March 18, 2001
Logan had come to the Magic Box, ostensibly for his own research in Max's eyes, but was actually working on the current Sunnydale problem…and laughing at Buffy.
"Honestly, Buffy," Giles was saying, "I don't understand how you managed to get so hung over."
"Me neither," she replied, looking up at him pathetically from where she was resting her head on the table. "I'd only drank a quarter of a glass of whisky. That's it, I swear."
Giles frowned as Logan's laughter picked up. "You shouldn't have had anything to drink. You're underage."
"Max and I were talking…"
"Buffy," Logan interrupted. "Was your glass missing the same quarter, the entire time?"
Buffy frowned and concentrated on the night before. "Now that I think about it, I sipped quite a bit, but never had to refill. That bitch! She set me up, didn't she?"
Logan grinned cheekily. "Yup."
"I swear, when I get home I—"
Giles sighed loudly, breaking off Buffy's tirade. "If you don't mind putting off your quest for revenge for a few days, perhaps we could resume the fight for evil?"
"Do we have anything to resume, Giles? I mean, the last time we heard from the monster of the week, he was still munching on one person." Willow looked around at the group, making sure she hadn't missed something.
"Well, it still seems to be satisfied with the same young man from the fraternity. They found a second arm this morning."
Xander raised his hand slightly, as in habit. "Um…I hate to ask, but why does this thingamamonster seem to be getting all his jollies on one person? Don't these things usually get their rocks off munching entire groups of pledges? Why did the Initiative program this doohickey for solo play?"
"I don't know, sometimes, and they didn't," Anya answered, snapping some gum.
All eyes turned to her. "Care to explain, my darling?" Xander asked.
"Well, there are certain monsters who simply like to savor the kill, to stretch out the person-eating as long as possible. Mostly product-loyalty, but—"
"Anya. Not the eating part. The Initiative part." Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
"Oh, that. I was bored and went by the old Initiative hidden entrance last night. Well, it's been sealed off since our last visit. The grass is one solid…what's the word? Clod? Swath? Anyway, there's no seam. It's all grown together. Closed. Kaput. Nothing's going on there." There was complete silence as she finished up. She scowled. "What? I can be useful, too."
Giles, although rather surprised at her foresight, gave her a pleased smile. "Of course you are, Anya. None of us ever thought otherwise."
Xander shot the others a quick, guilty look to make sure they didn't disagree.
"So, if it wasn't the Initiative," Buffy stood quickly and leaned on the table as the world spun. "Shit, I swear as soon as I'm not hung over, I'm killing her. If it wasn't the Initiative, what do we really have here? An Initiative-ish baddie. Kinda looks like Adam, without the human or machine bits. But, why is it so…so…?"
"Primitive?" Tara added. "That picture that the newspaper caught, you know, the one that was later re-labeled as an alligator? It didn't look like that Adam did. Seamless."
Willow picked up the train of thought. "Raw, primitive. Like a…an early experiment. It makes sense. All good scientists - hell, even the mediocre ones - have preliminary work. It makes sense that the Initiative would have some early projects, just to make sure that the big one would turn out right."
"So this early work," Buffy continued, "or pre-Adam – hell, let's just call it Bob for lack of a better name – Bob was made as a prequel to the big show. Bob pretty much sucked, and they what? Set it out with the trash?"
Giles pondered the new conjectures. "It would make sense. A failed experiment would have no use. It would be disposed of. It's very possible that, assuming that those in charge of the experiment failed to properly dispose of…Bob. Someone may have gotten a hold of it. Decided to use it for their own nefarious deeds."
The table went silent. Nobody dared to say the words.
"I assume you have some psycho in mind?" Logan asked with an arched eyebrow.
"We do. But this really isn't her style," Buffy pointed out. "She's usually preferred to do the dirty work herself, as long as none of it gets under her nails. Why let some garbage-dump reject have all of the fun?"
Willow sat up quickly, as though a steel rod had been jammed in her spine. "Because she's still hurting! She hasn't recovered from the last fight we've had! Giles, Glory's left us alone for more than a month, and this is the first thing she's throwing at us."
