Part 4

The air above Treviso airport was cloudless: as the small aircraft carrier circled in to land it was possible to see all the way to the glistening Canal Grande. Neither Buffy nor Faith were aware of the view however, after a 14 hour long haul flight to Rome and then a connecting 1 hour plane journey to mainland Venice, it was all the girls could do to disengage their seatbelts and disembark at the appropriate time.

The taxi ride to the Piazzale Roma took another 45 minutes, and it was late afternoon by the time they stepped off the gondola on the Lido shore.

Buffy's journey planning rarely extended beyond booking tickets, she generally found that money paved the way to whatever type of accommodation took her fancy upon arrival, even in the busiest season. Accordingly she told the taxi driver to drop them off at the hotel nearest the beach, and 10 minutes later they were flopped out on identical beds, in beach view rooms connected by a bathroom and balcony.

It was into the silence of exhausted sleep that Buffy's phone rang, and although the display ID'd the caller as Willow, it was still hard to answer the call without sounding tired and grumpy.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Willow's immediately contrite tone made Buffy feel guilty enough to sit up and try to attend to the conversation.

"S'alright Will. Did you find anything?"

"Kind of. Do you know a guy called Wesley Windham-Price?"

Buffy frowned as the name rang a distant bell, it didn't seem the type you'd easily forget. Then it hit her, "he was at the party, in London, I think we spoke for a while. Why?"

"So that means he could be a friend of Angel's?"

"More than likely."

"In that case I'm not sure how far we should trust this, considering our not entirely honest activities in Tanzania. But I got an email from Wesley last night."

"Really?" Buffy exclaimed, rapidly feeling much more alert. "How'd he get your address?"

"No idea but he sent me a couple of references to passages in the diaries of the first Venetian Doge's."

"The Governors of Venice in ye olde times?" Buffy confirmed.

"Right. So I looked up the first and it talks about an unusual set of rocks his wife bought from an African trader. 'As big as a man's fist, storm cloud grey and smoothed by a thousand years of sea water," she quoted.

"So he bought some big grey rocks. Will a million rocks fit that description," Buffy sighed.

"That's what I thought," Willow eagerly continued, "but then it says, 'when hit by light one of the rocks seems to contain a viscous substance, as though the tide itself rolled within."

"Oh."

"Exactly."

"So what happened to them?"

"She put them on display in the Palazzo Ducale, with the Tide Rock as the central piece. Which is where they stayed for a couple of hundred years, until the Doge-"

"Will, please tell me this is the short version."

Willow laughed, well aware of her best friend's limited attention span, even when she wasn't jet-lagged and sleep deprived. "I'm wrapping it up, I promise." She gently assured. "According to the second reference, in 1529 Jacopo Sansovino is working on refurbishments to the Basilica di San Marco-"

"The tomb of St Mark?"

"Right. When he pays a visit to the Doge's palace-"

"- spots the rocks and decides to use them in his interior decoration?" Buffy suggested.

"Yep."

Buffy paused for a moment to ensure she was processing this correctly. "The second Tide Rock is in the Basilica di San Marco?" She asked slowly, "the one in the middle of St Mark's Square?"

"According to this? Yes."

Slowly a smile spread across the young blonde's face as the implications of what they were discussing became clearer. They were going to break into one of the most famous churches in the world, a church that sat in one of the most famous public spaces. It was the equivalent of trying to break into Buckingham Palace, or stealing Lenin's body from Red Square. It was crazy, impossible, dangerous – and it was going to be a ton of fun.

"Don't forget where this info is coming from," Willow tried to put the breaks on Buffy's runaway thoughts. "Wesley's with Angel on this and I doubt they're trying to do you a favour."

"No," Buffy agreed, "but no harm going in, taking a look around..."

Willow laughed, the day Buffy found an adventure she wasn't up for the world would probably stop turning.

"Okay, just look, no touching."

"Yes mom."

"Ha ha. I'm going to see what else I can find out."

"Okay, I'll call you later."

"Faith!" Buffy shouted as soon as she'd hung up. A muted grunt came from the other room but no further movement followed. "You'll never guess where we're breaking and entering this time," Buffy persisted. She listened for a few moments but was disappointed to find her excitement met with silence. "Ah, I'll tell you later," she muttered, climbing fully clothed into her own bed.