Chapter 37
"So, the guy's name is Gregor Valenos. He's a member of the Order of Marcomanni. He married Antonia Francesconi of the Order of Aurelius sometime in the late 1700s. Although he was part of the aristocracy even before he was turned, he's not historically been involved in politics or power grabs, among humans or vampires. She was a commoner before being turned, nearly a hundred years before him. They were definitely a behind-the-scenes couple, never stayed with any vampire clan or Master's court for long once they got together. Most recently they've been heavily involved in real estate development, mostly building demon-friendly hotels and resorts, although there are a couple of documented cases of them getting involved in the construction of facilities useful for demonic rituals.
"Word on the street is, ever since Antonia's death Gregor has been plotting something, and we're not talking about a condo. He's bargained with most of the Master vampires in the greater Los Angeles area for permission to stay; he may or may not have given Philippe in Atwater Village a partnership share in his newest resort in exchange for allowing him to stick around indefinitely. He also seems to have made a hiring push a month or so ago, bringing in new minions."
"And you're sure this is the guy, Chas?" Robin asked.
"Definitely the guy." Lorne responded. "Sorry to interrupt, but I have additional info from Lindsey and Eve in Rio. Gregor and Antonia were Wolfram & Hart clients, of both US and European branches, since the late 1850s. He's not one of the former clients who signed onto the lawsuit against Liam, but the year before she died Antonia wanted our Evil Overlords to negotiate the purchase of some land near a volcano in Hawaii, so she could build a temple with clear access to make sacrifices to Pele, and we shut her down. Evidently, they also palled around with Drusilla and Gary. So, I called Gary the Chaos demon. He said they'd travelled together a couple of times but didn't talk much. Gregor called him right after Drusilla died, told him Antonia was gone, and asked a bunch of weird questions. Gary didn't know what he was getting at, but if you'd read the prophecy…"
"Gregor knew about the End of the Order of Aurelius, and blames Liam and William." Chet responded. He sighed. "I agree, this sounds like we've found the responsible party."
"Do you remember this guy?" Buffy asked William, turning partially away from the phone as she looked at him. "Did you ever meet him when you and Drusilla were together?"
He sighed, nodding. "Yeah, I remember Gregor."
"Speak up, Spike, we can't hear you on the phone." Faith called.
William rolled his eyes, but turned to face the phone and raised his voice. "I knew Gregor. Darla was friends with Antonia from the Master's court, as much as she was friends with anyone. Toni was banished for taking up with Gregor…Nest didn't like that he wasn't part of the family. But, Darla liked Toni, so they'd exchange letters. The two of them visited Darla's house in Barcelona a couple of times, I met them then."
"So, you can identify him?" Chet asked.
"Yeah, not sure how you'd get pictures to us here, but if I saw him again I'd know him. Next question is, Rogue, how's my phone? Has he messaged me again?"
"Your phone's fine, quit worrying," Faith snarked, just as Liam butted in.
"We talked about Spike's phone yesterday, can we please move on to something important? Like, has anyone seen the hostages, are there any more, do we know what shape they're in? Any evidence of where they have Connor and how he is?"
"Well, if you'd let me finish I'd tell you all about the texts he sent to William." Faith rebutted. "There's been three messages; the first's like what he sent to Liam, the one I mentioned yesterday after I got the phone and turned it on. Last night there were two more. Evidently Jezebel's either cooperating or they're extracting information from her somehow, because now he's asking about how William located Drusilla's human relatives. Says he may be willing to make a deal if he can find what's left of Antonia's family."
Spike snorted. "Not bloody likely. I don't know what angle he's playing there, but they were together hundreds of years, alone for the most part. No way are you convincing me he's gonna be satisfied turning some neo-Antonia and moving on. Something else there."
