Buffy was whirling through the house. The day after the wedding, the new
boarding guest would come, and it was high time to get ready.
After she had met the nice police officer, Buffy had felt good. She had looked into possibilities to make money without going back to the Doublemeat Palace so that she could start prepare for a new career with Sunnydale's Finest without smelling like a French fry. She had scanned the job offers at the Sunnydale UC board, but to no avail. All there was were TA positions and students looking for someone to help them with Statistics, or French, or something else Buffy knew she would need help with, too.
She had wanted to turn away, ready to grease-wrestle again when she saw it. A purple leaflet, on the far right corner of the board: "Rooms needed. UC Sunnydale seeks rooms for rent to allocate guest professors from Europe, starting this spring term. Please call…" And that's what she had done. She had called the administrative office for international exchange programs. The lady in charge had told her that they were still looking for one room to rent in order to accommodate a British professor for New History from LSE. Only after talking to Willow, Buffy had found out that that meant London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious universities in the UK.
To the lady, she had described the guest room next to the living room as a sunny bedroom / office, not mentioning that it had served only partly as a home office for her mom. Mostly, the room had been a huge walk-in closet where all the junk they didn't use any more but couldn't find the heart to discard completely, was stored. The lady probably wouldn't have cared anyway. When Buffy mentioned the small bathroom next to it, the deal was half done. But today, the office wanted to send someone along to have a last look at everything, to be sure that the rent was appropriate for the offer. So it was important to make a good impression, not only with the room. Stinking magical herb smell throughout the house might undermine her plan to establish a reputation as a good host for guest professors from Europe.
So when Tara had left that morning, the slayer had spent the better part of the day slaying junk and dirt. Now the whole house sparkled, and the guest room was cleared out and cleaned, smelling like fresh linen, thanks to the fresh sheets on the bed in the corner. The window was streak-free, and the sun had been pouring in before it had set. Buffy had moved the small desk over there and away from the door that led to the adjacent bathroom so that the professor wouldn't have to leave his room to freshen up in the morning. She had even managed to oil the hinges of the door. Everything looked perfect.
"Buffy! Where are you?" Dawn shouted through the house.
"In here", she yelled back.
Dawn bounced in and looked around. "Wow! Can I have that room?"
"No."
"But, I have to get up early to be at school in time – I so need my own bathroom", the teenager whined.
"Dawn, do I really have to explain?" Buffy sounded slightly exasperated.
"No, no. I know, foreign male professor cannot be asked to share a bathroom with the female population of the house. Needs his privacy. And I promise, I won't pry on him unless he wants me to."
"Dawn!" The slayer's voice rose, menacingly.
"Just joking. He'll probably be as old as jack, and wrinkly and stuff. Will the room inspector bring a picture?"
"I doubt it." Buffy frowned suddenly. It might have been a good idea to know how this guy looked like, for safety precautions. This was the hellmouth, after all. She shook the thought away. Stop it with the paranoia already, she told herself.
"…name?" asked Dawn.
"Huh? Sorry Dawnie, I was…"
"…thinking thoughts." With her typical teenage impatience, Dawn shrugged and left the room. "Just wanted to know what his name was."
"Caine", answered Buffy, "William Caine." And, in a very low voice, she added again: "William."
**************************************************************************** **********
"William, come on!" Willow dragged a very unwilling Spike through town, using his human name to make him move faster. When the vampire realised where they were heading, he grew all the more weary.
"Where the fuck are you takin' me, Red?"
Willow remained unfazed by his nagging. Resolutely, she opened the door to the infamous fast food joint: "The Doublemeat Palace!", she said, inviting him in with a mocking half bow.
"Duh! Why? What in hell are we doin' here? What if Buffy…"
"Buffy doesn't work tonight. I don't even know if she'll work here ever again, after the last stunt she pulled when she left in mid-shift to help Riley. So you're save."
"She got herself fired from this friggin' joint, again?" Spike asked incredulously.
Willow just shrugged and dragged him to the counter. A brown-haired girl repeated, to the trillionth time today, "Welcome to the Doublemeat Palace, how can I help you?" She didn't sound as if she was too enthusiastic about their being here, let alone the fact that she would have to help them with their order.
"Hi Sophie", said Willow.
