Author's Note: Imzadi, I'm sorry to say that Lindsey won't be making an appearance in this story. In the original version he did, but it just didn't work. I hope you're not too disappointed.


Chapter 2: A Slayer, an Emissary, and a Messenger

That bloody tosser threw us all out of his office while he took the call. Well, he couldn't really make me go, but I knew I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't. I let everyone go out ahead of me, but before I left, I mouthed, "Tell her about me," to him. He rolled his eyes and made a shooing motion, and I went out without knowing whether he would or not.

I paced back and forth in front of his window while he talked to her, until finally, in exasperation, he closed the blinds so we couldn't see in anymore. I growled...and then noticed the way Harm was looking at me. My conscience started nipping my ankles. I hadn't treated her very well when I became corporeal again. And even if she was a silly chit, she didn't deserve what I'd done to her.

I walked over to her desk and leaned on it. She pretended I wasn't there, busying herself with files and things. I sighed. She was going to make it difficult. "Harm, pet." Her gaze speared me like a crossbow bolt. "Did you need something? Whose office do you want to use this time?"

Uncomfortable, I dropped my eyes. "Um, about that. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done you that way." I turned my back on her shocked expression, went back across the room, and waited for Angel to finish his phone call. But before I got halfway across, I heard her mutter.

"Maybe a zebra can change his spots after all."

One side of my mouth quirked up in a lopsided grin. Perhaps this soul business wasn't so bad. Angel chose that moment to come out of his office. He didn't look happy. "Buffy and Dawn are going to try to catch the next flight out. Their plane lands around nine-thirty tonight."

"You told them?"

"Yes, I told them," he said with his face in his hand.

Huh. Would wonders never cease.

:-:

No, they wouldn't, actually. Angel asked me to wait for them in his apartment upstairs...and I did, after making a few snarky remarks about his decorator. He had the same ugly chairs in his apartment that graced the offices. And while the urn motif was interesting, I thought it only polite to point out that most people put things like flowers or the ashes of loved ones in them instead of just letting them sit on shelves, all bare and lonely. I heard him mutter something about my ashes, but since he couldn't dust me due to my delicate condition, I just grinned at him, wishing I could smoke a cigarette.

I perused his bookcases for something interesting to read while I waited. Byron, Shelley, Frost, Thoreau...No wonder he'd liked my poetry. Buncha sentimental wankers. Mood I was in, I wanted some Emily Dickinson, but...oh, look - a leather-bound, annotated, illustrated "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

I took that one down.

A couple of hours later, voices in the hallway alerted me to the fact that Angel had come back with Buffy and Dawn. I had enough time to stand up before the door burst open, and Buffy strode in and aimed a hard punch at my face. Dawn squealed in protest...until Buffy's momentum carried her through me and sent her stumbling onto the couch. Crossing my arms and shaking my head, I gave her my best smirk. "I missed you too, pet. Didn't Peaches tell you I'm a ghost?"

An interesting mix of emotions crossed her face as she picked herself up off the sofa. "Something like that came up in the conversation."

The Nibblet was crestfallen. "Does that mean I can't hug you?"

Remembering the battle with the androids, I was loathe to tell her that until I tried something out first. "Stand still, Bit. Need to concentrate..." A delighted smile wreathed her features as she felt my arms wrap around her, but changed to puzzlement as she tried to return the gesture, but her arms went right through me and she found herself clutching air instead. "It's...complicated."

"I can tell." She sat herself on the couch next to her big sis, and Angel and Fred followed them into the room. As they found seats, the story started to come out in bits and pieces...Buffy telling about the Final Battle over the Hellmouth - conveniently leaving out the part where she'd said she loved me - me, telling about the final minute or so; Angel talking about how I'd come back when he'd opened the package with the amulet in it; and finally Fred telling about the efforts to get me corporeal again and the Box of Flashy that had finally succeeded, if only temporarily.

I met Angel's eyes across the room, and we made a tacit agreement to gloss over what had happened in the opera house. No sense in regaling Buffy and Dawn with everything that had gone on there. Angel told them that the Cup of Torment was a fake, and we left it at that. Fred lifted an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged a little. Seemed like we were all leaving out important parts. Getting to be a pattern, that was.

And so was getting pulled through the floor into the basement. I grumpily picked myself up off the cement and surveyed my surroundings. They hadn't changed much since Pavayne had played his little game with me. "I bloody hate this place," I muttered. Buffy's expression had been priceless, though. That was some consolation.

"I don't like it much either," said a female voice. Pretty, in a severe sort of way, wearing a business suit that looked feminine on her and a scarf that didn't really match around her neck, she stuck her hand out. "Lilah Morgan."

I held my palms up. "I'm a ghost. I can't shake hands. What do you want with me? Come to suck me into Hell? Played that tune already, luv."

She smiled a little. "No, Spike. I'm here to open a dialogue with you."

I crossed my arms. "Really. And who do you represent?"

"The Senior Partners."

Curiouser and curiouser. "And what would they be needin' with me, then? They've got that Eve bint as their liaison; what do they want me for?"

"This is her first field assignment. I'm supposed to make sure everything goes smoothly and that she's not screwing it up too badly."

"And what makes them think I'll feel like cooperating?" I was getting rather bored with Ultimate Evil thinking I was its toy. "Like I told Angel not too long ago, I don't play for that team anymore."

"They can make you corporeal again. Permanently."

That stopped me for a second. "Very attractive carrot you've got there. Where's the stick?"

"No stick. Just report to me every once in awhile on the goings-on."

I scoffed. "There's always a stick. F'rinstance...they've got you on some kind of tether. What's their hold on you?"

