Chapter 15

The Plan

Sunnydale – May 21st

"What happened to Spike," someone asked at the meeting of the Scooby gang at Anya and Xander's apartment.

"Not that anyone is actually interested," mumbled Xander.

"I left him at home," Giles replied. "He's watching football and making a mess of the place, I'm sure."

"I thought it was still baseball season," said Buffy quizzically.

"Sorry," said Giles, seeing the confused Americans in his mist. "What we call football in England you call Soccer."

"So what do you call what we call football?" Buffy asked.

"Rugby," Giles replied straight-faced.

"Weird," she replied.

"I'm not sure Rugby can be considered a real sport," Xander began like he was launching into a stand-up routine. "I mean, they use terms like 'scrum.' What sport uses a term like scrum?"

"They're not listening, dear," Anya said absently as she carried in a mammoth platter of snacks. "Since this is the first official meeting of the team here at our apartment, I wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of. I take being a hostess very seriously, you know."

Everyone eyed the platter of food incredulously. There was enough to feed them for ten such meetings, assuming that they hadn't already eaten dinner (which, of course, they had). Tara, not one to hurt anyone's feelings, gamely picked up a small plate and began placing snack chips on it. "It looks wonderful," she said, and then gave everyone else 'the eye.'

"Oh," said Buffy, startled into action. "Absolutely. We gotta keep our strength up, what with fighting demons and all." Buffy grabbed several finger sandwiches and placed the plate between her and Giles. She elbowed Giles as she took one up and began to eat it. Giles did the same.

Xander reached for a sandwich, but Anya promptly slapped his wrist. "Those are for the guests," she said primly. Then she began pouring tea for everyone. "Would anyone care for some honey for their tea?"

"Please," said Giles.

"Xander, go grab the honey," she said immediately. Xander dutifully rose and went to the kitchen and began looking in the cupboards. "It's not there, sweetie," she called out to him. "Remember, you left it on the nightstand in the bedroom."

"Yeah," Xander said, turning pink. "For our evening cup of tea," he explained exaggeratedly.

"We don't drink tea at night," Anya corrected him. "Remember, you said it was for 'the land of milk and honey.'" She pointed at her chest meaningfully.

"T-M-I!" Buffy shouted, holding up a hand. Too Much Information.

"I'll just take some sugar," replied Giles demurely. "Assuming that's in the kitchen."

"Where else would it be?" Anya asked in mild bewilderment.

At the other end of the table, Willow was smiling mischievously at Tara. "Honey, huh?" was all she said, but it was enough to turn Tara bright red.

"Can we just get to the topic at hand here?" asked Buffy, trying to pull the meeting back to business while she still had some semblance of a chance to do so. Honestly, it was like pulling teeth with her friends lately. They seemed so caught up in their own personal lives. Granted, they were young and in love; they were happily coupled, which is a lot more than Buffy could ever hope for. Her relationships simply didn't work out.

First there'd been Angel, the vampire with a soul. Then there'd been Riley, the commando demon killer. Both of those had ended badly. Angel was living in L.A. now, and their last meeting had ended badly. He had basically thrown her out of the city in a fight over Faith, the other slayer. Riley had left her, too. Their last meeting hadn't been much better. However, instead of throwing her out of Sunnydale, Riley had left the country with another commando team to go hunt demons freelance.

In between there'd been a number of dates, each one worst than the last. She'd lost track of how many of her boyfriends she'd had to rescue – and at least one whom she'd had to kill after he willingly gave himself over to Spike to be turned into a vampire. He'd been suffering from a brain tumor and had hoped to forestall death by becoming one of the undead. Buffy liked to think that the tumor was the reason he'd made such a bad choice – that it had affected his faculties. That's why he had surrendered Buffy to the vampires. But deep down she thought that maybe it was her; maybe she generated that kind of spite in men.

Seeing her friends so happy was good … and painful. She wanted to be like them, part of their lives. But more and more it became clear that she was different; she was an outsider. When it came right down to it, Buffy alone was the Slayer. She did the hunting and the killing alone. Her friends couldn't be a part of that.

With the possible exception of Spike. Spike was a killer, in many ways like her. She did what she did out of duty; Spike did it out of instinct. In many ways, Buffy was simply following her instincts as well. The more she looked at the situation, the more she realized how much alike they were.

And that's why Spike wasn't here.

