Characters and settings are used without permission, and with no intention of damaging copyright in the original stories. This story may not be distributed on any profit-making basis. Distribution Fanfiction.net, Twisting The Hellmouth, Fonts of Wisdom, other sites please ask. I'm British, so's my spelling - live with it.
"I still can't believe you already knew about vampires and demons," said Willow, half an hour later.
"Of course I do. I've been a reporter in this town for nearly thirty years and I've seen a few things in that time, things we can never put in the Trib. Most reporters, most good ones anyway, know something about it, we just don't talk about it much. Those that do tend not to last long in the business, or end up working for papers like the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News."
"Why?"
"There's a, I guess I'd call it a climate of disbelief. More, there's active hostility to the information. Most people really don't want to know these things, won't talk about them. The police, emergency services, everyone else that deals with them always comes up with other explanations, makes it almost impossible to put stories together. Then there's the hate factor. If we ever really publicised these things, and enough people believed us, there'd be species riots that'd make the race riots of the seventies look like a friendly snowball fight, and most of the victims would be human or creatures that aren't doing much harm. Oh, I know that there are total monsters out there, vampires and the rest, but most of them just seem to be trying to get by, same as everyone else."
"Wow, and there was I assuming that the papers in Sunnydale were just totally clueless."
"They are. I took a look at their web site, recognised a few names. Rejects from every major paper in California, I guess it's the only work they could get."
"Can't say I'm surprised. Umm, you should maybe know that not all vampires are totally evil. I know one that isn't, he got his soul back, and another one that kinda gave up on being evil but still has problems with being good. It's a good rule of thumb, almost always true, but there are exceptions."
"That's interesting, but what about the rest of what you've told me?"
"What parts are you still having trouble with?"
"Well, I know magic exists although I've never actually seen it in action, I think it's the giant snake and the mouth of Hell being in California that bother me."
"'Fraid it's all true."
"And you used to be a witch? And Tara still is?"
"I still have the mojo but I'm non-practicing, except for self-defence. Tara's kinda taken over as the family witch, she's never been addicted the way I was so she can handle it without giving in to temptation."
"And your friend Buffy is a super-warrior who fights demons and vampires but can't keep a job?"
"Fighting evil kinda sucks when it keeps screwing up your career prospects, but that's the way it's been for her. She's okay right now, got a big reward for busting the nerds I mentioned, she's going back to college. And something tells me that the college is gonna be very generous with its grants over the next few years, as soon as I finish setting up a few endowment funds with kinda specific targets. By the time she graduates there ought to be a few jobs she's suited for in the businesses I'm gonna be setting up. Assuming that she doesn't want to do something else, of course."
"You're right, there's no way that any of this could go in the paper. Okay, let's say for now that I'm believing all of this, there's just one question. What does all this have to do with your inheritance?"
"This is the part that's difficult to explain, especially since there's portions of it I can't talk about. Briefly, wishes can change reality, and there are vengeance demons that can grant them, except that they always twist them to cause the worst possible outcome. Two years ago their boss kinda head-hunted me as a possible recruit. I'd made a huge mess with my magic, more or less accidentally, and he thought I'd make a good vengeance demon. You with me so far?" Billie nodded. "I turned him down, then a couple of months ago Tara was murdered..."
"What?"
"Tara was murdered and I couldn't save her. Tried magic, didn't get anywhere because it was natural means that killed her, not magic, then I thought of the vengeance demons. So I summoned their boss, thinking I'd make a wish that'd bring her back to life. Instead he offered me a job as a vengeance demon, and like an idiot I took it."
"Why an idiot?"
"Because vengeance demons can't grant their own wishes, and because something about being one messes up your sense of right and wrong."
"So you couldn't make a wish?"
"I could only grant other people's wishes. But even as a vengeance demon I was kinda sneaky. I found someone making a wish that could change my past and granted it, thinking that it might make things come out differently. It did, but it turned out that I had no memory of the way things had originally been, and the change wasn't big enough to save Tara, so I ended up as a vengeance demon again. Must have gone through that cycle eight or ten times until I changed things just enough. One of the changes was that I got my memories back and learned what had happened in my other lives. Another part was that something happened to Sheila. It was her wish that I granted a couple of times including the last; I didn't know it was her, there were good reasons why I didn't recognise her at the time, but that's kinda beside the point. The change she wished for threw her back through time, kinda merged her with me. I have all of her memories. So when the government guys came looking for her they found me, I could help sort out the mess, and that's why I'm suddenly rolling in cash. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that's enough to give you the basic idea."
Billie tried to imagine it, but the thought of changing time made her head hurt. The worst of it was that she was sure that Willow was telling her the truth, or at least believed that she was.
