Chapter 21

"So." Buffy stood in front of her Watcher's 'assistant', who'd been instrumental to the conspirators in keeping Giles docile all this time, according to a quick search of his e-mails. "Why don't you start from the beginning. What did you do for the Council before the explosion?"

Alan squinted at the woman, not much younger than him, who had woken him by entering his cell. When he came to work today he hadn't been expecting to be imprisoned by his employers, especially since he worked for the two most important men in the Council. He might even be counted as number three.

"I don't know who you think you are, young lady, but you should be very careful how you treat me. While I'm powerful in my own right, I have even more powerful friends." He tried to forcefully press his will onto her, but all she did was glare at him.

"I felt that, you know." Buffy shook her head, trying to look nonchalant when she was feeling pretty chalant, thanks. That had been creepy as hell, even if the spell or whatever hadn't worked on her. "Is that supposed to work on Slayers?"

Alan blinked, trying to place her. It took him a few minutes since he wasn't expecting Buffy Summers to just show up in England without making them roll out the red carpet for her. Usually he arranged her flights, sent a car to the airport, and was tasked with all sorts of nonsense when she traveled. Though it was an annoyance, it kept Rupert calm, and allowed him to monitor her. He honestly hadn't been sure Buffy knew how to make her own travel preparations.

"Ah, Ms. Summers. I should have expected this kind of behavior from you. Once Mr. Giles finds out what you've done…"

Buffy held up a hand, "Listen, you can save the drama queen act, we know you're involved. Giles is fully aware that I'm in Bath and in the process of dismantling the Executive Committee."

His eyes went wide against his will. That was not what he'd expected Buffy to say at all. He tried to cover his shock and buy some time. "Ms. Summers, you know the New Council doesn't have an Executive Committee."

"Which made the office you built them on the third floor especially surprising." She arched an eyebrow at him. "Seriously, Alan, is that how this is going to go down? You're just going to deny everything and force us to hit you or bespell you to get our answers? I was hoping for something more civilized."

Alan sniffed. "What would you know about civilized? Bloody colonial, you'd never even been to Europe before we brought you here."

"Yeah, because there's no civilization anywhere on earth except in Europe. Even I know civilization comes from the fertile crescent, which is Iran, not here." Buffy pulled over the wooden chair she'd left just inside the cell door. "Look Alan, I know you don't like me or whatever. The feeling's entirely mutual, I assure you. I have no patience for anyone who would endanger or entrap a member of my team. That goes double for GIles, who's been like a father to me. So…" She stepped closer to him. "You can either tell me what I want to know, or I start giving you examples of the techniques Giles taught me in five years of weapons training."

Alan paled. "Umm, what was the question again?" Surely if he pretended to cooperate, he could buy himself some time to either outsmart the girl or be rescued.

Buffy sighed and dropped into the chair. "What did you do for the old Council?"

"I was on the support staff for the Executive Committee." Alan replied. As he continued speaking, pride filled his voice. "I'm an expert on the occult and many demonic cultural practices, as well as being highly competent in research and administrative tasks. I was in the top ten percent of my class at the Academy. Since I wasn't interested in field work, I remained at Headquarters and was chosen for the EC post. It's a highly coveted position."

Yeah, for those who are either too scared or too inept to go into field work, Buffy thought. She'd learned in the last few months about how the old Council had worked, and she knew darn well that the best and brightest ended up in either the Research or Field divisions. Those who couldn't qualify for either of those moved into another division or became support staff. Unless they fell into the dumb jock/psychopath category, in which case they went directly to Special Operations, sometimes without going to the Academy at all. Buffy wondered where those guys were now, hoping they'd actually been disbanded like she wanted. Another thing to add to their list.

"I was working on a project for one of the Executive Heads over at the Research Library when the explosion happened. I was part of the immediate response team after the explosion, looking for survivors and clues to what had happened." Alan had his mouth open to continue, but Buffy interrupted.

"See, and that's when it starts getting fuzzy for me, Alan." Buffy leaned forward in her chair, eyes focused intently on the Watcher. "Because what should have happened at that point is that more experienced investigators showed up to deal with the London explosion. Then you got transferred to the Research library, to manage the inventory of what texts were lost in the explosion and how to replace them. You'd think that would be a big deal appointment for someone kinda junior level like you. Instead, you appear about 6 months later at HQ managing the move to Bath, then you stay on here and become part of Giles' personal staff. The inventory never got done, and all of the sudden you have a lot more power. What could be the advantage of that?"

