"Wish granted", said the Justice Demoness.
Spike stared at her, his eyes widening with fear: "What? No!" And his body began to shake convulsively. "OOOWWW!"
"I was shooting for a 'thank you very much', but a mere 'thanks' would have been just as fine!" Halfrek tossed her locks back. "That's what we justice demons get for all the trouble we are going through these days. Unthankful crowd…"
"Justice demon?" Spike managed to grind out between convulsions. "Vengeance demon seems to be more appropriate after aaaa…." He howled again in pain. And then, suddenly, he fell face first on the floor beneath the table.
"William…", Halfrek had turned him onto his back and patted his face lightly.
The bartender had come over. "Too mucha drink, eh? Did polish that bottle rightaff, dinn't he? What a shame – fella should know whena stop, especially when with a lady!"
"Why, thank you!" Halfrek rearranged her curls, pleased by the compliment. "Could I have some water, please?"
The bartender nodded and went off. Within a minute he was back with a bucket of ice water and a staple of paper towels.
As soon as she put one ice-water-soaked paper towel on Spike's front, he came to. "Ah!" He stared at Halfrek for a moment before recognition dawned.
"Bloody hell, Cec… ah, Halfrek, what did you do that for?" He immediately gasped for breath as if just having run a marathon. He had forgotten that breathing now didn't just help him to smoke. It had become a life-insuring necessity again.
"You wished. I grant wishes. You do the maths."
Spike sat up tentatively and touched his breast. Something in there hurt incredibly. It was his heart, trying to get back to rhythmical beating after over a century of silence. It seemed awfully loud to Spike. "I wished?", he asked, dumbfounded. "What the fuck did I wish for?"
"You expressed the wish to be human", Halfrek informed him, beaming at him.
"No I didn't!"
"Yes you did. Beats me why, but that was your wish."
Spike sat up on the floor. He remained silent for a couple of minutes, trying hard to remember the conversation he had had with the demoness just a moment ago. Then realisation dawned: "Oh, damn you, Halfrek, I said sometimes. Some. Times. Which part of the word 'sometimes' didn't you understand?"
"Sorry, we Justice Demons are not that sophisticated. You cannot switch humanity on and off like a lamp on a night stand." Halfrek held her hand out and helped him back up to his feet. "Besides, it seemed like a wish from the depth of your heart."
Spike snorted. 'Great, I can still snort evilly. Was it an evil snort?' But he didn't ask if Halfrek thought his snorting was evil. What he asked, was: "Since when do you care what I wish anyways? Remember, I am a demon. Demons don't get wishes granted."
"Who says that? Seems I didn't get the memo…" At Spike's insisting look, the justice demon stopped giggling at her bad joke and shrugged. "I know, we are not supposed to use our powers in favour of other demons."
"Favour my ass", Spike grunted.
"But essentially, we are free in our decisions to grant wishes. And I kinda owed you one." Halfrek shrugged her dark locks behind her shoulder. "Maybe I felt a little bit guilty, being the reason for you to have become a vampire…"
"Don't flatter yourself, luv. I might have got bitten anyways, with or without you telling me zit."
"Oh, come on, William, cheer up already. To be honest with you, this kind of wish is a little bit out of my league. So it seems that the Powers That Be helped me grant this enormous favour. That means you deserved it! Isn't that great?" The justice demon was obviously very chipper about her accomplishment.
"Deserved it? What did I do to deserve such a horrible punishment?" The former vampire asked, eyes flashing angrily.
"Punishment?" Now it was Halfrek who looked aghast.
"Oh come on, you and I are the only living … living …, oh bugger, the only ones still around to have witnessed my complete and utter failure at being human." He took a deep breath. "In fact, we delved the better part of this bloody evening in the memories of my being a pathetic loser as a human."
"You were young. You never had a chance." Halfrek opened her arms: "And here I come, presenting you with something only few ever get – a second chance!"
Spike seemed not to listen to her anymore. Instead, his face fell at the pictures displayed in his mind. "Oh my god. What have I done? I am a monster!"
"William, listen to me! You are not a monster. Your body had been taken over by one…"
"And he made a good job engraving all the drastic pictures of his actions – zillions of sweet little horror movies in my brain!" Spike shuddered and started to shake again violently. He was crying. "This… this is… they want to…" he sobbed. "They are punishing me for all the torture I did…"
"Oh, for crying out loud, William, will you stop that?" Halfrek started to loose her patience. "Here, take a last sip of the whiskey." As the man in front of her started to calm down, she patted his forearm again. "There, there. So, are you ready to listen now?" As the blond-bleached ex-vampire nodded, she continued: "You have been given a second chance. You are not a monster. So don't get all broody-moody, but make something out of your life. And open your wallet already!"