Sophie looked up, and her face lightened when she recognised the guests as friends of Buffy's she had met at the birthday party that took longer than everybody had wished. "Willow, hi!" She blushed a deep crimson red and started to stutter. "A… a… and S… S… Sp… Spike…" she coughed.
"Red, what is it with you and stuttering girls? Does this turn you on?" The vampire sneered, only to be elbowed in his side. "Ow! Can't I even make the odd nasty comment?"
"No, you can't. And it's not me Sophie is interested in, right?" She turned to the girl who had blushed even more, if that was possible.
"What the…" Spike started to understand. "You gotta be kiddin'!"
Willow glared at him to shut up. Smiling to Sophie, she dragged Spike a couple of steps away from the counter. "She thinks you are cute, or hot, or whatever these girls say today when they think about a guy a certain way. She'd most definitely agree to go to the Wedding with you!"
"Hm." Spike looked slightly more pleased. "How come you know?"
"She told me at Buffy's birthday party. She asked if you two, as in Buffy and you, were an item, and I said, no! Silly me, but she is your chance to make Buffy jealous!"
"No way!" Spike suddenly remembered what the ultimate goal of his tagging along with the ex-witch had been.
"Why not?" Willow shot back, to angry to keep her voice down.
"Because!"
Willow just gave him her 'tell me already'-look.
"Because, for starters, it's not right. Not if she", and Spike pointed over to the brown-haired girl at the counter who obviously strained to understand what the two were talking about, "expects more."
Willow snorted slightly, obviously not believing that he would give jack about someone else's feeling.
"Don't you fucking snort at my caring about other people beside your pathetic little group of slayer groupies!" Spike got angrier by the second. "You don't really believe that I've changed, either. Oh, bloody hell, Willow, you know what? Forget this…" And with this, the blond-bleached vampire turned around, duster billowing behind him, ready to leave.
Willow grabbed his arm. "Wait! I'm sorry, but… never mind. What other reasons might there be?"
Spike turned back, motioning his arm Sophie. "Look at 'er, Red." He sounded exasperated. "No offence, Sophie, but you're just a girl."
"Exactly! If you two turned up at the wedding together, it would show Buffy that other normal girls could fall for you, too. And she'd be jealous as hell, believe me!"
Spike looked at her intently. Willow had really lost contact to her best friend, he decided. He sighed and started to explain: "Buffy would never believe this. She'd immediately see through the scheme. She'd never, not for a second, believe that I would fall for someone like Sophie. No, Sophie poses no threat to the slayer."
Willow looked back and forth between the vampire and the waitress and decided that Spike was right. She had thought that sending him on a date with a girl who could be a new friend of Buffy's might hurt her feelings even more, but Buffy wasn't stupid. So the red-haired mouthed "I'm sorry" to the brunette girl and followed Spike to the door, when a voice from one of the corner tables stopped her in her tracks.
"Willow, hi!" The girl who had called her had short, pitch-black hair that was spiked up by at least one tube of gel, rings on each finger, a huge peace sign dangling from her neck, ten earrings in each ear, and piercings in her nose and eyebrow. Her face was pale, her huge green eyes surrounded by black charcoal. She wore a smudgy white T-shirt that was torn conveniently to reveal her navel that was also pierced. Black leather pants hugged her hips.
"Oh, hi Lori! Enjoying dinner?" Willow asked
"Mhm", munched the girl. "And you?" She swallowed a sip of her soft drink, and with a nod to the door, stated: "Out with a real cutie, I see. Did you change camps again?"
Spike had also stopped and watched the two girls. He eyed Lori appreciatively.
"Huh?" asked Willow and followed Lori's look. She blushed. "Oh, no. He's just a… he helped me… he's…" She took a deep breath. "He is a friend."
"Don't you want to introduce me, then?" Spike had obviously overheard her stammering and came over, looking as pleased as punch. 'Damn vampire- hearing', thought Willow. 'Have to keep that in mind!'
"Ugh, Spike, this is Lorenna, Lori, this is Spike."
They both nodded and eyed each other curiously. Then, it was Spike's turn to whisper into the redhead's ear: "Now here we have a girl worth upping the odds!" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Willow laughed. "Forget it."
"Why not?" Spike asked, now clearly audible for everyone in the restaurant. "She is perfect. Exactly my style. If I showed up with her, Buffy'd feel really threatened, if she has any sense in her!"
