Barnabas is back home. With him are Buffy Harrington and Edmund Collins, son of Quentin, both refugees from Parallel Time. Here he finds that Willie is about to become a father, and that Vicky and Phillip want to marry. He also has to face the revelation of what George's true relationship to Dave Woodard was.

CUSTODY FIGHT

Chapter 1

"When is Daddy coming back for me?" Edmund asked.

"Not now." Buffy did not know what to answer. It was hard for her to understand and accept this strange world. To ask Edmund to make the adjustment... He should be told, eventually, that his father was dead.

Quentin was dead... She did not believe it herself. And Roxanne... Barnabas had told her about Roxanne, what she had done and why.

She believed that. She had known Roxanne long enough to realize how in character that was.

Now she was Barnabas' housekeeper. Instinctively her hand went to her throat. It was silly, but she could not control her feelings where Barnabas was concerned.

Maybe it was the memories of that first time. He had been neither unnecessarily rough nor cruel. But he had used her. She had not yet recovered from her experience of being victimized by John Yeager, and to find herself victimized again had been more embittering than she expected it to be.

The wounds in her throat had closed. The blood she hardly missed. But the bitterness did remain.

But now she was alive and well, with nothing to fear. No Sergeant Haskell around. It was a strange world she was in, but not so strange that she could not find he way in it.

David took off his shoes before falling over his bed. He had finally made it. He was in college.

His roommate and his guest were making jokes about dorm food and other hazards to be found around. He did not think that he would care much about it.

What would they say if they knew that he had spent months in a place without electricity nor running water, and chained to his bed, too?

Chained to it by his cousin, who was not really his cousin. - He imagined himself trying to explain. "He's more of an ancestor. You see, he's a vampire who was born in the eighteenth century. He was locked in a coffin for over a hundred years. Willie Loomis let him out. Of course, he was rather freaked out those days, but he got over it..."

No, he could not tell them that. Now how Vicky had disappeared into the past, only to reappear changed, then became catatonic the night that he, with Chris and Sandy, had stopped the Leviathan...

Lord, the stories he could tell if there was any chance that he'd be believed..

George studied the inside of the Old House. Much of the stuff there had only sentimental value. After all, people in the past had as much bad taste as those in the present. Since the good stuff had a better chance of being preserved, people did not realize how much junk had been created in the past.

He could understand Barnabas not wanting to part with them. Their value was neither artistic nor monetary, it was in the memories they evoked in him.

"I imagine that it must be difficult to keep it clean all by yourself" he told Buffy.

"Yes." Buffy was somewhat wary "But luckily he's not the type to put on white gloves to pick up dirt. As long as it is passably neat, he does not mind,"

"He's easy to get along with, then?"

"Yes."

George smiled "Did he ever say anything about your choice of literature?"

"Literature?"

"That racing sheet that your are trying to hide."

Buffy picked up the sheet, flustered. "I don't see why it is any of your business" she said.

She was downright hostile. It was to be expected. She could not trust anyone with a uniform, not for a while, and any warning he gave her would be worse than useless. Probably he's have to ask Barnabas to tell her.

...If, after what he had come to say, he and Barnabas would still be talking to each other...

He looked at his watch. Too early for Barnabas to rise. If only there was someone he could talk to while the time away, but Phillip and Vicky were off, preparing for their wedding, and Buffy certainly did not want to talk to him.

Buffy could adjust to a vampire, but a cop was a different matter.

Maybe he should go away and come back later, but that way he risked getting busy and not coming back at all. Maybe he would not get the courage for this again.

He knew the ground rules. You waited until Barnabas had fed, and if your business was too urgent for that, you opened your collar and told him of it while he was feeding.

He had never been in that position... and now Barnabas might not want to do it at all, even since he had heard the truth about him. There was now a strain between them, and it was not wholly due to his helping Sabrina. He and Barnabas had shared much in the past. He had hoped for more... and now he might end up with nothing...

The door opened and Barnabas emerged.

"George" the voice was cordial, but the reserve was there. Would George make a pass at him now?

"You didn't expect me?" The hurt spilled out of George. He could understand why Barnabas would feel that way towards him, the way he could understand Buffy's mistrust, but it got him all the same.

"I...I didn't think." Barnabas tried to evade.

"Barnabas, tell me the truth. I deserve as much., if nothing else. Is it the fact that I helped Sabrina send you over? I had to do it. It was the only way I could be sure that she would not hurt you."

"I know."

"Is it because... because of what I told you about me?"

Barnabas looked down, not willing to speak about it.

"Yes... I am also...hungry."

George pushed up his sleeve. "Here."

Barnabas shook his head. "No."

"I promise that I won't make a pass at you. I just want to talk to you about it."

George looked so hurt, so pitiful, that Barnabas did not have the heart to refuse. Still, he did not relish it.

A slight tremor ran through George as Barnabas did it. Barnabas had never bitten him before. He had had fantasies about it, but the circumstances of it made it look like a dirty joke.

Barnabas lifted his head and wiped his mouth. George smiled uneasily at him.

"You see, I didn't try anything with you." he said bitterly.

"No, you didn't" Barnabas admitted.

"Why are you so suddenly uncomfortable around me? Do you really think that I would force myself on you? I had plenty of opportunities and I never took them. You never suspected a thing.

Barnabas wondered what to say. He finally settled down to a lame excuse. "I have little experience about this sort of thing."

"I had even less on handling vampires, yet I managed." his eyes gleamed dangerously "Did you know who my first lover was?"

Barnabas shook his head.

"Don't lie to me. You know full well who it was. If I could understand, and even forgive you for killing him, why do you have a hard time accepting that I bedded him as often as I could?"

"George..." the emotions warred within Barnabas. He wanted to comfort George, to reassure him, to tell him that nothing had changed. For another was the knowledge that everything had. That every word they now said would be charged with sexual tension and that he was afraid of it.

"Did you find it shocking about him? Maybe it will go easier on your conscience to realize that you killed a pervert, and that he did not deserve your tears and your pain."

"George..."

"Don't bother to explain. That's the way you feel, and that's the end of it.!"

And with those words he stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Derek threw the pencil away in disgust. No matter how he went about it, there wasn't enough money.

The ship was there, still sunk, timbers rotting, barnacles probably growing on top of the jewels.

The Russian Crown Jewels. He knew that they were there.

And what good did it do him to know it? To get them, he needed money, and he didn't have it.

If only he had one tenth of the money he had lost on the horses. If only he had managed to hold on to the money that Roger had given him. To the money that Sheriff Brant paid him. To his winning in the card games...

He was making book on the identity of the attempted murderer of J.R. Ewing, but he doubted that it would let him make the money he needed.

Specially if he came close to a bookie...

"Derek?" he heard Delia came in "are you there?"

"Yeah," he grunted.

"Did you pick up the laundry as I asked you to?"

"Yes. I did."

"Thank you."

That was another thing. Every day there was a new errand, a new domestic chore. Things that he had never done before.

He wondered how long it would take her to have him washing floors...

It was that damn therapy of hers. She had sworn off the SM, but what had taken its place was worse. She had switched form the obvious forms to the not-so-obvious.

She had interrupted her therapy too soon, against the protests of Dr. Hoffman, and it showed.

He wondered why he put up with her. In many ways it was convenient for him, true. He somehow liked her, even if she was not so much fun now. And he could always hit her for money, within limits...

So...