CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Meetings
The next day was Dawn's first day back at school. Zachary made a point of seeking her out in-between the first two classes just to say hi. Then he made a point of sitting with her at lunch. After school he offered to walk Dawn home.
"Sure," Dawn said. "Only, I'm not going straight home. I promised my sister I'd meet her and her friends at this magic shop. She's not happy about how my grades are going right now so she's kinda keepin' a short leash on me." Dawn made a face to communicate how much of a pain big sisters and parent types could be.
Zachary nodded sympathetically. "I know how it is. I can give you some help with your studying if you like."
"OK. If you want, you can walk down there with me." She was a little worried that Buffy and the Scoobs might scare him off. Because you never quite knew what was gonna happen down there. Some demons might come charging in to trash the place as part of their plan to take over the world. Still, she figured it was better to have him meet them sooner than later . . . before she got used to all the attention she'd gotten that day. "My sister will probably hang there for a while. And there's a place in the back where we can study."
"Sounds good," Zachary said, the breeze lightly ruffling his light brown hair. "I'd like to meet your sister."
Luckily, when they arrived at the Magic Box, everything was very quiet. There were only a couple of customers wandering through and Buffy and the Scoobies were huddled around the circular table in the center of the main room, listening to Buffy. The huddle stopped, however, as soon as Dawn and her male friend came over.
"Hey," Dawn said.
"Hey," Buffy said back.
"Everybody, this is my friend Zack."
"Hi," Zachary said shyly. And with good reason. Five pairs of adult eyes were checking him out very thoroughly.
Buffy was looking for signs of him being a demon. Willow was giving him a wide-opened smile of welcome. Anya was just looking at him curiously. Spike was smirking slightly, thinking how bookish the boy looked. And Xander . . . well, he had more empathy for what the poor kid was going through then the rest did. Tara would have too, but unfortunately she wasn't there.
"Nice to meet you, Zack," Xander said, trying to give him an I-know-how-it- is smile.
"This is my sister, Buffy," Dawn said.
Buffy had been half leaning over the table. She straightened up properly and wondered if she should shake the young man's hand or not. What was the proper etiquette? "Hi, Zack," Buffy said with the hint of a smile. She would have agreed with Spike that the kid looked bookish. At least he didn't look like a demon. One in the family was quite enough!
"And these are her friends," Dawn continued. "This is Willow, and Anya, and Xander, and Spike."
Willow, Anya, and Xander all said hi and tried to appear welcoming. But not Spike. He didn't say anything. Instead he gave Zachary a strong stare and a tight-jawed nod. He wanted to show the kid that the Summers women were not alone and defenseless. He figured that was part of his job as Buffy's now official boyfriend. Sure Buffy could have kicked the kid's ass downtown and back before he knew what happened. And Spike's chip wouldn't have allowed him to knock the kid over. But Spike knew that appearances go pretty far with men sometimes. If you look like the Big Bad, people will think that's what you are. And if you do it well enough, you never have to fight at all. He wanted this Zack kid to know Dawn wasn't some little helpless girl he could take advantage of.
"Well, we'll just be going in the back . . . to study," Dawn said. "You guys can go on with whatever it was you were talking about."
"OK," Buffy said.
The adults all watched as the kids walked away.
Zachary could feel their eyes on his back. But there was only one of them that made him nervous. "Your sister and her friends seem nice. But who was that Spike guy?" he asked.
"Oh, he's my sister's boyfriend," Dawn answered. She hadn't seen the dark look that Spike had given Zachary. And if she had, she probably wouldn't have been impressed with it. She was real used to Spike's tough guy act by then. She knew the glaring eyes and verbal threats like, "I could rip your head off and drink from your brain stem," actually translated into stuff like, "I was desperately terribly worried about you because I care about you."
"Oh," Zachary said. There really wasn't much else he could say. He just made a mental note to avoid Spike. The guy looked creepy.
As the kids settled into their books, Buffy got to the end of her story about the Shadow and Fire demons. Spike had softened her on the idea of presenting the whole thing to the Scoobies somewhere between bedtime and awaking. "Spike wants us to meet with the Shadows as a sort of goodwill gesture," she said.
"I told you there was something suspicious going on at Lindemann Avenue," Willow said, almost jumping up and down in her seat. "I sensed it! The whole thing just didn't sound right."
"You mean, you guys have already been considering this?" Buffy asked. "How come I wasn't told?"