Willow just continued giggling, especially when she realised the look of horrified realisation on the other girl's face. "Spike, stop it. Lori might help me to make Tara jealous, if you get my drift, but she'd never…"
"You want to make a girl jealous?" Lori interrupted.
Spike had the good graces to look embarrassed. "Yeah…"
"How much you'd pay?"
"How much do you want for some hot kissing in front of a bunch of people? But I warn you: It has to look like the real deal, meaning I will shove my tongue down your throat and you will have to reciprocate the tonsil tennis." Spike put it as blunt as he was able to.
"Just making out? For how long? And when?"
"Next Saturday. The whole day, max. Perhaps only a couple a'ours. Prolly they kick me out the second they see me there, anyways."
"Five hundred bucks, no matter how long it takes."
Spike offered his hand: "You got yourself a deal, Luv." **************************************************************************** **********
The cage had three concrete walls, one with a heavy steel door. The forth wall was a mirror. The creature stared in it, at itself, dazed and confused. It hadn't seen a mirror before. Something wasn't right about that. It stared and stared in its own eyes, trying to look through this wall, through its own image, on the other side. There must be another side. There always was. It got closer and closer, its image getting bigger and bigger and clearer in the process. Standing nose to nose with its reflection, it suddenly aimed and charged a violent blow against the mirror.
On the other side, Sam jumped back, unconsciously holding her nose.
Riley laughed.
"Don't you laugh! You think it can see through the mirror?"
"No, it can't. The demon is scared as hell, believe me. Never saw itself in a mirror before, doesn't know what that is, doesn't grasp the concept." The soldier with the short-cropped hair contemplated the Savolta demon who had retreated into the opposite corner of the cage. Then he stepped over to the next glass window. It gave view into a likewise highly secured glass cage. But no demon was held there. Instead, the cage was outfitted as a sophisticated lab: computers and other instruments monitored the developments in several smaller glass boxes. Above the boxes, infrared lamps burned with warm light. Riley watched the interior contently. Suddenly, he took a deep breath in: "Agent, step over here!"
When Sam joined him in front of the second window, she understood his excitement: In each of the glass boxes lay one demon egg. And the first had just started to hatch.
After she had met the nice police officer, Buffy had felt good. She had looked into possibilities to make money without going back to the Doublemeat Palace so that she could start prepare for a new career with Sunnydale's Finest without smelling like a French fry. She had scanned the job offers at the Sunnydale UC board, but to no avail. All there was were TA positions and students looking for someone to help them with Statistics, or French, or something else Buffy knew she would need help with, too.
She had wanted to turn away, ready to grease-wrestle again when she saw it. A purple leaflet, on the far right corner of the board: "Rooms needed. UC Sunnydale seeks rooms for rent to allocate guest professors from Europe, starting this spring term. Please call…" And that's what she had done. She had called the administrative office for international exchange programs. The lady in charge had told her that they were still looking for one room to rent in order to accommodate a British professor for New History from LSE. Only after talking to Willow, Buffy had found out that that meant London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious universities in the UK.
To the lady, she had described the guest room next to the living room as a sunny bedroom / office, not mentioning that it had served only partly as a home office for her mom. Mostly, the room had been a huge walk-in closet where all the junk they didn't use any more but couldn't find the heart to discard completely, was stored. The lady probably wouldn't have cared anyway. When Buffy mentioned the small bathroom next to it, the deal was half done. But today, the office wanted to send someone along to have a last look at everything, to be sure that the rent was appropriate for the offer. So it was important to make a good impression, not only with the room. Stinking magical herb smell throughout the house might undermine her plan to establish a reputation as a good host for guest professors from Europe.
So when Tara had left that morning, the slayer had spent the better part of the day slaying junk and dirt. Now the whole house sparkled, and the guest room was cleared out and cleaned, smelling like fresh linen, thanks to the fresh sheets on the bed in the corner. The window was streak-free, and the sun had been pouring in before it had set. Buffy had moved the small desk over there and away from the door that led to the adjacent bathroom so that the professor wouldn't have to leave his room to freshen up in the morning. She had even managed to oil the hinges of the door. Everything looked perfect.
"Buffy! Where are you?" Dawn shouted through the house.
"In here", she yelled back.
