Kat yawned a little, scribbling in a notebook as she sat at the counter of the magic shop. Now she was back in employment, Giles had got Willow to do a special enchantment on the windows so the sun couldn't filter through and set her on fire. As a baby vampire, her fire tolerance was quite low, nowhere near as much as Spike's. She'd go up in a poof of dust in seconds. She used the sewers and the basement entrance to get to work, as much as she hated it. She was getting a little used to it but it was still a little creepy down there. Spike had been walking her to and from work everyday because she'd been so wigged out until a couple of days ago when she decided she needed to put her big girl panties on. She was making a list of the things she knew she needed to order, not really in the mood to deal with this particular supplier, but Giles wasn't here yet and he didn't want to deal with him either. Anya came in from out front, holding a box overflowing with items.
"What's that?" Kat asked curiously, happy for a break in the monotony.
"I don't know. It was left outside. It's got lots of expensive merchandise we can sell, though," she murmured happily, moving over to Kat at the counter as she set the box down. The girls refiled through it, Kat seeing some of the usual magical items along with some interesting relics.
"I wonder who left it here," she mused softly, hissing under her breath as she accidentally brushed her hand against a cross in the far left of the box. She glowered at the offending object before deciding to stick to the right side of the box.
"Who cares? This is great! And Giles better not tell me that we can't sell it. Do you know how expensive this is?" she asked enthusiastically, holding what looked like a jar of crap. Literally.
"I don't even know what it is," Kat replied with a scrunched up face.
"It's the essence of a furnop demon. It's rare and extremely valuable," Anya explained, practically making moon eyes at the gross jar. Kat pulled at a chain at the bottom of the box and on the end of it was a silver locket with intricate carvings and swirls. It was pretty and she used her nail to pry it open curiously. There was a picture that looked like it was from the 1700's or the 1800's, she was never that good at history, and a lock of hair.
"That's not creepy at all," she murmured warily, snapping the locket shut. She never understood the appeal of keeping locks of hair or when parents kept the baby teeth of their children. It was weird to her. Keeping parts of a person. It just weirded her out. She put the locket back carefully, peeling the jar from Anya's hands that she was still ogling.
"We should leave this all in the box for Giles to look at when he gets in," Kat instructed, raising her brow and giving Anya a firm look when she looked ready to argue. Whether it was the fact she was now a vampire or something else entirely, Kat wasn't sure, but the ex vengeance demon shut her mouth quickly with a nod and a sigh.
"Fine… I guess," she muttered, grabbing the box and moving around the counter to put it behind and out of the way of customers.
Later that night, a Scooby meeting was underway. There had been the usual vampire activity and the occasional weird demon that popped up, but Giles was concerned something might be on the horizon. Some kind of vampire ritual or special day. Spike told him it was 'bollocks', but Giles had wanted to be extra sure in case they needed to be ready. So they were researching. Or everyone but Spike was researching because he really thought they had nothing to worry about and he was a little salty over the fact that no one was listening to him. It wasn't that she didn't trust what he said, she did and she agreed it probably was nothing. But she also agreed with Giles that it was better to be safe than sorry. As usual, she perked up once Spike had gotten there. She always missed him when they weren't together which was stupid because they were never apart long.
"Katherine, could you please pass me the Dupont Chronicles," Giles muttered wearily, closing the book he was reading. She hopped up out of her stool, moving to the bookcase. She was two steps away from it when a glass statue of some kind of demon eating a baby slowly started sliding to the edge of the shelf before it hit the floor and shattered. Kat blinked dumbly at it for a moment, her brain short circuiting.
"Really, Katherine? I'd have thought with all your vampire reflexes, you'd have been able to stop breaking the merchandise," Giles chidied softly, slight mirth to his tone. She wasn't always breaking the merch here. Not all the time anyway.
"As much as I'd love to take credit for breaking that ugly piece of crap, that wasn't me," she snorted. She meant it too. When she asked Giles why he was even displaying something like that, he'd told her it was very rare and sought after. Yet, it was still here after a year. She couldn't imagine why.
