "You're not. But Papa, you're so thin."

"Am I?"

"Yes. You're... you're not...? But vampires don't get sick."

"They don't indeed. Let me look at you now."

The twilight was almost gone, so she couldn't discern his expression as he took her in. What did he see? He looked her over carefully, his eyes flashing a benign gold in the dark. Then he tweaked the braid that hung over her shoulder, and kissed her, his lips cool and dry against her fevered forehead.

"You've turned into a plump an' rosy little baggage."

"Hasn't she?" Buffy came in then, and switched on a lamp. In the sudden brightness, Jemima blinked. Glancing at her mother, she thought that description more aptly fitted her. Jemima couldn't remember when she'd looked so sleek and glowy. And yet she'd had the distinct impression, in the car on the way back from the airport, that Mamma was still far from happy.

"Did you plan this surprise, pet?"

"No -- it was a sneak attack. Jem phoned me from the plane, two hours ago."

"Is that so?" Spike smiled. His initial anger wasn't exactly gone, she felt; it hovered in the atmosphere, ready to coalesce again if circumstances warranted. There was a tension too between her parents that perhaps had nothing to do with her presence, that pre-existed it.

Spike drew Buffy into their embrace. "Let me see you kiss your mum."

"I kissed her at the airport," she said, kissing her again. Buffy's cheek was round and glossy, she smelled faintly of sugar. Jem rested her head on Mamma's shoulder. "Tell me how you both are."

"We're fine," Buffy said. "Getting... getting back to normal. Aren't we, Spike?"

"What've we got to feed this little one?" He prodded them gently towards the kitchen.

"I'm not little!" Jemima laughed, real pleasure flooding her cheeks with heat. This reunion was better than she'd dared imagine, though she sensed that there might be bad moments ahead. No one had said Angel's name yet, and he would have to come in for some mention. But at the moment she was overcome with the comfort of being in her parents' house, of seeing them together again.

"You're always our little girl," Buffy said. "Shouldn't that phrase just have a number? You know, like in that joke? Like, I say '88,' and you know it means 'you're always our little girl.'"

"Still, bears repeatin'," Spike said. "Good things do. You still like toasted cheese, don't you, Biscuit?"

"... remembered that Johnny was gone two months that day, and... it wasn't a good day for me. I was crying, I missed him so much, missed you both, and An -- well, I mean... I decided it would be good for me to come and see you. So here I am." She smiled into their listening faces. "I didn't want to tell you I was coming because...."

"Because you were afraid we'd say no?" Buffy reached across the table to caress her cheek. Spike was already sitting at right angles to her, her left hand wrapped in both of his. She had one hand free to negotiate the raft of toasted cheese -- toasted cheese for days -- that smelled so good but which she couldn't quite eat. Her head was starting to swim. She'd had a lot of wine on the plane, and most of the big glass of white Spike poured for her when they sat down to eat. The timezones were crunching together, crunching her with them.

"It's so good to see you. I missed you both so much." She yawned, hard and wide. Papa and Mamma glanced at each other, in apparent amusement at her. She felt warm and safe and grateful. "Can we talk more tomorrow?"

"All day, sweet."

They delivered her to the guest room door. Buffy went in and fussed around with the bedding and the towels and the window coverings. Spike leaned against the wall outside and regarded her again up close, his eyes fond and mild.

"Are you all right, my Jem?"

"Why are we whispering?" But she whispered too. "Yes, I'm all right, really."

"I'm sorry I faffed off an' left you in the lurch. Missing the funeral, and...."

"Sssh." She put a finger to his lips. "You don't have to apologize to me, Papa."

"I do, though." He smoothed a hand over her hair, caressed her face. "When you came in before, didn't know you for a sec'. You've changed since I saw you last."

"Yes. We all have." She pressed her cheek into his cool palm.

"Do the visions hurt you very much?"

"Didn't Mamma tell you? They don't hurt me at all."

"I... I haven't let her tell me anything about you."

"... oh."

"She wanted to. But it's not the only thing Buffy and I aren't talking about."

"Papa, if you're afraid for me, I wish you wouldn't be. I'm sometimes in danger -- not from him, never from him -- but I'm really alive now."

His sudden frown, the intense light in his gaze, like a reflection of the gold his demon eyes became, made her want to turn her head, to wriggle away. The pretty words she'd just said didn't mean anything, they were stupid, they hadn't anything to do with what he was thinking. What he hadn't stopped thinking from the moment she came into his sight. She felt a rush of shame, and another at being ashamed. In a fierce whisper, she said, "This isn't fair!"

His lip curled, just barely. "What isn't?"

"What do you expect me to do? You know I care too much what you think of me! You're taking advantage!"

"Too much? Anyway, don't see that it's made any difference. You've done what you like. You're all gleamin' with it." His gaze, which had been so soft two minutes ago, was a basilisk stare now, that made her gasp.

"The bed's turned down, Jemmie."

When Buffy appeared in the doorway, Spike pulled away, turning his back too fast. "Leave you two to say your goodnights, then. We've just had ours."

He moved soundlessly away and was gone.

"Mamma -- "

Buffy pulled her close and kissed her, but Jemima felt that her mind was with Spike, that she wanted to hurry after him. "Sleep well, baby."

The guest rooms were on the ground floor, situated so that there was no possibility of any sound carrying to or from the master suite upstairs. When Buffy was gone, Jemima had an eerie sense of being alone in the isolated house. The wind racketed against her windows. Blinking back tears, she fished through her purse for her mobile. Angel would be waiting to hear from her.

Spike was just emerging from the bathroom. Despite everything, Buffy still found a bit of humor in the sight of William the Bloody in pajama trousers, even though they were black.

"What're you smilin' at?"

"I'm only gloating over your beauty. Spike, come here." She opened her arms, but he stayed where he was, half way between the bathroom and the bedside, squinting at her with his head on one side.

"Baby... it kills me too."

"Does it?" He came nearer, studying her.

Buffy nodded. "When I found out... I about lost my mind. After what happened to Johnny, the idea of her with... it was too much. I was this close to staking him."

Spike's eyes widened.

"No, really. I went to the Hyperion, I confronted him -- "

"But you couldn't do it."

"Obviously." She shrugged.

"You're still fond of him."

"Spike -- ! No. ... the world needs him. Your precious Powers you're so connected to... he's important to them. ... Anyway, that you should accuse me of being fond of him! I haven't been with him since I was seventeen!"

"That was -- "

"Don't say 'it's a vampire thing and you wouldn't understand'! I do understand. I wasn't going to throw it in your face." She took a deep breath. She'd tried so hard to shy away from the mental image of those two men she knew so intimately, loved so much, in bed together. It was one thing to know they'd fucked often when they were feral vampires, back in the days when everybody wore a hat, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, another to know they'd been together just a few weeks ago. She wondered if they kissed. Did they do it in game-face? Did they draw blood?

"Wasn't done to hurt you. You know that?"

"Do I? Yes."

"But did, an' so I'm sorry. Buffy, I'd undo it if I could."

She shied from this. "We'd undo the entire last year if we could! Please -- I can't bear these tit for tat apologies -- I know you mean it, I really do, but they make me feel worse!"

They were both so wounded, could manage no conversation that wasn't a blow on a bruise.

Spike paced to the window, put his hands up to block the light, to see out over the moonlit expanse of uneven snow. "Bastard was so bloody needy. Never known him to be like that before. Lonely as an eskimo on an ice floe. Couldn't do enough for me, in bed an' out of it." He let out a bitter laugh. "Felt for him, I did! Told him he ought to take a mistress! No, no, sez he, can't do it, mate, wouldn't be proper. Fucking hell. Fucking hypocrite."

She moved to him, laid her face against his shoulder, nuzzling, though she was afraid he'd shrug her off. For a long moment he didn't move at all, then he lifted an arm for her to duck under.

"Think he started seducin' Jem before he was even done with me. Our thing opened up the bleedin' sluices, apparently." He ground the words out, bitter and bitten.

"She knows about that. That you and he... she didn't seem to care. She didn't seem to care about anything I said to her. She claimed she knew all about him -- I suppose she does. Or thinks she does."

"Nothin' he likes better than a bit of wide-eyed innocence. S'why he went for you. Saw him do it over an' over, years I ran with him. Remember Fifine in Paris? There were others. He'd have 'em for a time, do a fine job of feignin' a gen'mun in love, an' all the while he was workin' up to eatin' the heart out of her broken ribcage in the end."

She didn't know she was going to, but all at once she was crying. Not violently, just the tears rolling freely down. She'd cried every single day since arriving here -- usually more than once. Most of the time she hid it from him, because her distress was about her own inadequacy, her awareness that she was still hurting him, and she couldn't go to him for comfort about that. "I feel like we've lost her too. Johnny is dead and she's... she's just gone, somehow. And Angel too. He was... our ally. He was... I thought we were friends. ... distant friends. You know. But now...." Even as she spoke, her mind havered. Was this what she really believed? In what way was Jemima gone, when she'd come to them, looking, as always, for their affection, their approval? She thought of Angel, how he'd been sincerely willing to give Jemima all the time she needed, or to let her walk away altogether. She hated this, loathed it, but she couldn't teach herself that what Angel felt for her daughter wasn't genuine. She knew him too well for that.

It was hell that those two should ever have seen each other, that was all, but she couldn't quite go so far as to be sure it was altogether a bad thing. Yet this thought galled her, as if she'd been disloyal to Spike all over again.

Spike was looking at her now. He brought a hand to her face, lifting the sliding tears off with a finger. "Poor Buffy. S'tough to be you."

"Baby, listen... I betrayed you, and then you betrayed me, and then Jemima did, and Angel... all of us squirming around like pathetic little bugs... but it's so stupid, because of course we still love each other and we love her and Angel isn't our enemy and we could just decide to stop."

"What?"

On a flood of feeling, she pressed herself against him. It was all so unnecessary, this squabbling and struggling. What was the point of keeping score, of parsing who'd hurt whom more? It only got in the way of love, the love that was still there, still real. They couldn't control Jemima and Angel any more than the Scoobies could control them. Love shouldn't be interfered with. It was nearly the only good there was, the only thing that kept life from being just dingy and violent and dull. Gazing up into his face, she smiled, and in her mind's eye it was a rapturous smile, an epiphany of a smile that would make Spike grasp it all, grasp the truth she'd just understood so beautifully. "Couldn't we just let them be?"

He jerked back, as if she was on fire. "Oh, so I'm to hold my tongue now 'bout anything you think's all right!"

He'd said nothing at all for the last ten days about the abortion, hadn't even asked what her plans were. She'd shut him down so thoroughly from the entire subject, even as his suspense and mystification spiraled up. The question that was always with them, even as they lay in bed necking like virtuous teenagers. Maybe most especially then, when, she knew, he would be most aware of the life forming inside her, the aroma of blood and tissue that wasn't her.

It was that which kept them both from their desire.

How stupid she was! How could she tell him that everything was good, that all was love, when she was still so jealous of her self-sovereignty?

Sometimes when she was small, her mother had told her Buffy, feelings aren't facts. Which was, she supposed, something a child ought to learn. Even though it wasn't quite accurate. When they were large enough, hard enough, feelings were facts. Not to be swept away with a couple of silly words wafted on a cloud of sentimental reminiscence.

"Spike, I -- " She bit her lip. No. She couldn't say another sorry. They'd piled up so many, they were nearly worthless now, like inflated currency -- heaps of bills you could haul in a wheelbarrow to buy one little loaf of bread.

"Come to bed, Slayer. This day's done, thank Christ."

Jemima understood why her parents liked Iceland in winter. But she found the lingering dark oppressive. She'd lain awake in it for a long time, jet-lagged but unable to fall asleep, her mind presenting her over and over with Papa's face, that curl of his lip, the reproachful words. Then she awakened in it too, hours before her mother might be up, with a sense of being unsituated. The effects of a sleeping pill she'd taken lingered, so when she began to move around, she kept yawning, her head so heavy she almost felt sick.

She'd ended up going to bed without phoning Angel. She'd sent him a text when she arrived. Before she left LA, they'd talked about what her likely reception would be. Even as he reassured her, Angel made her feel he was more in sympathy with her parents than with her. She was to be patient with them. She was to try to see their point of view. "It's because you've chosen something so close to their own lives, something they understand all the risks of, that they don't like it. They... they don't trust me. They've both had reason not to." It was clear that, much as he treasured her, Angel regretted his stillborn friendship with her father, and the loss of his tenuous long-distance links to Buffy.

That conversation left her frustrated and mindful that he was ten times older than she was.

It was barely 4 a.m. here, and her body seemed stuck between yesterday and tomorrow. She padded out to the kitchen.

Spike was there, sitting in the dark with a drink in his hand.

"Oh. I -- "

"Come in. You can turn on the light." He started to rise. "What did you want?"

"Just some milk. I'll get it. Please don't move." She wanted to run out. He would be too much for her, in her addled state.

But he reached a hand towards her. "Come here a mo'."

She sidled closer.

"No need to be skittish. Not going to hurt you." He caught her hand, drew her to stand beside him. When he looked up at her she was struck again by how thin he was, the lines of his face in hard relief, eyes circled in grey.

"So... how's he treating you, then?"

"Very well. Papa, I know you think -- "

"What? What do I think?"

She threw her head back, willing herself to firmness. "It's true he was interested in me first. For quite a while, apparently, before I even noticed. But if you think he manipulated me... seduced me... it's just not so. I made the first move. I made... pretty much all the moves."

"Did you?"

He took a long swallow of scotch, half turned away so she couldn't see his expression, then set the empty down on the glass table with a clatter. "Another way you're like your mum, then."