"I noticed it last week," Willow said, "while I was cruising through the Sunnydale papers online. I told Xander and Anya and Dawn. But Xander and Anya told me no way. Fire and Shadow demon stuff never gets that big. It must be insurance fraud or something like that."
"That's what it sounded like to me then," Xander said. "Now it sounds like some kind of demon gang war, like Buffy suggested."
"It could be," Anya said. "But it's starting to sound suspicious to me too." She paused for a moment as the last customer departed the store, leaving them alone. "Fire demons are usually real independent. But if some group of them is being manipulated in some way and their powers are being upped, it could be a sign of trouble. I say we talk to the Shadows. A little PR among the demon population can't be bad."
"What if they just want to involve us in gang war?" Xander asked.
"Then we say no," Anya answered. "It should be very easy to figure out the truth. I've run across several Fire demons in my last thousand years as a vengeance demon. I'm sure Spike has too. We should be able to tell by the description of the battles if the Fire demon's powers are being toyed with. I say we go and powwow with the Shadows."
Buffy sighed. This was not the reaction she'd been expecting. She'd assumed they would all side with her. That's why she had agreed to tell the Scoobies about it. On some level she had been hoping to put Spike in his place again. But it seemed to have backfired.
"Seems you're outvoted, Slayer," Spike said.
Buffy made a face at him and he smiled triumphantly. "All right then," she said, authoritatively. "We'll meet here tomorrow and go visit the Shadows. Xander, would you call Tara and ask her to come too? Also, I hope you don't mind driving us to the meeting site."
"No problem," Xander said.
"Willow, I don't think any of us have thanked you for what happened on Sunday. I hope it didn't compromise your sabbatical from magic."
"Oh, no," Willow said. "I think in special circumstances it's good for me to use magic."
Buffy wondered if she should argue this point. But she didn't. The truth was, they needed her magical abilities. If this thing with the Shadows turned out to be a trap or something, they would need Willow and Tara to create a diversion for them. "OK," she said. "Then until tomorrow. I've got to get Dawn home and concentrating on schoolwork."
"I think she's concentrating on other things right now," Willow said, gesturing with her head to the back of the shop.
Dawn and Zachary were sitting in front of several open books. Zachary was pointing at something in one of them and talking as if he were giving a lecture in study hall. Dawn's eyes were fastened on Zachary's face, studying the way his blue eyes looked behind his glasses and admiring the single freckle on his right cheek.
"Uh-oh," Buffy said. She was remembering the first time she'd met Angel. She had a feeling she'd looked at him in exactly that same way. And she'd fallen for him quickly, like Dawn seemed to be falling for Zachary.
"Aren't they cute?" Willow said with delight.
"He seems like a nice guy," Xander offered.
"A little too bookish for my taste," Anya said.
"That's my girl," Xander said, rubbing her shoulder. "My woman only loves manly men who work in construction."
"Not necessarily," Anya said. "But he has the look of a poet. And what's that line from that old musical . . . 'A poet only writes about the things he cannot do.'"
Spike shifted uncomfortably. "Now, I wouldn't say that."
"Well . . . I don't speak from experience, of course," Anya admitted. "It's only what I've heard. But it was from one of the Muse's, so I assumed she was a reliable source."
"Yeah," Spike said. "Nobody values poets much."
"Dawn," Buffy called, trying not to sound too much like a mother calling her kid in from play, "we're going now."
"I'd better be off and tell that little Nazari about tomorrow," Spike said, getting up.
The rest of Scoobies also got up and started milling about. Dawn and Zachary started packing up in the back.
In all the movement, Spike felt comfortable enough to run his hand intimately up Buffy's back and kiss her briefly on the cheek. "I'll see you later, Luv," he whispered. "You patrolling tonight?"
"After I have Dawn fed and settled in for the evening."
"I'll look for you, then." And with another kiss, he was off.
"You two are pretty intense," Willow said after he was gone. "I can see why you like him. He's got this sort of a sinister attraction on top, with this soft sensitive stuff underneath."
"Yeah? Well, sometimes I just don't know what it is I see in him," Buffy admitted.
"I don't know. There's lots of history between you two. Lots of chemistry. Now that I've seen you two around the house together, under close observation these last coupla days, I'm wondering why I never saw this coming. I mean, there are times when I think you two are gonna set the drapes ablaze just by looking at each other. You two have this fire between you that you and Riley never had."