"I know you probably don't want Giles to cut your wages, but the 'it wasn't me' defense, is a little overused," Xander chuckled and Kat shot him a look.
"If you use your little eyeballs, you'll see I'm not even at the shelf yet, and as far as I'm aware, Vampires don't have the power of telekinesis," she said dryly.
"What? It just fell of its own accord?" Giles asked incredulously, a hint of curiosity in his voice as he stood from his chair to walk over. He was half way when his chair slid across the shop.
"A ghost!" Xander shrieked in a high pitched tone, falling off his chair and scrambling to get back on his feet before clearing his throat.
"I mean… a ghost," he muttered, making his voice lower and deeper.
"Right… Really saved that one. Not one person is questionin' your masculinity right now," Spike drawled with an amused smirk.
"A ghost? That's so cool!" Dawn grinned, practically bouncing in her seat.
"No, not cool, Dawnie. Ghosts are a pain in the ass," Kat huffed, yelping when one of her french braids got yanked on.
"See! Assholes! All they do is be assholes and you can't even hit them 'cause you can't see them," she groused, eyes glancing around and hoping maybe her enhanced vamp vision helped her see something. It didn't.
"That poltergeist back in LA really traumatized you, didn't it?" Spike asked teasingly, eyes dancing with mischief as she squinted at him.
"Shut up. You weren't there," she muttered, almost pouting as she tried to forget that ordeal.
Buffy groaned, rubbing her temples.
"Look, Mr or Mrs Ghost. Can you just not? I really don't wanna deal with you, I have enough on my plate right now with my new training schedule. If you could just leave, that would be great," Buffy grumbled tiredly. For her troubles, a lamp on the counter exploded and they all jumped.
"I uh… I don't think they're gonna just leave," Willow murmured, giving Buffy a dry smile.
"Why does it have to be my shop that's haunted?" Giles lamented, taking his glasses off and cleaning them rigorously.
"Everything can be a great business opportunity, Giles. Don't be such a pessimist. Hello, ghost. If you wish to stay here, you'll have to pay… With money," Anya called out loudly, looking around the room. The cash register flew open with a ding and the money poofed out of it like a green explosion.
"My money!" Anya screeched, running over to the register to scoop the money off the floor.
"You dealt with a poltergeist in LA? So you know how to deal with this thing?" Willow asked hopefully as she looked at Kat.
"Not really," Kat shrugged sheepishly. "I may have been knocked out by it… Angel had to deal with it," she admitted, abashed, watching as Willow sagged a little in her seat.
"Great! So we call up Angel and have him fix our problem," Xander said enthusiastically, a nervous smile on his face as his head whipped around the room.
"I don't bloody think so! Had enough of Captain Forehead to last me for the next few centuries. We can deal with this ourselves," Spike glowered.
"Spike's right. We don't need Angel. We have books and smart people. We've dealt with worse than a little ghost," Buffy scoffed, whining sadly when her blueberry muffin that was in front of her was squashed by nothing.
"I was gonna eat that," she muttered in contempt. Kat wondered if Buffy's reluctance to ask Angel for help was because of their strained relationship. Angel had started speaking to her again but things weren't so great.
"All in favor of leaving this place to research elsewhere?" Xander asked with a nervous chuckle, raising his hand.
"Yes, please. We can go to our place," Kat muttered as she moved to grab her denim jacket, earning a scoff from Spike.
"Babies," he huffed, shaking his head. Kat was about to go and hit him around the head but his head snapped forward as a smack resounded through the shop. The ghost got there before her.
"Bloody ow!" he grumbled with a scowl.
"Maybe this ghost isn't so bad after all," Kat remarked wryly, earning a mock glare from her blonde counterpart.