"We don't have to talk about that any more. I'd prefer not to. But I wanted to say that much. And also just this... what happened between you two... I honestly don't believe it had anything to do with what Angel was starting to feel about me. I don't think about it. We're all complex people, we all have... different compartments in our lives, things that may be happening at almost the same time, but without intersecting. Do you see what I mean, Papa?"

He turned to her then, and smiled. It was a smile of pride, but with something sly in it, almost wicked. "An' you're my daughter as well, as if I needed reminding."

Jemima ducked her head. "Papa, I'm sorry you're so unhappy about me. I never thought... I never thought I'd fall in love with him." She blushed once more. Just thinking about Angel filled her with naughty greed.

"He's a sexy bastard. As your mum an' I well know. An'... I'm aware you've been deprived in that way -- now, don't look at me like that. You've got to expect some embarrassing talk. But there's fellows, regular fellows with pulses, can deliver satisfaction to a girl."

She pulled her hands from his. "Now you're condescending to me. We both know it's about more than that."

"Do we? An' in twenty years? Not sure I feature Angel paired off with a -- 'Course, you may not live so long, if you're chasin' demons every night."

She decided to ignore the dig about her aging. "We can't know what will happen to any of us."

He leaned back in his chair, his bony face taking on that smoldering expression that he used on Mamma, that made her feel she was seeing something she shouldn't. "An' what about kiddies? Thought you wanted 'em."

She was afraid he'd bring up the abortion. "I still do. Just because I can't get pregnant with Angel doesn't mean I can't get pregnant."

"Talked about it with him, have you? Suppose he told you all about the child he had once."

"Papa, I don't like your tone right now. It's a little... disingenuous of you, anyway, isn't it? I mean, c'mon. The vampire telling his daughter all about the disadvantages of loving another vampire? You just said I'm your daughter -- yours and Mamma's -- through and through. Things that are strange to other people -- strange and frightening and painful -- are just regular life to me. This is my life."

"'Cept it's your mother's life, not yours. You're not a slayer. You're not immortal. The bloody miracle of you is that though we made you, you're a normal human girl. You an' your brother both, real human beings."

"How irksome of me, not to transcend my bringing up. Anyone would think you were channeling Milo."

"Johnny strayed off into worse-than-death just when he was gettin' started to live! An' now while we're still in the shock of that, you decide you want to chuck yourself into the heart of darkness! Your mother gave you life so you could have a life! A life leadin' to more life, not to -- to -- "

"Papa, stop this! I can't be something you and Mamma have made up in your heads! And I can't make up for what Johnny did! I have to be what I am."

He glowered, a lion in the long grass.

"I knew you would be furious, but I also knew that you, of all the people I care for, understood the imperative of passionate love. Understood that it's real, and so rare, and that you can't just expect a person to walk away from it. I feel that with Angel. And I have a purpose with him. What could be more important, than to have a role in his mission? The visions are a gift. I feel alive now."

"Glad you do. To me, looks like nothin' but death all around. ... got no power to make life. It's that I envy. Hate seeing it squandered. I'm jealous of that power, on your account. And on... well, never mind."

He got to his feet.

Her self-absorption broke, and suddenly she saw him in a different light, saw him as Spike and not just as Papa. "Are you -- is there something else going on -- ?"

"Goin' back to bed before your mum wakes up an' misses me."

"I do want to have children. If that's what you're really worried about. Not right this minute, true -- "

"Have your fling with Peaches. Have your passion, an' your fun -- if you can get any fun out of old broody face. S'only right you should build yourself up again after bein' married to that ego-flattener Whidders. In a while I expect things'll look different to you, an' you'll move on to something more suitable. Angel'll be grateful to have had whatever you gave him."

He kissed her on the forehead and moved towards the door. She wanted to cry out against his arrogance, but her head was heavy and starting to ache, and if she protested, they'd only end up repeating everything they'd just said. He was sad, they all were, sad and disappointed, and it was better to err on the side of gentleness.

There was a little scotch left in bottle, left sitting out on the counter. She poured out a finger into his glass, and drank it down quickly, then went back to bed.

"All right?"

He opened his eyes to find Buffy smiling over him, warm from sleep, her hair dangling. Somehow, are you all right? had come to replace good morning and good night; they asked it of each other nearly every hour, like the chiming of a clock. It meant everything and nothing: Are you still content to be here with me? or Are you hungry/thirsty/tired/lonely/going to leave me? or Are you feeling too sad right now? or Forgive me for this silence or I'm doing the best I can.

It amazed him, when he stopped to think about it, that he'd started out wanting nothing from Buffy but her death. She wasn't even Buffy in the beginning, just the slayer, an annoying impediment to his plans for Drusilla's restoration and their further fun. And now all these years later here they were, inextricably entwined, so that when one was hurt, the other howled. Existence was fucking surreal, really.

"All right," Spike said, pulling her down for a kiss. He could tell she tasted the liquor still on his breath, but she said nothing about it. She settled against him, head on his chest.

"Aren't you glad Jemmie came?" she whispered.

"Very. You really didn't send for her?"

"No. I thought about it, but... I didn't want to seem to be interrupting what she's doing with Angel." She pouted. "I wonder how long she'll stay."

Spike laughed. "Wishin' she'd go already?"

"No! No... just... I feel like if I ask her, she'll take it the wrong way."

"Let's give her a week before we start oversalting her food, yeah?" He wondered, as he did every single day, what Buffy's intentions were. It didn't seem likely that she'd have the abortion today, not with Jem just arrived. Would Buffy tell her about it? That seemed even less likely. She might want to wait until Jem was gone again. But it would have to be soon.

"What're you thinkin' about staying on here ourselves?"

"What do you mean?"

"You were up to your eyeballs with Council doings before. New slayer an' all. Wouldn't mind getting a look at her myself, see what she's made of. We could head back to London."

"You don't want to be here?"

"Want to be wherever you are. Just thought... after you... y'know, take care of... might want to spring back into action."

A hunger, buried down so far he wasn't aware of it until now, surged up at the thought of a full-out battle with her. He didn't want to win it -- didn't even particularly want to hurt her. But he wouldn't mind it if she beat him up. The sensation afterwards would be good -- like the kind of aching pleasure that comes from worrying at a sore tooth.

Her eyes lost focus. "Oh. I kind of wanted to be domesti-Buffy for a while. But if you think... well, we can talk about it." She pushed off and wandered away, obviously not meaning to talk about it right then.

He knew her through and through, and yet still she could stymie him. If she really wanted to be done with the pregnancy, what was she waiting for?

He wondered if she would be angry at him for mourning it. Would she mourn it herself? Hateful it was, hateful and terrible, to be undead, and yet concerned with the world of the living. For a moment the room spun and he didn't know why he went on. Things just got more and more complicated, pain-wracked. Wouldn't it be better to complete his death? Free his soul into the aether?

"Are you going to stay in bed?"

Buffy was back, wrapped in a towel.

Spike sat up, reached for her.

She stepped closer, giving him a curious look. Her wet hair dripped. Without glancing into her face, he pulled the towel open. Her skin was flushed from the hot shower. Breasts swollen, the nipples taut and surprisingly brown. The barest start of a pooch to her pretty stomach, and beneath that, a soft light brown tangle of hair. Leaning forward, he kissed one breast, then the other, weighing them in his hands. Buffy sighed. He curled a palm around her moist mons, slipped lower to kiss her belly, lips against her navel, then down further, soft kisses pressed in a circle all around it. Her fingers were in his hair. She smelled delicious to him, like food and sex and life.

He couldn't leave her, not even for the release of death.

"Think I will stay here a bit."

"Oh. I could..."

There was no release anywhere. He scooped the towel up from the floor and handed it to her. "Think Jemmie's stirrin' downstairs. You two should go out while the sun's shinin'."

He met her eyes then, saw her uncertainty, which gave him a little coil of mean satisfaction. To allay it, he drew her close again and kissed her mouth.

"Johnny never really lived with you here in Reykjavik, did he, so I guess that maybe makes it easier."

"Nothing makes it easier," Buffy said. "Believe me, I wish I had a room of his I could just go sit in, some days."

"But you shut up his London apartment. You didn't have to do that by yourself, you know. I'd have come and helped you."

She squinted at her daughter. The sun was at its brightest, as they walked slowly along Laugavegur in the center of the city, looking at the window displays. How could Jemima be so calm and measured? As if she herself hadn't had to slay him. Buffy wasn't even there, and yet she could see the scene in her mind's eye, her beautiful son going up in flames, she could feel the terror and finality of it. He might have had something rotten at the core of himself -- something that was so much a part of him that even the restoration of his soul couldn't suppress it -- but her accumulation of love for him was all still there. Piled up with nowhere to go, nothing to expend itself on. Mixed up now with shame, because it seemed shameful to be the mother of an unrepentent murderer. "I wanted to. Needed to. Do it. I gave everything away. I kept some pictures, some small things." Buffy shrugged. "Maybe I shouldn't have done that."

"Mamma! Of course you should!"

"If there's anything you want -- "

"I have some things. Gifts he's given me over the years. And I have a lot of pictures. If you want some of them -- "

Buffy stopped walking, grabbed her arm. "Jemmie, are you really all right?"

That's when Buffy saw a shadow cross her eyes. "Sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm not, and when I'm not, I cry. Just like you, I guess."

Buffy's stomach churned. "I thought, after the funeral, that we'd take care of each other for a while."

"We could have. I mean, if you hadn't... never mind."

"If I hadn't gone off the deep end about you and Angel."

"Never mind that, Mamma. You had to. It would've been so odd if you hadn't. And I should have told you sooner, that I was interested in him."

Hearing her say this, with that gentle expression on her face, Buffy had a moment of wondering which of them was really doing the mothering. "I wanted to take care of you. It seems like I so seldom get to do that. You usually go to Spike instead."

Jemima blinked, her mouth opening. She would deny it, but it was true, and Buffy couldn't exactly blame her. She'd always been volatile, especially when Jemima was little, and the child often couldn't know what face of hers she'd show. Of course she'd formed a habit of caution.

Her realization of the night before came back to her: it was all so pointless, this angst. Grief, yes, there had to be grief, and fear -- she never could entirely do without fear. But the bits that were just among them, the tension and uncertainty and withholding, it was so artificial and stupid, if they could just acknowledge that, and set it aside.

"Your father took the news better than you expected him to, I think," Buffy said. "You two had a talk didn't you, early this morning. I woke up at some point and he wasn't in bed."

"... yes. As for taking it well... yes and no. He's showing terrific self-control. I hate knowing I've made both of you unhappy."

"He is unhappy about it. But Spike has other things on his mind besides you."

"I hope whatever rift you two had... will be mended. What happened to Johnny makes everything different -- I mean, it makes us look at our priorities, doesn't it?" When Buffy nodded, she said, "There didn't seem to be any real reason, after I ki -- after Johnny was gone, not to be with Angel. Everything is so temporary and fragile, and you've got to do what you can, when you can. You can understand that, don't you? Why should any of us be aloof, alone, what good does it do? We must love one another or die."

As she looked at her daughter, who was lovely in a way she'd never been, as if some of her doomed brother's beauty was transferred to her account when he died, everyone Buffy had ever loved looked at her out of Jemima's mild querying eyes. She saw her own mother, and old Mrs Grieves who had been kind to her, and Spike's sisters lined up for their sepia portrait, and Johnny, and Dawn. She thought of Giles, who, when she confessed to him about loving Spike, had followed her in her leap of faith, like the best sort of father. She saw her friends who had helped raise Jemima, make her what she was. Angel, who had loved her enough to walk away from her when that was required, and Spike who never deserted her no matter how difficult she made it for him. Her own consciousness was suffused with light. The dark places in her gave way to it, fortifications silted up and calcified as if for centuries crumbled away against that onslaught of clarity.

She was free. The fear, like the Red Sea, was parted for her passage. At this moment she was in the clear, and nearly giddy with comprehension and purpose.

Buffy put an arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Let's go across the street there and get some coffee. I have something to tell you, something you can help me with."

Spike circled through the house like an animal in a cage, in the grip of an uneasy premonition. In each room, at each window, he paused to look out. In one direction, the water glittered weakly in the pale light. In the other, the uneven ripple of snow-covered tundra stretched away with no feature more definite than the blue and pink and orange reflections of the sun's rays.

That morning when, so intent on his own sorrowful ideas, he kissed her, what was Buffy thinking? She'd offered herself to him, and he'd put her aside. The whole thing done in a moment, in pantomime, almost without a glance. Another step in this new dance they were doing. The hesitation since his return wasn't a simple tit for tat over their core conflict. It came as much from her as from him. As if they'd forgotten what was once so natural between them. Holding back wasn't an exercise of power, one over the other, but an absence of power in each other them. A gap they couldn't bridge.

Her gesture earlier was a stab across the divide, perhaps no more considered than his in kissing her belly. He'd deflected her as if by rote. Noted her flash of disappointment, let her go. In their strange chaste state, they didn't even talk about what they weren't doing. Of course, talking was next to doing it, usually led to doing it. So that wasn't so surprising.

He'd made a bad mistake; shown her, without realizing it, what she'd been waiting all these days, perhaps, to know. His unconsidered rejection must have jogged Buffy from her holding pattern. Wandering through the still, airy rooms, he was certain now that right this moment, she was undergoing the abortion.

She wouldn't have taken Jemima into her confidence; she would've sent her off somewhere for the afternoon, with any sort of excuse, while she went in alone for the procedure. They'd return together in the late afternoon, Buffy, already healed, silent, no need to mention what she knew he could sense, certain that he wouldn't refer to it in front of their girl.

Every few minutes he fingered the phone in his pocket. He could just call her, and find out. Find out, in any event, whether she answered.

Except he didn't dare.

He'd have liked to talk to Xander. Or -- he'd have liked to be with Xander, and not have to talk. But that wasn't possible, and Xander was going to be a father himself in a few months, a fact which, at this moment, was entirely unbearable.