"What? My wallet?"
"Yeah!" Halfrek sighed at his incomprehension. "I want to know your last name, how old you are, where you live, the whole piñada!"
Realisation dawned on Spike's face. He reached into his back pocket and produced a wallet: "Hey, there was more money in there before!"
"Honest money?"
"Noo…" And he started to sort out the cards. "Hey, credit card. Cool, never had one. Driver's license. William Caine? What kind of name is that? Hm. Cute picture. This is what I look like?" He handed the small plastic card to Halfrek, who nodded approvingly.
"Anything else?"
"Airplane boarding pass – oh, just flew in this night!, receipt of a locker at the bus station, library card… great, I am still a book-loving poof!"
Halfrek snatched the wallet away. "A poof who is working out, obviously!" She tossed the membership card of the more prestigious of the two fitness clubs Sunnydale harboured over the table. Spike's face lightened slightly, while the justice demon scanned the wallet for further clues. "Hm. Nothing else… Oh, yes, here! Business cards from … UCSD?
"University College of Sunnydale", Spike answered without missing a beat. Both heads shot up.
"I am at the university?"
"A teacher. Guest professor from London School of Economics, for New History, it says here." Halfrek seemed to be very pleased with her findings.
"But I am pretty sure that there is a break right now", Spike mused. "Red… Willow told me."
"Probably you just start after the break then. So no one will wonder where you came from, or why you started your courses a couple of weeks late. The Powers That Be have arranged everything just perfectly!" She smiled, completely content with the outcome of the evening. Her face fell when she looked at the former vampire again.
Spike obviously didn't share her contentment. Instead, his eyes were wide with horror again.
"In the name of D'Hoffryn, are you never satisfied? What is it now?"
"My… my… my ad…" Spike stuttered, unable to complete the sentence.
"Your address?" ventured Halfrek.
The blond-bleached man in front of her could only nod. All of a sudden, the last remaining vampire confidence seemed to have been drained from his body, much like he had drained his victims' blood when he had still been the demon. Now on the contrary, he didn't look like a demon. He looked very young and vulnerable.
The address read "Revello Drive 1637". Buffy's address. The Summers' home.
"Oh, oh", was all that Halfrek managed to say.
"I can't go there. No chance in hell. Somebody stake me already!"
"You are not a vampire anymore!"
"Oh bloody hell!" And Spike remembered very vividly the conversation when Buffy had told him she would take in a boarding guest, a professor from England, earning a little money on the side with the rent. "Teaches history", she had pretty much spat out the word, her nose wrinkling slightly. "Well, perhaps I can learn from him…" And she had already looked bored.
"Cec… Hallie, I can't go there. First of all, she wouldn't believe me. And second, even if she did, she could never love me. And it would break my heart. If it weren't broken already…"
The justice demon reached over the table and touched Spike's breast. "Seems pretty whole and working, if you ask me." She smiled. "The Powers That Be arranged all this for a reason. No need to fight it. Besides, you don't even know if you like her, now that you are human."
He looked unconvinced, but Halfrek knew no mercy. Instead, she rose. "Get up, William. Time to tackle your new life."
He stood beside her, still a little bit insecure and wobbly in his legs. In silence, they approached the front door. Just when Halfrek opened it, Spike shrunk back into the shadowy entrance area of the bar like a beaten dog. The justice demon looked at him as if he had gone nuts.
"Sunrise!" He pointed out.
"And you are, for the umpteenth time, no longer a vampire. So get your ass out of this sorry excuse for a hole in the wall and let's get going already!"
The couple ventured through town by cab. Spike's DeSoto had disappeared together with his vampire self. They picked up his bags at the bus station.
"How can one travel with so many books?", asked Halfrek while Spike could only grunt under the load of the heavy bags. 'So much for vampire strength', he thought. 'High time to hit that gym and do some free weight training!'
Then he dropped Halfrek at her hotel. She gave him a peck on the cheek and the thumbs up. "You will be fine, William", and the taxi sped off into the morning traffic again. He was grateful for every red light that stopped them.