"You think so? I guess I wasn't with Riley for the fire. More for the steadiness. I thought I was all over that bad boy thing."
"Maybe the bad boy thing just fits in better with being a slayer."
"Maybe. But a big part of me still wants the sweet guy type, like Dawn's new boyfriend." Buffy glanced up at the new young couple in time to see Zachary straighten the collar of Dawn's jacket for her. "I really hope things works out for her."
"Me too," Willow agreed.
- - - - - - - - - - -
As the Scoobies were going their way for the night, the phone was ringing in Jonathan's room. He let it ring for a very long time, staring at the phone pointedly. Should he answer it, he wondered. He knew who it was and he'd been avoiding it all day. Sooner or later, he had to answer it. "Hello?" he said nervously.
"Where have you been?" Warren screamed on the other end. "I've been trying to get you all day. But your phone just keeps on ringing and ringing. Why don't you have your answering machine on?"
"It's broken," Jonathan lied. In truth, he'd disconnected it. Because if Warren had left a message he would have felt more obligated to call back. It was now a little over a week since their fiasco with the power transference ray gun. At least Jonathan thought it was a fiasco. Warren seemed to think it was wonderful that Andrew had been totally absorbed into nothingness except for what got transferred into Warren.
"I've got the ray gun all ready and it's time to go and look for the slayer," Warren announced.
"How were your holidays?" Jonathan asked, trying to change the subject.
"Ah, you know. My mother had all these people staying over. A couple of them went down into my workroom and it was all I could do to keep from using the ray gun on them."
"But you didn't," Jonathan said.
"No. My mom woulda had a fit if one of her guests suddenly went missing. And I probably wouldn't have gotten anything good from them anyway. Her friends are a bunch of losers. Anyway . . . I think we should start tracking the slayer tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief. He was afraid Warren was going to say they should go looking for her tonight. One day could make all the difference. Maybe by tomorrow he could talk Warren out of it.
"Yeah," Warren continued, "tonight Andrew wants to show me some tricks with one of his favorite video games."
"Oh," Jonanthan said, swallowing hard. "That's nice." And then again, Jonathan thought, maybe there wasn't much chance of getting through to Warren at all anymore . . . about anything.
Meetings
The next day was Dawn's first day back at school. Zachary made a point of seeking her out in-between the first two classes just to say hi. Then he made a point of sitting with her at lunch. After school he offered to walk Dawn home.
"Sure," Dawn said. "Only, I'm not going straight home. I promised my sister I'd meet her and her friends at this magic shop. She's not happy about how my grades are going right now so she's kinda keepin' a short leash on me." Dawn made a face to communicate how much of a pain big sisters and parent types could be.
Zachary nodded sympathetically. "I know how it is. I can give you some help with your studying if you like."
"OK. If you want, you can walk down there with me." She was a little worried that Buffy and the Scoobs might scare him off. Because you never quite knew what was gonna happen down there. Some demons might come charging in to trash the place as part of their plan to take over the world. Still, she figured it was better to have him meet them sooner than later . . . before she got used to all the attention she'd gotten that day. "My sister will probably hang there for a while. And there's a place in the back where we can study."
"Sounds good," Zachary said, the breeze lightly ruffling his light brown hair. "I'd like to meet your sister."
Luckily, when they arrived at the Magic Box, everything was very quiet. There were only a couple of customers wandering through and Buffy and the Scoobies were huddled around the circular table in the center of the main room, listening to Buffy. The huddle stopped, however, as soon as Dawn and her male friend came over.
"Hey," Dawn said.
"Hey," Buffy said back.
"Everybody, this is my friend Zack."
"Hi," Zachary said shyly. And with good reason. Five pairs of adult eyes were checking him out very thoroughly.
Buffy was looking for signs of him being a demon. Willow was giving him a wide-opened smile of welcome. Anya was just looking at him curiously. Spike was smirking slightly, thinking how bookish the boy looked. And Xander . . . well, he had more empathy for what the poor kid was going through then the rest did. Tara would have too, but unfortunately she wasn't there.
"Nice to meet you, Zack," Xander said, trying to give him an I-know-how-it- is smile.
"This is my sister, Buffy," Dawn said.
Buffy had been half leaning over the table. She straightened up properly and wondered if she should shake the young man's hand or not. What was the proper etiquette? "Hi, Zack," Buffy said with the hint of a smile. She would have agreed with Spike that the kid looked bookish. At least he didn't look like a demon. One in the family was quite enough!