Spike rested his forehead against the cool glass of the bedroom's west wall, the long orange rays full in his face. When he closed his eyes he saw Buffy, her confusion, her disillusionment. He should have taken her in his arms from the first and never let go.

The sun was nearly gone now. The snowfield was a deep orange-streaked grey in the dying light. He saw her then, his ghostly tail, casting a long distorted shadow, the wind tumbling her hair around her head. She wore a bright woolen dress and tights and clogs, but no coat, no hat and gloves. He stared at her, rage rising through him. She was put here to manipulate him, and he'd succumbed, like a great pillock, without a struggle. The Powers, or whoever it was that delighted in tormenting him, knew his susceptibilities through and through. How he would bend like a reed to a sweet little girlchild who seemed to know him and yet forgive him everything. How could he have considered an apparition, an enigma, alongside Buffy herself? As if they could be remotely comparable?

But he had -- at least, she believed he had. Believing that, she'd gone out to get free, and would return scraped clean of everything, not just of the child but of his love, and any possible future with him. She'd leave him again and this time it would really be over.

The girl gazed up, her dress billowing around her legs, but he couldn't see her face, because of the tangle of hair that seemed to move of its own accord, as if it would seize her head and smother her.

He wanted to run out and gather her in from the harsh cold. Instead he vamped out and snarled. No more of this, no more! He wouldn't betray his true loyalties again.

"What are you roaring at?"

He spun around. Buffy hastened to him. "What is it, is there something out there?"

He couldn't reply, because he was caught up in her, her sudden appearance when he was at his lowest ebb like an answer to his outcry. Despite the cold still coming off her face, she gave off a rich melange of heated excitement and anxiety. The other was still there, undisturbed inside her, but that was merely a detail, and far from the most important. Pulling her close, he breathed her in, deep convulsive breaths, his face buried in her neck, her hair. Her arms went tight around him and held, as he lifted her off her feet. They vibrated together, bound up in a mutual resonant emotion.

She spoke first. "I think I know what you were growling at just now. Spike, is she still there? Look, and tell me."

Nothing outside but the undulant snow. "Gone -- gone now." He could barely stand to tear his eyes from her long enough to check. "Where's Jem?"

"She'll come home later, but she won't disturb us tonight. I came back by myself because I wanted to tell you something."

Her face took on a sweet almost uncanny lightness, an expression he couldn't remember seeing before. She took a deep breath, trembling against him. "Listen to me... listen... don't laugh...."

He was stilled with wonder. She examined his face as if it was quite new to her, tracing the ridges of nose and forehead the way she'd touch something beautiful and rare. He started to shake off the bumps, but she caught him in her hands. "Please don't! Let me speak to this face. Listen. Something has happened. The Powers have done something wonderful. Because you were so brave, and... and willing to sacrifice. No, sssh, don't say anything, let me finish... they're entrusting us with another life. Not to make up for the son we lost, because no one could do that. But they're giving us another chance.... The next time we make love... you'll come to life for just a few moments, and I'll... I'll conceive a child. We'll conceive a child, together. Isn't that... isn't that good?"

His initial flash of fear, that she'd gone do-lally, gave way to comprehension. He understood why there was so much pleading in her eyes, so much misgiving. Somehow, by some miracle, she'd changed her mind. Yet she needed this pretty pretense, a do-over that would erase the memory of how their bodies were seized apart from their will. With her eyes she begged him not to make her feel more foolish for speaking this fantasy, even as she blushed and blushed again.

The child, wonderful though it was, was nearly beside the point. Buffy had come back to him. With all of herself, she'd come back at last, confided herself to him, so that all difficulty, all doubt, was swept aside.

The yellow eyes, the cragged demon face, couldn't take on the nuanced expressions of his human visage. He did nothing but stare as the moments mounted up, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

Had she waited too long? Was it too late? She tried to laugh, as if she wasn't nearly frozen with dismay. "When are you ever speechless, Mr Mouth?"

When he moved, it was with the preternatural speed of the monster, zero to sixty in a fraction of a second. All at once she was caught back against the glass, opening to his ravenous kisses, thrilling to his low continuous growl. She'd been aroused all day, with a subcutaneous throbbing, beginning when she'd stood naked before him that morning; she was liquid now, her skin turned to quicksilver, the tension at her core opening into raw desire. She didn't see anything anymore, there was no distinct seeing, hearing, touching, the separate senses merged into a torrent, just as the separate moments of waiting and thinking and talking rushed together into the unstoppable action of love.

When she'd imagined this encounter, they were in bed, surrounded by hundreds of flickering candles, everything distinct and deliberate, Spike narrating every tender move when their mouths weren't fused together, and the part where he'd come to life happening in slo-mo, a transformation she'd be able to experience like one of those films of a blossom opening, and hold tight to in her memory for the rest of her life.

Instead it was more like their first time ever, physically at least: with her pinned against the glass wall and trying frantically to climb him at the same time, breathing hard into each other's mouths, her right hand and his left struggling underneath with skirts and fastenings. There was no time to arrange themselves gracefully, to disrobe and lie down -- the world might end in a minute and they needed this now. As the last fly button gave way, his cock springing out taut and moist-tipped into her hand, Spike tore the wet crotch right out of her heavy tights. He hitched her up. Hanging from his shoulders, she sank down, gasping as he filled her.

"Oh God -- oh Spike -- I've missed you -- Oh God -- "

"You're mine an' don't you fucking know it. Gonna make sure you know it. Show you how so you never forget it again."

"Oh God Oh God -- "

"Say it. Say it, Buffy."

"I'm yours. I'm all yours and no one else's, not ever."

He drove into her with force, harsh and tight, growling into her neck, jouncing her body hard up against the cold glass. Every thrust filled her to the very tip of her womb. She seemed to feel him as well in her throat, her heart. He met each shiver, grunt, gasp, with an answering growl that opened her more. Her voice pierced the house's awful silence, breaking its spell. "That's right -- scream for me, bitch -- scream for your Spike -- gonna fuck you so you know who you are -- you're mine like I'm yours -- lemme hear it."

This rough handling, his angry demand, felt truer, more tender, than any amount of gentleness and worship possibly could. "Fuck me -- oh God -- fuck -- Spike -- I need you -- give me -- "

Without asking, without warning, he bit her. She shrieked, shaking, but he stopped the in-and-out and held her suspended, impaled, while he fed. Crushed between his body and the wall, her whole sex fluttering with her heart as he pulled at her neck, she whimpered in helpless pleasure. Her toes curled. She heard herself laughing, as if from far away, laughing like she was on ether. She belonged to him again, was servicing him in every way possible, and it was so good, so good that he'd taken her, taken everything. As he drank, his skin warmed, he expanded inside her, so when he resumed his thrusts she screamed again. He let her neck go with a low snarl she felt all down her spine. His eyes burned gold, she saw his red-stained fangs before she buried her face on his shoulder and came and came and came.

"Why you saucy little cunt. You'd do anything right now, wouldn't you?"

She showed him a blissed-out smile.

She'd surrendered to him, everything open, undefended. Years ago, when their affair was still new, he'd told her his fantasy of how, after a long hand-to-hand struggle, he would possess her, devour her, while she wept in grateful ecstasy. Later she'd spoken the words of the fantasy back to him: There's nothing of me you cannot have, in tears at the thought he might not believe her. With that capitulation, she'd conquered him utterly.

She was sobbing now, without tears, still throwing off little orgasms as she clung to him, like electrical pulses that fizzled the air. He was harder than ever, and thrust up slowly into her wet heat, so she'd feel it, the intensity of his arousal and control. She smelled of blood and pussy and adrenaline, her head rolling on the torn stem of her neck like a drunken woman's. He kissed her mouth, softly now, with his demon mouth, and as her tongue rolled across his, she purred.

"Say it."

"God, you're enormous. You're -- I want you to fuck me forever. Just -- forever."

"You want me who?"

He jounced her at a stately dignified pace, like a lady out for a Sunday ride in Rotten Row on her best mount. She grinned, her head lolling, eyes locked on his. "Spike. I want you, Spike. Will -- William. My husband. My -- mine. Oh fuck -- fuck -- "

"Sssh. You'll pleasure me now for long as I say. Not gonna let you come again so quick."

"No?" She made a defiant face, and wriggled, and went off, drenching him afresh. "I'm gonna make your eyes roll back in your head, Mr Grieves. What, you think you're the only one who's all steely and powerful and -- "

"I very much doubt you can even feel your legs, let alone stand on 'em, Slayer." They were still wrapped around him, her thighs tense as bows.

"Oh yeah? Let's see you walk, then."

He swung them both away from the wall, staggered with her towards the bed, and made it as far as the armchair. They landed hard; Buffy let out a squeal, then began at once to move on him. "I want to see you come. I want to see your face when you spring to life for those few seconds. I want to feel your heart beat and the heat of you all around me. Inside me."

He'd meant to keep this first cockstand going, to work her for a long time before he let himself go. But he was helpless against her stoned intensity, her encompassing inner grip, her little pink tongue darting in and out between her smiling lips. She yanked her sweater off, and there were her pretty breasts, round and full, slick with sweat. She offered them to his mouth, as if it wasn't a nest of fangs.

"I want to feel your heart beat," she repeated, and he almost believed that she would. Her blood made him feel immensely strong, it sang through him with all its mysterious power.

If anything could bring him to life for a second time, it was Buffy.

Her pale face hovered over him like the moon in a midnight sky. "Come for me, William." The tightly-wound cable of his self-control ran out, spinning faster and faster. He lost all sense of place, position, surroundings -- he might have been floating in space, moored to nothing but her, the wet grip of her quim, its tight encompassing heat, her coaxing voice and her hands that were suddenly linked to his, the fingers interlaced, squeezing. "Come for me, come to life!"

Afterwards, when he regained his shattered senses, he thought he had. He seemed to feel the aftershock of it, not in sickness as the other time, but as if he was some spent galvanic force, emptied out in glory.

Collapsed against him, limp and soaked and breathing hard, Buffy looked as satisfied as she ever had.

He cupped her head in his hands. "Did you see what you expected, pet?"

"You were so beautiful, Spike." She raised her head, pressed gentle kisses on the corners of his mouth, his chin. It was only then he realized he was smooth-faced again. "You did it. You gave me a baby." She brought his hand, immense and heavy and lax, to rest on her belly. "Can you feel it yet? The little life?"

There was no need to fib, or take on faith anymore. "Feel it, yeah. Feel her. Think it's a her."

"I think so too."

He let his hand drop lower, to the curly hair slick with their spendings.

"Fucking hell, there's no other cunny than yours."

"No?"

"Yours is the only real one." Her clit was still hard, and pulsing. He rubbed it softly, it was so wet it felt like a ball bearing spinning beneath the pad of his finger. Buffy sucked air in through her teeth, and wriggled. His cock was still inside her, half erect though he'd come so hard. She squeezed, tighter and tighter as it filled. "Keep it just for me, Mrs Grieves. Keep it for me, an' I'll make it worth your while."

"I will." She pressed her forehead to his. When she lifted her eyes again to his, hers were glistening. "Mr Grieves, I will."

"There," he said, kissing her swollen eyelids. "Spoken like a true friend."

"Not your queen anymore? No -- ! Friend is better -- it's so much better! My best, dearest, kindest friend."

"Who fucks you, an' bites you sometimes too, just to keep you payin' attention."

She fingered the wound, already scabbed. He surged forward to mouth it, lick it. She laughed and shuddered, clutching at him.

"An' so old Spike and the slayer are friends for keeps. Now hang on for the end of the whole bloody world."

Buffy laughed, as if he'd said something really witty. She was incredibly beautiful when she'd been fucked, flushed and disheveled, her mouth swollen, blushing in patches.

"We're going to be all right now," she said. "I know we are."

"We are, my girl." Gathering himself, he rose, and tumbled with her onto the bed. He would make her more beautiful still, before the night was through.

One of Buffy's hands was still wrapped around the sticky base of his cock, but she'd slayed it with her mouth so it was dead now, and would be dead, Spike thought, for a while. Maybe even as long as ten whole minutes. Dropping her head onto his belly, Buffy gazed across into his eyes. Hers were slightly out of focus; her lips swollen and pink. She was splayed beside him at an angle, her feet near his shoulder. The whole time she was giving him head, she'd ground herself against his hand, and come twice before he did. He held her sex now like a peach.

He squeezed her, pushing three fingers into her drenched folds. She bucked her hips. Her clit pulsed under his thumb. "You're an insatiable little cunt. Gonna fuck you ten times a day an' put you on your knees ten times more. You're gonna keep me happy."

She nodded. Even that little bit of friction, her wet cheek against his abs, was exquisite.

"An' I'm confiscating your knickers. You're gonna be naked an' wet for me all the time. Ready to be fucked. Your quim is mine."

She lifted her head, eyes sparkling. "You'd better be ready too. I just might get you first. Your ass is mine."

"It is. You should see yourself right this minute, Slayer, you're such a tigress. Could fuck that pretty mouth of yours all over again."

His cock stirred in her hand; she gave it an answering squeeze.

"I wanted this so much, to be back here with you. To be forgiven. To get back to our life together."

"I do forgive you, in case you didn't know it. With all my heart."

"Really? Are you sure? I promise you I will never hurt you like that again."

"Like that? But you reserve the right to hurt me other ways?"

For a moment she looked absolutely stricken. Then she took in the humor in his eyes. "It's only that I don't know what the future holds -- I never want to hurt you again, not at all."

"I believe you. An' do you forgive me?"

"For what?"

"C'mon, Slayer. Plenty enough. For keepin' you in the cold so long, for one thing. An' before that, for... for whatever I did to turn you off from me. Must've been something in me, made you need to go outside."

"No, not you. It's nice of you to say, but you know it wasn't you."

