Chapter 16

It took a quarter of an hour for Fred to tell her tale to the group assembled in Michael Wight's living room. When she finished, they continued to stare at her in dumbfounded silence.

"Well...'Balls of fire,' said the monkey as he slid down the flagpole," Michael finally managed.

"It's not forever," Fred insisted again. "Just until we can figure out...something else," she finished lamely.

"And until we do, you're gonna time-share yourself with a big phantom Illyria," Gunn intoned.

"Is she looking out at us now? Hi!" Thu leaned forward and waved in Fred's face as if it was a security camera.

Fred sighed. "Not as far as I know. She agreed to tell me if she wants to lurk. And whenever she's at the wheel, I'll be lurking - that sounds kinda trashy, doesn't it, like I'm crawlin' around in the neighbors' bushes - anyway, I won't be knocked into that godawful void again, and she says she won't want to drive me that often- "

"Only on Sunday afternoons and to do the marketing," Spike muttered glumly. He sat slumped on the edge of a sofa with his elbows resting on his knees and a look of resignation on his face. Beside him, Kay studied the crude sketch of the Old One that Fred had drawn for them.

"I can't help but feel sympathy for her, though," she said thoughtfully. "If my only two options were to live as a shade or be put into the body of a gerbil, say, or an oyster; to never be my true human form again..."

"Well, the shade bit's no bloody picnic; I can vouch for that."

"Fred, you're positive you can't contact Illyria unless she initiates it?" Angel halted in the midst of pacing the room.

"I don't think so, not at this early stage of the game. But with practice we may be able to improve our symbiosis. It could be sort of interesting, actually; it's been a while since I've gotten to work on a puzzle like this." The young physicist's face began to brighten. "Just think what I could learn from her - time-travel, alternate universes..."

"Places to look for a body of her very own..." Angel reminded her.

"With no guarantee that she wouldn't revert back to her old nation-conquering ways..." Gunn added.

"I know, I know..." Fred fiddled with the hem of her blouse uncomfortably. "Look, let's just try it this way for now and see how it goes. Lord knows we've done weirder things."

"Paloma ate a mouse once," Thu offered.

The clump of booted footsteps crossing the porch brought everyone's heads up. "That's probably Ronnie Osterberg," Michael said. "He's bringing over a toy that's suspected of demonic possession."

He rose and opened the front door to a heavyset man in a policeman's uniform. The officer's face was pale. He thrust a clear plastic bag at Michael, holding it by the corner and at arm's length. Inside the bag was a Fisher-Price Little Wooden Person. "Here," he said quickly.

Michael took the bag and looked at Osterberg with concern. "Are you all right, Ronnie?"

Osterberg nodded. "Just glad to be rid of it. About halfway over here I heard the goddamn bag crinkle all by itself. I pulled over and carried it the rest of the way on foot. No way in hell I was gonna stay shut up in a car with it. If it hadn't been broad daylight on a busy street I'd probably a' just left both it and the car there 'til morning." He glanced through the doorway and noted the roomful of people. "Tell all these folks to be careful. Don't go in a room with it by yourself." He turned and hurried off the porch steps and back down to the sunlit world of lawnmowers and driveway basketball.

Michael closed the door and placed the bag on the coffee table. It was stout; the type of heavy plastic bag that bedspreads and ready-made draperies were sold in. Its zippered seal was encrusted with a white, crumbly paste. In its far corner was the toy figurine, barely one and a half inches tall and one inch wide, consisting of a round wooden ball attached to a round wooden cylinder. The cylinder-body was green. The ball-head was pink. Eight tiny brushstrokes of paint formed its hairdo, two dots its eyes, a turned-down curve its nose, and a turned-up curve its mouth. No arms, no legs, no hands or feet.

"That's cold," Gunn said sadly. "Makin' Little Wooden People do evil. Man, I played with these when I was a kid."

"So did I," Kay replied. "They're all big and plastic nowadays. I had the airport and the amusement park and everything. I think they even made a Sesame Street Little Wooden Mr. Hooper."

