"Go search the ballroom, you can't look in the billiard room, no you might have some fun and we wouldn't want that now that your night is pretty well ruined." Anya mumbled under her breath as she and Xander walked down the hall towards the ballroom. "Buffy always gets to make the rules."
"Why is that exactly?" Her sudden outburst as she spun to face Xander caused him to jump. Xander had learned to tune Anya's mutterings out, as white noise, so he hadn't been paying attention.
"What? Why is what?"
"Why does Buffy get to make all the rules and boss everyone around? I didn't want to search the ballroom, but we are because she said we had to."
"Anya," Xander took on the patient explaining voice he used when dealing with her questions. "You can't lead a group by committee. Someone has to be the leader, and Buffy's the Slayer. It's her job to be the leader. She leads, we follow, evil is slaughtered, and then there are usually munchies. It all works out."
"You could be the leader occasionally."
"Me?" he barked with laughter. "I am the last person anyone wants leading a group of people. I'm more of the color commentator figure in the group. We all have our roles and so far they've worked out pretty well."
"You could be a leader if you wanted to. You can be very forceful when you want to be." She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "I quite enjoy that sometimes."
"Role playing is one thing An, leading the gang into battle is another. But, uh, I enjoy that too. Let's hurry up and look in the ballroom so we can move right onto the billiard room." Anya's answering smile lit up her face.
"Well how about Giles?" She asked as they got to the ballroom door. "Why isn't he the leader?"
"Because he's Buffy's Watcher. It's his job to be right behind her backing her up."
"And I suppose it gives him the best vantage point for admiring her rear too," she mused.
"I'm going to try and forget you said that," Xander answered as he pushed open the door.
The air in the room was cooler. Xander fumbled his hand against the wall looking for the light switch. Finally he found it and the room was bathed in a golden glow. "Now this, I could get used to." The ballroom was enormous; the lack of furniture only emphasized the cavernous space. Black and white marble floors gleamed by the light of the sconces that lined the walls. The ceiling was an impressive example of molded plaster design. Delicate cream fabric draped the wall panels; adding an air of warmth to the room.
Anya looked around appreciatively. "This reminds me of the Prince of Prussia's ballroom. I attended a masquerade ball of his in the early 1700's. One of the earls was cheating on his wife. She wished for him to be eviscerated. It was a simple wish, but very satisfying," she said fiercely, flourishing the sword she was carrying.
Xander jumped back. "Be careful with that, or someone is going to lose an eye." He glared in response to her snort. "It's true; at least my weapon doesn't have any sharp edges that could hurt someone." Slinging the troll hammer over his shoulder he strode further into the room. "I suppose we'd better check the perimeter even if the room looks empty."
Anya saluted smartly. "Yes sir. I love it when you talk like you're in the military."
"Old habit I suppose. I still say it's too bad we didn't turn into our costumes last year. It would be cool to have James Bond's knowledge in my head.
"Don't even suggest such a thing," Anya shuddered, flashing back to her bunny costume. "I can't think of anything worse than being turned into such an awful creature."
"But you'd be so cute and cuddly," Xander joked, and then danced out of the way as she tried to slap him. "Come on, I'm just kidding. You go that way and I'll go around this way. It will take less time."
Xander started a counter-clock wise circuit around the room. A layer of dust coated the floor; however, nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him. Across the room, Anya had stopped and was closely examining the floor. "Xander, come over here. I think I've found something."
Xander crossed the room and knelt next to Anya. She pointed to a patch on the floor. "I think this looks like footprints."
Xander examined the area carefully. It did look like footprints. Upon even closer inspection, it looked like the footprints came out of the wall. It made no sense, but Xander guessed that someone had come out of the wall, stood in place for a few minutes, then turned around and went back into the wall. After a few moments of contemplation, Xander snapped his fingers. "There must be a secret passageway here, just like in the movie. Now we just have to figure out how to open it."
Anya stood and leaned her sword against the wall. "This is becoming a lot more work than I thought it would be. It's times like these that make me wish I were a vengeance demon again."
"Well, I have to admit I'm glad you're not," Xander said as he started to run his hands along the wall. "There's got to be a seam around here somewhere."
Anya tried jiggling the sconces on the wall. None of them budged an inch. She took a step back and surveyed the wall, trying to find anything out of place. She then turned and scanned the rest of the room, looking for discrepancies. Finally, she realized that there were two small tables flanking the panel Xander was now trying to pry open with the tip of her sword. On each table rested a small candelabra. She walked over and started pulling candles at random out of the candelabra. When that didn't achieve the desired effect, she tried to move the candelabra itself. The whole thing bent forward and Anya heard a clicking sound. The panel Xander was prodding swung into the room, knocking Xander off balance.
Xander looked at the panel, then at Anya who still had her hand on the candelabra. "That is too cliché," he said.
"What is?"
He gestured at the candelabra. "That. You know. 'Put ze candle beck'," he said, with a horrible Transylvanian accent. "How many more movies are they going to steal ideas from?"
"We can worry about that later. Let's see where this passageway goes, and whose been using it."
Xander passed the sword back to Anya and picked his hammer back up. His face was grim as he hesitated before entering the passageway. "Yes, let's hope there's someone on the other end."
The passageway was dark, the gloom lifted by a very faint glow. "It's just as well we can't see; there are probably cobwebs everywhere. Places like this are never kept up," Anya reflected.
After a few minutes of walking and several turns, they reached the end of the passageway. Xander located the lever to open the panel in front of them. The door swung open on silent hinges and revealed that they were in the billiard room. No one else was in the room.
"Damn, it was probably too much to expect that our captor would be here," Xander grumbled. "We should probably go tell Buffy and the others what we've found."
"I don't think we need to be in such a hurry," Anya protested. "Buffy said we should search this room, and there's a huge pool table over there just waiting to be searched."
"Anya, we need to tell them about the footprints. And I should go back and look at them a little closer; something is nagging at me about them."
"Well I'm going to be nagging at you soon if you go running off to find everyone else."
Xander looked indecisive for a minute. He weighed the need to share their discovery against his fiancée's pleading features. Finally, he admitted to himself that he would rather spend some "quality time" with Anya before the rest of the night disintegrated into fighting whoever had locked them here.
"If you insist, I think I could squeeze you in for about twenty minutes."
Anya smirked at him, "Twenty minutes? I didn't say I wanted to do it twice."
Fifteen minutes later Xander was buttoning his shirt. Anya had smoothed out her skirt and was still reclining on the pool table, shirt off, with a contented smile on her face when they heard Dawn's frantic cry for Buffy. Xander scooped up the hammer and ran out the door.