"Do I? Still a lot I don't seem to figure, pet." He wasn't sure he was ready to go back into this, but here they were on the threshold, and she looked ready to spill; her eyes were full of painful musing.

"I seduced Saleem because I felt trapped. By my life. Which felt like an infinite corridor with no turn-offs. Which isn't how a real human life is shaped at all. I kept thinking how the few people I care for would go on aging and dying and soon there'd be no one left who knew me when I was still relatively normal, except you. Then you might get tired of me because I'm too difficult, and I'd be alone, and still no end in sight. My life felt so unnatural, just going on and on fighting without change or death and I couldn't bear it."

Her eyes pleaded for reassurance.

"I guessed that's how it was."

"I talked to Angel about it, a couple of times. Him, and not you, because... it occurred to me that nothing with a soul is supposed to have eternal youth, eternal life. He was the only one who knew what it was like, maintaining hope when there's no end ordained. I thought he could advise me how to cope... but he didn't say what I needed to hear, because what I needed to hear... I don't know what it was, exactly, but it would've been something wrong. I wanted a Get Out Of Jail Free Card, and Angel didn't have one for me." She pressed a kiss to his belly. "That hurts you too, I know. That even after all this time as my partner, I shut you out because you didn't have a soul."

"Hurt me then, yeah, but I understand now. Soul makes you look ahead, makes you need meaning. Never did any of that when I was evil. Loved, yeah, passionately -- as you know -- but before I met you, did it very much in the moment. We're like little children, vamps an' demons. All emotion an' appetite, like to make big plans, but don't really care about anythin' that's not the here an' now. I came closer to it, probably, than any other, but... now I'm on the other side, I see how much I lacked before."

"Spike, I didn't perceive any lack in you. You know that, right? I don't want you to think, now you have a soul, that all that time without one was worthless."

"N-no. I don't think that. But listen, about this lookin' for answers. We're both in it now, yeah? Fighting a mission where there's no definitive win, but losin's too awful to contemplate."

"We must love one another or die."

"Eh? Since when do you read Auden?"

"Jemmie said it to me earlier. I didn't know it was a quote."

"Well, you wouldn't, my darlin' books-make-me-sleepy girl."

"Hey, I like books. Anyway, when you read to me."

"So, Jemmie quoted old Wystan Hugh, an' you -- "

"And I got it. The last missing piece locked into place, and I got what this is all about. I realized that even though I hate their methods, the Powers understand me more than I know. How alienated I can get. They gave me this pregnancy to keep me in the stream of life, not superior to it. Because they see I'm not a saint, it might be the whole world I save every time, but it's individual people I save it for. People close to me, people I love. I need more of them, not fewer." She kissed his belly again. Her eyes were humid with affection. "I understand why they did it the way they did, too. Because if they had offered it to us, a choice for us to make, I think... I think we might've turned it down. We'd have thought we weren't ready, and maybe we'd have fought about it and wasted a lot of time and ended up parting -- who knows? The Powers figured it was better to go phwoom. Like they phwoomed Dawn."

"Could be." He was half-afraid to say too much. She'd come farther faster than he'd dared imagine. Maybe if he agreed too stringently, she'd bounce back the other way. "Glad you're at peace with it, anyway. That's the important part."

"Hey, let's not go nuts here. At peace? No. I'm a world of scared. Our track record as parents -- at best, it's checkered. We can't pretend we did our best with Johnny, either of us. He was so different from Jem, he had different needs. Maybe bigger needs. We failed him. Not just by leaving Drusilla loose out in the world. He had all kinds of issues we were oblivious to, and they destroyed him. Now another poor innocent unsuspecting baby is going to be at our mercy, and we must do better."

"We will, Buffy. Of course we will."

"Except -- we're so unsuited to this! What we do best, you and I, we fight big evil and we have hot sex. This branching out into areas of endeavor outside our core of expertise... it's chancey."

"You ask Jemmie if lovin' a child is outside our core of expertise. Did all right with her, let's not forget. Glass's still half full, pet."

"I'm a little surprised to hear you say that, since you're so angry at her for throwing herself away on Angel."

He was aware at once that she was testing him. "I'm angry, yeah. But doesn't change how I love her. Wouldn't be so angry if I didn't love her like I love you."

Buffy smiled. "Oh Spike, you don't have to pretend you don't love her more than you do me. I know you do."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because to Jemmie there was never a time when you weren't good -- it never even occurred to her that you might not be. And she's the only person who ever saw you that way -- who not only didn't know you evil, but couldn't even imagine it. And that reaches a part of you even I can't touch."

Surprises heaped on surprises. He'd never figured her for putting all that together, or expressing it so generously at last.

Before he could reply, she said, "Whereas Johnny... somehow he lost his innocence so early. He didn't think either of us was good. I wish I'd figured that out a long time ago, but I don't know what I could've done about it."

"No. I don't either."

They were quiet for a while then. Buffy played with his cock, running the foreskin back and letting it go, until it filled in her hands, the rosy head once more uncovered.

"... doesn't mean anything, you know, to say more or less 'bout how I love you an' Jem. You took me on though you knew me for the blackguard I was, an' raised me up by hand. Never had such scope for adoring a woman as I do with you. No one else could satisfy me the way you do."

She colored, and glanced away. "Aww, now you're just fishing for another blow-job."

"Only telling the truth. Know you'll give it a suck for the asking."

"You don't have to ask." She kissed the rampant head, tracing the slit with the tip of her tongue, so he gasped and arched. Sucking the whole knob into her mouth, her tongue swarmed across the underside, one hand tugging, just hard enough, on his balls. At the same time, her cunt contracted around his fingers, giving down a fresh wash of warm slick against his palm.

"Fuck! Yeah -- like that -- Buffy -- "

She let him go long enough to say "Who's the slave to whom here, Spikey?"

Somehow that remark, and the sight of her taking him in again, put him over. He came in her mouth with a long shudder. She held on through the after-shocks. When he was still again, she crawled up to offer him his own pungent taste in a kiss.

"Y'know," she whispered, lips by his ear, "No one satisfies me the way you do either."

"Guess you know that better now."

"Guess I do."

She settled against him. He breathed in her deep aroma of sweat and spunk. This reunion was providing him even more than he'd missed, or hoped for.

"So, speaking of Jem... I guess it's not a coincidence either, that she met Angel just as Wesley died.... I think the Powers steered her into his world so she can keep him human too. "

"Let's not go too far with the All Is Love theories here."

"You're going to forgive her even this, Spike. You might as well get started now."

"Don't be so sure." The images of his recurrent dream came back to him, in all their filth. Should he tell her about it?

He might have been able to do so before. But not now she'd decided to go on with the baby. How could he describe how she appeared in the dream, the things she said?

It was all lies, anyway. Lies his demon told, the part of him that was black and fraught with rage and fear.

"Think about it though, okay? I've never seen her look so vibrant. That has to mean something good."

We must love one another or die. That's what Buffy wanted now.

"Just means she's finally bein' seen to regular," he grumbled.

"Oh God, don't talk that way about our daughter. I don't want to think about Jemmie doing that."

"Yeah, but we know she is. We've both inspected the merchandise, too, know exactly what she's getting. Would prefer not to contemplate it, yeah, but there it is."

"Okay, but let's not discuss it like that."

He laughed, and gave her a squeeze. "Still sore at me for my little fling with old sire?"

She twitched, but was silent.

"Can say it, if you are."

"I have no right to be."

"That's all bollocks. S'no right an' wrong to feelings. Still... you'd have liked watchin' us, I reckon. Little cunny here would've been all a-flutter."

He brought a hand down to her thighs, which she parted for him even as she protested. "Oh God -- Spike -- don't."

"I fucked him, I did. Had him on his back with his feet up in the air. Never wished so much for a reflection in all my days as then. He gave up his bleedin' cherry to me, Slayer, like a -- like a angel. Had him speakin' in tongues, I did, 'fore I was through. An' when it was over, he thanked me."

Buffy's eyes were saucers. "No."

"I swear on my soul."

"Huh." She blinked, and blushed, her nipples going hard, cunt twitching against his hand. Seemingly without noticing, she drew up one knee to give him better access. "Well, I guess that must've been something. I guess you've waited a long time for any chance of that."

"Too true. An' it was bloody unforgettable."

"I can imagine." She tweaked his nipple, smiling. This sudden capricious willingness to enter into sympathy with him, meant more than any amount of exuberant head, or passionate words. Showing as it did that beneath it all, Buffy understood him perfectly, when she chose, and approved of him, though she chose, even more rarely, to show it.

Engaging her gaze, not letting her look away even as she blushed hotter, he strummed the tight plumpness of her clit with his thumb. Squirming, she gasped, "I could probably imagine it more vividly if I, y'know, heard more of the details."

"... so, this child you've been seeing... do you really think it's this? she asked, touching her belly. From needing so wildly to deny the reality of the apparition, Buffy found herself now overtaken with curiosity.

"Can't really say, can I?" He wouldn't quite look at her.

"C'mon, Spike. You can be frank with me now. My claws are all retracted."

"Then, sweetness, I do."

"Tell me about her."

"She'll have my curly hair, an' your lovely looks, I think, an' she'll be fond of dresses an' girly things. Other than that... didn't get much sense of a personality. 'Til I got here, thought all along she was by way of bein' a spirit-guide. But now I recall, early on she told me I'd never meet her if I didn't go the right way. So pretty sure she's right here an' all." His hand starfished on her stomach.

"Do you think... do you think she'll be special somehow?"

"Any child of ours must be that, Buffy."

"No, I mean, do you think she's going to have some mission? Some particular purpose?"

"Will it make a difference to what we do with her if she did?"

"... no. No, I suppose not." She let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "No one knows what their child will be, do they? And if you did know in advance -- well, it wouldn't make any of it any easier, would it?"

"If my mamma knew what would happen to her brood, poor lady might've run mad."

Buffy could practically hear and see her again, Mrs Augusta Grieves, with her great stores of forebearance, always occupied with something but never hasty in her movements, sitting upright in her straight chair near the embroidered firescreen. She never sat easy, was never seen without her hand-work, her stays, her cap, her high-button boots. She'd talked by the hour to her about her departed daughters, believing her to have been an acquaintance of the two eldest. She spoke of them as if they were still alive, away perhaps on a country visit, but yet there was nothing in her manner to suggest self-delusion or dangerous fantasy. She knew they were dead, but she could not learn to set them aside therefore, any more than she set her son aside, who still came home each evening to dine at her side, to read aloud to her, and say the prayers at ten o'clock in the dining room. Buffy wondered what Mrs Grieves might have known about her daughters that she did not speak about. Certainly there was nothing at all like what she knew about Johnny, that put her in two minds about him so that no thought or memory could be untrammeled.

"She wouldn't," Buffy said. "Even if she knew, your mother would've had her children all the same. Treasured them while they were there, and kept their memories after." She found his hand in the bedclothes, squeezed it. "Spike, I know she thought of you every day -- probably every hour -- until she died. She loved you so much, and that never never changed."

"Would she have loved this?" He brought up the fangs and bumps.

Buffy kissed them. "I think so. She'd have been frightened... and very sorry... but I don't think she'd have been able to help loving you anyway." Her eyes filled suddenly with hot tears. "I can't believe I said you should've slain him! Oh Spike -- ! But if you had -- all those people would still be -- oh God! Our boy, our boy, our boy -- !"

She crawled into his lap, his arms. At last, they wept together. Holding each other, rocking back and forth crazily in the disordered sheets in a shuddering rhythm weirdly like the fuck they'd had a little while before. Her tears didn't so much ooze as shake themselves out, burning her skin as they slid down to her cheeks, distended by a silent howl. In her arms, Spike's body quaked; he was almost silent, except for the occasional cry, startling coming from him, like the honk of some kind of water bird.

When it was over, like the fuck, they were left spent, speechless, lightheaded, sprawled.

Her eye fell on the clock on the bedside table.

"It's almost morning." She still couldn't speak without emitting a sob.

Spike's face was a blur, parchment white, the eyes sunken and rimmed in red. "Should get some sleep. S'been a long night."

"Let's wash first, and change the sheets." She rose with difficulty; for a second, the room spun. He seemed to know it; in the next moment he caught her, lifted her off her feet. She let him carry her into the bathroom, where he set her down in front of the sink, with its broad expanse of mirror.

"Bath, or shower?"

She yawned. "I am tired. Quick shower." She could barely focus, her eyelids wanting to fall closed. She forced her eyes wide, saw herself, woolly and dissheveled, bare skin covered in the reddening marks of her husband's fierce love. Her breasts were bigger, and she thought now she saw, for the first time, the beginning of a pooch to her belly, though it had to be, still, too soon for that. He got the water running, then turning back to her, threaded his arms around her from behind. He pressed a kiss against the place he'd bitten her, and she shivered down to her toes.

"I love you so much, Mr Grieves."

"An' I love you, pretty Scourge of the Darkness an' Mother of my Children. Come now, water's just as hot as you like it."

Just before he tugged her towards the shower, she saw, through her swimmy fluttering eyelids, their dual reflection. His hands clasped around her breasts, his bony face hovering at a tilt beside hers, the hooded eyes regarding her with adoring bemusement.

In the next moment she was beneath the warm spray, eyes pressed shut as she raised her face to the water. She wouldn't say anything to him about it, but she was sure of what she'd seen. She clasped the image to her, as she clasped all sorts of memories that would not come again.

He awoke with a powerful thirst, a hard-on like a club, and a sense of well-being he couldn't remember the like of. The brief day was just dawning, the pale winter light diffusing into the room. Beside him Buffy still slept, hands curled into fists.