"I signed a contract. Enforceable in perpetuity."

"Sold your soul to the sodding devil, did you?" I shook my head at her. "You can't sell what you don't own, luv."

For the briefest of instants, an expression of wild hope flashed across her face...then was wiped away as if it had never been. If I hadn't been looking directly at her when it happened, I would have missed it altogether. Interesting. But the cynical mask slipped smoothly back into place, and she said, "You've been watching too many Brendan Frasier movies."

I had no idea what she was talking about. "Yeah, whatever. Why you, coming to me?"

"The Senior Partners feel that, since I have experience with the folks upstairs, I'll be able to assess the information you give me better than a stranger would. And since you and I don't have any history together, we don't have any baggage to overcome."

"Uh-huh." I was still skeptical. "And what kind of contract do I have to sign - enforceable in perpetuity?"

"Hard to make you sign a contract when you don't have any blood."

"There's that. All the same, I think I'll pass. I trust Freddi and her big brain more than I trust the Senior Partners and whatever they may think they owe me when all is said and done. I don't much feel like spying on my friends for some evil pie-in-the-sky reward."

"Your friends? What friends? You and Angel hate each other, and you don't even know the rest of those clowns."

"I know them well enough."

"Huh. You think you do. You have no idea what dark deeds our heroes can get up to when they think they have to."

"No? Wes shot his Da when he threatened Fred - or the person he thought was his Da, anyway. I've heard some interesting stories around here. Not sure you could say anything that would shock me, pet."

Her lip curled. "You might be surprised. However..." She sighed. "I'm not authorized to tell you any of that. What I am authorized to do is have you discuss this offer with one person." Her eyes slid away from my face momentarily when she said that, and it made me wonder if she was playing a game of her own. For a lawyer, she didn't lie very well - at least, she didn't lie very well to me.

"Do I get to pick the person?"

"No. You can discuss it with Wes. No one else. Anyone else hears about it and all bets are off."

"Why the Watcher?"

She gave me an enigmatic smile. "Why don't you ask him that?"

I took the elevator back upstairs, and they all stared at me when I walked through the doors - literally- into Angel's penthouse. "What was that all about?" Angel asked.

"Sorry. Not allowed to say."

"Spike, if you're keeping secrets again..."

"I am, but not just because of me, you git. I'm sure that when the time is right, I'll be permitted to tell all. For now, no. At least, not with anyone in this room. Has Wes gone home for the day?"

"Does anyone around here ever go home?" Angel asked the ceiling.

"Well, not very often. I need to toddle off and find him. If you'll excuse me..."

"Spike, we need to talk," Buffy said.

"Yes, we do, pet. But I'm sure you're tired from your flight, so let's just save that talk for tomorrow, all right?"

"Okay," she said reluctantly.

:-:

I found the Watcher in his office, looking over one of his ever-present big leather-bound books. He looked up when I made a throat-clearing noise. He seemed unhappy to see me. "Spike. Come to call me 'Head Boy' again?"

"Are you bloody kidding? After what you did to the android you thought was your Da? That took balls, Wes. I can admit I was wrong about you." After all, Wes wasn't Angel. I didn't have any issues with the Watcher.

"Thanks ever so," he said drily. "Something I can help you with? Or are you just doing general haunting right now?"

I perched on the edge of his desk. "I just had a very interesting conversation, with a woman named Lilah Morgan."

He went extremely still. "Really. And what, exactly, was that conversation about?"

"Apparently this is Eve's first field assignment. So they want me and Lilah to act as a sort of liaison, I suppose, make sure what she's telling them is accurate. But she said the only person I could tell was you. So. Here I am." I explained what she had told me, and mentioned the expression on her face when I'd said that she couldn't sell what she didn't own.

His countenance got even more pensive at that. "I tried to burn her contract. It didn't work."

"Why would you...Oh." Wasn't that interesting? I wondered just what had made the good Watcher and the evil lawyer come together in that way, decided that Wes probably wasn't going to tell me, and dropped it. "So, what do you think?"

"I think," he said, "that it can't hurt to give the Senior Partners another perspective on what we're doing here."

We exchanged thoughtful looks as we considered the possibilities.

:-:

"Bugger it," I thought to myself. Why the hell had I come here? The music was good, but I couldn't drink, couldn't play pool, couldn't smoke...This bar was a rather nasty reminder of what I'd lost, again. I was just about to get up and leave when a man sat down in the chair opposite me at my table. He was a bit shorter than average, with short brown hair,dressed in shapeless brown pants, a shirt Xander would have been ashamed to wear, and a jacket that didn't match the rest of his ensemble at all.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked with a heavy Irish accent.

"I was just leaving."

"I'd rather you didn't, Spike."

I had half-risen, but sat back down when he said my name. "All right. You've got my attention. Who the bloody hell are you?"

"My name is Doyle. The Powers That Be sent me to you with a message."

"Yeah? What's that? That I'm doomed to be surrounded by bloody Irish louts for the rest of my unlife?"

He didn't react to the insult. "You're supposed to be the new Champion," he said, without a trace of irony.

"Really?" I barked out a laugh. "You're a bit confused on that one, then. I'm nobody's Champion. I can't even touch anything." I put my hand up through the bottom of the table, and waggled my fingers at him, to demonstrate.

He leaned back. "Hey, I'm just a messenger, here to do one last thing. It's up to you what you do with the information."

"Well, I think you got your bloody wires crossed, then, boy. That's Angel's gig, not mine. I've done my share of world-saving, and if it's all the same to you, I think you can go bugger yourself. Good night." I turned my back on him and walked out.


TBC...