When he got off at Revello Drive, a suitcase in each hand and the bag with books over his shoulder, his heart was beating so fast he feared he would die of a heart attack right then and there. But then he felt the morning sun shining on his back, showing him the Summers' house in daylight for the first time ever, and he suddenly felt surprisingly calm. 'Home', he thought.
A noise at the front door made him look up.
"Buffy!" It was unmistakenly Dawn who was shouting for her sister. "I think our rent… ah, guest has just arri…" She had opened the door in the process and turned to face the person who was standing there. Her mouth dropped open and she was lost for words.
Buffy came down the stairs, a smile plastered on her lips. "Sorry for the shouting, Mister Cai… Spike?"
And then both sisters could only stare at the former vampire who stood calmly at their front door, in full sunlight, packed with suitcases and bags, and not bursting into flames.
"Spike! What… how… why…" Buffy suddenly stopped her babbling. "The Gem of Amara. I thought Angel had destroyed it. But you must have found a way… You double-scheming, blood-sucking, hell-raising, …"
The ex-vampire smirked and shook his head. "Now, now, Miss Summers. We will have none of the name-calling in front of the Nibblet."
The nibblet, also called Dawn, had recovered. "What's with the suitcases, Spike? Want to mo…?"
"Dawn!" Buffy shouted. She had Tara do the de-invite spell just a couple of days ago and didn't want to go through the stinky herbal ritual again.
"Yes, Dawn, I want to move in." He started searching for something in his book bag. He had seen a letter there from UC Sunnydale that informed him about the kind offer of former student Buffy Summers to lease him a room at a very reasonable price, breakfast included.
"Oh no. You think you can barge in here, only because I have incinerated your crypt. But that was entirely your fault. You shouldn't have harboured these eggs in the first place. So deal with the consequences!" Buffy shoved Dawn aside and was about to slam the door in his face when he placed a foot inside the house.
Buffy took a deep breath. "How did you do that? Why is the de-invite spell not working?"
"What spell is not working?" asked Willow who emerged from the kitchen, only to mirror the earlier reaction of the Summers' sisters, gaping at Spike as if he were the 8th wonder of the world.
"The Gem of Amara. Or something similar", Buffy informed her. "And it obviously overrules the de-invite spell. We have to do research, and fast." With this, she turned back to Spike, let her fist connect with his nose and knocked him out.
Spike stared at her, his eyes widening with fear: "What? No!" And his body began to shake convulsively. "OOOWWW!"
"I was shooting for a 'thank you very much', but a mere 'thanks' would have been just as fine!" Halfrek tossed her locks back. "That's what we justice demons get for all the trouble we are going through these days. Unthankful crowd…"
"Justice demon?" Spike managed to grind out between convulsions. "Vengeance demon seems to be more appropriate after aaaa…." He howled again in pain. And then, suddenly, he fell face first on the floor beneath the table.
"William…", Halfrek had turned him onto his back and patted his face lightly.
The bartender had come over. "Too mucha drink, eh? Did polish that bottle rightaff, dinn't he? What a shame – fella should know whena stop, especially when with a lady!"
"Why, thank you!" Halfrek rearranged her curls, pleased by the compliment. "Could I have some water, please?"
The bartender nodded and went off. Within a minute he was back with a bucket of ice water and a staple of paper towels.
As soon as she put one ice-water-soaked paper towel on Spike's front, he came to. "Ah!" He stared at Halfrek for a moment before recognition dawned.
"Bloody hell, Cec… ah, Halfrek, what did you do that for?" He immediately gasped for breath as if just having run a marathon. He had forgotten that breathing now didn't just help him to smoke. It had become a life-insuring necessity again.
"You wished. I grant wishes. You do the maths."
Spike sat up tentatively and touched his breast. Something in there hurt incredibly. It was his heart, trying to get back to rhythmical beating after over a century of silence. It seemed awfully loud to Spike. "I wished?", he asked, dumbfounded. "What the fuck did I wish for?"
"You expressed the wish to be human", Halfrek informed him, beaming at him.
"No I didn't!"
"Yes you did. Beats me why, but that was your wish."
Spike sat up on the floor. He remained silent for a couple of minutes, trying hard to remember the conversation he had had with the demoness just a moment ago. Then realisation dawned: "Oh, damn you, Halfrek, I said sometimes. Some. Times. Which part of the word 'sometimes' didn't you understand?"
"Sorry, we Justice Demons are not that sophisticated. You cannot switch humanity on and off like a lamp on a night stand." Halfrek held her hand out and helped him back up to his feet. "Besides, it seemed like a wish from the depth of your heart."