Watching her eyes move beneath the closed lids -- smiling at the sight of her inelegantly open mouth -- he stroked himself. Thought whether it would be kinder to let Slayer dream on while he got himself off, or treat her to this quite-remarkable-even-for-him cockstand. Seemed a shame not to share it -- it was so patently for her. Though she'd washed before sleep, she still smelled juicy. Lifting the sheet up to see more of her released a big waft of the lovely funk of her sex. She lay on her belly, one leg drawn up. Sitting up, he got a good view of her behind, and the pink lips of her quim. A light touch with his fingertip came away wet. Buffy sighed in her sleep, pulling her leg up higher.

That decided him. Rolling her gently onto her back, he buried his face in her cunt. She awoke with a cry that turned at once into a long happy groan.

She was wet and slippery and fragrant as a halved fruit. Lapping her up, he humped the mattress until suddenly her hand was there, closing around his cock. "God, Spike, don't waste this on the sheets."

He laughed, not lifting his mouth from her. She was already undulating to fuck his mouth, her free hand pressing on the back of his neck. With a shout that was nearly a bark, she came. Before she stopped quaking he reversed himself, plunging into her to the hilt. She cried out again, a whoop of joy that sent his excitement spiralling higher.

"Fuck -- Spike -- I love your cock."

He rolled onto his back, carrying her around with him. "There you are," he said, when he was sprawled beneath her, their wiry hairs crushed together, her face hanging over him, as pink as her nipples. "Give us a fuck now, Slayer, that'll do justice to it."

It was just this way -- riding him like a valkyrie -- that she came out strongest as a woman who wasn't like other women. As rude and demanding as he was with her the day before, she was even more so, using him as she pleased, confident that her pleasure was his as well. He gave up counting the number of times she threw her head back, shivering and shaking and drenching him. When she finally signaled that she wanted him to come, he was as covered as she with bite marks and hickies, every muscle stretched to the sore point, every sense suffused with slayer.

Still, she brought him off, after the long rough ride, not with a harder mauling, but with a sweet speaking look into his eyes, a murmur of his true name, and a kiss -- soft and encompassing as a happy homecoming -- on his bruised mouth. He bucked and shouted and shot.

"I think you passed out there for a sec'."

He forced himself to focus, and found her stretched out close beside him, flushed and amiable and shiny-eyed.

"You send me, baby."

He floated on the afterglow through another shower, more kissing that almost led to another bout -- deflected by Buffy who insisted she could hear his stomach growling as well as her own -- and following her down to the kitchen.

Where he found Angel sitting in his place at the table, accepting one of his bottles of beer from the rosy fingers of his daughter, who bent to kiss his mouth as she placed it in front of him.

Spike vamped out and lunged.

PART TEN

"You are not wrecking my kitchen!" Grabbing two handfuls of his shirt, Buffy snapped Spike back just before his fist could connect with Angel's face. Angel was already on his feet, chair and beer bottle overturned. In the stunned moment that followed, it was apparent that Angel had started up not to defend himself, but Jemima. He stood planted between her and the wall. She peered around him, blanched and wide-eyed.

Spike took this in with a jerk that also freed him from Buffy's hand. "I wasn't going to hurt her, you great pillock!"

"Buffy's right. We can't fight in here." Angel was as grave and calm as a monument.

"You can't fight at all!" Jemima stepped out, climbing over the toppled chair to stand between them. "No fighting! I didn't bring him here for that."

"Shouldn't have brought him here at all. Bloody cheek. How'd he get in, anyway?"

Buffy was already applying paper towels to the beer puddle on the floor. She moved slowly, her attention fixed on the clean-up as if there was nothing else going on around her. "Wherever I am is home for my children. This is Jemmie's house too. She can invite."

"The fuck she can. You -- out."

"Papa -- don't start off like this. Please."

Angel picked up the chair, then stooped to help Buffy with the blotting. She glanced up at him, impassive, as if he was a stranger who'd paused to assist her in the street.

Angel stared, mouth opening in awe. "Buffy... my God." He pitched his voice so only she heard. "Con-congratulations. It is congratulations, isn't it?"

"When it isn't oh shit get me out of this, or, more to the point, oh shit, get this out of me, yeah." She straightened up with a sigh and a big wad of wet towels, pushing her hair out of her face with one hand as she threaded past Jemima to throw them away. "Spike, aren't you going to offer Angel another beer? Or some blood?"

Both women regarded him as if he was being merely boorish, rather than either dangerous or perfectly within his rights. With a growl, he stalked after Buffy to the other end of the big kitchen. "You! You're supposed to be in my corner, remember?"

She blinked. She might almost have looked bored, except he knew what her expression really contained: disappointment at the blasting of their night's communion, dread of a long tiresome scene. "I thought we'd finally got to the big Que Sera Sera sing-a-long."

"So you knew he'd be here? You planned this?"

She sighed again. "No. I really really didn't."

They glanced back at the troublemakers, as if they weren't perfectly within earshot. Jemima, hesitating by the counter el, partly to mostly cloudy, and beyond, by the table, Angel, looking like he'd prefer to be facing something whose neck he could break.

"What is he doing here?" Buffy said.

Jemima frowned in that way that Spike couldn't help but find adorable. "He... we missed each other."

Angel, on the other hand, wasn't adorable at all.

"Oh bloody hell -- girl's only been here a couple of days, you prancing twat. LA's probably falling to shit while you come gallumphing after your bit of skirt! 'Cept she's not yours, so you can get that notion out of your thick head straight off!"

"Spike. I don't 'gallumph.'"

"Don't you? Well, my bad, then."

"Sometimes a short sharp shock is best. Papa, I brought him here this morning so we could all just... just deal and get over it. And be a family. Which we already are, whether you like it or not."

At that, Spike checked with Buffy. She was holding her head up the way she did when facing some monster she suspected might be slightly too big to take on alone. Her eyes were glossy, edging into moist. The corner of her mouth twitched.

He couldn't be angry at her. Not after the night they'd had. Not when she looked so shiningly, imperfectly beautiful. In anticipation of Jemima being there, she'd bound a scarf around her neck to hide the bite-wound; the effect was to make her look like a blown flower on a fragile stem.

We must love one another or die. That sounded good when she told it to him last night, when they were alone. But now the Despoiler was here in his house, his daughter wanting him to be treated like a goddamn son-in-law, and it was too fucking much.

When Buffy spoke, she said the last thing he expected. "Y'know, I haven't told her yet. I thought you'd like to, Spike."

Jemima started forward, the question of Angel forgotten. "Told me what? What is it, what's wrong?"

He couldn't resist taking Buffy, so golden and beloved, in his arms, or reaching out to pull Jemima in too. Angel, stranded on the far side of the room, wouldn't, he knew, miss a bit of the nuance in this display of his riches. "Your mum's gonna give you a baby sister."

"She -- what? But how?"

Angel might as well have been nowhere. In her astonishment, Jemima had forgotten him.

Of course, that would only last a moment. While Buffy told her news, and Jemima gasped and questioned and hugged her mother, Spike couldn't help peeking at the other man. He stood abstracted, half turned away, gazing out at the choppy grey water of the bay beneath the overcast sky, his big hands dangling at his sides. He might have been waiting for a train to take him on some routine journey, except for the suggestion, in the line of his stolid profile, of tightly-reined impatience.

Still in her parent's arms, Jemima craned around to him. "Angel -- !"

He didn't move. "I heard."

"He congratulated me already," Buffy said. "He knew as soon as I stepped into the room."

Jemima looked at Buffy then, as if she wasn't quite making sense. Gave them both her sad, pensive expression, the kind that could melt steel. "Why can't we just get on together? You could if you wanted to, Papa! This doesn't have to be such a death-match! Especially now!" Uncurling herself from the family embrace, she crossed back to Angel. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. You were right, coming to the house wasn't a good idea."

At least the bloody bugger had that much sense, to not to want to come here. But he'd come on anyway, because girl could already lead him about like a trained bear on a string.

Milo had never given her anything like that sort of consideration. With him, if Jemmie said white, it had therefore to be black.

Not that that mattered a tinker's fart, because Angel was still the exactly wrong man for her, and --

Buffy laid her forehead against his shoulder. Her skin through the thin cotton was hot, and she rolled her head as if to pass that heat to him. She whispered. "Do you really want to push your daughter away? You will, if you go on like this. "

"Don't want him in my house. It's one thing -- one thing -- " He wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say the one thing was, but Buffy was already speaking again, and there was something about having her whisper to him alone, something to the way she held his arm and pressed herself against him, that was almost irresistibly compelling. He had to listen.

"Oh Spike, isn't it like how we were, in the beginning? You had nothing to recommend you, as far as any of my friends could see. Everybody wanted to break us up. Remember -- Willow and Xander burned you out of your crypt, to make you leave town. Instead I brought you to live with me."

"'Course I remember." He remembered how miserable she'd been then, dwelling on the narrow edge of despair, and how he'd dared to think he could pull her back from that edge. Which was incredibly and abundantly arrogant of him, and should've resulted in disaster. "But love, it's not the same -- "

"Don't you see? That was the beginning of my happiness. Our happiness."

She smiled -- how radiant she was! Her happiness. Was still half-way incredible to him that he could ever have a hand in that, let alone be it. But she was showing him that it was, and he couldn't disbelieve her.

"Oh love. Love...."

"Are you really going to stand here and deny Jemmie hers? I mean -- can you really do that, Spike? Especially now?"

"Bloody hell." Jemima looked so tiny at Angel's side, her hand swallowed in his great paw. An image flashed into his mind, unbidden, unbearable, indelible, of how easily he could be too much for her. He'd been too much for so many thousands of women, torn up even before he got his fangs out. Spike squeezed his eyes shut on the sight of his daughter's face. Didn't want to imagine her doing that, not with anyone, but especially... especially....

Buffy put her lips to his ear again, speaking only to him. "Do I like this? Is it what I wished Jemmie would have? No. But Angel went out of his way for us. He did all he could to help when you came to him with Johnny. He cares for all of us -- he's a friend. We can't treat him like this. Not anymore."

Again she pulled back enough to look at him, and he was reminded how Jemima came by her will-bending stare.

"Anyway," Buffy said aloud, "You know we're all in this mission together. There's few enough of us, we don't need to split into factions."

She'd learned already to take his passionate declaration about the mission and turn it to her purposes! It was the argument that could make him bend the knee without protest, though it still roiled his heart.

"Bugger."

Buffy led him across the room again.

Meeting Angel's gaze, Spike let the demon surface in his eyes -- not all the way, but just enough.

"You do her wrong -- hurt her -- disappoint her -- make her cry -- an' so help me, your last sight on this plane will be my blade loppin' your head right off your shoulders. Don't imagine I won't do it, mate, 'cause you know me well enough by now. Nuff said."

Angel raised his chin. "Nuff said."

"Oh, that's just great," Buffy said. "Now shake hands and let's have something to eat."

Angel felt he was sitting on the edge of his chair even though he wasn't. The whole house smelled like Buffy, much the way the old place on Revello used to. He'd never been remotely at home there, in the too short time he'd been Buffy's lover. Joyce had never welcomed him in through the front door, never sat him down for a meal. He'd spent a night in Buffy's room at the beginning, but had never lain with her in her bed. In all the years since he'd left her, he'd never imagined returning, even as a visitor, to her home, let alone as a sort of in-law.

All this came back to Angel in a confused muddle of sadness and unease as he sat in the kitchen, watching Buffy cook breakfast. Her happiness, though, was apparent, startlingly so, given all she had to mourn. The hoped-for reconciliation with Spike was clearly a fact: she gave off an intense musk of sex that betrayed how they'd been going at it all night. He could smell the bite on her neck too, the distinctive aroma of her blood stirring up troubling, shame-shot memories.

He wasn't ready for this direct confrontation with the evidence that, for Spike and Buffy, feeding and fucking were happily intertwined. Buffy clearly relished everything about him, right down to the demon's most basic appetites.

The silk scarf that bound Buffy's throat seemed just as obvious a flaunting of that relish as showing off a frank bandage, or the bite itself. It struck his conservative Irish soul as a bit of obscenity he'd gladly have spared Jemima.

Buffy served bacon and eggs out onto plates. She brought them to the table and set them down -- one, two, three. Spike, already sipping warm blood from a large mug, set a smaller mug of the same in front of Angel.

"I don't get eggs?"

"Since when do you eat?"

"I... "

"He eats now," Jemima said. "When I cook for him."

"Well well," Spike said, smirking over the rim of his cup. "How the mighty have fallen. I remember the time it was all We don't waste time on what feeds the humans, boy. The humans feed us."

"Papa."

Spike dropped a kiss on Jemima's head, then slid into his chair. "Love it when she calls me that."

Buffy, sitting down before her own plate, made no sign of an inclination to restrain Spike's teasing. There was to be, Angel saw, a certain period of unavoidable hazing. He made up his mind to endure it with patience. Considering that it would've been quite easy -- and even correct, in some lights -- for Spike and Buffy to blame him for Johnny's ultimate failure, and the violence it caused -- they seemed to have made up their minds that that at least wasn't to come between them.

"You can share mine," Jemima said, inclining towards him. She'd already pulled her chair around so she was sitting beside him at the square table, rather than at an angle. "There's too much here for just me."

"No, you eat. I'll watch you."

"It's good as a feast, isn't it -- watchin' 'em eat? Mouths all shiny, an' eyes bright." Spike's remark startled him. In a moment his tone had utterly changed; suddenly he'd taken Angel as his partner in the pleasure of observing the human beloved. His eyes were all for Buffy, a gaze of such pure adoration that it was amazing she didn't disintegrate in the heat of it. "Ah, look at her. Eatin' for two, she is now, pretty darling."

"But very daintily," Buffy insisted, even as she reached for more toast. "Not with, you know, any gorging about it."

"Never, Pet."

Jemima was all smiles. All her worries about her parents were evaporated. Angel thought he could glimpse in her current expression a hint of what she'd been as a little child, entirely unguarded.

