Chapter 20
"So, what do we have?" Buffy felt strange seated behind Giles' desk. She'd tried to give the seat to Chet, but he insisted that in the absence of a duly elected Head Watcher, the Head Slayer was in charge of the Council, so it was technically her desk at the moment.
"We managed to get all of the conspirators we knew about into custody. Unfortunately, we've since learned about the involvement of five more people we can't find. That should take care of the 'Executive Committee' leaders." Willow reported from her post laying on the settee, which had been dragged closer to the desk so she could rest and participate at the same time. "We also took into custody a few people who may or may not be compromised." She looked over at Andrew, who blushed but didn't feel compelled to defend himself.
"Roger Wyndam-Pryce isn't someone you want to give the benefit of the doubt, he's dangerous even at his age. I'd say Wells was justified." Chet interjected. "If he's involved, you want him neutralized."
"And I suppose you want me to call and tell Wesley about this?" Spike's voice filtered up from the conference phone on the desk.
"I'd appreciate it if you would. You and Penny are the people closest to him, and I don't think Pen's up to talking to anyone just now." Buffy turned to look at Penny, who was laid out on the large sofa on the other side of the office, asleep. Just like she had been for the last two hours.
"She's still asleep?" Tom's voice was low, but they could still hear him. "I should drive up there, if I leave now…"
"No, Tommy, don't bother. We're headed back to London in a couple of hours. Amber's getting a van from the motor pool, the three of us, Goldie, and Daniel will be back at the hotel by the time you've finished at the storage unit and picked up takeout for us."
"I don't like the idea of Red staying there without a Slayer to protect her." William said.
Willow rolled her eyes. "I appreciate the thought, but we actually asked Marlene to come and stay with Chet and me for the night. That'll also help us feel out how she thinks the school here is being run. Also, one of Giles' aunts contacted the Council looking for him, and we're going to have dinner with her. Evidently there was some kind of spell keeping them from remembering he was in England, which is super weird since they live on the same estate. Like, they didn't notice all this time?"
"Some of these old estates are literally towns." Daniel said, calling from his spot at Giles' bedside. "Not so much this one, but it's enough acreage that with magic involved they wouldn't have noticed the little signs of occupation, and with his situation here he wouldn't exactly have been out visiting family."
"I'd like for Daniel and the girls to bring some of the electronics from the conspirators' offices and Mr. Giles' office back to London to get the technical people in research involved, since there seems to be some intersection of IT and magic going on. I don't trust security after what we found here." Chet said. "The trouble is, we don't know who's capable of doing the work, or how trustworthy they are."
Fully half of the Conspirators had been from the Security Division, so they were all a little spooked. That was part of the reason Willow was staying in Bath for now, to make sure the facilities and the baby Slayers were protected while they sorted out the mess that was the organization's security.
"I can get you a list of the people I know are capable whom I would personally trust, but I'd prefer that someone magic us up a lie detector or do something more concrete to help us figure out who to trust before we approach anyone else." Daniel said.
"Penny and I can get started on the electronics tomorrow, that should buy you guys a day to figure out who we can tap to help." Andrew offered. "I can do the tech and she can do the magic, and we each have some knowledge of the other's part. As long as Penny's up for it, we can make it work."
Buffy sighed. "That's great, Andrew, except I thought you were going to stay over to keep eyes on the building tonight, and help Willow with the interrogations tomorrow?"
"I'll still spend the night here, and this evening Willow and I can set some things up for tomorrow. In the morning I'll head back to London on the train." Andrew shrugged. "I offered to help with the questioning because I wanted to be useful, but I'm better with computers than I am at looking intimidating."
"True enough." Buffy smiled. Then she realized what that would mean, and her smile dimmed. "I guess that means it's my job to intimidate people, doesn't it?"
"Sorry, not sorry." Goldie responded. "But when you talk to Alan Thomas, give him a big Fuck You from me, would ya?"
"That bad, is he?" Chet chuckled.
"He must have said 400 times how impressive it was that Mr. Giles 'plucked him from obscurity' in the Clerk's Office to have him for a personal assistant, which is a stupid thing to draw attention to when you magic yourself into the role, and no one chose you for it."
"Or, maybe that was how the magic worked." Willow sat up. "It's possible he was reinforcing the idea the spell created by mentioning it."
"That's a rather extreme 'fake it till you make it' situation." Buffy declared. A knock on the door drew their attention, and Amber let herself into the office with a tea cart. "Alright, food!"
Amber smiled. "I'm sorry it's just tea and stuff from the vending machines, I didn't trust anyone to prepare anything without me watching. My amulet picked up something in the refrigerator when the tea lady took the milk out. Turns out Mr. Giles had special food prepared for his meetings here. I had to force them to throw it out."
Everyone else groaned. "Duh, why didn't we think to check the kitchen staff here, after we caught Giles' cook at home?" Andrew smacked his forehead.
"I'll go…" Willow went to stand, but her legs buckled, and Buffy dashed to catch her.