"I agree." Willow piped up for the first time since the start of the meeting. "That's a weird question; unless, maybe you're looking into resurrection magics. He may have found out about the 'descendant of Drusilla' thing and decided to try magically reverse-engineering his wife. For that, he'd need at least three of her human descendants. Also, it probably means he'll want to capture you two and drain you first, before he kills you."
"Wolfram & Hart had a way to resurrect a vampire using six humans and six vampires as sacrifices." Liam muttered.
"And you don't wanna know how dark that magic is, if it's even possible without the Senior Partners in this dimension anymore." Willow responded, glaring at the phone and wishing Liam could see her.
"Well, if they need me there for a spell, good thing I'm in Europe." William quipped, then sighed, "I hate to have abandoned all of you, and I feel rotten that Jez got mixed up in all of this…"
"No sweat," Chas responded. "And you know Jezzie, she was gonna be up to her eyeballs in this, whether she got kidnapped for not. You do remember how she recruited other Slayers and did all that prophecy research for the Battle of the Black Thorn, right?"
"I s'pose you're right." Will grumbled, and Buffy squeezed his hand.
"Before we get too far off topic," Chet's voice came through the phone, "I'd like to wrap up the discussion of Los Angeles, and move on to the next item on the agenda. Chas, Lorne, do you have anything else for us?"
"Not as such." Chas said. "Next steps here are looking for Gregor's location and seeing if we can dig up any enemies or weaknesses, then making a plan for dealing with him. We only have a day before this meeting he's scheduled, so I wanted to ask everyone else if you could devote some time to research tonight or tomorrow. Check with your contacts, hit the books, whatever you've got. We know Antonia was a weak point, but now that she's dead we need something else. Anything we can negotiate with or use to throw him off balance."
A chorus of agreements came from the other phone lines, and Lorne was just opening his mouth to give the floor back to HQ when Liam spoke up.
"Really, that's it? That's the whole meeting? There's no plan?" He shook his head, ignoring Merry glaring at him. "That's kinda bullshit."
"It is not." Buffy snapped. "Everyone's working hard, but we can't sit here on the phone all night and get anything done, so we are now closing this topic. Once we cover the other topics and get off the phone, we can each do follow-up research on our own, and report in if anything turns up."
Liam couldn't help himself, "But if we go after him now, we could get the jump on him!"
"Liam," Chet called, "We don't know where he is, and if we just start knocking down the doors of vampire lairs all over town we risk getting the LA Slayers into a war with some other Master. It's not worth it to move forward until we have as much information as possible."
He muttered, but Merry spoke over him, "Montana, signing off." She hit the phone button before turning to face him. "Look, I get that you're frustrated, but you remember the battle in LA? How long did it take you to put that together?"
Liam blinked at her, his face bent into a surly frown. "Weeks…Maybe over a month. But, that was totally different, there was a need for secrecy, and no one was being held hostage…"
"Didn't William rescue a baby and return it to its family?" She retorted. Liam subsided into silence, and Merry sighed. "I'm gonna go get ready for dinner, clean up a little. I'll come get you in a few, okay?"
The conference phone beeped. "Oh, shoot, I needed to talk to Merry about one of our other items." Buffy said.
"It's okay, I'll text her." Lorne offered.
"So, next topic," Chet said, a note of warning in his voice. "We've reached a critical mass of Slayers in the US with complaints against them. Willow, care to give an update?"
"Thanks." They all heard papers shifting around through the phone. "It looks like there are seven Sineyans in the US right now who've been reported for misuse of power. Someone who can bind them should go as part of the team that does the evaluation. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who can cast the Power Binding geas. Going forward, I'll have to teach that spell to those who are both powerful witches and Sineyan, but right now there are no good candidates, either in Rio or at the Coven."
"And, why can't a regular witch cast it?" Faith asked. "I don't know a ton about magic, but I remember my first Watcher saying anyone can cast spells, they just have to know what's involved."