"I can't believe I'm going to have another sibling," she said now. "It's really wonderful."

"Sister."

"But how can you know that, Papa?"

"Your father is privy to all kinds of secrets," Buffy said.

"And she'll be born soon after Auntie Dawn's. Won't it be fun to have babies in the family? I wish you would come and live near us while the kids are small. The cousins should have each other."

"Maybe we will," Buffy said, piling egg onto her toast. "We haven't thought that far ahead."

Angel wondered about what she'd said before, while the others weren't listening. When it isn't oh shit get me out of this, or, more to the point, oh shit, get this out of me. That ambivalence was nowhere in evidence at the moment. She was blushing under Spike's looks and her daughter's smiles. Her arousal scented the air, a salty second to the aroma of bacon; Angel couldn't help being aware of it, and aware that Spike knew it; the smug glance his host occasionally threw at him spoke that much.

In all the years since Dru dragged him home, a curly-pated prat she'd no business to turn, Angel never had imagined it would be bloody Will who'd come up roses.

Beneath the table, Jemima squeezed his hand.

At the conclusion of the meal, something happened as Spike and Buffy cleared the table, some little bit of business around stacking the dishwasher, nearly inaudible, except that Buffy laughed, a high girlish helpless laugh.

"Excuse us, we need to... I have to change, and I need Spike to -- zip me."

"Zip you, yeah," Spike grinned. In the next moment, they were gone, the stairs thudding under their running steps, a door slamming above.

Angel glanced at Jemima. She shrugged.

"Don't imagine I'm not used to this. They've always been like that. I had my -- what do you call it -- primal moment -- very young."

"I -- "

She slipped out of her chair and onto his knee. Every time she did this, with that sweet confiding expression on her face, his chest swelled as if his heart would break out into beats in the next moment. "You look all thunder-stormy. It's all right, sweetheart. Thanks for coming here even though you didn't want to. We don't have to stay. I've got what I wanted."

"You're visiting with them -- you shouldn't go so soon."

"We can get a hotel room in town for a few days, if you want. Or we can just go home."

"Is it home?"

She looked as if he'd said something very silly that she was nevertheless going to indulge. "America is home." She kissed him. An indeterminate period of time elapsed, during which Angel saw no further than the blur of Jemima's face filling his vision as he tasted her mouth over and over. A couple of times, when she pressed her hand against the bulge in his trousers, he shifted it away. His excitement wasn't all for her.

"Hello young lovers."

Buffy was, unexpectedly and too quickly, so it seemed to him, back in the kitchen. Jemima sprang up with a laugh.

Buffy had indeed changed -- into a dress that zipped up the back. She'd also washed, which only added a scent of soap to her predominant essence of cornucopia: Spike had fucked her again, and again made the blood flow from her neck. This time, clearly, it was as much a boast for his benefit as anything else. Buffy must've known it too, but he couldn't somehow bring himself to blame her, even as she nearly overwhelmed his senses with rich aromas of sustenance and satisfaction. He couldn't help but remember that he'd tasted of all that himself, just enough to know what it was he really lost when he had to give her up.

"We were just talking -- " Jemima started.

"Were you?" Buffy raised an eyebrow, smiled at her daughter with a generosity Angel had to admire. On the point of Jemima's choice, she really had capitulated, and all the way. "Funny way to go about it." She winked.

Jem blushed. "About whether I'd go stay with Angel at the hotel, or if we should go -- "

"Jemmie, don't leave yet. You just got here." She came and took her hand. "Now things are better, I wanted -- "

"I don't want to go." She glanced at Angel. "We'll stay in Reykjavik for a few days."

"But stay here. There's plenty of room." Her hopeful glance included him. "Angel, really. You're welcome here. Spike would say the same. Our guest room's very comfortable."

He wasn't sure he could stand it. He wanted to make love to Jemima -- the few days she'd been away already felt like a desert of time -- but the idea of doing that under this roof was a wilting one. On a number of fronts. The blood-scent that laced the air stood in for all the strangeness of it.

"Why don't you show him the room," Buffy said. "Tell him about it. About how quiet it is."

Blushing again, Jem took his hand, tugged him up. "We can take a look, anyway, but I think -- "

It was a relief to be led away from the kitchen. The stress of all this would've been great enough if any of the componant parts -- the boy's misadventures -- the affair with Spike -- the erotic clash of the Titans -- was absent. Taken all together, this visit was exhausting. Even used as he was to living among people -- to having a team -- this new venture into love and family reminded him how very rusty he was at human relations. How solitary was his default mode.

He wasn't like Spike, who had the gift of easy affection -- giving it, getting it. When he tried not to be solitary, bad things usually ensued.

The bedroom she led him to was a wing off the main part of the house, remote from Spike and Buffy's aerie. Two walls were of window, reflecting the room now because it was dark outside. The unmade bed smelled of Jemima's sleep and little else. She sat at the foot, a faint smile on her face. "I know they can be too much. But then I think you've been too much too, in your day, so you can make allowances." He couldn't deny this; the remark sent his mind spinning back into places he didn't want to associate with her. That was maybe the worst of it, how the promiximity to Buffy and Spike in their state of fecund honeymoon stirred up his whole ugly past, reminding him of what he'd been and could too easily be again.

She stretched her booted legs apart, drew up the hem of her gathered woollen skirt. In the windows, two other Jemimas did the same, looking as if they were each alone, preparing to remember some absent lover in an act of self-pleasure. "Angel, I want you."

In this room at least, there was nothing but her. No longer drowned out by the larger presences of her parents, he found her delicate aromas again. He knelt between her knees on the Persian carpet. She caught his mouth with hers, her little fingers caressing his face, twining in his hair. Her chunky sweater made her seem bigger than she was; threading his arms around her reacquainted him with her slipping slenderness. She sighed into the kiss when he embraced her, parting her legs further. She was breathing fast. "Here -- please -- " She pulled the skirt up higher. The woolly tights she wore turned out to be stockings. Her uncovered sex gave forth its perfume; she leaned back in his arms. "Kiss me here -- "

She mewed and gasped as he licked her, sometimes scrubbing at her face and hair, sometimes stretching her arms all the way up, arching her back. Sometimes a real word or two escaped her in the midst of her kittenish vocalizing: once she cried out her love, then a minute later said, do you have your cock out? Is it hard? When she came she lay splayed and panting, showing herself off. The deep pink mouth of her quim twitched, an invitation he didn't resist for long. She was so small, yet she took him in with such joyful ease, wrapping her legs around his flanks.

"Yes. Yes."

Jemima's voice could be sometimes, in pitch and tone, just like her mother's. Her mother, who, within the hour, had given herself to Spike just this way, and in the midst of it, he'd tasted her. Her blood -- made more delicious with her excitement -- welling up between his fangs, filling his mouth, hot, powerful, love made liquid.

Afterwards Jemima rose reluctantly and went to the bathroom. Spent, Angel lay in her warmth, thinking what now? If he remained with them for the next few days, what would they all do and say? He couldn't imagine any sort of conversation with Spike, not anymore. And how could he be with Buffy in a way that wouldn't be endlessly awkward?

His thoughts reverted to the scarf she'd worn that morning, to the bite it concealed.

The blood thing. The blood thing was just too much.

Spike had boasted how he drank Buffy's monthly blood, and thereby implanted indelible images in Angel's mind, images that followed him into his affair with Jemima, nagging and tormenting like the temptations of St Anthony.

After they'd been sharing a bed for a couple of weeks, he'd sprung from sleep one early morning achingly hard and fangy, made so by the rich aroma of bleeding. She was still in deep sleep, oblivious to the beginning of her period, just beginning to seep out.

That morning he'd lain in the dark, listening to her quiet breathing, trying not to inhale the tantalizing spice of her, wrestling with himself, for ten minutes that felt like ten hours, while Spike's words replayed through his head nothin' in this unlife's sweeter than sippin' the stuff straight from her little cooze. He'd never been tempted like this by any of the human friends he'd made in LA -- but then none of those women slept naked with him, cherished in his arms. Never never had he had what Jemima gave him -- such unrestrained warmth, such tactful trust. In succumbing to her, he'd promised himself -- promised the whole universe -- that he'd protect her, and above all from himself. That morning he fled the room -- afraid not that he'd hurt her, but that he desired what he shouldn't even dare think of.

Later that day something came up that took him away from her for the duration. He pushed the problem to the back of his mind for a month. But the next time it came around there was no convenient job to remove him from the Hyperion. He couldn't bring himself to say a word about it -- shame and confusion stoppered him. Jemima's blood, in any form, was a thing he simply should not want. He mustn't impose his demonic desires on her. If he once tasted her, nothing between them would be the same. Nothing would be as it should be. Anyway, she'd never agree to it, even if he were to insult her by... no, he couldn't even fantasize about asking. She wasn't like her mother, and he, above all, wasn't Spike.

For those four nights he found -- or invented -- work that kept him from going to bed when she did. During the day he kept his distance as best he could without making it too obvious. All the while he berated himself for making so much of this -- after all, Buffy hadn't troubled him so in the old days -- not this way, anyhow. It was Spike's fault. If Spike hadn't spoken to him....

As those days passed Jemima grew hesitant, as if afraid to offend him further. The unarticulated tension built up. At the point when it seemed she was working herself up to a question about the cause of his coolness, Jemima had a vision that distracted them both so that the matter was forgotten until it was over with. She accepted him back in their bed as if all was well, only remarking as they lay twined in the afterglow, "You are a moody man. Milo was too, but the difference is that I like you. Still... it seems that's who I attract. I wonder why."

He'd apologized and told her it wasn't her fault, and there the matter rested for another month.

It wasn't going to rest, though. That was the trouble.

"You and Angel are going to be nice to each other, now. The way you were in LA, while you were... you know... sleeping together."

"Are we, Pudding?" Spike turned, apparently unsurprised at her suddenly coming upon him on his solitary walk on the frozen tundra. There was a bit of a moon, but she brought a small flashlight to help her see over the uneven hummocks. In its light she saw that his expression was as good-humored as his tone. She dialed her own determination back a notch.

"Yes, you are."

"He sent you out here to tell me?"

"No, he did not. I'm here on my own."

"Well, you're a good girl." He reached for her free hand, tucking it into the crook of his arm as he resumed his stroll. The wind made her eyes water, but she was determined to say her piece before she went back to the house.

"Papa, that was quite a show you and Mamma put on."

"Didn't mean it for a show. Didn't know he was gonna be here when we came down this morning."

"I don't mean that. I mean -- everything afterwards."

"What -- slippin' off upstairs after brekkie? Your mum an' me have some catching up to do. Thought that us being together again would please you, anyhow."

"It does! It -- yes, I'm so happy -- relieved -- "

"Makes two of us."

He was, in his good humor, still determined to tease. She made her voice stern. "You're deliberately not understanding me, Papa."

"What am I not understanding?"

"We both know you're trying to scandalize him. It isn't kind. For one thing, I think he still has some feelings for Mamma, and it's hard for him, to see..."

"Scandalize him? This's Angelus we're talking about here! Fellow never met a debauch he couldn't do one better than."

"No, it's not," she said patiently. "Angel is very... he can be very proper. Prim, even. Irish Catholic, you know, without being actually so Catholic, which -- "

"Which thank God for small favors."

"Well, yes. But the point is, I feel he's uncomfortable with -- it's hard for him to see -- " She struggled to say what she'd prepared. Back in the house, making up her mind to intervene before things got worse, it all seemed very straightforward. She'd imagined herself speaking without hesitation. When she brought it out she could only manage a whisper. "... that you bit her."

"Again -- didn't do it on account of him."

"Not at first, Papa, I know. Only...."

Spike paused then, turned to look into her face. "Petal, I'm sorry my earthiness embarrassed you. 'Spect I forget myself too much when you're around. Usually your mum throttles me back, but she's a bit tipsy on it herself just now." He broke into a wide, spontaneous smile. "She loves me again. 'Fraid we can't quite help ourselves."

"I'm not... really not embarrassed. I'm used to you two by now!" Even as she spoke, her face went hot in the cold breeze. "But Angel isn't, and I wish -- listen, Papa, I'm very glad that you've made your peace with my choice. I didn't say that yet, and I want you to know. But I feel it disturbs him, to know that you -- that you do things with Mamma he can't do." Bringing this out was much more difficult than she'd anticipated. Having said it, she wanted to run.

Spike bent then to look into her eyes. "You really happy with him, Biscuit? I mean -- don't mind me askin', though I shouldn't -- you really happy in all the ways -- you know?"

"Oh Papa, yes. But Angel... he's not so free and easy with me as you are with Mamma. He thinks he can't be, for one thing, but... it's not only his concern about his soul. He kind of... puts me on a pedestal, you know."

"Ah?"

"I don't want to say too much. I just want you to be more thoughtful, if you can, while we're here. We won't stay long."

"All right, my girl, I'll do my best."

"And one other thing, Papa. Please don't let this -- me with Angel -- keep you from being his friend. I think you were starting to be before, and then...."

"He say anything to you about that?"

"No. There are still a lot of things he doesn't talk to me about, but I watch him, and I know... I know things. I think he wishes you both didn't have to be at daggers drawn, and not just on my account, but because... maybe he misses you."

Spike laughed, his eyebrows rising as if she was making fun.

"I mean it. It meant so much to him, that you came to him when we were in trouble."

"All right, petal." He pulled her into an embrace, shielding her from the blasting wind. "Christ, why'd you do it? World's full of men, an' you pick -- "

"We are so good together."

"Well, if you think so. 'Course you're good to him, it's the other way 'round I'm not sold on."

"It'll all be fine. You'll see, Papa." She tugged him back towards the house. "Promise me one more thing."