"I think you've done enough for tonight." Buffy said, helping her friend back to the settee. "You're exhausted. What about calling in the Coven? We can trust them, right?"
Willow sighed, deflating a bit. "I'll call Althenea, she'll know who's best to bring over, and I trust her implicitly. Sorry, I should have done that earlier, I guess."
"It's alright, Willow, we had no idea how bad this was until we got to work unravelling it." Chet made a calming motion, as though he'd pat her if he could reach her. "Now we have to figure out how to fix it."
"Umm," Andrew started, "Wait, we have some kind of connection to the Immigration people, right? That's how we get through airport security so fast in England, because of the Council?"
"Yes, although I have no idea who's in charge of that right now, with Security in such a state." Chet said.
"Theoretically still Martindale, although if he didn't notice so many of his people working against us, I wouldn't keep him in the role for long. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence." Goldie muttered.
"Yeah, but maybe he can keep the rest of the conspirators from fleeing the country, or tell us where they've gone if they already left." Andrew responded.
Buffy blinked. She never would have thought of that. "Andrew, do you think you can go see Mr. Martindale right now, and get him started on that?" She handed him a sheet of paper from the desk. "Make a copy of this and take it to him, then sit on him and make sure he does his job correctly. Put them on every watch list we can." She squeezed his hand as he reached to take the paper. "Thanks, that was good thinking."
Andrew rushed off, and Buffy turned to the rest of the group. "Okay everyone, let's eat something, and then we need to brainstorm. We've obviously forgotten things about what the Council does, and ways these people could have gotten as much control as they did. We need to think of every stupid little detail, from who has drivers to what the tea ladies hear, and check for what else could be going wrong."
William and Tom had been at the storage facility for hours. Will had never been to a place like that before, and although Tommy warned him about the scale, he hadn't grasped it until he'd tried to walk into a room full of crated memorabilia from his past.
When Will realized opening boxes randomly wasn't going to work, he'd asked the facility's management for the item catalogue books, and he and Tom had taken over a small conference room to review the books and make phone calls. In addition to keeping in touch with their friends and girlfriends in Bath, Tommy had been trying to schedule him an appointment to see his childhood home. Which he still owned, amazingly.
Will was flipping through the pages cataloguing items from the house stored after his mother's death, waiting for it to be an appropriate time to call Los Angeles. "I still can't believe Michael managed to set this all up the way he did." He murmured. "My parents' wedding rings! Even if they didn't dust when Mum did, I'd 've thought her ring was a family heirloom that went back to the estate."
"You saw what he wrote." Tom replied. "He thought it was bullshit that they were treating you like you were dead when you were still alive…Or, undead, anyway. He figured if your mother wanted you to have her rings and the remains of her dowry, they should still come to you. I agree, it wasn't right that the Wyndam-Pryce family was trying to take the parts of your inheritance that weren't entailed, but you were technically dead, and they were Council. It wasn't like they were going to believe a vampire could reform."
"But, Michael did." William's eyes grew misty as he thought about his old friend. "He somehow thought I was going to be strong enough to fight the demon and win. He really thought I'd Shanshu."
Tommy patted Will on the shoulder. "He was a very special person, who thought you were even more special than him. Even if we're not blood related, I'm very proud to consider myself part of his family."
William turned a page in the book, sniffling and fighting to keep the tears out of his eyes. He wasn't embarrassed to cry in front of Tom; he'd done it before when the pain in his legs or the emotions from all these revelations had overwhelmed him, but it was still something he'd like to minimize. He'd flipped through a few of the books earlier to get an idea of the scale of what was here, but now he was looking at individual items, trying to decide if there was anything he'd like to take with him today, or maybe just dispose of outright to lower the inventory. Evidently he was paying to store all this junk. "Oh, good Lord!" He almost growled when he saw what was on the next page. "Seriously, they didn't take any of the horse pictures? Not even the old ones?" He flipped to the next page, which continued to catalogue oil paintings of horses. "Bloody hell, how many of the things are there?"
"Two-hundred fifteen, I think?" Tommy replied. "Or, something close to that. I counted them once."
"Well, those can go. I never understood why Da wanted to have the horses painted. It was a stupid, outdated tradition even then." William flipped the page. "Oh, wait, I'll keep this one. I remember Jacobin, Da used to put me up on him after he'd won a race. I must have been four or something, felt like I was a million miles from the ground."
Tommy smiled. "Circle that one, we'll have it pulled to be crated for shipment to LA."
Will circled the painting, then flipped back to the jewelry and circled that also. "How do I mark the items I want disposed of?"
"There are little check boxes below the listings, see?" Tommy pointed. "Pull, dispose, hold. But don't check dispose unless you think it isn't worth anything. A lot of the stuff you don't want is probably worth some money, we can pull it and send it to an antiques dealer who'll run an estate sale. That way you can get something for it, at least."
"Okay," Will rolled his eyes, "So, how do I mark stuff for the estate sale?"
Tom blushed. "Oh, right. Umm, star it?"
Spike dutifully drew stars next to every horse painting other than the one of the horse he actually remembered.