Dawn bounced in and looked around. "Wow! Can I have that room?"
"No."
"But, I have to get up early to be at school in time – I so need my own bathroom", the teenager whined.
"Dawn, do I really have to explain?" Buffy sounded slightly exasperated.
"No, no. I know, foreign male professor cannot be asked to share a bathroom with the female population of the house. Needs his privacy. And I promise, I won't pry on him unless he wants me to."
"Dawn!" The slayer's voice rose, menacingly.
"Just joking. He'll probably be as old as jack, and wrinkly and stuff. Will the room inspector bring a picture?"
"I doubt it." Buffy frowned suddenly. It might have been a good idea to know how this guy looked like, for safety precautions. This was the hellmouth, after all. She shook the thought away. Stop it with the paranoia already, she told herself.
"…name?" asked Dawn.
"Huh? Sorry Dawnie, I was…"
"…thinking thoughts." With her typical teenage impatience, Dawn shrugged and left the room. "Just wanted to know what his name was."
"Caine", answered Buffy, "William Caine." And, in a very low voice, she added again: "William."
**************************************************************************** **********
"William, come on!" Willow dragged a very unwilling Spike through town, using his human name to make him move faster. When the vampire realised where they were heading, he grew all the more weary.
"Where the fuck are you takin' me, Red?"
Willow remained unfazed by his nagging. Resolutely, she opened the door to the infamous fast food joint: "The Doublemeat Palace!", she said, inviting him in with a mocking half bow.
"Duh! Why? What in hell are we doin' here? What if Buffy…"
"Buffy doesn't work tonight. I don't even know if she'll work here ever again, after the last stunt she pulled when she left in mid-shift to help Riley. So you're save."
"She got herself fired from this friggin' joint, again?" Spike asked incredulously.
Willow just shrugged and dragged him to the counter. A brown-haired girl repeated, to the trillionth time today, "Welcome to the Doublemeat Palace, how can I help you?" She didn't sound as if she was too enthusiastic about their being here, let alone the fact that she would have to help them with their order.
"Hi Sophie", said Willow.
Sophie looked up, and her face lightened when she recognised the guests as friends of Buffy's she had met at the birthday party that took longer than everybody had wished. "Willow, hi!" She blushed a deep crimson red and started to stutter. "A… a… and S… S… Sp… Spike…" she coughed.
"Red, what is it with you and stuttering girls? Does this turn you on?" The vampire sneered, only to be elbowed in his side. "Ow! Can't I even make the odd nasty comment?"
"No, you can't. And it's not me Sophie is interested in, right?" She turned to the girl who had blushed even more, if that was possible.
"What the…" Spike started to understand. "You gotta be kiddin'!"
Willow glared at him to shut up. Smiling to Sophie, she dragged Spike a couple of steps away from the counter. "She thinks you are cute, or hot, or whatever these girls say today when they think about a guy a certain way. She'd most definitely agree to go to the Wedding with you!"
"Hm." Spike looked slightly more pleased. "How come you know?"
"She told me at Buffy's birthday party. She asked if you two, as in Buffy and you, were an item, and I said, no! Silly me, but she is your chance to make Buffy jealous!"
"No way!" Spike suddenly remembered what the ultimate goal of his tagging along with the ex-witch had been.
"Why not?" Willow shot back, to angry to keep her voice down.
"Because!"
Willow just gave him her 'tell me already'-look.
"Because, for starters, it's not right. Not if she", and Spike pointed over to the brown-haired girl at the counter who obviously strained to understand what the two were talking about, "expects more."
Willow snorted slightly, obviously not believing that he would give jack about someone else's feeling.
"Don't you fucking snort at my caring about other people beside your pathetic little group of slayer groupies!" Spike got angrier by the second. "You don't really believe that I've changed, either. Oh, bloody hell, Willow, you know what? Forget this…" And with this, the blond-bleached vampire turned around, duster billowing behind him, ready to leave.
Willow grabbed his arm. "Wait! I'm sorry, but… never mind. What other reasons might there be?"
Spike turned back, motioning his arm Sophie. "Look at 'er, Red." He sounded exasperated. "No offence, Sophie, but you're just a girl."
"Exactly! If you two turned up at the wedding together, it would show Buffy that other normal girls could fall for you, too. And she'd be jealous as hell, believe me!"