"More? I'm already overcommitted, what with having to say I'll be friend to Himself."

"When my little sister comes... promise me you won't give her all the pet names that are mine."

"What? I have to make up a whole round of new ones?"

"I don't think that's a lot to ask. I know she'll be your darling when she comes, and I'll just be the grown-up one."

"Now you're fishin' when your belly's already full."

"Well, yes. But promise me -- I'll share your love but I'm not sharing my names."

"An' here I thought your mum was the big slavedriver. All right, all right. I promise, Biscuit."

"Are we alone?"

"I think so. If you're going to ravish me, better do it now."

"I -- no."

"Well, of course no." Even as she said this, Buffy realized that her mood and Angel's were at cross-purposes. He filled the wide living room doorway like some allegorical figure of portent, or possibly the Incredible Hulk. "Come sit down. Do you want a drink?" She rose from the sofa where she'd been flicking through a fresh pile of fashion magazines, ready to go to the cart where the bottles and glasses lived, or if not there, to veer over to the fireplace, where she could poke at things while he chose a seat.

"Buffy, I wanted to tell you how really sorry I am about your son."

"I know, Angel. You said so at the funeral. You don't have to -- "

He stared at his knees, his expression reminding her of how he'd so often been in those months after he came back from hell: bemused, almost lost. "I do, though. He might have made it if I'd worked harder at him."

"Oh." She blinked, the previously serene Scandanavian indoor air all around her suddenly warping and boiling like a heat mirage on a highway. I'm not ready for this. I may never be ready for this.

"I let myself be distracted."

Buffy thought of him for a moment -- an image of her adorable, affectionate boy, composed of poses in snapshots and the firm morter of motherlove -- then let him go. Johnny was gone, beyond recall. Angel was here. She could only do what she could do. "I don't think what happened is your fault. Spike doesn't either."

"I didn't win his respect."

"I think he was beyond respecting anyone or anything." She sighed. "Angel... I can't have this conversation now. I wish I could comfort you -- I wish you didn't feel responsible. But I just can't."

At first his stare was entirely incomprehending. Then he got it, his blankness giving way to self-rebuke. He started to his feet. "I should go."

"No -- no -- sit. Just... talk about something else." She cocked her head, regarded him. Suddenly she had a strong gust of memory -- how he'd first appeared to her, dark and mysterious and maybe dangerous -- in that Sunnydale alley. She'd disliked him instantly, even as her curiosity bucked up like a cat's arched back. No idea of what was to come from him. How entwined they'd be. "Do you like my house?"

He glanced up at the high ceiling of the room. "It's nice."

"Well. Sometimes I forget how expressive you can be. And my daughter -- is she nice too?"

"Buffy, she -- " This time Buffy heard in his stymied silence all he thought and couldn't say.

"Funny how things work out." Now she wanted a drink, and couldn't have one. She recalled why with a little start. The motherlove thing didn't yet extend to the promised child. Right now she was completely focused on Spike. The pregnancy was more about him -- his need, his apotheosis, almost -- than it was about looking forward to a new little person in her life. She would fall in love later, when the child was in her arms. That was how it went with her before.

"Funny, yeah."

His voice startled her; for a moment she'd forgotten him. "I know you didn't want to come here. But you were brave."

"She -- "

"It takes bravery to be part of my family, Angel." She rose, laying a hand on his shoulder as she passed towards the door. "So welcome to it."

Jemima thought that some effort might now be made to make the visit more visit-y, but in fact her parents disappeared upstairs soon after she came in from her talk with Spike. Instead of an evening spent as a foursome, she went out swimming alone with Angel, and afterwards to a movie that turned out to be dubbed into Icelandic, with English subtitles. They sat in the back row and kissed through most of it, the frequent explosions flashing in her peripheral vision as she made love to his tongue.

Back in the guest room, getting ready for bed, Jemima watched Angel out of the corners of her eyes. A little while ago she'd read an email from Rita, her closest confidant at home and proving to be a good correspondent now they were apart. Is it weird? Rita wanted to know, a question which Jemima read as one she could feel free to answer a little, or a lot, or not at all. Of course it was all kinds of weird. Even unanticipated weirdnesses were popping up like points of interest on a scenic roadway.

"We can go back to LA anytime you say." She brushed her hair at the dressing table. A hundred strokes. Often Angel liked to do it for her, but he made no move from where he was sitting heavily on the side of the bed.

"There's no rush. At least, unless you get a vision."

"Did you have a nice talk with my mother?"

"We... we talked."

"I was afraid that they really might split up, but that danger's past."

"Yeah."

"And the news about the baby -- I'm sure they'd have gotten back together without it, but -- what a blessing that is. What a hopeful sign."

"Yeah."

"What did you two say to each other? Am I allowed to know?"

"Just... nothing really. I -- "

She went to him, sat down at his side, nuzzled against his satiny shoulder. "Never mind, I shouldn't have asked. Private talk."

She hadn't realized, until she said it to her father, that there was so much she and Angel didn't speak about. She would've said, before, that they talked all the time. But now she paused to consider, most of their conversation had to do with work, or with mundanities like what she was going to eat for supper or whether there was anything good at the drive-in. Or it consisted of flirting, which gave bone-deep satisfaction but was not... not what you'd call content-rich. In bed after the sex that the flirting led to, they settled burning questions, such as how many freckles do you have on the bridge of your lovely nose?, or just how sexy IS this tattoo on your shoulderblade?, or else they didn't talk at all. She'd taken pleasure in the ease of their silences -- they so contrasted with the dire silences of her marriage -- but now she wondered, was this all there would ever be?

There were a lot of things Angel didn't want her to know (many of which she already knew, in a dry sort of way, via the Council's records), whole regions of himself he didn't like to dwell on, let alone share. She could respect that -- she had no particular yen for hearing first-person narratives of what Papa called 'debauchery'. But Angel had been quite a while on the side of good even at the time she was born -- which gave him just as much experience of being a person to look back upon as she had. Surely some of that could come into conversational play? Surely there were things he'd like to tell her, if she could just get him started.

Not to mention all the sticky bits she sensed, the places where Angel's sense of propriety and caution rubbed too hard against his instinct for joy. She suspected he could be getting a lot more pleasance out of their affair than he was, and still stay well on the right side of the line.

He pulled her onto his lap. Looked at her in a way that went well beyond words. "You know what you mean to me, don't you? You know what a difference you've made to -- "

She nodded. Just last week, she'd overhead him singing in the shower. Amazing Grace.

"Girl's asleep?"

"And yours?" Angel stepped hesitantly into the living room. With the moonlight striking off the snow outside, it was quite bright here, even with all the lights off. Spike sat in the armchair nearest the window, a heavy crystal glass in one hand, the decanter of scotch on the floor at his feet. Angel wondered why he was awake and drinking when all was so well. He ought to be wrapped around Buffy, sleeping the sleep of the well-fed, well-laid vampire.

"She sleeps," Spike said, the smug note coming back into his voice, "like the little engine that could. Chuggin' away at making us a new little bit. Sweetest thing in the world, it is."

"And I thought I had that in my safe-keeping."

Spike looked up at him as he drew nearer. "Don't try to be charming, Peaches, you don't pull it off. Glasses're in that cabinet over there."

Angel fetched one, and after a moment's deliberation at the room's seating possibilities, folded himself Indian fashion on the rug at Spike's feet. Might as well give him the satisfaction of looking down on him for once. Angel was sensible of Spike's difficulties with all this -- more, he thought, than Spike could bring himself to acknowledge.

Angel sipped at his drink, looked out at the silver tundra stretching away towards the line of mountains in the distance.

"A lot's happened to you in a short time," Spike said after a while. "Who'd credit it?"

"Change attends death."

"So it does." He stared into his glass. "When Buffy died... that's what changed me. Not fallin' for her so much as losin' her. Not that I had her, mind you, not then. But had the sight of her, which I lived for, in those days. Only bright thing in my black heart. Then she was gone, but she left me with a task. Clung to that, and it was what changed me."

"Love."

"Love, yeah. Can kill or cure."

"Spike. I'm grateful to you -- "

"Eh?" He sat forward, sharp, peremptory. His eyes glittered. It was almost as if he didn't want to hear it.

"For what you gave me. I don't just mean the bed stuff. And I don't just mean Jemima. She's everything. But without you, your... influence... I wouldn't have had the courage... I know you never meant me to look for someone so close to you. But you know -- who could know better -- you know how these things go."

"I do." It came out on a growl.

"I don't know how long I can make her happy. I don't know if I can really give her what she -- well, I know I can't. Not what you've somehow managed to give to Buffy, the things that... the human things. But I swear to you I won't hurt her, and if she decides, after a while... if she decides to move on, I'll let her go like a gentleman. You have my word."

"Fucking hell." Spike kicked him, but not hard. He was barefoot. Angel decided to just take it in good part. "An' what if she doesn't regain her common sense? What if she stays? She's not immortal. She's going to age like any girl, unless some nasty puts an end to her first. Don't quite feature you bein' attentive lover to an old lady."

"And if Buffy aged, you'd discard her?"

"Talkin' 'bout you here."

"I couldn't bear to miss a minute of Jemima."

"Should've thought you'd feel the same 'bout Buffy. Walked away from her."

This roused a little resentment. "You know it's not the same thing. The way things were then. I was still a boy in those days. I couldn't be good for her then, even if I could've kept my soul in her bed. It's all different now."

Spike grinned suddenly. "Oh, what a funny one you are, Angelus. What a funny one you always were."

Angel wasn't used to talking this way to anyone, least of all to Spike. But he found that it didn't hurt him much. He leaned back on an elbow, took another drink.

After a while, Spike spoke again. "Don't want her to miss out on bein' a mother, if she wants to. I think she wants to."

"I'd like that," Angel said.

"Your son. You think about him?"

"All the time."

"Visit his grave? Has he got a grave?"

"No. He's still alive. But he doesn't know me. He has another life."

"You gave him away? I thought -- "

"Another reality. He got a new reality, and I got -- I got his safety. Assurance of his safety. But I don't get to see him, or know him."

Spike stared into his glass. "I didn't know. That's hard."

"Hey -- what's up?"

Buffy appeared in the doorway, almost wraithlike with her unbound hair, her long white nightgown. She paused there for a moment, then at some faint signal perhaps from Spike, sailed into the room. In the reflected silver light from outside, Angel could see all her shape through the gown, just as he could smell, once more, that tantalizing perfume of sex and blood and Buffy-warmth that so stirred and disturbed him.

"Guess this is the vampire happy hour," she said. "Three in the morning."

"Pretty much. Come sit." Spike rose to give her his place, joining Angel on the floor. He leaned against her legs in a fond, proprietary way, laying a hand over one of her bare feet.

He'd been made welcome, Angel realized, far more fully than he'd ever anticipated this early in the game. Even so, his impulse upon Buffy's appearance was to remove himself from the scene. What were they all now to each other? In-laws? Friends? (You'll never be friends.) Buffy curled her fingers into Spike's ruffled hair. Angel was on the verge of rising when he realized that her gaze was fixed on him, an intent look, nearly sharp, like a queen gazing from her throne.

"So here we are," she said. "The night creatures. The hybrids. The ones who don't -- "

"We change, pet," Spike said, reassuring. "Even we change."

Suddenly an image popped into Angel's mind, pulled from a space opera movie he'd watched after Jemima left him on his own. Might they find themselves together like this again -- or still -- three hundred years from now, or four, pursuing the mission perhaps on another planet, or between them? Fighting demons in zero G? Making history in a way while skating along on its surface. Touching it though it couldn't touch them. Jemima would be gone by then. He didn't like to think about that. She'd be so brave, and comely even in a space suit.

"I'm glad we can still be killed," Buffy said. This remark pulled Angel from his revery.

"I know what you mean." Spike patted her foot, as if to assure her but also sway her off the topic.

She leaned forward, her other hand darting out to touch Angel's hair as she touched Spike's. "We need one another," she said, her voice low, fervent, her gaze full of some idea that made her seem far off even as she appealed to him, to both of them. "We must love one another or die."

Her touch was like a flaming brand; Angel's skin crept to meet it, eyes locked with hers. He was lifted somehow by her gaze, by the connection that linked the three of them, in and outside of time.

"Ah, my girl, my girl." Giving her leg a light slap, Spike started to rise. "Deadly with whatever she gets hold of -- stake, sword, or poor defenceless tag of bloody overworked poetry."

The moment was over -- and not a bit too soon. Feeling a bit sheepish, Angel rose too, and went back to the guest room.

As if all his disturbance that day evoked it, Angel walked in to the scent of blood lacing the air. The sweet-salty fragrance mixed with the bready warmth of Jemima's sleep, the marine undercurrent of their lovemaking, and her flowery perfume, whose round bottle sat on the dressing table, glinting in the moonlight.

He hovered in the doorway, his first instinct to withdraw.

Jemima sat up. Not at all startled, apparently, to see him there, she smiled. "Sweetheart." She looked lovely on awakening, the way a child does, fresh and sunny and guileless. She'd never known a moment's guile, Angel thought, in her thirty years. Her every desire was pure, just because it was hers.

Before he knew he was speaking, Angel said, "Jemmie, I think about you."

"And I think about you. Come cuddle me."

"No, I mean, I think about -- I think of wanting -- " He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected to see Spike hovering at the end of the hall, yellow eyes flashing, that axe in hand. Shame ran through him, outlining the demon within in a corrosive green that burned like acid.

She was blushing now, he could feel the heat coming off her. Already he'd gone too far, when he hadn't meant to embark on this at all. It was obscene and impossible. He stepped back, mind racing.

"Sweetheart, come in and shut the door."

She didn't know what he was saying. He wondered what she thought this was. He liked it when she was imperious. She was so petite.

Without quite meaning to, he obeyed.

