Chapter 3

The book sat on the table like a curse. She was terrified to touch it, terrified by what might happen if she did. She turned the TV on and busied herself making dinner. But her thoughts were never far from the possibilities. Buffy picked the book up and re-read the bio at the back. She stared at the grainy photo, trying to see something in it, wishing she had some of Morgan's super sight powers; wishing she had a computer. At least then she might be able to Google the author and find a decent picture.

Finally, unable to fight it anymore, she grabbed the phone and called Willow.

"Hey, Will! Did Dawn arrive safely?"

"Hi, Buffy! Yeah! She's gone out with Josh, but you could probably catch her on her cell. Do you have the number?"

"She left it with me. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. Could you let her know that she left her "Grigori" book here?"

"Ooh! She was looking for it earlier and was worried she'd left it on the plane. She'll be glad to know."

Buffy forced a laugh. "Tell her I'm finishing it and then I'll mail it to her."

"Sure, how are you holding on? First couple nights are bound to be hard. Dawn was a mess when she got here. That's why I called Josh and told him to come over. He was able to talk her out of her droopiness and drag her out of the house."

Buffy closed her eyes and bowed her head. "Thanks, Will," she murmured.

"Not a problem," Will said. "I'd do the same thing for you if you were here…or if I were there or…you know?"

"You could do something for me," said Buffy quickly.

"Sure – what do you need?"

"Can you Google the author of that Grigori book that Dawn likes so much?" Buffy asked.

"You don't have a laptop?"

"No, you know me, I never had time and never needed one," Buffy said truthfully.

"You'll need one for school," pointed out Willow.

"I know, I'll have to go out and get one this week at some point."

"Get a Mac if you can," Willow advised.

Buffy had no idea what she was talking about, but agreed anyway. "Okay, in the meantime, can you find out as much information as you can and call me back?"

"Sure. What's going on?"

Buffy frowned. "I'm not sure, there's – it might be nothing."

"Buffy? Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"Yeah. I just want to follow up on something - for Dawn," she said quickly, fabricating a story.

"Okay," Willow said slowly.

"Thanks! Give me a call when you have anything," replied Buffy. "Night Will!"

She hung the phone up and turned back to the book. She stared at it, wondering. Then

she switched off the lights and went back to bed, taking the book with her.

***

Willow hung the phone up and sat back, staring off into space. She turned to her book case and scanned the shelves, searching. Finding what she was looking for, she pulled the hardcover novel from the shelf and turned it over, looking at the grainy photo on the back cover.

She shook her head.

"Shit," she muttered. Then she reached for the phone. She punched in a number and waited while it rang.

"Angel Investigations."

"Hey, Bliss. Is Angel around?"

"Sure, Willow, just a sec." Angel's administrative assistant set the phone down and hurried back from the reception and into his office.

"Angel?"

He poked his head out from behind the bathroom door. "Yes?"

"Willow's on the phone," Bliss said.

"Put her through," Angel replied, walking into the office, towel drying his hair.

Bliss took a second to admire all six feet of solid, beautiful vampire muscle and bone in jeans and nothing else, and then she dashed back to the front desk.

"Willow, I'll patch you through."

In seconds, Angel picked up. "Willow, what's up?"

"I think we have a problem," she said.

"What else is new?"

"No, we have a different kind of problem," she said, sounding worried.

"What sort of problem?"

"Remember that book I read a couple of months ago? The one that I had flagged for the Council?"

Angel nodded. He opened the file cabinet and flipped through the files. Finding the one he was looking for, he pulled it. "The Grigori, you'd been worried about it divulging Council secrets."

"That's the one," Willow said softly. Her system had caught the title and she'd read the

book, looking for codes or messages, concerned that someone might be using it to reveal information best left secret. She hadn't found anything definitive, but there had been something strange about the book. "Buffy just called me, she's reading it."

Angel shrugged, dropping the folder back onto the desk and sat down. "Buffy's reading a book?"

"Angel!"

He shook his head, frowning. "Sorry. What's wrong with her reading it?"

"Well, she just called and asked me to do some research on the author," she said.

Angel flipped open the file and stared down at the blurred black and white photo of the author that Willow had sent him. He couldn't see the problem.

"And?"

Willow sighed and closed her eyes. "I think Spike wrote it," she whispered.

Angel dropped the folder. "What the hell are you talking about, Willow?"

"There are some things in that book that are really similar to things that happened between Buffy and Spike," she explained.

"Coincidence," Angel argued.

"Too close to be coincidence," Willow retorted. "And if Buffy's reading it and asking about it, then she's seeing some connections too."

"Did you ever mention this to her?"

Willow bowed her head, resting it in the palm of her hand. "No."

"Well, good, because, Will, it's not possible and it's not worth bothering her with it," Angel said with certainty. "I was there and I saw him die." He stood up and walked over to the window, staring out at the darkness. "He went down right in front of me."

"Did you see him turn to dust?"

Angel shook his head. "No! But when I turned back, he was gone. He had to have been dusted! Willow, he took a stake through the heart!"

"We told her he was dead, Angel," Willow said.

Angel leaned against the window, pressing his forehead to the glass. "He is, Willow. There was nothing left behind but his coat, the stake, and a pile of dust."

"But you didn't see him turn to dust did you?" she persisted.

"No, but I knew he was dead," Angel replied.

"How?"

"We had a connection. I was his grandsire, I felt him die. I felt him go," Angel whispered. 'And I've felt a hole in my soul ever since,' he thought, but didn't say out loud.

"So what about this author? How could he know these things?"

"I don't know, let me look into it," Angel said. "I'll get back to you."

"And in the meantime - what about Buffy?"