She'd ask Giles to leave him tucked away safely. "Let's not expose him any more than we have to," she'd said. "Besides, I don't want to invite him into Xander's place." It was a good excuse. That's why she had chosen Xander and Anya's apartment for the meeting, because it was a good reason to not have Spike here. But the real issue was that she didn't want Spike around cluttering her thinking. She needed to focus on the task at hand – finding and killing the jornikof demon.

The fact that the demon was after Spike complicated things. She couldn't hunt and kill it and protect Spike at the same time. She needed to leave him tucked away in his little hidey-hole until she could eliminate the threat. If Spike was here, he'd insist on coming with her. She couldn't fight that fight right now. So, she instead left him out of the discussion.

She needed to focus, because for the first time in a long time she was scared. This was a demon that they knew nothing about. It walked about as a human, and if not for the amulet she'd never know it until it killed her. She was starting to look at everyone with suspicion. People on the street, even her friends. What if a demon had infiltrated one of them? What if she couldn't trust anyone?

Buffy suddenly looked around. She wasn't sure how long she had been preoccupied with her own thoughts, but everyone at the table was waiting for her to begin. They were staring at her; they knew something was wrong.

"Buff, you okay?" Willow queried.

"Yeah, no big," Buffy replied. "Let's get down to business." The Slayer took a deep breath and focused back on the problem, turning her attention away from her own fear. She had to break up the problem into simpler steps. "The way I see it, we don't know nearly enough. We need more information."

"We've gone through all the books," Xander replied.

"And searched all the databases," Willow supplied.

"I've sent inquiries discretely to some other associates, but they don't know anything," Giles said. "I'm not sure how else to get more information," he concluded. Everyone around the table nodded. The mode had quickly grown somber.

"We just don't know what to do," said Xander finally. His voice was edged with desperation.

"Have some brie," Anya said, smearing the cheese on a cracker and handing it him. "Eating always helps you think," she added, smiling confidently.

Xander nibbled on the cracker. "Why do they call it 'brie', anyway? You'd think they could've come up with something a little more interesting."

"Perhaps you should go there and help them out," Giles huffed, exasperatedly.

"Wait a minute," Anya said, "that's it. See honey, I knew eating would help. Have some more."

"What's it?" Buffy asked, trying not to lose her temper. "You think we should go to a cheese factory in France?"

"No, I think you should go to San Francisco," Anya replied as if it should be obvious to everyone.

"Sweetie, you're going to have to elaborate a little," Xander said encouragingly. "Or one of us might be squashed like a bug," he added, seeing the frustration on Buffy's face.

"Congressman Green - he's on a tour right now, right?" Anya began.

"Right," everyone agreed.

"Which means he's not at his office right now," Anya continued.

"And his office is in San Francisco," Willow supplied.

"And now would be a perfect time to go there and see what we can find out about him," Buffy finished, putting the pieces together.

"A reconnaissance mission," Giles said, nodding approvingly. "Excellent. We may well find out quite a bit about this creature from surveying his surroundings."

"Let me check his schedule," said Willow, pulling out her laptop from her bag. "It's published on his web site, so this should only take a few minutes."

"What about Madame LaFusce? Do you think we should tell her what we're doing?" Tara asked.

"No," Buffy and Giles said together.

"I'm thinking we should try to keep some of our cards closer to our chest, as it were," Giles said. Although, truth be told, everyone pretty much knew he was bitter at the way he'd been treated by her.

"And I want this on a need to know basis," Buffy added. "Our enemy knows too much about us already. From this point forward, we're going to have to keep this to ourselves." Buffy looked around the table making sure everyone understood. "That means not telling anyone, including Madame LaFusce. And," she paused for emphasis, "especially not Spike."

"Um," said Willow nervously, looking up from her laptop. "That may not be so much of a problem as one might think." She glanced around, clearly afraid. "This just in off the police wire. 'Shots fired at the Brentwood apartment complex, number 5b,'"

"That's my apartment!" Giles said, half getting out of his chair.

" 'Witnesses reported several heavily armed figures chasing after a Caucasian male in a black leather trench coat, believed to have been found in an alley six blocks away.' The trench coat, not the Caucasian male." Willow paused. "There's a picture," she said meekly, turning the laptop around.

On the screen was an image of a trench coat, very much like Spike's, pinned to a barrel by a wooden stake.

Buffy was out the door before anyone else could react.