"What happened to the murderer?"
"Warren? One of the things about vengeance demons is that their spells always punish someone. No exceptions. He was already a criminal, led that nerd gang, in this time-line he suddenly started having really bad luck, incredible coincidences that left him broke and on the run and eventually killed him. I didn't have vengeance demon powers and I couldn't have stopped it if I'd wanted to. Buffy actually tried to rescue him, but he kept making things worse. I can't really say I'm sorry it ended the way it did."
"What about your father? Your adopted father?"
"That's part of the stuff I can't discuss right now."
"And Wolfram and Hart, and Holtz?"
"That you really need to talk to Angel about. Pretty much everything I've heard about them comes from him. But if he says they're lawyers serving the forces of darkness I'm inclined to believe him."
"And Holtz?"
"All I know is what I've seen in the papers, hasn't really been time to discuss it much since I got here. I know that Angel has history with him, that's about it."
"Any idea why?"
"With Angel it could be anything, probably it's kinda nasty. But you'll have to talk to him about that for yourself."
"Just once I could wish that someone would give me a straight..." Her voice tailed off, and she looked past Willow towards the hotel. "Oh my god, is it really you?"
Willow turned, and saw a tall green-skinned demon with horns and a hooked nose, wearing a red suit, who grinned and said "Billie baby! Long time no see! And um... Willow, right?"
Willow stared; she and Billie said "You two know each other?" almost simultaneously.
"Sure, cupcake. Billie used to be one of my customers until she got to be too busy to spend time hanging out in bars. And I met Willow last year. Suddenly I'm guessing that you must be Billie's niece. See, Billie, I told you you'd find her."
"Lorne runs a karaoke bar," said Billie, "a place for demons and humans to meet peacefully, and he tells fortunes."
"Not any more, unfortunately. Place was fire-bombed a couple of weeks ago. I'm staying here au momento."
"I saw a club had been fire-bombed," said Billie, "I didn't realise it was Caritas."
"You mean to say you two have known each other for years and you didn't realise we were related?" asked Willow.
"My readings always said she'd find her sister's kid, how was I to know it was you? And you didn't sing for me, the hour or so we met, so there was no way I could know your fate."
"Well, considering I was here to tell Angel that Buffy was dead, I guess I didn't feel much like singing."
"I thought you said she's about to become a student again," said Billie, feeling even more confused.
"She was killed last year. One of the worse things I did when I was abusing magic was bring her back to life. It was chance in a million thing, only possible because it was supernatural forces that killed her."
"Abusing? That's a miracle."
"Not if the person you bring back to life was in heaven and thinks that our world is hell. Not if you think that the spell didn't work and you leave her buried in a coffin."
"Oh..."
"She's pretty much over it now. I hope."
"You're the one that did that?" asked Lorne, "I'd heard it'd happened but people were kinda vague on the details. I knew you were powerful but that's major-league mojo."
"Too major, and too arrogant. I won't be doing anything like that again."
"If it upsets you to discuss this," said Billie, "maybe we should change the subject."
"It's okay. I'm in a kinda abuse program, a bit like AA, part of it is that you tell people what you've done if there's need, don't try to pretty it up. I know that I'm capable of much worse." She hesitated. "In some of the lives I remember I did terrible things as a vengeance demon and enjoyed every moment. I'm guessing that there were other time-lines where Warren killed Tara and I caught up with him without trying to change the past, if so I think I would have killed him. Slowly and very painfully."
"You'll never know now, sugar," said Lorne. "Maybe it's just as well I never heard you sing, I would have picked up on all those possibilities, maybe messed things up even worse."
"You never talked about possibilities with me," said Billie, "it was always 'you'll find the kid one day' or 'apply for the job, you'll get it.'"
"You're not a major probability nexus. Willow is."
"What?" said Willow nervously. "Me? Major?"
"What you've been doing with the Slayer, what you'll be doing over the next few years, there are endless possibilities, all of them important. What Billie does, well, it's important, but it isn't the kind of thing that actually changes the time-line much. Even when your stories are important, they're more of a collaborative effort, and that tends to stabilise the probabilities, makes things easier to predict."
"I can see that, I guess," said Billie.
"Sure you can. Let's have an example. Billie, ever been in real life-or-death danger, or had your life saved by a fluke?"
"There was the kidnap attempt a few days ago," she thought for a moment, "a couple of earthquakes where I suppose I might have been injured if things had gone differently, and back in eighty-two I was almost aboard a plane that crashed, but had to cancel the flight at the last minute because I was called back to the Trib for a conference. There were no survivors."