Spike snorted. 'Great, I can still snort evilly. Was it an evil snort?' But he didn't ask if Halfrek thought his snorting was evil. What he asked, was: "Since when do you care what I wish anyways? Remember, I am a demon. Demons don't get wishes granted."
"Who says that? Seems I didn't get the memo…" At Spike's insisting look, the justice demon stopped giggling at her bad joke and shrugged. "I know, we are not supposed to use our powers in favour of other demons."
"Favour my ass", Spike grunted.
"But essentially, we are free in our decisions to grant wishes. And I kinda owed you one." Halfrek shrugged her dark locks behind her shoulder. "Maybe I felt a little bit guilty, being the reason for you to have become a vampire…"
"Don't flatter yourself, luv. I might have got bitten anyways, with or without you telling me zit."
"Oh, come on, William, cheer up already. To be honest with you, this kind of wish is a little bit out of my league. So it seems that the Powers That Be helped me grant this enormous favour. That means you deserved it! Isn't that great?" The justice demon was obviously very chipper about her accomplishment.
"Deserved it? What did I do to deserve such a horrible punishment?" The former vampire asked, eyes flashing angrily.
"Punishment?" Now it was Halfrek who looked aghast.
"Oh come on, you and I are the only living … living …, oh bugger, the only ones still around to have witnessed my complete and utter failure at being human." He took a deep breath. "In fact, we delved the better part of this bloody evening in the memories of my being a pathetic loser as a human."
"You were young. You never had a chance." Halfrek opened her arms: "And here I come, presenting you with something only few ever get – a second chance!"
Spike seemed not to listen to her anymore. Instead, his face fell at the pictures displayed in his mind. "Oh my god. What have I done? I am a monster!"
"William, listen to me! You are not a monster. Your body had been taken over by one…"
"And he made a good job engraving all the drastic pictures of his actions – zillions of sweet little horror movies in my brain!" Spike shuddered and started to shake again violently. He was crying. "This… this is… they want to…" he sobbed. "They are punishing me for all the torture I did…"
"Oh, for crying out loud, William, will you stop that?" Halfrek started to loose her patience. "Here, take a last sip of the whiskey." As the man in front of her started to calm down, she patted his forearm again. "There, there. So, are you ready to listen now?" As the blond-bleached ex-vampire nodded, she continued: "You have been given a second chance. You are not a monster. So don't get all broody-moody, but make something out of your life. And open your wallet already!"
"What? My wallet?"
"Yeah!" Halfrek sighed at his incomprehension. "I want to know your last name, how old you are, where you live, the whole piñada!"
Realisation dawned on Spike's face. He reached into his back pocket and produced a wallet: "Hey, there was more money in there before!"
"Honest money?"
"Noo…" And he started to sort out the cards. "Hey, credit card. Cool, never had one. Driver's license. William Caine? What kind of name is that? Hm. Cute picture. This is what I look like?" He handed the small plastic card to Halfrek, who nodded approvingly.
"Anything else?"
"Airplane boarding pass – oh, just flew in this night!, receipt of a locker at the bus station, library card… great, I am still a book-loving poof!"
Halfrek snatched the wallet away. "A poof who is working out, obviously!" She tossed the membership card of the more prestigious of the two fitness clubs Sunnydale harboured over the table. Spike's face lightened slightly, while the justice demon scanned the wallet for further clues. "Hm. Nothing else… Oh, yes, here! Business cards from … UCSD?
"University College of Sunnydale", Spike answered without missing a beat. Both heads shot up.
"I am at the university?"
"A teacher. Guest professor from London School of Economics, for New History, it says here." Halfrek seemed to be very pleased with her findings.
"But I am pretty sure that there is a break right now", Spike mused. "Red… Willow told me."
"Probably you just start after the break then. So no one will wonder where you came from, or why you started your courses a couple of weeks late. The Powers That Be have arranged everything just perfectly!" She smiled, completely content with the outcome of the evening. Her face fell when she looked at the former vampire again.
Spike obviously didn't share her contentment. Instead, his eyes were wide with horror again.
"In the name of D'Hoffryn, are you never satisfied? What is it now?"
"My… my… my ad…" Spike stuttered, unable to complete the sentence.
"Your address?" ventured Halfrek.
