When he could finally get a word in edgewise, Angel filled Spike in on the little they knew about Daria McBride. It didn't take long. Once he was able to get started though, Spike listened very intently, with a grim expression on his face.

"I'm going to kill that bitch," he stated in completely emotionless tones. He turned to look at Angel as if daring his grandsire to argue with him.

Considering how things were going, Angel reflected that he wasn't sure that he wanted to argue. He was ready to get a piece of Daria McBride himself. He shook his head. He knew that when push came to shove, he'd kill a human only as a last resort.

Spike watched the pouf's internal argument. His grandsire's face may not give away much to the untrained eye, but he could read him like a book. He could also tell the outcome of the debate, which was pretty much what he expected. As for himself, he didn't see a problem with offing the bint. It wasn't a matter of good and evil, but rather, right and wrong. And leaving Daria McBride alive after what she'd done just seemed terribly wrong.

&&&&&&&&

"What do you want with me?" Rose asked with a calm she didn't feel. The only light on the horizon she could see was that judging from all the ruckus she'd heard, which included a British voice swearing very creatively, was that Spike at least was safe. She clung to that like an anchor. Spike was safe.

Daria shrugged. She supposed there was no harm in giving her prisoner a little information. It wasn't like she was going to be able to use it. "You're a paycheck to me," she said. "Nothing more, nothing less. Just a nice, big, fat paycheck."

"So, you're working for someone else," Rose observed. "But what would anyone want with me?"

"I don't ask questions," Daria replied. "It's part of my exclusive and very expensive services."

Rose didn't even try to conceal the utter contempt and loathing she had for Daria. "How do you live with yourself?" she asked. "Don't other people matter at all?"

"Don't give me the sweetness and light, do unto others speech," Daria remarked. "I've heard it so often that I could recite it down to the punctuation marks. I look after me, and everyone else can do the same."

"What a narrow existence," murmured Rose a little sadly. And who, after all, should know better. "I could almost bring myself to pity you."

"Only almost, huh?" Daria eyed her speculatively. "It's because of the pretty blond vampire, isn't it? Tell me honey, just between us girls. What got to you more, seeing me hurt him, or making the moves on him?"

Rose refused to answer, but merely glared at her.

&&&&&&&

Spike snatched the large volume out from under Wesley's nose, and Angel took it out of his hands before he could throw it across the room. Again.

"Spike, how is Wes supposed to find out anything if you keep taking his book away?" he asked reasonably. "I know you want to get Rose out of there, we all do. But what you're doing isn't helping."

Spike was about to make a sarcastic reply, when his eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. Without a word, he shoved Gunn away from the computer and started tapping at the keys.

"Dammit, you're going to lose all my information," Gunn complained.

Spike ignored him, but kept at what he was doing. His fingers stopped moving, and his face became thoughtful as he read. Angel just barely moved quickly enough to keep the computer from sailing across the room. "What is it?" he demanded.

"Wards can be broken by someone other than the caster," Spike read. "When two demons who are not demons are met." He looked up again in frustration. "But that's all it says. It doesn't say how."

"What the hell?" Angel pushed Spike aside and read it for himself.

"What's all this about demons who aren't demons?" Gunn asked, mystified. Spike and Angel just looked at him until he got the point. "Oh, I see."

"Let me see that," Wesley ordered, now pushing Angel out of his way. "That's a very obscure reference," he muttered, scrolling down the screen, looking for hints of where to go next. "How did you happen to know about it, Spike?"

"You yourself gave it to me mixed with a lot of other codswallop just a couple of weeks ago," Spike replied with a little heat. "Are you trying to tell me..,"

"What I'm trying to tell you," Wesley interrupted. "Is that I don't know it all, and I certainly can't remember it all. That's why I have a whole department instead of just myself."

Wes carried on at Angel's computer with Angel leaning over his shoulder. Gunn, grumbling, left the office to find another computer to work on. Fred, seemingly totally unruffled worked on at her laptop, until she noticed Spike pacing. She got up and laid a gentle, restraining hand on his arm. "We'll get her back, Spike."

Spike was about to rudely shake her off when he realized he shouldn't be taking his frustrations out on Fred. Instead, he patted her hand and removed it carefully.

Lorne came bursting into the room, and he himself seemed to be almost bursting. "Wes, between your lead and Wolfram and Hart's resources, I think we may have a clue to what's going on," he announced. Everyone immediately gathered around him. "It seems that in some dimensions, there are collectors who would pay a very good price for our Rosebud, just because she's not an ordinary ghost. The rarer, the better, and they don't care what, or who, they're collecting. And Rose is not just rare, she's unique."

