"What are you reading, Love?"
Christina set the book aside discreetly. "Nothing very important."
Spike sauntered over to her enclosed table. "Been catching you more and more often in here, Kitten. Once upon a time you said books meant nothing to you anymore."
"Once upon a manic-depressive time," she countered smoothly, smiling. "So what do you really want, Sire."
"First off, for you to stop calling me sire. It's bloody annoying."
She laughed. "What else."
"Been talking to Angelus--"
"And what shall I tell the workers we need fixing tomorrow? I hope it's not the photo-sensative windows from the skylight. Do you know how hard that is to find?"
"Actual talking, Kitten, with words and everything." Her face said, Oh, really. "Peaches says you used to hear stuff from the spirits. Premonitions or the like."
Christina scowled. "Hardly. They were messages from familiar spirits, a kind of lesser demon. They knew what I was, a Slayer, and something of my future. I'm sure they wanted to taunt me with it."
"So they lied to you."
"No. They start off telling the truth then they lie to you, twisting the truth. By that time, though, you're so deep in their mudo crudoff it might as well be Gospel. I never let them get that close."
Spike sighed. "Thought you might have been something like Dru."
"No, Druscilla had the gift of Prophecy long before the Church started recognizing such things. Then she became a demon, but a gift's a gift . . ." she shrugged. "I used to get flashes from the familiars every now and then, a kind of temptation, but the moment I became a vampire --" she snapped, "gone. What's the use of torturing a fellow demon? Not much I guess."
Christina stood. Standing on tiptoe she wrapped her arms around Spike's unyielding neck and brushed a kiss on his nose. "I'm going out." She slowly disengaged herself, "Don't wait up."
With reflexes just out of her own sphere, Spike enveloped her in a tight embrace and kissed her properly. Grinding against her meaningfully he murmured, "I will." He fingered her quickly growing hair. The inch wide white edge hung, flipped up, just under her ear.
Christina slipped from his grasp and bounded from the room, reminding him of a frightened deer or an overzealous child. Curious still at what she had been reading Spike picked up the old leatherbound book she had been fishing through. Apparently she had been studying it for some time because the book naturally fell open to a number of very definite pages when he opened it. One very definite set struck his fancy in particular.
The entire hall was utterly silent when she entered. Only Lukas moved to greet his long-missing mistress. Grace followed closely behind -- Derek and Katie were still out looking for their mistress in the cool of the evening.
"Miss me?"
"Mother."
Christina looked up from her fingers tangled in the kneeling vampire's very brown hair -- nearly the color of her skin -- to her daughter's round face. "Honey." Her smile was beatific -- and frightening.
"Spike's been looking for you."
"Yes I have."
Concern etched into every line of Christina's face at the sight of him. Shirtless and barefoot, his hair was in a tangled disarray and in need of at least a trim. Both finger- and toenails were caked with dirt and as he approached Christina could smell that he had foregone bathing for at least three days. She had only been gone five.
"You look like so much walked in mudo crudoff, Sire."
Faster than most of the eyes around them could follow, he was in Christina's face, game-faced and snarling. "Do not 'Sire' me, Gemini." More angry than he knew what to do with, Spike found that he had already unbuckled his belt even as he thought about it. Whipping it out of the belt loops with a sickeningly loud swish with one hand, he drew Christina's hands foreward with the other. A small hot pink and black koala bear was in one. Snarling he snatched it out of her hand and gave it to Grace.
"Raspberry?" The girl stared at the beloved stuffed animal with wrinkled brow. "But how? He lives at Gran'ma's house."
Spike was leading Christina down toward the kitchen and the basement stairs when she called back to her daughter and childe, "I'm sorry Honey, darling, but Gran'ma's dead. I think I might have killed her."
"What?!" Grace ran after her mother. Vampire or not she loved her grandmother dearly, preferring to forget the old woman existed than try to reconcile the feelings.
"She saw me." Spike yanked her along. Down they were going, to the place reserved for playing with food. "I think I gave her heart attack. Maybe 'cause she thinks I've been dead for twenty years!" A terrible laughter rose up from the dark.
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