The blond-bleached man in front of her could only nod. All of a sudden, the last remaining vampire confidence seemed to have been drained from his body, much like he had drained his victims' blood when he had still been the demon. Now on the contrary, he didn't look like a demon. He looked very young and vulnerable.
The address read "Revello Drive 1637". Buffy's address. The Summers' home.
"Oh, oh", was all that Halfrek managed to say.
"I can't go there. No chance in hell. Somebody stake me already!"
"You are not a vampire anymore!"
"Oh bloody hell!" And Spike remembered very vividly the conversation when Buffy had told him she would take in a boarding guest, a professor from England, earning a little money on the side with the rent. "Teaches history", she had pretty much spat out the word, her nose wrinkling slightly. "Well, perhaps I can learn from him…" And she had already looked bored.
"Cec… Hallie, I can't go there. First of all, she wouldn't believe me. And second, even if she did, she could never love me. And it would break my heart. If it weren't broken already…"
The justice demon reached over the table and touched Spike's breast. "Seems pretty whole and working, if you ask me." She smiled. "The Powers That Be arranged all this for a reason. No need to fight it. Besides, you don't even know if you like her, now that you are human."
He looked unconvinced, but Halfrek knew no mercy. Instead, she rose. "Get up, William. Time to tackle your new life."
He stood beside her, still a little bit insecure and wobbly in his legs. In silence, they approached the front door. Just when Halfrek opened it, Spike shrunk back into the shadowy entrance area of the bar like a beaten dog. The justice demon looked at him as if he had gone nuts.
"Sunrise!" He pointed out.
"And you are, for the umpteenth time, no longer a vampire. So get your ass out of this sorry excuse for a hole in the wall and let's get going already!"
The couple ventured through town by cab. Spike's DeSoto had disappeared together with his vampire self. They picked up his bags at the bus station.
"How can one travel with so many books?", asked Halfrek while Spike could only grunt under the load of the heavy bags. 'So much for vampire strength', he thought. 'High time to hit that gym and do some free weight training!'
Then he dropped Halfrek at her hotel. She gave him a peck on the cheek and the thumbs up. "You will be fine, William", and the taxi sped off into the morning traffic again. He was grateful for every red light that stopped them.
When he got off at Revello Drive, a suitcase in each hand and the bag with books over his shoulder, his heart was beating so fast he feared he would die of a heart attack right then and there. But then he felt the morning sun shining on his back, showing him the Summers' house in daylight for the first time ever, and he suddenly felt surprisingly calm. 'Home', he thought.
A noise at the front door made him look up.
"Buffy!" It was unmistakenly Dawn who was shouting for her sister. "I think our rent… ah, guest has just arri…" She had opened the door in the process and turned to face the person who was standing there. Her mouth dropped open and she was lost for words.
Buffy came down the stairs, a smile plastered on her lips. "Sorry for the shouting, Mister Cai… Spike?"
And then both sisters could only stare at the former vampire who stood calmly at their front door, in full sunlight, packed with suitcases and bags, and not bursting into flames.
"Spike! What… how… why…" Buffy suddenly stopped her babbling. "The Gem of Amara. I thought Angel had destroyed it. But you must have found a way… You double-scheming, blood-sucking, hell-raising, …"
The ex-vampire smirked and shook his head. "Now, now, Miss Summers. We will have none of the name-calling in front of the Nibblet."
The nibblet, also called Dawn, had recovered. "What's with the suitcases, Spike? Want to mo…?"
"Dawn!" Buffy shouted. She had Tara do the de-invite spell just a couple of days ago and didn't want to go through the stinky herbal ritual again.
"Yes, Dawn, I want to move in." He started searching for something in his book bag. He had seen a letter there from UC Sunnydale that informed him about the kind offer of former student Buffy Summers to lease him a room at a very reasonable price, breakfast included.
"Oh no. You think you can barge in here, only because I have incinerated your crypt. But that was entirely your fault. You shouldn't have harboured these eggs in the first place. So deal with the consequences!" Buffy shoved Dawn aside and was about to slam the door in his face when he placed a foot inside the house.
Buffy took a deep breath. "How did you do that? Why is the de-invite spell not working?"
"What spell is not working?" asked Willow who emerged from the kitchen, only to mirror the earlier reaction of the Summers' sisters, gaping at Spike as if he were the 8th wonder of the world.
"The Gem of Amara. Or something similar", Buffy informed her. "And it obviously overrules the de-invite spell. We have to do research, and fast." With this, she turned back to Spike, let her fist connect with his nose and knocked him out.