"Could we...you know, get back to the evil part?" Angel asked patiently.

Michael continued. "The paste on the zipper is Communion wafers ground up and mixed with holy water. The toy belongs to a local woman who'd been fooling around with a Ouija board - Maxine Lopez," he interjected in response to Thu's wide-eyed "Who?" expression. "Something began replying to her questions with the board's planchette a few weeks ago. It claimed to be the ghost of a lost child and asked if it could live in the toy. Maxine felt sorry for the 'child' and agreed."

"And gave it a name, too, I suppose." Spike rolled his eyes.

"Naturally," Michael sighed. "A classic case: demon beguiles sympathetic human into inviting it in and assigning it a personality, then proceeds to take control of the household. It didn't help that the Lopez family was unhappy anyway - a son failing school, rumors of an affair, that sort of thing - Possession demons are typically more powerful in environments where there's constant turmoil. It wasn't long before the usual unsettling noises and visions started up, and furniture began rearranging itself, and then physical attacks by forces nobody could see. And at each occurrence this toy would be found in the room somewhere."

"How are the Lopezes doing now?" Gunn asked.

"Gone. They packed up and fled town, leaving us literally holding the bag."

"So what do we do with the little wooden guy? Burn it?"

"I'm not sure yet. The entity doesn't have a physical form as far as we know, but it seems to be able to bump things around anyway. Which makes it harder to handle than the incorporeals with no physical capabilities at all."

At Thu's growing look of confusion, Paloma spoke up. "There are some evil spirits whose only control over anything is the power of suggestion. They can't move or physically affect stuff themselves; they don't even have an electrical charge. They have to talk someone else into doing things for them. So they look for someone who's mentally unstable, or emotionally fucked up; people who're really scared, angry, unhappy, unsure of themselves...and then they sidle up to 'em and start dicking with their minds. Convince 'em of all kinds of stupid shit. An' if that person's fucked up enough, he'll believe it." She looked over at Spike and Angel. "Nothin' personal."

"Holy crap," Thu murmured.

Paloma waved her hand contemptuously. "Yeah, those assholes are full of themselves. 'I'm the Greatest Evil,' 'I'm Original Evil,' 'I'm Sin Incarnate.' Some of them can mimic dead people, but it's just a visual trick; your hand will pass right through them."

"The Lopezes' priest sealed the bag up," Dilip said. "I'll throw as much containment magic as I can at it, too. But I think we should stay up in shifts of three or four people tonight to keep watch. And we should all sleep in the same room."

"I hope the Lopezes have sense enough to do the same," Gunn commented dolefully, "In case this thing decided to follow them instead of the doll."

Michael's house was old and large, with a wrap-around porch and tall, fragrant hedges. In the gloaming, Fred followed the odor of cigarette smoke around the side of the building to the dim cave between hedge and house, where an orange, glowing speck hovered in the darkness.

"Spike?"

"'M right here, Love."

He crushed out the cig and drew her up against him, wrapping his arms around her from behind and leaning back against the wall. Up and down the block streetlights and porchlights blinked on; a dog barked; children's voices rose and fell as they moved their play toward the safety of indoors. He squeezed Fred gently and listened to the sounds, and to other sounds that were beyond her hearing range. His mind drifted back to another neighborhood, with another house in which another little girl once lived, and another young woman.

Thu's so much like Dawn used to be. Loud-mouthed, ridiculous, good-hearted. I miss you, Niblet. I wish you hadn't grown to hate me.

He pulled himself back into the present and listened to Fred's steady, quiet breathing.

"It'll work out," she whispered. "Illyria and I. We'll work it out. Don't worry."

Spike inwardly shook his head. He didn't care for the Illyria arrangement one damn bit, but his lady was clever; she knew what she was about. They stood in silence again, and Fred made only soft moaning noises when he lifted her skirt and entered her from behind. He turned her so that she could brace herself against the wall and took her slowly, prolonging the pleasure for them both.

In the darkened dining room window above them, four Little Wooden People looked out through the glass.