"I've been waiting for you to bring this up," she said. "I wasn't sure you would."

Angel waited, amidst a rising sense of horror.

"Can you say it? Can you say to me what it is you think about?"

Angel leaned on the door. What the hell was she doing?

"Because I think you should say it first. Not me. If it's what you really want."

"I -- I don't. Let's stop this. Never mind. We should go back to sleep." Even as he backpedaled, he was faced again with what he was so reluctant to do -- stay here with her in the midst of that heady aroma, as if it was nothing. Saying nothing, because nothing was all that could be said. He loved her. She trusted him. Awakened from her deepest slumber, she almost certainly didn't realize she'd begun to bleed.

"What are you trying to protect me from really?"

This was too much. He hung his head, captured for the moment by the onslaught of memory her question stirred. How could she ask it? How? She knew what vampires were. She knew what he was.

Maybe this was a mistake. All his instincts against taking a human lover -- all the reasons he'd told Spike -- surely they were sound. He'd misjudged here. Jemima didn't know what she was saying. What was she evoking.

"Angel. I wish you would tell me." She was getting out of bed now.

He couldn't believe his own fright -- the elephant cowering at the mouse.

"Jem."

She paused, hovering by the foot of the bed.

"I can't ask you. I can't tell you. It's wrong." If he were to taste her, what might happen? Would it rouse a desire, ungovernable even by his soul, to take her utterly? Mental images blossomed that made him blink.

"Oh, Angel." Her voice was soft. Infinitely tender. "I'm going to bleed every month for... for the next twenty years at least. And you're not going to pretend all that time that... that it doesn't stir your desire?"

A gasp escaped him. He put a hand over his mouth, whether to prevent another such frank response, or to quell the itch of the demon, wanting to rise at the mere suggestion, he wasn't sure.

She stepped closer. "Did you really think I didn't realize?" She reached him now, gently plucked his hand down, seized them both in hers. "Angel, I don't want you to bite me. I'm sorry, that would be... it would be too frightening for me. And I don't believe you want to, either, not really."

He exhaled a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

"But when I bleed..." Her blush, sudden, furious, cut her off. She radiated fever, her breath short and quick. In a single moment she'd become almost unbearably excited. Angel felt it in the heat of her hands, gone moist, and in her smell. "I... you know I like it when... oh, I'm so stupid, the things I'm too shy to say!" She shook her head, and laughed once, and blushed again. Then she sprang back, jerking him with her. "Do it, I want you to, I want you to so much." In a moment she was lying back, nightgown discarded, legs wide, her eyes glassy with need, her lip caught in her teeth telegraphing her insecurity, fear that he would reject her. The sight and savor of her open cunny, flushed with excitement, filled his senses as if it was a flower he'd pressed to his face. Angel sank to his knees and matched deed to image. Jemima cried out when he touched her, a cry like triumph, and jerked her hips up to meet him.

The first taste -- rich, exquisite -- of her womb-blood, brought the demon clamoring to the surface. He fought it down, even as he delved in deeper, sealing his mouth over her sex, furling his tongue inside her. Jemima sobbed, rolling up against him as if they were fucking. He touched her feet, doubled under her, found her toes curled in tight. His own body was caught in a powerful trembling; he braced himself against the bed.

The blood, as if drawn by his sucking and her exertion, flowed freer, deliciously mixed with the nectar of her spendings. He wasn't sure how much time went by, or how times she came with desperate mewing cries, tensing and thrashing. Her cunny fluttered around his tongue. After a while, she almost stopped moving, her sounds reduced to sighs and whispered praises. He was tremendously moved, at her pleasure, her complete relaxation, undefended, unashamed, unafraid. He didn't know when the demon overcame him, rising in bumps and ridges. It was only when he raised his head, sated, and met her eyes, which widened, that he realized he'd fanged out.

Angel hastened to shake off the game-face.

Jemima reached a hand towards him. "Don't. You don't have to."

Thinking of her brother, the ordeal she'd suffered at his hands, the shame returned. "You shouldn't have to see that."

"No, it's your desire for me. Don't hide it. It would be like hiding your erection."

"It's not the same." He had an erection, aching unattended all this time.

"I know how it isn't. But between us, right here, it can be, can't it? It can be whatever we agree to. It's a handsome face, did you know that? Leonine and beautiful. Have you ever seen it?"

What questions she could ask!

"Photographs, yes."

"Of course. I should have realized."

"Jemima, it doesn't have to be -- it shouldn't be -- a part of what we are together."

"But it is. It's part of you, it's part of your beauty as well as your -- your ugliness. The less you deny, Angel, the better it will be."

"There's such a thing as being too accepting."

"Let me be the judge of that. I liked this." Jemima laughed. "No -- I loved it. The best head you've given me so far. The best I've had in my life. Don't tell me I don't get to have this again. To give you this again. You were so passionate. You lost yourself in it."

"That's just what I can't do, Jemmie. Lose myself. What if I -- "

"Angel, if it ever happens again, it isn't going to be sensual pleasure, or even love, that makes you lose your soul. You're not the man you were that other time, no matter what you think. I'm still not worried."

"You should be. You -- "

She half sat up, reaching for him. "I refuse. I believe in you. In us. Come lie with me. Take those off."

She watched him shuck his trousers with a smile that was girlish but far from innocent, reaching for his jutting cock as he stretched out beside her. "What would you like?" she said, playing with it, her small hands encircling him, one at the head, the other at the base. "A fuck, or -- "

It was overwhelming, her acceptance of him. How matter of fact she could be about what should horrify her. But, having regaled himself with her blood, quaffing it like wine, the more severe urge he'd feared was absent. No need stirred him to tear at her neck. His love impulses, present from the first moment he'd set eyes on her -- to protect her, to please her -- were stronger than ever. A fresh bond -- entirely unexpected -- was set by their exchange; now demon as well as man was sworn to her.

"Let me see it go into you."

Smiling, her cheeks pink and mouth glossy, she moved across him, hands braced on his chest, wriggling her moist behind against his cock. "I'm not sure my muscles work anymore after that feast," she whispered, even as she got into the stance he asked for, crouched over him so he could see the red head of his cock nestling against her, then slowly swallowed as she lowered herself. Angel didn't think he'd ever get tired of the delight it gave him, watching her stretch to take his bulk, seeing how she liked it, her eyes shining, and the soft sounds she made, dirty words breathed out in a kitten whisper.

He thought of what Spike had said earlier, how he didn't feature him making love to an old woman. But he was wrong -- Angel knew he'd make love to her as long as she wanted it, and if a time came that she didn't, or couldn't, he wouldn't care for her less. Spike, maybe, put too much emphasis on the physical. Angel wouldn't have dared this with Jemima, not for one moment, if he hadn't felt -- felt every second -- this strong attraction of spirit to spirit. This communion. Spike would understand that, if he told him about it. It must be the same as he shared with Buffy.

Jemima's age -- her aging -- wouldn't matter. He hoped only that she would age, that nothing would come to cut her short. He wanted all he could get. Knew he'd carry his eventual mourning of her, as he carried Wesley's, as a permanent stone in his heart. A stone that was yet a lightness, because of the wonder, the boon, of having had such a friend at all.

"God, look at us! I love it!" Dawn had been laughing all morning. She'd laughed nearly all day yesterday too, through the rehearsal and various last minute preparations. Now that she was dressed in her long white gown, cut low to show off the bounteous cleavage that came with pregnancy, and Buffy was in her matron of honor dress, she took in their reflections in the full length mirror with nearly hysterical hilarity. "We look like -- like two soap bubbles! Big round soap bubbles with arms and legs." She wiggled her arms, and kicked out a leg, making the satin swirl. Her dress was just the sort of thing an ambitious twenty-year-old would've chosen, and gave almost no concession of style to the enormity of her abdomen.

"Maybe you do," Buffy said. "I look quite svelte. From the back you can't tell at all."

"Soap bubbles!" Dawn insisted, grabbing her into a sideways hug. To hug front-ways would've demanded they both bend over quite far. "Round and rounder! And with the boobies -- we're like a knockers convention."

Buffy kissed her. "You look beautiful. The roly poly bride."

"And so do you. I almost forgive you for when the caterer thought I was your mother."

"I'm sorry about that."

"De nada! I'm happy, so it's nothing. Of course, I look forward to seeing you do your utmost doing the limbo dancing portion of the party."

"There's going to be limbo dancing?"

A knock sounded before Dawn could answer, and Jemima peeked around, her up-do garnished with fresh gardenias. "Are you ready, auntie? Do you need help with your veils or your flowers or your garters or anything?"

"Your mother has tricked me out, it's all good."

"I'm going to check on Spike a minute, then," Buffy said. "With the no reflection thing -- "

"He and Angel were helping each other," Jemima said. "Uncle Xander and Willow too, of course."

Willow and Spike were splitting the Best Man duties, and in light of this, Willow was being an honorary man for the occasion, Drag King style, something she seemed to be enjoying just as much as Dawn was enjoying being a spherical bride.

Buffy crossed the upstairs hall. They were laughing behind the door of the opposite bedroom, which was ajar. Xander's tolerance of Angel's presence, especially on this day of days, showed off his innate graciousness. Or else showed that, like Dawn, he was so happy nothing could bring him down. She knocked. "Matron of honor here to inspect."

Spike opened the door.

Buffy blinked. She'd so seldom seen him in a suit. Their own wedding. Giles' funeral. A few other occasions. Rare as that was, this was rarer still. He'd never, in her presence, worn formal evening clothes before. Yet he carried them as if he'd been born in them. She glanced from him to the others, and it was the same -- the four of them, even Willow -- perhaps especially her -- in their black tuxedos and white tie like the louche members of some glittering set.

"My God. You guys...."

"Spoiled for choice, she is, as to which one she wants to tear it off first," Spike said, glancing at the others with a sly wink. "Look at her -- positively gagging for it."

Xander and Willow laughed. Angel -- poor thing -- looked a little uncomfortable, and ran a finger round his immaculate collar.

Xander looked radiant -- it was an attribute usually ascribed to brides, not grooms, but Buffy thought it, and said so, taking his hands and going up on tiptoe to kiss him.

"I never thought -- "

"We never do. But you see -- you were right that Dawnie had a crush on you."

"I was right -- ?"

"It wasn't Spike. It was you. I think it always was."

Xander colored, and grinned.

They were married in their house. Not a new house, but new to them, their first together, overlooking the ocean. The party was larger than Buffy expected -- she'd never quite realized how full her sister's life, and even Xander's, had become. Of relatives on either side there weren't many, but colleagues and friends turned up in abundance. Herds of children ran through the rooms and out into the garden, lit by Japanese lanterns. The wedding ceremony was at seven. Toasts had been made, pictures taken, the first dance danced, when Dawn's water broke. At the hospital, the obstetric nurses said no mother had ever yet brought a team of birthing coaches in formal wear. The baby took its time in coming -- they were there all night, before the end.

Xander was dazed, nearly cross-eyed, his face slack from hard smiling. "I didn't think it would be like this," he said, over and over, like a doll whose string had been pulled. His eyes followed the child wherever he was. "I didn't think it would be like this." He was nearly delirious. Spike was almost holding him up.

"He's wonderful," Buffy said, squeezing him. "I'm so happy for you both."

Dawn, subsiding into exhaustion, was heard to say this was something she never needed to do again.

A month after the debut of Giles Tiberius Harris, Buffy gave birth at home -- a temporary home, a suite in the Hyperion, where they were staying while organizing a more permanent place in the vicinity, in order that the little cousins could be together often. This pregnancy, so different from her previous ones in its placid physical course, ended just as peacefully, without agony or hemorrhage. The baby came easily after a couple hours' firm pushing. Buffy wanted no more help or attendance than Spike. There was something nearly sacred to them in this private welcome of their serendipitious child. When she was free of Buffy's body, they, and not the new girl, cried. Spike sprawled beside them on the sweat-soaked sheets, to watch Buffy, red-faced and nearly sobbing, attach the newborn to her breast.

"She's ours, Spike," Buffy breathed. "She's ours ours ours. Oh I love you." She pressed a frantic kiss to his mouth before becoming entirely absorbed in the child, caressing her all over with gentle fingers, weeping without tears.

The first the other inmates of the hotel knew of it was when the new parents appeared in the lobby in the morning with the baby girl wrapped in a blanket.

"Here's a good thing," Spike announced to the startled gathering of Jemima, Angel, Rita and the others, standing around Buffy in a tight knot, trying to get a peek at the little face obscured by a pink wrapper. "Our number's increased in the night. Here's hope for the future, yeah?" He kissed Buffy's hair. "Our hope borne out."

"Let that be her name, then," Buffy said. "Hope." She looked up at the others, flushed with pride. "Jemmie -- here's your sister."

Buffy and Jemima together took the infant out into the sunlit world to be properly weighed and measured and recorded. Spike stood in the shaded doorway of the Hyperion after they'd gone, looking out at the bright street, the passing traffic. He was already anxious for their return. Didn't like letting Buffy or the child out of his sight.

Angel came up and prodded him in the shoulder.

"Here."

"What's this?"

"Cigar."

"Huh. Pre-Castro. Where'd you dredge this up?"

"Know a fellow. Let's see you smoke that. I'll join you." He produced a second one; they stepped outside the door into the shade of the portico, and lit up. He gestured to Angel with the cigar, acknowledgement, thanks.

The day was getting warm. Hope's first day. Drawing on the aromatic smoke, Spike thought of how her hair would curl, the plumpness of her arms and legs. Thought of how fierce and intent Buffy looked a few hours ago, pushing her out. She'd squeezed his hand in a crushing grip while she labored, but she was happy, happy and excited, as if she was on her way home after being a long time gone.

He'd stayed with her all the way, and now they were here, all of them.

Home safe.

THE END

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Where They Have To Take You In