"Give her some bits and pieces that you can find out about this William P. Bennett. She'll be starting school soon and that co-op, hopefully she'll be so distracted that she won't push it."

As Willow hung the phone up, she stared down at the book on her desk. She was afraid that Angel was being a bit too optimistic. The possibility of Buffy being too distracted by school and work fell under the category of highly unlikely.

Willow bit at her fingernails in worry. How was she going to face Buffy and explain

why she hadn't said anything when she'd begun to suspect that there may be someone all

too familiar behind that grainy photograph?

***

Buffy didn't sleep. She spent the night sitting at the kitchen table with the book and a pad of paper and a pencil. She might not have a computer, and she might have had to rely on Willow to do some research for her, but there was one thing neither the computer nor Willow had that Buffy had in spades.

Her memories.

So she read and she took notes. Each line of dialogue that seemed even remotely familiar, each scene that struck a chord, she wrote down. And as she read more and more frantically, her heart pounding, the list grew. By the time the sun rose, she had pages of notes and the truth was staring her in the eyes.

"A hundred plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of – you…"

" I'm not asking you for anything. When I say I love you, it's not because I want you, or

because I can't have you, and it has nothing to do with me. I love what you are…"

"I know you'll never love me, I know I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man."

"She shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love and he will be loved. So everything's okay, right? Can we rest now? Morgan, can we rest?"

The scenes were slightly different, the characters their own. But there were enough similarities that Buffy couldn't overlook them. She remembered those moments! She remembered that conversation in the hallway, the night she'd spent in his arms, that heart wrenching scene in the church. She could still see him, curled around the cross in the ghostly half light as the smoke rose from his burning flesh.

Sure, the book was different. There was no apocalypse; no attempted rape in the bathroom. When Morgan's demon lover Rain wept and begged for her forgiveness, it was over her brother's dead body.

But the moments - the beautiful, bittersweet moments were there and Buffy's heart ached.

"You're in my gut... my throat... I'm drowning in you, Morgan, I'm drowning in you…"

As she wrote that last line down, Buffy cracked under the weight of the memories. She

laid her head on the table and wept.

A half hour later, she sat up and wiped her eyes. Then she stood and went to the phone. She didn't care what time it was in L.A; she dialed the one number where she knew she would find someone awake.

"Hello?"

"Angel, it's me," she said, her voice hoarse from crying. She wound the phone cord around her fingers and stared out at the ocean. Brilliant oranges and reds streaked the sky, burning away the dawn. The wind had picked up and was tossing the waves onto the shore with rhythmic ferocity.

"Buffy? What's wrong?"

"Tell me again," she asked, her voice cracking. "Tell me how he died."

She heard a sigh on the other end of the line and then a frantic whisper and the creaking of the bed. It hadn't even occurred to her that he would have company, or that he would even be in bed for that matter.

"Buffy, what is this about?"

"I need you to tell me how he died!" she cried out.

"It's been five years, Buffy," Angel replied. "And I've gone over this again and again. I brought you there, showed you where he died. You need to move on."

"I can't!" she shouted. "He – I – I never got to fix things!"

"Buffy, there was nothing to fix," insisted Angel.

She shook her head, turning away from the window and walking towards the living room. "Yes, there was. Both times he died not knowing the truth! I need to tell him the truth; I need to make him see, to believe."

Angel sighed again. "Believe what?"

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, leaning against the doorframe. "He needs to believe that I loved him," she whispered.

Angel couldn't lie and tell her that Spike had known. He'd gone to his death both times – first in the Sunnydale Hellmouth and then in that back alley – doubting her feelings for him. Angel had even fed that doubt, something that now, all these years later, he regretted. Which is why, whenever she came to him and asked, he couldn't refuse her.

"What can I do to help?"

"Tell me again what happened."

Angel cleared his throat. "I'd told everyone that if they made it, we would meet in the alley, the one north of the hotel, you remember the one?"

"Yeah," she said, clutching the phone.

"I got there and then Spike and Gunn arrived. Spike was bloody but not beaten, he was still ready to fight," he paused, overwhelmed by the memories. He was angry with her suddenly, for making him relive the night just to appease her own guilt. His tone, when he continued, was a little harsher. "Gunn had been wounded pretty bad. Illyria showed up next and she – she told us that Wes hadn't made it. So it was going to be just the four of us."

"Spike wasn't badly hurt at this point was he?"

"No, he was bruised and banged up, but not bad," Angel replied, then continued. "Then the army of demons showed up and the dragon and we faced them down, and went to work."

"You saw the stake go in him?"

"Yes. I was covering his right side, but when the dragon swept down for Gunn, I stepped back to get better leverage on my swing. When I turned back Spike was fighting three demons and was too preoccupied to see the one coming up behind him. Before I could warn him, he was staked in the back."

'And if I'd had a heart,' he thought to himself, 'it would have stopped beating.'

"And you saw him turn to dust?" she whimpered.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I – I screamed his name and then I had to fight my way back to him. When I got to where I'd last seen him, he was gone. And as I've explained before, all that was left was the stake, the coat and a pile of dust."

Buffy sat down on the couch and clutched the phone. "So you didn't actually see him dusted?"

"I saw the stake go through his heart Buffy. We don't survive that," he pointed out.

"He survived burning in the Hellmouth!"

"He came back as a ghost!" Angel bit back, finally losing the last of his patience. "Buffy – he is dead! Get over it. Get on with your life! Meet someone else, someone normal, someone you can really trust and love! Get married and have babies, I don't care – but let this go!"

Buffy jerked the phone back from her ear in shock and then, without hesitation, she hung up on him.