Chapter 11
The evening ticked on. Giles and Yoder continued to record the prophecy book and tried to ignore its smelly addendum. Xander made a sandwich. Thu Kheim grew bored and began entertaining herself by balancing Buffy's troll hammer upright with the end of its handle on the flat of her hand. Clem and Spike drifted over to the television and reminisced quietly about old times.
"This one's interesting," Michael commented, examining a withered yellow object from the purchases that Oz had unpacked on the coffee table.
"It's a goblin scrotum," said Gunn. "Used to boost invisibility spells. They're collected from the corpses before burial and preserved in fungus."
"I see," Michael nodded, setting the object down and wiping his hand on his pants.
Gunn chuckled. "That's the kind of trivia that stays with you when all the legal eagle info has faded away."
Little Jordy was seated on the rug with his chin and crossed arms resting on the coffee table's edge, his face back in its human form. He gazed at the new magical supplies with his customary silence. "Danny."
"Yeah, Jord?" Oz said absently.
"Can Willow use this stuff to find that Wesley guy?"
Heads raised; the adults looked at Jordy and at each other. Willow was a much more powerful mage than either Dilip or Giles. Her control was iffy, true, but over the years she had successfully tapped into sources of magic that most witches could only dream of.
"Maybe she could," Oz answered.
Jordy stared ahead thoughtfully. "Maybe she could make Illyria her own body, too, so she wouldn't have to keep borrowing Fred's."
"Hey, yeah, why not?" Gunn exclaimed. "She's got the mojo. Hell, she re-souled Angel twice and slayerized half the fuckin' planet...Dude, if anyone can give us a hand, it's her."
Giles rose up, alarmed. "Wait, now. It'd be best to think this through before asking Willow to perform any spells on your behalf. Wolfram & Hart is still a powerful and very evil organization; we can't just go charging into their territory at half-cock, even to find a former colleague. It could be suicidal - and believe me when I say that we'd like nothing more than to know Wesley's true fate, for his family's sake as well as our own. His mother is heartbroken." He shook his head, and then his voice audibly stiffened. "As for dealing directly with your 'Illyria' creature - that's entirely up to Willow."
"Aw, no, we wouldn't want you to get your fingers dirty helpin' us out," Gunn growled, his voice dripping sarcasm.
"It isn't that," Mr. Yoder said. "It's just that it makes sense to try to secure an area befo- "
He was interrupted by a WHUMP as Thu accidentally dropped the troll hammer and its massive weight broke three floorboards. She cringed sheepishly. "Oops."
Several pairs of Council and Sunnydale eyes went to the damaged floor, and then automatically went to Xander. "I know the drill," Xander sighed. "Where's your toolbox?"
Buffy slipped from the house unnoticed, not much caring what was going on downstairs, and drove back to the motel room she shared with Willow. The room was dimly lit: the TV off and only the bathroom light burning. She found her friend sitting crosslegged in bed in her pajamas, eyes closed, covered from head to foot in a cloud of twinkling, dancing, glowing particles. "Are you beaming up or down?" Buffy asked her.
Willow cracked open one eye and smiled. "Just jogging in place." The particles swirled and settled and rose again. "I got the grand tour of the area today. It's not such a bad little hellmouth at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love."
"You're not quoting freely from A Charlie Brown Christmas again, are you?"
"It's still my secret vice," the witch murmured. Her body levitated a few inches above the covers. "They seem to have this hellmouth under control pretty well; no apocalypti or legions of demonic armies or fluffy yellow baby chicks with agenda and poison fangs..." She caught sight of her glittery reflection in the TV screen. "Hey, check it out. I'm a snow globe."
Buffy slumped down on her own bed, disconsolate. "Okay, I know my track record sucked before, but two dumpages within a twenty-four hour period is a new low."
Willow gave her an odd look. "Is there a reason that I need to know how many times you've pottied?"
"I'm talking about guys, Wil," Buffy sighed. "Guys who've made it clear that I'm no longer wanted in their undead, new-girlfriend-having lives. I've been thrown over for Lassie and Alberta Einstein. All that's missing now is for Riley Finn to parachute onto the roof to tell me again how fabulous Sam is."
The shiny particle cloud vanished. "Angel broke it off with you? Oh, no! Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him?"
"There wasn't much part of 'I loved Cordelia and now that she's dead I'm smoochin' a werewolf' to misunderstand."
Willow did a double-take. "Oz and Angel...?"
"No! Oz and- I mean Angel and- " Buffy's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "He found someone else."
Willow picked at the bedcovers for a minute before she spoke. "Well...not to split hairs or anything, but so did you. Morty's waiting for you back in Rome, remember?"
"I wish you wouldn't call him that."
"Sorry. But I have trouble pronouncing Chef Boy-Ar-Dee's name correctly, let alone Don Julio Pizzaria What's-His-Face, and 'The Immortal' just sounds like something out of a comic book. ...Hey, whoa, Cordelia and Angel?"