"Damn right she is," Spike agreed. "So we're looking for one of these collectors, are we?"

Lorne shook his head. "I don't think so," he replied. "From what I was able to pry out of my contacts, the person we're looking for is a go-between. Possibly some sort of auctioneer, wanting to sell Rose off the highest bidder." He looked at Spike, then to Angel with a question in his eyes. Angel shook his head. He knew what was on the Pylean's mind, but now was not the time.

&&&&&&&&

Rose was finding out the true meaning of boredom. Now, not only was she unable to do much of anything, she couldn't do anything at all. All she could do was stand there, frozen in one place. At least when she was bored, she wasn't consumed with apprehension with what was going to happen to her. She almost wished that Daria would come back just so that she would have someone to talk to. She couldn't even see a clock, to watch time ticking ever so slowly by.

Daria came in. "Well, I seem to be stuck with you for a while," she remarked. "It seems that my client didn't think I'd be able to bag you so quickly, and he needs a little more time to raise the funds."

"What a shame," Rose remarked insincerely. "What happens if he doesn't come up with the money?"

"Oh, he'll come through," Daria replied. "You see, when I started out in this business, I did get stiffed a few times. Once I'd been burned one time too many, I started making examples of the deadbeats. The client will come up with the cash if he has to start selling off all his major organs to do it."

"Charming," Rose said. "I don't suppose there's any way that you could make a deal with my friends to get me back?"

Daria shook her head. "I do have a reputation to protect. If I started reneging on bargains, then I'd have them coming after me. You may think I'm scum, sweetie, but I'm reliable when it comes to business. I have to be, or I wouldn't have any business. Or a head."

"Would it be terribly cliché if I said that you're not going to get away with this?" Rose asked. "My friends will find a way to get me back." She said it as if she meant it, but she was beginning to wonder.

"I've already gotten away with it," Daria answered. "Your friends won't dare to kill me, I'm the only one who can take down the wards that are holding you here. And if they raid the place, well, you're not going anywhere."

Something had been bothering Rose, aside from the obvious. It was something the bounty hunter had said to Spike in the basement.

"What did you mean when you said that you might have uses for Spike that would require him to be more or less in one piece?" she inquired.

Daria's eyes twinkled with avarice. "There's always a market somewhere for just about anything. Your boyfriend might have brought a good price. But the buyers usually like their toys pretty much intact." A puzzled expression crossed her face. "You two might even have brought more as a set. What can you possibly have going on when you're not even really there?"

"If you don't know," Rose replied, "then I can't even begin to explain it to you. Just take it as read that Spike and I love each other."

"How did you get to be a specter?" Daria queried.

Rose looked at her thoughtfully for a minute, then decided that maybe it would give the bounty hunter something to reflect on. "Spike was.., the way I am now," she said haltingly. "It was part of the price for bringing him back."

"Nobody, certainly no man is worth that," said Daria. But there was a hint of doubt in her eyes.

"I didn't know," Rose admitted. "But it wouldn't have made any difference if I had. I would have done it anyway. Because I still think Spike is worth it. I didn't consider the price too high."

Daria stared at her with something akin to awe for a moment. Then, she was herself again. "I need to contact my client," she muttered. "Once he hears this, he may insist on the matched set." A greedy smile lit up her face. "And my price is going to go through the roof."

&&&&&&&&

Wesley was sacked out on the couch in Angel's office. Fred was nodding over her laptop, but still pressing on gamely. Lorne had fallen asleep in the middle of a phone conversation. Angel took the cell from his hand and turned it off, and shifted the demon around so that he could sleep more comfortably. Gunn opened the door and looked around. Angel put a finger to his lips and joined him outside the office door.

"I've got a whole list of people that aren't Daria's clients," the lawyer informed him. "But I haven't tracked down the money yet." He cocked his head toward Angel's office. "Worn out from fighting the good fight, huh?"

"Something like that," Angel agreed. "Right now, I'd settle for getting Rose back and to hell with the money behind it."

"Yeah, but if we do that," Gunn pointed out, "the money's still out there, just waiting for another time." Something suddenly dawned on him. "I didn't see Spike in there. Where did he go?"

"Spike?" Angel silently cursed himself for not keeping an eye on his wayward grandchilde. "Follow me," he told Gunn, and led him to the nearest security office. He started checking one camera after another until he found one that held views of the parking garage. "I should have known," he muttered, disgusted with himself. "The Viper's gone."

"You think Blondie Bear went off to Daria McBride's again?" Gunn asked.