"Being at Headquarters allowed me to more effectively assist with the recovery efforts and get close to Mr. Giles…"

Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. "And I get why that was a good deal for you, but what did it give the conspirators? It's not like you're some amazing catch with special abilities. There's gotta be a hundred Watchers with more magical abilities and better research skills."

"But almost none of them are nulls." Alan sneered. "You can cast all the truth spells you want, they won't work on me. Spells just bounce off."

"So, they couldn't even use you to reinforce the web of spells around Giles, that seems like a mark against you, if you ask me." Buffy tried to look confused as she thought about how they could have used that ability. He'd be able to touch everything in Giles' office without feeling all the magics. It had probably made Giles nuts, to sense something affecting him then having to watch as the person standing next to him all the time felt absolutely nothing.

"Rather the opposite, Mr. Travers felt it was safer to have someone close by who couldn't be accidentally affected by the spellwork necessary to influence Mr. Giles to his views."

"Mr. Travers is dead." Buffy said firmly, sure he wasn't talking about Quentin but utterly ignorant of any other Travers' at the Council.

Alan sniffed, a faint smile crossing his face. "See, we knew you weren't equipped to understand the complexity of this situation. The Travers family should have been dealt with better after the tragedy, then Duncan never would have joined the cause. Mr. Wyndam-Pryce knew you wouldn't pay the families enough for their losses, and we could use that…" He probably shouldn't have given her those names, but she didn't seem to realize he'd said anything interesting. "You've been the author of your own destruction, in your haste to change everything about the Council you've neglected the kinds of niceties that earn people's loyalty."

Buffy hung her head, as much to hide the sparkle of triumph in her eyes as to convey disappointment. "What about being loyal to an idea, or to the betterment of the world?"

"Betterment?" He scoffed. "When the Council has so much money and resources, and they dole them out so pitiably? Do you know how few families which have devoted generations to the Council actually made any money from it? Not everyone is like your Watcher with his ancient family estate, or the Wyndam-Pryce's who have more money than sense most of the time. My family, for example, had to leave the Council's service for several generations in order to have the resources to come back to the work."

It was about money, then, for at least some of them. Buffy wished she wasn't surprised. She could strongly identify with the urge to give up the mission so she could eat. More things to think about for the future. "So you joined up with Roger because he promised you the money you needed to stay on the job? I don't suppose working hard and earning a raise occurred to you? You know, since you cleared the hurdle of getting hired and they were already paying you to work here, which is more than you could say for some of us." She was so not above acting pitiful to get a reaction.

"If you'd moved in with your Watcher in your teens as you were intended to, he would have been supporting you this whole time and you wouldn't need to worry about being paid." Alan sniffed. "This is the trouble with making changes to systems without thought. Watchers are intended to support Slayers, not just with research and training but with a roof over their head and spending money and all the other necessaries. Your Watcher could certainly afford it. If you're going to call him your Watcher, you should be following the procedures and getting what you need from him. He has nothing else to spend his money on, since the Council pays for his books and he has a huge family fortune to support him. Of course," he looked at her archly, "Now neither of you's in the field anymore, he isn't being paid to support you, and you should be drawing some kind of salary for training Slayers. It's at least half of a Watcher's job, so something in the range of a support staff salary. I assume you'd be willing to make due with only 50,000 pounds per year."

Buffy snorted, "Wow, you're sitting in a holding cell with less than the no authority you had before, and you're trying to buy me off with a raise. You have a lotta nerve." She stood and picked up her chair. "Thanks for the tip about truth spells not working on you, though. That should be helpful later."

As Buffy withdrew from the room, Alan had the fleeting thought that he'd handled that badly somehow, but he couldn't put his finger on exactly how.

"Did you get all that, guys?" Buffy poked her head around the corner into the observation room where Willow and Andrew had set up recording equipment they were testing for the interrogations planned for the following day.

"Yeah, the microphone in the chair works great, no matter how far forward you lean." Andrew played back a clip of her voice at the moment she leaned forward. The volume changed, but not much, and there was no distortion.

"Perfect." Buffy smiled. "Listen, I know we talked about getting more information out of Alan tonight, but I think we should quit while we're ahead. I want to get Daniel back to London to do some research on him. Some of the things he said pinged for me."

"If you're worried about him being a null, it's actually not that hard to work around." Willow broke in, keys flying across her laptop. "I did a bunch of research into it at one point, nullism doesn't effect spells performed around the person, and he can still be affected by potions, just not direct casting. Also, I'm putting out a warning on Quentin Travers' nephew Duncan. We should know where he is in a few hours."