"Who'd a' thunk, huh?" The concept was still impossible to process. God rest her soul, but...conceited, shallow, self-centered Cordelia? Cordelia who'd worn her Snotty Bitch title proudly? Cordelia the Queen of Mean? But he'd gotten all chummy with Faith, too, when Faith was horrible, Buffy remembered. Had Cordelia acted differently around him, or was there a side of Angel that was attracted to mean girls?
"He's changed, Willow. He was always quiet, but he was never...distant before. It was like his mind was a million miles away. Like he didn't care whether I approved of what he'd been doing or not. Oh, my god. He took up for Spike."
That, as much as anything else, wounded her ego. It also frightened her. The rivalry between Angel and Spike for her hand had been a constant for lo these many years; a thing that, in a sick sort of way, she had come to count on and be reassured by. As long as they fought, she knew she was wanted. That she was the center of their universe. That they would do whatever she asked. In a life where people were so fleeting and burdens so great, that kind of power was both heady and comforting. I've given so much. I've given UP so much. Don't I deserve it?
Couldn't count on anything now. In her absence all the relationships had shifted; all the players had changed sides.
No more dancing.
"I'll get with Willow first thing in the morning," Oz promised Gunn. "I think she'd be willing." To Giles he added, "We'll be careful."
"Please do," Giles said. He was forced to raise his voice somewhat over the hammer and woodsaw sounds of Xander patching the floor. "I can't guarantee you the full support of the council. We're here primarily to check on Miss Kheim, after all. Any additional casework will require clearance..."
"Bla bla bla bla bla," Thu Kheim mumbled under her breath.
A quick swear escaped Xander as his impaired depth perception caused him to misjudge his target and almost hammer his hand. Spike rolled his eyes. "No fear now that Bob The Builder's on the team."
Xander took some nails out of his mouth. "Hey, better that than Bob The Spirit Of Unwiped Bottoms Yet To Come." He grimaced in the direction of Old Bob. "Seriously, that guy puts the B.O. in 'Boo.' "
"Ro rhit, Rhaggy, to paraphrase one of American telly's higher intellectual children's programs," Spike snorted.
Xander jabbed a finger at him. "Okay, I'll give you that our cartoons are weird, but at least..." He pondered in desperation. "...At least our towns don't have goofy names like, like...'Doodleshire' and 'Strumpet-Upon-Twit.' "
Spike turned to Giles. "We have a town named after Faith and Monkey Boy?"
Giles said, "Shut up, both of you."
Yoder set the video camera down, rubbed a crick out of his neck, and murmured to the watcher, "We've still got Ms. Burkle to interview. Now that Spike's told us where the rest of the Old Ones are buried - I couldn't get much out of Angel about that, by the way - we can send a team out to seal it off. The well-keeper's cave might have some records about Illyria's species, too. Be worth having it searched."
Giles nodded agreement. "Far safer to do this in our own way," he said, his voice low and confidential. Angel's way, after all, was what had gotten Illyria released and Ms. Burkle killed in the first place. Too blind, too rash, too overly-confident. He didn't like the idea of Willow heading off in that direction.
"Don't throw candy corn through the ghost, Jordy," he heard Oz saying. "That's rude."
No, he didn't like the idea of Willow joining forces with Angel at all.
Login...password...
The Inbox page appeared, and Angel gazed down at the bright laptop screen and its list of e-mail letters. Past the Discount Viagra offer; past the invitation from the Nigerian princess to keep her twelve million sixty dollars safe in his bank account; down, down...
neenah at hotmail dot com.
He sat still and silent for a time, then slowly moved the cursor onto the letter and clicked it open..
Hi, Big Guy. Miss you. Love you.
See you soon.
Slowly, painstakingly, he began to type a reply.
Home again, Spike pressed his front door shut, and moved quietly across the bedroom. In the dark and the silence he shrugged out of his clothes. Cool air tingled the newly-bared skin and he paused a moment, motionless, to revel in the sensation.
When it passed, he lay down on the bed and slid underneath the blankets. He found Fred asleep there, curled on her side into a fetal ball, her small hands fisted and pressed against her face. Carefully, trying not to wake her, he spooned his body around hers and draped an arm over her protectively. The hand that could crush bricks with no effort gently covered her tense fists, easing them open, lacing his fingers between hers, soothing and stroking until finally her hands relaxed in his.
"I'll never hurt you, Pet," he whispered against her cheek as she slept. "I promise."
Tonight's dream was different from the previous ones: erratic, fragmented; lurching from scene to scene in an uncertain timeline. At one point she found her mother lying dead on the couch, and that was truly a nightmare even though it didn't look like Mama; Mom had straight black hair and was Cambodian, and now she was tall and white and curly sandy-blonde. And dead.
And a severed hand was crawling across a table, and Anya insisted on selling it, and bit by bit she felt a rage begin to grow within her that twisted her soul into ugly, shrieking knots...
Buffy got out of bed and groped her way to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Several miles away, Thu Kheim got out of bed and turned on a lamp and wrote the dream down.