"And these are her friends," Dawn continued. "This is Willow, and Anya, and Xander, and Spike."
Willow, Anya, and Xander all said hi and tried to appear welcoming. But not Spike. He didn't say anything. Instead he gave Zachary a strong stare and a tight-jawed nod. He wanted to show the kid that the Summers women were not alone and defenseless. He figured that was part of his job as Buffy's now official boyfriend. Sure Buffy could have kicked the kid's ass downtown and back before he knew what happened. And Spike's chip wouldn't have allowed him to knock the kid over. But Spike knew that appearances go pretty far with men sometimes. If you look like the Big Bad, people will think that's what you are. And if you do it well enough, you never have to fight at all. He wanted this Zack kid to know Dawn wasn't some little helpless girl he could take advantage of.
"Well, we'll just be going in the back . . . to study," Dawn said. "You guys can go on with whatever it was you were talking about."
"OK," Buffy said.
The adults all watched as the kids walked away.
Zachary could feel their eyes on his back. But there was only one of them that made him nervous. "Your sister and her friends seem nice. But who was that Spike guy?" he asked.
"Oh, he's my sister's boyfriend," Dawn answered. She hadn't seen the dark look that Spike had given Zachary. And if she had, she probably wouldn't have been impressed with it. She was real used to Spike's tough guy act by then. She knew the glaring eyes and verbal threats like, "I could rip your head off and drink from your brain stem," actually translated into stuff like, "I was desperately terribly worried about you because I care about you."
"Oh," Zachary said. There really wasn't much else he could say. He just made a mental note to avoid Spike. The guy looked creepy.
As the kids settled into their books, Buffy got to the end of her story about the Shadow and Fire demons. Spike had softened her on the idea of presenting the whole thing to the Scoobies somewhere between bedtime and awaking. "Spike wants us to meet with the Shadows as a sort of goodwill gesture," she said.
"I told you there was something suspicious going on at Lindemann Avenue," Willow said, almost jumping up and down in her seat. "I sensed it! The whole thing just didn't sound right."
"You mean, you guys have already been considering this?" Buffy asked. "How come I wasn't told?"
"I noticed it last week," Willow said, "while I was cruising through the Sunnydale papers online. I told Xander and Anya and Dawn. But Xander and Anya told me no way. Fire and Shadow demon stuff never gets that big. It must be insurance fraud or something like that."
"That's what it sounded like to me then," Xander said. "Now it sounds like some kind of demon gang war, like Buffy suggested."
"It could be," Anya said. "But it's starting to sound suspicious to me too." She paused for a moment as the last customer departed the store, leaving them alone. "Fire demons are usually real independent. But if some group of them is being manipulated in some way and their powers are being upped, it could be a sign of trouble. I say we talk to the Shadows. A little PR among the demon population can't be bad."
"What if they just want to involve us in gang war?" Xander asked.
"Then we say no," Anya answered. "It should be very easy to figure out the truth. I've run across several Fire demons in my last thousand years as a vengeance demon. I'm sure Spike has too. We should be able to tell by the description of the battles if the Fire demon's powers are being toyed with. I say we go and powwow with the Shadows."
Buffy sighed. This was not the reaction she'd been expecting. She'd assumed they would all side with her. That's why she had agreed to tell the Scoobies about it. On some level she had been hoping to put Spike in his place again. But it seemed to have backfired.
"Seems you're outvoted, Slayer," Spike said.
Buffy made a face at him and he smiled triumphantly. "All right then," she said, authoritatively. "We'll meet here tomorrow and go visit the Shadows. Xander, would you call Tara and ask her to come too? Also, I hope you don't mind driving us to the meeting site."
"No problem," Xander said.
"Willow, I don't think any of us have thanked you for what happened on Sunday. I hope it didn't compromise your sabbatical from magic."
"Oh, no," Willow said. "I think in special circumstances it's good for me to use magic."
Buffy wondered if she should argue this point. But she didn't. The truth was, they needed her magical abilities. If this thing with the Shadows turned out to be a trap or something, they would need Willow and Tara to create a diversion for them. "OK," she said. "Then until tomorrow. I've got to get Dawn home and concentrating on schoolwork."
"I think she's concentrating on other things right now," Willow said, gesturing with her head to the back of the shop.