"It's like she doesn't want us to relax, that she wants to show us even though she's down, she's not totally down for the count." Buffy stood and paced. "Okay, where do we take this? Eventually Bob's either going to get tired of microbrew boy and want a leaner, healthier, more abundant snack, or he's going to get some new directives from the uber-skank."
Giles took the lead. "Buffy, you start with light patrol of the campus. Concentrate in the areas of the killing, the original sighting, and all secondary sightings. Willow, Tara, begin work on a locator spell. We need a way to find the…um…Bob. Xander, Anya, and I will patrol the more common areas, and also talk to some of the usual snitches. Anya, there are a few things we need if we are going to go hit up any of the demon bars."
As the main room of the Magic Box began to clear out, Xander turned to Logan and smiled. "This is probably nothing like you're used to in your time, is it? Thanks for hanging and helping us look up stuff. I know you've got your own stuff to be looking up."
"Not a problem," he said, shrugging in response. "I've been enjoying it. Kind of reminds me of the good ol' days. There's not so much difference between looking for a monster and when I'd look for mobsters. I guess I just miss some of the more normal things. Playing basketball down at the park. Making dinner at night, with Max sniffing around for handouts. Ah, well. It is my turn to cook dinner tonight."
Xander gave Logan a manly slap on the shoulder. "Sounds like it's not that different at all...by the way, are we invited for some of these handouts? Never mind." Anya and Giles came back upstairs, and the three soon left. Logan tapped on a book in front of him a couple of times, and just shook his head as he closed it. He, too, was soon gone.
The silence of the shop was thick, and pervading.
At least, that's how it felt to Max.
She stepped out of the upstairs stacks and moved to the railing and stared down at the location where Logan had sat. Giles had come over to the Summers' house early that morning while Logan was out with Joyce buying groceries for the evening's dinner. He had run a few small tests involving her, some books, and a few "empowered" crystals, and determined that she should be okay going back to the Magic Box. Something about potential versus kinetic magic. Whatever.
Obviously, Giles had forgotten to tell anyone else, and Max herself had been content reading through the books in the upper level all day. But hearing Logan talk just then…
Something was up.
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Logan chopped fresh parsley as though his life depended on it. The stress of keeping his little "secret" was beginning to get on his nerves, literally. Since he had been back to the Summers' house and around Max, he had nearly blurted it out several times. Every time, however, he bit his tongue. He would wait a few days, just until after the equinox, when it would be safer. A day and a half. That was it.
So he threw himself into preparing the pasta carbonara. Cooking had always been good for relaxing him before. It just didn't seem to be doing the trick right now - possibly because Max was in the kitchen with him, chopping bacon. After she finished, she wandered over to the stove and checked the water. "Water's boiling," she said with a quirky grin.
"Good, add the spaghetti and I'll get started on the sauce," he replied, glad Max had said something. She had been rather quiet that evening.
Max frowned behind his back. She'd expected some other comment. Not "add the spaghetti."
"Look, I can finish up from here. Why don't you go set the table and relax for a bit?"
She shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"
When she was out of the kitchen, Logan began to breathe a little easier. He hoisted himself up on the counter as he tried to turn his attention to the sauce.
Dinner was more of the same. The strong majority of the participants were distracted. Max was holding a light conversation with Dawn and Joyce. Thanks to her parallel processing abilities, however, most of her brain was concentrating on something else entirely. She pondered, mused, and brooded…and couldn't quite figure out why. She began to push through her meal.
Buffy was also rushing through her meal, but for different reasons. At one point, Joyce frowned at her and commented, "Buffy, you might want to remember to chew before you swallow. Helps you taste the meal."
Buffy swallowed, and grimaced guiltily. "Sorry, Mom, Logan. It's an excellent meal, really. I'm just eager to get going. I feel like we're really closing in on Bob and—"
"Bob?"
"Um…the new thing on the block. We're closing in, and I'm hoping we can nab it between limbs."
"Well, eat your veggies before you go slay." Joyce rolled her eyes towards Dawn.