"There you go. Four you can remember, maybe a dozen more you don't, or never knew about. The hot-dog with botulism that would have been given to you if someone hadn't bought it thirty seconds earlier, that sort of thing. Willow, would I be right to guess hundreds of times for you?"
"Must be." Billie's eyes widened. Hundreds?
"And a lot of those times you've been saving lives, maybe saving the world?"
"That or just fleeing in sheer terror, I guess."
"And that's why I can't predict your future, or the futures you'll make for others. Prophecies and seers can try, but when they're dealing with someone like you or Angel or Buffy it's always chancy, no matter what they may say."
"Why Angel?" asked Billie.
"He's a Champion, sweet thing, a warrior for the Powers That Be. He's affected thousands of lives, saved the world a few times, same as Willow and Buffy. There are more of them around than you might think. Even the guy burned out my club was one once, might be again."
"You know who did it?"
"You've met him, according to the papers. Guy called Holtz."
"Holtz did that?" Billie felt a sudden shock, and tried to imagine the rage that would make someone do that.
"I guess he thought he had cause. He was after Angel and Darla, and the spells I had protecting the place wouldn't let him attack them directly. Trouble is that there was a bunch of other people in there including me, and it was a miracle we all got out."
"Darla? Holtz mentioned that name, so did Fred. Connor's mother? Let me guess, that's something I'll have to ask Angel about."
"You got it. Now, is it just me, or am I picking up some seriously strange vibes off those two over there?" He waved towards April and her boyfriend.
"You might be," said Willow, "why don't you go ask them?"
"Does she sing?"
"Let me think... nope."
"How about her boyfriend?"
"I think it'd be more of a caterwaul."
"Neither very musical, huh. Sounds like half my customers."
"Ask them, I don't think either will bite."
"Okay." Lorne wandered towards them and started chatting.
"You're up to something," said Billie, watching Willow smile, and seeing her sister in her again.
"Not really. Well, maybe a little. This is something else I need you to promise won't go in the paper."
"All right."
"Okay. April and Tom are good people, just umm, not exactly. I'm wondering how long it'll be before he catches on."
"Not exactly what? People?"
"Yeah."
"I thought you said she was Buffy's cousin."
"Adopted."
"Some sort of demon?"
"No. Did I mention that Warren was kinda a mad scientist?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Well, he kinda built April."
"Built? Like Frankenstein's monster?"
"No, thank god. She's a robot. We discussed this on the way down, decided that if we were going to spend much time around each other you'd know sooner or later, might as well be sooner."
"She's intelligent?"
"That's kinda the point. Warren wanted a robot girlfriend, pretty much a walking doll, then he got bored and abandoned her, then there were some accidents and she got rebuilt and reprogrammed with some software I'd modified pretty heavily, and suddenly she was starting to think for herself. I'm not sure what her IQ is now, my guess is well above average plus she has a perfect memory. Anyway, he tried to destroy her a couple of times and she started to help us against him. Pretty soon she was part of the team, so much so that when she needed a proper identity Buffy invited her to become a Summers."
"That's... that's extraordinary. Why did she need a proper identity?"
"She wanted to rent an apartment and pay her own way in life, that meant she needed a social security number and stuff to pay taxes, that sort of thing. You know, the sad thing about Warren is that if he'd just patented his inventions he could have been incredibly rich. He was closer to true artificial intelligence than anyone else I know. But no, he had to be a super-villain. I think he read too many comics."
"What about Tom?"
"We're straying towards the stuff I can't talk about, but someone else had him built as a bodyguard for me, and when they met they kinda clicked."
"Not to mention whirring and buzzing?"
"Ouch. Suddenly I get the feeling that you and Buffy are gonna have a lot in common, she kinda likes lame jokes too."
On the far side of the garden Lorne said "You're what?"
"I think they just told him," said Billie, smiling.
"You could be right," said Willow, smiling back. "Okay, now you know about me, any horrible family secrets I should know?"
"Not really. Compared to you I've been living the dullest life imaginable. Journalism classes, then a reporter, then editor, married and divorced a couple of times, that's about it. I've been working at the Tribune since the late seventies. Won one Pulitzer Prize which I deserved, another which I didn't, that's about it."
"I looked you up on the Tribune web site and read the stories, asked a couple of people who are taking journalism at UC Sunnydale. I think you're being too modest."
"I think I'm the one that ought to know, but never mind." She grimaced slightly.
"Something wrong?"
"My wrist and ribs are hurting a little. I'm supposed to take pain-killers, but they make me a little drowsy."
"Let's go inside, see if Tara can do something for you. She has healing hands. If not, maybe you'd better take your tablets and rest for a while."
"Maybe you're right."
To Be Continued