"Well he's not going out to get drunk," Angel replied. "Not while Rose is in danger. What is that idiot thinking of?"

"You know what he's thinking of," Gunn remarked. "He's thinking of her. Are you going to go after him?"

"I suppose I'd better," Angel replied. "Damn him, why'd he have to take my Viper?"

&&&&&&&

Spike slipped into Daria's house with no trouble at all. Even the ops team, supposedly keeping the place under surveillance hadn't seen him. He'd have to talk to Angel about that. He didn't know what he expected to accomplish, he just had to see Rose, see that she was all right. He moved silently from room to room, hoping that Rose would show up somewhere along the way. He was afraid to say anything though, just in case the bitch was listening and had a few more tricks up her sleeve.

He made his way to the living area where Daria had drugged him, and there she was. Rose stood in one place, not moving, glowing softly from the spell that held her prisoner. Spike thought that she was the most beautiful thing that he'd ever seen.

"Rose?" he whispered when he was a few feet away. He found it odd that she didn't turn to face him.

"Spike?" She sounded terrified, poor pet. "What are you doing here, love?"

"I had to see you," he replied, coming around in front of her. It was then the other shoe dropped, and he realized why Rose hadn't turned round to greet him. "She caught you, didn't she, babe?"

"Almost as soon as I left you," Rose confessed. "All I saw was someone dressed in black, with a black mask, just like the ops men, and I let her see me and she cast a spell on me. I've been here since right about the time they rescued you."

"Did you hear the spell at all?" Spike asked. "If we knew that, we might be able to find a way to undo it."

Rose tried to shake her head, forgetting that that much range of movement wasn't allowed her. "I just heard enough to know that it was Latin," she answered. "But her voice was so low that I couldn't make more than enough to figure that out." A thought occurred to her. "Spike," she said urgently. "You've got to get out of here. You may have just been the bait before, but now she wants you, too."

"Me?" Spike was genuinely surprised. "What would she want with me?"

"She asked how I got to be this way and I told her," Rose admitted. "I didn't think that it would do any harm, and maybe it would, I don't know, touch some little bit of humanity left in her. The only thing it did was to make her call her client to see if she could raise the price to get both of us as a matched set."

"I really hate that bitch," Spike said with feeling. He looked at his lady love, standing there helpless, and his features softened, going from hate to love in the space of a heartbeat. "I don't want to leave you here like this, sweetheart," he whispered, feeling like someone was jabbing a stake into his heart.

"You have to go," Rose urged. She gave him a loving smile. "How can you rescue me if she catches you too?"

"I love you." He couldn't go before he'd told her that.

"I love you, too," she replied. "Now get out of here before Daria finds you."

There was a sound of approaching footsteps outside the door, and rather than take a chance that she might have a spell on her that would work on a vampire, Spike dove headfirst out the nearest window without bothering to open it first.

&&&&&&

Angel had found where Spike had parked the Viper just as his grandchilde was returning.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" they said in perfect unison.

"What am I doing here?" Angel snarled. "What are you doing here? Or are you really anxious to be a prisoner again?"

"How'd you know that?" Spike asked curiously. "I just found out myself."

"Found out what?" Angel demanded.

"That our friendly neighborhood bounty hunter just added me to the list," Spike explained. "She's got Rose, Angel. I mean, she's really got her. Some sort of spell's got her bound to one spot. She got Rose to talking and found out how she became a phantom, and now she's thinking of raffling the two of us off as a set."

"This just gets better and better," Angel groused. He looked at Spike. "You. Get your scrawny ass back to Wolfram and Hart and keep it there. Daria's change in plans may have bought us a little more time, but it won't do us any good if she catches you again."

Spike saw the wisdom in the words, even though he didn't much like taking orders. He opened the door to the Viper, then stopped. "Scrawny?"

&&&&&&&&

Daria had entered the room just in time to catch a glimpse of a blond-headed figure racing away from the house. "So the vampire came back to see you, did he?" she observed. "I won't even try to pretend that I understand what there is between the two of you. I don't really want to know. But I think I can use it to my advantage."

"If you're thinking of setting a trap for Spike," Rose said defiantly. "Don't waste your time. He knows you're after him now. He won't be back until he can get me out of here."

"He's not getting you out of here," Daria said with asperity. "In case you haven't figured it out, and obviously you haven't, you're not going anywhere."

Privately, Rose thought Daria was right. She probably wasn't going to get out. And maybe it would all work out for the best, at least for Spike. And that was what mattered. Right now, that was all that mattered to her in the world.