"That's great, Wills. Maybe work on a truth potion we can give Alan if he stops cooperating? That's not what has me most concerned, though. The first thing is, I felt him push me mentally when I first went in there. I thought it was a spell, but he shouldn't be able to cast anything if he's a null, right?"

"No, a null wouldn't be able to cast anything, they aren't able to interact with magical forces." Willow agreed.

Buffy nodded. "So, that's weird, right? I want to check his personnel records, see if there's anything else special about our friend Alan. Maybe he's got some other kind of power. Is there some kind of human mental power that acts like a vampire's thrall?"

"Telepathy, or Psychic Persuasion." Andrew offered, "Neither one is usually described as a push or pressure, it's generally felt as persuasion or a sense of complacency, but with you being the Slayer it's possible your body naturally resists which means you feel more as it works to get at you."

Willow shrugged. "I don't have a better explanation. What's the second thing?"

"He mentioned his family previously working for the Council and leaving, then him coming back, right?" They nodded. "There's a Slayer in LA named Barbara Thomas. She's planning to be the Middle and High School math teacher. They've been treating her like an unidentified potential, but if anyone in her family knew about the Council before, who knows what that means. Were they hiding from the Watchers? Did she actually know about Alan and his plans and send herself to LA to keep an eye on the group there?"

Willow groaned and banged her head gently on the desk beside her laptop. "Why? How come every time we think we have a handle on this something else weird pops up?"

"At least this one is an easy fix." Andrew said. "Lorne can find out her destiny and stuff when she sings. All he has to do is host a karaoke night for the staff and we'll know if she's going to be a problem."

"Really?" Buffy asked.

At the same time, Willow smiled, "Oh, right, I'd forgotten he could do that. Good call!"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Hey Andrew, since you've got all the good ideas today, any thoughts on how to tell Wesley that his Dad's evil?"

Spike squinted at the mobile phone in his hand, trying to read the text message he'd just opened. "How the hell do I make this text larger, mate?" He called out to Tommy, who was typing a brief on his laptop. "I can't even see the damn text, print's so small."

"Give it here." Tom sat back and stretched out his arm. He hit a few buttons, "Okay, that should…Shit."

"Well I hope not, it's a phone." Will quipped. When Tommy didn't smile, he quit joking around. "What's wrong, mate? Buffy's not hurt, is she?"

Tom sighed, "No, she texted to update you on the conspirators." He handed the phone back across the table, and William frowned as he finally read the message.

"Wes dad part of conspiracy. I think he should come home." Buffy's texts were generally full of abbreviations and such, so complete sentences, however brief, were a strong indication of how seriously she was taking the situation. "Have u called LA yet?"

"No I wanna wait til 4." He texted back, sighing. He was now looking forward to talking to Percy even less. Poor Wes wasn't gonna take this well. The Cyborg fiasco last year had left him all out of sorts with his pap. The phone beeped at him again.

"You also need to call Jez, or have Wes do. Need to keep Barb T out of Council business til we research. She may b connected."

"Seriously? Is everyone part of a fuckin' conspiracy now?" He grumbled, quickly texting back to say he'd do as asked.

"Who else?" Tommy groaned, saving his document and shutting the laptop. Obviously other things were going to take up his attention for a while.

"Possibly Barb Thomas." Spike muttered, in the middle of composing a vague text to Jezzie telling her not to discuss Council things in front of the maths teacher.

"Barbara, the girl who didn't know what the Watcher's Council was, and has a family so aggressively normal that she wanted help telling them she had powers?" Tommy frowned. "Okay, my grandfather had no idea he was Sineyan, and it took until my father had to be trained to handle his increased strength before anyone clued him in, so I can see how that could happen."

William sighed and checked the most recent text from his Slayer before going back to composing texts to Jezzie. "One of the conspirators is named Thomas, and mentioned his family leaving the Council and then coming back."

"So they're guessing Barb's part of the family that left the Council?" Tommy shook his head. "It's not like Thomas is a common name or anything. They may be a little paranoid, dude."

"It sounds like they have reason to be paranoid." He rubbed his eyes and groaned. "Now I gotta call Wes and tell him his pap's an evil buggering conspirator."

Tom snorted. "From everything Penny's said about their relationship, I'll bet he already knows his dad's evil. The conspiracy will be the real surprise."