Back at their place, the Scoobies were scattered around the living room. Giles was in the armchair, furiously researching how to get his shop ghost free. Buffy, Willow and Tara were huddled on the floor next to a mountain of books they'd brought with them. And Xander and Anya were on the sofa reading, Dawn next to them as she busied herself with watching TV and not helping with research at all. Kat was in the kitchen, warming up a mug of blood after she'd felt the hunger pangs. Once the microwave beeped, she grabbed it, making sure her back was turned as she guzzled it down. The lower level was open plan and she didn't want to vamp out in front of everyone, she still wasn't ready. It was bad enough with Spike, although she'd had to do that more recently. He'd been trying to teach her how to control it. How to keep it at bay, feed without it coming out. It worked sometimes but not all the time, she was still learning. She didn't want to take that chance, so she kept her back turned until the blood was gone and she made sure she had none around her mouth.
"There a reason why you offered up our place for the Scoobies?" Spike huffed as he came into the kitchen. He'd been perched in the other armchair, unhappily researching.
"You can always go back to the shop and chill out with the ghost if you want?" she asked with a saccharine smile. He gave her a deep sigh, moving to stand next to her at the counter.
"Funny. They're cloggin' up the place and I'm gonna have to deal with the whelp stinkin' out the whole house with his hotdog breath odor for a week," he grumbled.
"Are you still butt hurt over the ghost hitting you?" she asked knowingly, moving to the sink to wash the mug.
"Was uncalled for. And not a fair fight, is it, when I can't soddin' fight back," he complained. She stifled a smirk at his petulant behavior. Spike loved a fight as much as any vampire, but one's that he couldn't fight back frustrated him. He needed a baddie he could fight. One he could see and get his hands on. She grabbed his hand as she made her way back to the living room, Spike in tow.
He plonked back down in the armchair, picking up his book reluctantly as Kat went and sat on the floor next to the witches and Buffy.
"So, ghosts haunt places for a reason, right?" Willow asked softly, glancing around at everyone.
"Usually. Things like dyin' in the place they're haunting," Spike replied, sounding bored and not even looking up from his book.
"Well, the previous owner died, didn't he?" Buffy asked, looking at Giles like she didn't remember. Kat did. She remembered them finding the man's body inside.
"Y-Yes. But I doubt it's him. It wouldn't have taken so long for the haunting to begin," Giles murmured thoughtfully.
"It's not a residual haunting either. This thing was responding to us," Xander piped up as he closed the book he'd been reading.
"Nothing's really happened there recently that would make a ghost suddenly appear," Buffy huffed, getting annoyed they couldn't seem to make sense of it. Much like Spike, she wanted something physical she could fight.
Kat's head snapped up to Anya then.
"The box!" she blurted, only just remembering. Anya's eyes widened in recognition as she nodded.
"Wait. What box?" Giles asked, confused. Kat had been busy when Giles got there and she completely forgot to tell him about it, figuring Anya would since she'd been so excited to try and get him on board with selling the stuff. She apparently hadn't told him either.
"There was a box left outside of the shop earlier, a lot of really great things I think we should sell and would make a lot of mon-" Anya started rambling excitedly.
"An," Xander said, giving her a pointed look. She blinked at him for a moment before sighing.
"There were a lot of magical artifacts inside of it. We have no idea who left it there," she explained more simply and Giles rubbed the crease between his brows.
"Why am I only hearing of this now?" he asked like a father gently scolding children.
"We were busy," Kat shrugged sheepishly.
"I bet. She was probably having hot vampire sex with Spike in the basement," Dawn snorted, eyes still glued to the TV. Kat almost choked on nothing as her head whipped to face her at break neck speed.
"Dawn!" Buffy chided, eyes wide and mouth agape, much like the others in the room.
"What?" Dawn asked, her eyes finally landing on the others with a shrug.
"First, I wasn't even bloody there. Second, you're not allowed to talk like that," Spike pointed at her, a firm look on his face. Dawn rolled her eyes and turned back to the TV.
"I wish I was anywhere but here," Giles bemoaned.
"Me and you both, Rupes. I wish you lot were anywhere but here too," Spike smirked smugly.
"See, he wants us to leave so they can have hot vampire sex," Dawn whispered to a horrified looking Xander as she elbowed him. Kat's hearing picked up on it fine, unfortunately.
"Can we get back on track? This box, do you think it's connected to the ghost?" Buffy asked impatiently, Slayer mode in full swing as she looked at Giles.
