Her name is Grace and she pushes pictures in the sand with other people's fingers. The nails are clipped neatly and the knuckles are blackened, but the bone is quite white. She has eight now, different sizes and shapes, one for every day one of The Men came to collect her. Grace bites people who try to touch her and pulls out their fingers with a delicate flick of her wrist. She delights in the squelchy pop of sound, tries to capture it in her head like a bubble of pink to distract her when the world bends and the screaming behind her eyes starts.
The man who comes on the ninth night is a little fat. Grace tells him so, because his fingers look a bit like sausages. He blinks at her with a brown eye (the other is hidden beneath the eyelid drooping in on a hole in his face) and he pretends he's amused. He isn't really. He's angry and embarrassed and there's a part of him, a quiet part, that wants to hit her across the face.
"Grace, I know what's been happening to you," he says, crouching before her. He's dressed in brown shoes, slack jeans and a blue shirt – too many clothes. It's too hot for clothes - Grace isn't wearing anything at all. Spain's sun makes her look like cracked leather, taut and peeling. "Grace? You got really strong all of a sudden, didn't you? You got all these powers and now you're scared and …"
Grace is bored. She punches him the face and goes back to her pictures in the sand. She's using the finger from the man on night 3. It's still soft in her grip, though the nail is yellow.
She doesn't hear the other man behind her until he grabs her middle with black arms and white hands, hauls her to her feet and stabs her neck with a thin slip of metal. She struggles and snarls, kicks her heel into his knee and releases the howls that sit in her chest until he staggers back. Grace whimpers as the poison takes effect, slumps to the dust and asphalt in a spill of strawberry blonde hair and bare skin.
"She's quite the little handful, isn't she?" Spike mutters around his cigarette. Xander snorts and wraps her in a worn grey blanket, lays her across the backseat of the car and slams the door shut with more force than strictly necessary. Spike hums as Xander pulls back onto the road, only breaking tune to glance over his shoulder and make sure the tranquilizers were doing their job. Enough to take out a small elephant, but this one's feisty so you can't be too careful.
"We need to get her some clothes," Xander says later when Johnny Cash is on the radio singing about ghost riders in the sky and Spike is rifling through his pockets looking for a lighter.
"S'pose. Dawn left some at mine last time she visited. Could stop off there before we go to the airport. It's only a stone's throw away."
"Do we have enough?" He isn't talking about time, he's talking about tranqs. Boy isn't nearly as stupid as he used to be.
"More than enough," Spike says with a nod to the coolbox at his feet.
"Right, cool. Okay. Your place. Not a crypt or anything?"
One word would have sufficed, but Xander offers ten where he once would have offered fifty. Spike remembers a time when Xander never fucking stopped, when he trampled over sense and silence with his incessant noise. Most of the time he's grateful Xander is content to leave him be, get the job done and leave out the small talk. But sometimes, like now, when the music is shitty and the air roars through the open windows of the car, Spike reckons he misses the noise. He thinks Xander might start chatting again if Spike pushed him to, like his friends always do – shoving Xander into conversation and willing him to be alright, because every hero needs some comic relief.
"No. Not a crypt. Apartment. Council pays for the whole shebang, air conditioning and everything."
He says nothing else.
"So this one collects fingers and the last one cut Spike's hands off. Christ. Call Dawn and warn her to run if Buffy tries to give her a manicure," Xander says into the telephone, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
"The similarities are entirely coincidental. The girl who amputated …"
"Hacked off!" Spike shouts indignantly from the bedroom.
"Sorry, I missed that. Spike was yelling. Vampire hearing, got to love it," Xander said.
"The girl who attacked Spike severely emotionally disturbed due to a childhood trauma and her visions aggravated her condition which meant she was …"
"Run of the mill crazy," Xander supplied.
"Quite. But Grace is a different case entirely. It seems that her connection with other slayers is more intense than usual and these visions, understandably, have disturbed her. If we dilute this connection with some old magic then hopefully she'll be as right as rain."
"And speaking of rain, I was wondering if I could be reposted to somewhere that lacks it. Not loving London, Giles." Xander is proud of his segue. He's getting better at them. Unfortunately, Giles isn't having any of it.
"Xander we've I discussed /i this. You're taking a break from intense independent field work. You and Spike are the only agents I trust to do the European runs and Spike already has valid connections in Italy." Giles sounds tired and snippy and from this Xander surmises that someone must have died today. They did most days. Being Giles is far more stressful since he took over the new Watcher HQ but he loves every minute of it. Xander prefers to lay low – ambition is for clever people and he knows he isn't one of I them /i .
"Okay, okay. Thought I'd try my luck. See you when I see you."
Spike has wrestled one of Grace's arms into a dress when Xander walks into the bedroom but her breasts are getting in the way and she slips out of Spike's grasp every time he reaches to pull the dress down. "Here," Xander says, gripping her waist so Spike can pull her other arm through. The dress is apple green and it's a shame to sully it with Grace's body. She smells like a bus in Africa and her skin peels when it's touched. She's rank and gross and human. Xander forgets they are, sometimes. Slayers.
"Best be getting back. Unless you want to paint her nails pink and pull her hair into a butterfly clip?" Spike asks. His smile is tight and he looks as though he might be sick.
"I don't want to know why you own pink nail polish and a butterfly clip. You look like shit. You need a minute?" Xander has always been good at observation but he's only started voicing them recently.
"No. It's just … she feels like a body. Like I'm dressing a body …" Spike explains as his eyes slide down the wall and his lips go slack, "me and Dru used to play games, dress up warm dollies after they'd stopped screaming."
There's a long pause where he forgets to breathe.
"Sociopaths in love, it's the greatest," Xander says. It's not really funny, but Spike laughs as he turns away and pulls Grace over his shoulder. They have a plane to catch.
To Be Continued.