Dawn and Zachary were sitting in front of several open books. Zachary was pointing at something in one of them and talking as if he were giving a lecture in study hall. Dawn's eyes were fastened on Zachary's face, studying the way his blue eyes looked behind his glasses and admiring the single freckle on his right cheek.
"Uh-oh," Buffy said. She was remembering the first time she'd met Angel. She had a feeling she'd looked at him in exactly that same way. And she'd fallen for him quickly, like Dawn seemed to be falling for Zachary.
"Aren't they cute?" Willow said with delight.
"He seems like a nice guy," Xander offered.
"A little too bookish for my taste," Anya said.
"That's my girl," Xander said, rubbing her shoulder. "My woman only loves manly men who work in construction."
"Not necessarily," Anya said. "But he has the look of a poet. And what's that line from that old musical . . . 'A poet only writes about the things he cannot do.'"
Spike shifted uncomfortably. "Now, I wouldn't say that."
"Well . . . I don't speak from experience, of course," Anya admitted. "It's only what I've heard. But it was from one of the Muse's, so I assumed she was a reliable source."
"Yeah," Spike said. "Nobody values poets much."
"Dawn," Buffy called, trying not to sound too much like a mother calling her kid in from play, "we're going now."
"I'd better be off and tell that little Nazari about tomorrow," Spike said, getting up.
The rest of Scoobies also got up and started milling about. Dawn and Zachary started packing up in the back.
In all the movement, Spike felt comfortable enough to run his hand intimately up Buffy's back and kiss her briefly on the cheek. "I'll see you later, Luv," he whispered. "You patrolling tonight?"
"After I have Dawn fed and settled in for the evening."
"I'll look for you, then." And with another kiss, he was off.
"You two are pretty intense," Willow said after he was gone. "I can see why you like him. He's got this sort of a sinister attraction on top, with this soft sensitive stuff underneath."
"Yeah? Well, sometimes I just don't know what it is I see in him," Buffy admitted.
"I don't know. There's lots of history between you two. Lots of chemistry. Now that I've seen you two around the house together, under close observation these last coupla days, I'm wondering why I never saw this coming. I mean, there are times when I think you two are gonna set the drapes ablaze just by looking at each other. You two have this fire between you that you and Riley never had."
"You think so? I guess I wasn't with Riley for the fire. More for the steadiness. I thought I was all over that bad boy thing."
"Maybe the bad boy thing just fits in better with being a slayer."
"Maybe. But a big part of me still wants the sweet guy type, like Dawn's new boyfriend." Buffy glanced up at the new young couple in time to see Zachary straighten the collar of Dawn's jacket for her. "I really hope things works out for her."
"Me too," Willow agreed.
- - - - - - - - - - -
As the Scoobies were going their way for the night, the phone was ringing in Jonathan's room. He let it ring for a very long time, staring at the phone pointedly. Should he answer it, he wondered. He knew who it was and he'd been avoiding it all day. Sooner or later, he had to answer it. "Hello?" he said nervously.
"Where have you been?" Warren screamed on the other end. "I've been trying to get you all day. But your phone just keeps on ringing and ringing. Why don't you have your answering machine on?"
"It's broken," Jonathan lied. In truth, he'd disconnected it. Because if Warren had left a message he would have felt more obligated to call back. It was now a little over a week since their fiasco with the power transference ray gun. At least Jonathan thought it was a fiasco. Warren seemed to think it was wonderful that Andrew had been totally absorbed into nothingness except for what got transferred into Warren.
"I've got the ray gun all ready and it's time to go and look for the slayer," Warren announced.
"How were your holidays?" Jonathan asked, trying to change the subject.
"Ah, you know. My mother had all these people staying over. A couple of them went down into my workroom and it was all I could do to keep from using the ray gun on them."
"But you didn't," Jonathan said.
"No. My mom woulda had a fit if one of her guests suddenly went missing. And I probably wouldn't have gotten anything good from them anyway. Her friends are a bunch of losers. Anyway . . . I think we should start tracking the slayer tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief. He was afraid Warren was going to say they should go looking for her tonight. One day could make all the difference. Maybe by tomorrow he could talk Warren out of it.
"Yeah," Warren continued, "tonight Andrew wants to show me some tricks with one of his favorite video games."
"Oh," Jonanthan said, swallowing hard. "That's nice." And then again, Jonathan thought, maybe there wasn't much chance of getting through to Warren at all anymore . . . about anything.