"It would seem so. I don't believe in coincidences and the box arriving on the same day as the ghost is a bit unusual," he answered with a nod.
"In the box, there was a locket with an old picture and a lock of hair in it," Kat said as she remembered how weird it had been. She knew back in the old days, Spike would kill her for saying that, they would sometimes take pictures of dead people, posing them as if they were living. She really hoped that wasn't the case with this picture. It would make it double weird.
"Oh!" Tara suddenly exclaimed, eyes turning wide and blushing fiercely as everyone turned to look at her.
"What is it, sweetie?" Willow asked softly. Tara tucked her hair behind her ear, cheeks still pink as she cleared her throat.
"S-S-Spirits… they can be attached to objects. And things like hair… teeth… the spirit can h-hold onto that. Enough to haunt a place," she explained quietly.
"Right then. We get rid of the box, ghost goes bye byes. Job solved," Spike grinned, rubbing his hands together with the prospect of all this being over and everyone leaving their house. Kat could read him like a book.
"No! Didn't you listen? The locket is the problem here, not the box. We get rid of the locket and keep all of the very valuable merchandise!" Anya protested hotly.
"It is likely the locket, but we need to be sure. We will get rid of that first and if the haunting keeps going, the rest will have to go," Giles instructed, an air of authority to his tone. Anya nodded, looking worried about her precious potential money.
They made their trek back to the shop with Spike grumbling the whole time about how they weren't needed and should go back home. Kat had told him he'd be sleeping on the couch if he kept it up and he promptly shut up. When they walked inside the shop, it was a mess and Giles made a weird noise she'd never heard him make before that sounded like a whine and a groan.
"My shop… We've only just fixed it up," he sighed forlornly.
"Just an FYI, I won't be on renovation duty again," Spike huffed, hands in his duster pockets. Kat gave him a look and he shrugged, a sly smirk spreading across his face.
"I'll play handyman if you play nurse," he drawled, his tongue swiping over his canines. She was about to give him a colorful reply when she heard a giggle next to her. She looked and saw Dawn giving them a smug smirk. Kat shot Spike a dirty look and he sighed, rolling his eyes before he gave Dawn a scowl and made her look away.
"How do we do this?" Buffy asked, the group all gathering in the middle of the shop. It didn't look as bad as when the troll had his rampage in here, but a lot of things were strewn about the place.
"Well… the book says we should burn the lock of hair. Maybe the picture for good measure too," Willow murmured. Giles went behind the counter, narrowly avoiding a pack of tarot cards flying at his head as he went to grab the locket. It reminded Kat of when she used to read. She'd slowly just stopped, not really liking the vague answers she'd get and struggling to understand them. She was wondering if she should take them up again just as Xander practically screamed. He looked like he was levitating but his hands were grasping at his neck so Kat could only presume the ghost had grabbed him by it.
"Okay, less of the talking, more of the burning," Buffy said urgently, knowing they couldn't fight the ghost. Giles rushed over, locket in one hand, small metal trash can in the other. He took the lock of hair and the picture out of the locket hurriedly, putting them in the trash can. Spike struck a match, dropping it in along with them. She'd asked him once why he carried matches and a lighter. He'd told her he never knew when he might need them. She'd wondered if he was a bit of a pyromaniac. She could just imagine him, pre soul and pre chip, lighting fires for the fun of it. Fire was chaotic and unpredictable. It devours things in a matter of seconds and leaves nothing but destruction in its wake. Much like how Spike used to be. The trash can lit up with orange and yellow flames and Xander fell to the floor, Anya rushing over to him.
"Why me?" he whined, his voice scratchy as he rubbed his tender throat.
"Well, you're whiny, annoying, mard, pathetic-" Spike started listing off, counting on his fingers until Kat elbowed him sharply.
"Does this mean we're ghost free?" Dawn asked, looking around.
"Seems like," Buffy answered, looking more relaxed now it was gone.
"Thank god. I told you guys, ghosts are assholes," Kat muttered with a huff, looking at the mess it had made.
"Ain't that the truth," Xander rasped displeased.