Both Buffy and Dawn rolled their eyes in return.
Max set her fork on her empty plate. "I'm leaving. Going out."
Logan frowned. "Where?"
"I don't know. Out." Max didn't look at him as she left the table.
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She had gone to the re-opened Fishbowl first, and filled her pockets with nickels from some of the early games. And now…
Max was staring at the outside of the Magic Box. Something was in there that Logan knew about, that Giles knew about, that she wasn't being told. But she wasn't sure that she was exactly ready to cross that threshold.
"So, you going in or you going to stand there all day?"
Max looked over her shoulder to see Spike watching her. She mentally kicked herself for being so distracted that she didn't hear the vampire coming. "What do you care?"
He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, before flicking it away. "I don't, particularly. Just think it very odd, you lurking out here when you could be lurking elsewhere." He raised an eyebrow. "Need any help poppin' the lock?"
She took a deep breath and walked up to the door. She pulled out her lock picks, and quickly made work of the deadbolt. "Nope."
The other eyebrow joined the first. "Nice work."
"Thanks. I'll be happy to teach you that little trick."
Spike rolled his eyes. He looked around. "Déjà vu. I was here with the little bit – Dawn – a few weeks before you and your boy came. I'll look for candles."
Max shook her head as she examined the dark shop. "Don't bother. I can see fine."
"Of course you can. Mind telling me why you're here?"
Max regarded him, still unsure of how much she could trust this particular vampire. "I'm looking for something." She thought of Giles and picked her mark. She quickly boosted herself over and behind the counter.
"What?" Spike was already getting exasperated. He knew demons that were less cagey than this woman.
She pulled out a large stack of paper from a box underneath the countertop. "This." She looked at the name and address on the first page. "Madagascar," she murmured, her brows knitting together.
"Madagascar? What's so important from there?" he asked.
"Answers." Max left the counter, and returned to the main portion of the room. She took a seat at one of the tables, and began reading.
Spike prowled around the room, occasionally poking at something, or looking closely at something else. Every now and then he'd turn to look at Max. She was flipping through pages, her eyes quickly scanning and absorbing the text. The more she seemed to read, however, the more tense she became. It soon struck him that he was watching a snake slowly coil, ready to strike in any direction. When she came to the last page, Spike was surprised that, instead of imploding, she calmly set it on the pile with the rest of the document. "See anything interesting?" he asked somewhat sarcastically. He was a little curious what could hold this spitfire's attention for so long.
Max didn't reply. Instead, she stood and walked back over to the counter, leaning on it to catch her breath. What she'd read…
Her thoughts boiled and brewed in her head, until she was no longer certain she had any control left. She felt a pencil crack under her fingers and knew she had to reign herself back in, quick. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, her gaze caught on, of all things, a tape dispenser. She pulled off a small piece of tape and stuck it to the top of the first paper in the stack. She then took that paper and affixed it to the shelving behind the counter. She slowly reached for a second piece of tape, and the second piece of paper, repeating the process. And repeating it again.
As Spike watched Max tape yet another piece of paper to the walls of the Magic Box, he got the vague feeling that he was actually watching someone slowly go insane. He pondered the situation carefully and decided the least he could do was help. "Can I do anything here?" he asked, indicating the pages.
Max placed a fifth page on the door to the alley. "You can get me something to drink." She looked back over her shoulder towards him. "Something stronger than that rainwater you gave Buffy last night."
He didn't even ask how she knew it had been him. Instead, he glared at her. "What? And spend my honestly stolen cash just so you can get yourself all bevvied up over the whatever it is that's in there?" He held out his hand, and wiggled his fingers impatiently.
Max looked up from her work and didn't say a word as she reached into her pockets. She poured Spike a handful of nickels.
He didn't say anything, knowing the worst thing he could do would be to try arguing with a crazy woman. He'd had plenty of miserably grand experiences at that one already. He swept out of the Magic Box, the merry tinkle of the bell a mocking echo to Max.
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Paradise Lost Chapter 8: March 19 – coming April 16.