Spike looked at her intently. Willow had really lost contact to her best friend, he decided. He sighed and started to explain: "Buffy would never believe this. She'd immediately see through the scheme. She'd never, not for a second, believe that I would fall for someone like Sophie. No, Sophie poses no threat to the slayer."
Willow looked back and forth between the vampire and the waitress and decided that Spike was right. She had thought that sending him on a date with a girl who could be a new friend of Buffy's might hurt her feelings even more, but Buffy wasn't stupid. So the red-haired mouthed "I'm sorry" to the brunette girl and followed Spike to the door, when a voice from one of the corner tables stopped her in her tracks.
"Willow, hi!" The girl who had called her had short, pitch-black hair that was spiked up by at least one tube of gel, rings on each finger, a huge peace sign dangling from her neck, ten earrings in each ear, and piercings in her nose and eyebrow. Her face was pale, her huge green eyes surrounded by black charcoal. She wore a smudgy white T-shirt that was torn conveniently to reveal her navel that was also pierced. Black leather pants hugged her hips.
"Oh, hi Lori! Enjoying dinner?" Willow asked
"Mhm", munched the girl. "And you?" She swallowed a sip of her soft drink, and with a nod to the door, stated: "Out with a real cutie, I see. Did you change camps again?"
Spike had also stopped and watched the two girls. He eyed Lori appreciatively.
"Huh?" asked Willow and followed Lori's look. She blushed. "Oh, no. He's just a… he helped me… he's…" She took a deep breath. "He is a friend."
"Don't you want to introduce me, then?" Spike had obviously overheard her stammering and came over, looking as pleased as punch. 'Damn vampire- hearing', thought Willow. 'Have to keep that in mind!'
"Ugh, Spike, this is Lorenna, Lori, this is Spike."
They both nodded and eyed each other curiously. Then, it was Spike's turn to whisper into the redhead's ear: "Now here we have a girl worth upping the odds!" He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Willow laughed. "Forget it."
"Why not?" Spike asked, now clearly audible for everyone in the restaurant. "She is perfect. Exactly my style. If I showed up with her, Buffy'd feel really threatened, if she has any sense in her!"
Willow just continued giggling, especially when she realised the look of horrified realisation on the other girl's face. "Spike, stop it. Lori might help me to make Tara jealous, if you get my drift, but she'd never…"
"You want to make a girl jealous?" Lori interrupted.
Spike had the good graces to look embarrassed. "Yeah…"
"How much you'd pay?"
"How much do you want for some hot kissing in front of a bunch of people? But I warn you: It has to look like the real deal, meaning I will shove my tongue down your throat and you will have to reciprocate the tonsil tennis." Spike put it as blunt as he was able to.
"Just making out? For how long? And when?"
"Next Saturday. The whole day, max. Perhaps only a couple a'ours. Prolly they kick me out the second they see me there, anyways."
"Five hundred bucks, no matter how long it takes."
Spike offered his hand: "You got yourself a deal, Luv." **************************************************************************** **********
The cage had three concrete walls, one with a heavy steel door. The forth wall was a mirror. The creature stared in it, at itself, dazed and confused. It hadn't seen a mirror before. Something wasn't right about that. It stared and stared in its own eyes, trying to look through this wall, through its own image, on the other side. There must be another side. There always was. It got closer and closer, its image getting bigger and bigger and clearer in the process. Standing nose to nose with its reflection, it suddenly aimed and charged a violent blow against the mirror.
On the other side, Sam jumped back, unconsciously holding her nose.
Riley laughed.
"Don't you laugh! You think it can see through the mirror?"
"No, it can't. The demon is scared as hell, believe me. Never saw itself in a mirror before, doesn't know what that is, doesn't grasp the concept." The soldier with the short-cropped hair contemplated the Savolta demon who had retreated into the opposite corner of the cage. Then he stepped over to the next glass window. It gave view into a likewise highly secured glass cage. But no demon was held there. Instead, the cage was outfitted as a sophisticated lab: computers and other instruments monitored the developments in several smaller glass boxes. Above the boxes, infrared lamps burned with warm light. Riley watched the interior contently. Suddenly, he took a deep breath in: "Agent, step over here!"
When Sam joined him in front of the second window, she understood his excitement: In each of the glass boxes lay one demon egg. And the first had just started to hatch.