"Well, yes and no." Willow responded. "I don't think we need to get too in the weeds, but that particular spell is linked to the spell our ritual on the Hellmouth broke, which was a geas over the entire race, 'calling' one person at a time. In order to cast the geas again on certain people, we kinda have to tap back into that well of Slayer power, and make that person an exception to the breaking of the geas. It requires a connection to the Slayer Line, and the only reason I have that, as a regular human person, is the ritual Buffy did with me and her Scythe. Any time I've tried to have a regular, non-connected human cast it, the spell fizzles."
Chet asked, "Do you have a plan in place for how we handle rogue Slayers going forward, if you find you also can't teach this spell to Sineyans?"
Willow cleared her throat. "Yeah, I've started working up some outlines for new spells, in case this is one only I can cast. In the meantime, I've started working with Penny Lane on it. She's not very strong, but she's stronger than any of my students in Rio, so I wanted to give it a shot. If anyone has the name of a strong Sineyan magic user we could talk to about this project, please pass it along to me, or Chet, or Paul Crenshaw in magical research."
"Excellent, thank you Willow. And, when will you be leaving England?" Chet asked.
"I'm flying into Boston next Thursday, so plenty of time to wrap up stuff here. I'll probably have to come back in September, but luckily the Devon coven had some connections for Wiccan school teachers in Latin America, so if we can hire more people in Rio I can travel more easily."
"Oh, we think we found a new spot for Kennedy Santos, by the way." Amber said. "I e-mailed you the info, let us know what you think."
"Hello, Willow, perhaps this is a foolish question, but have you checked in with Lavinia on the spell? Perhaps she'd be willing and able," Giles asked, looking up from his papers for the first time in a while. He'd been reviewing and making notes on the meeting agenda and the few summaries people had sent before the meeting.
"Er, no, Giles, I haven't. I agree, she's an ideal candidate to learn, and I'd be happy to train her along with Penny, but she doesn't technically work for us, and I wonder if that isn't a lot of information and access to give to someone who may not stick around long." Willow twisted her hands nervously in her lap, hoping she wasn't offending him.
"Well, I do agree that there is risk involved, and we've had quite a lot of that recently." Giles sucked on the cap of his pen, thinking. "Chet, how close is she to passing the background check and satisfying security?"
"The background is taking forever, since she's so old," Amber jumped in. "Good thing is, she's completed all of the paperwork, and she's not been doing anything odd or untoward that the coven's picked up in their checks. If the coven has positive feedback and she's serious about our security concerns, maybe we could set her up as some kind of consultant, until the check is done?"
"I don't love the idea of a consultant working with that spell, even if she's someone I trust implicitly." Buffy offered.
"Also," Willow cut in, "She wants to go to Romania, to do some research. She's very clear that she shouldn't do any magic without approval, and she's receptive to having a Council escort, but she's bound and determined to go. I wouldn't want to start training her on this complex spell, then have her go wandering off across Europe still not bound to the Council."
"Oh, sorry," Buffy said, sounding embarrassed to those over the phone, "That's my research. I asked her to look into some stuff for me. Do you want me to get her to put it aside for a while, Willow?"
"Is it for Dawn?" Willow asked.
"Yeah, it's…"
"Then don't worry about it." Willow said. "I can wait, and if Dawn's having any problems, you should get her the help she needs."
"Well, sure, but I feel like I'm slowing down the organization…"
"Buffy." Chet's voice cut in. "I've said this to you before, and I haven't spoken to Faith much, but I feel like she may need to hear this, also. As the last Slayers called, the Sineyas, the heads of our clan…You are entitled to any resources we can give you. You don't need to run it by a committee, or a board. You just ask for help, and we'll try to find you the help you need."
There was a pause as the group absorbed that, and Buffy was just opening her mouth to respond, when Faith spoke up. "Actually, Mr. Freeman, there's something I've been thinking about." Faith sounded almost shy. "Robin and I've been talking, and I know the Council has people who research the Slayer line, that analyzed our family trees when we were called. I was wonderin', do they know where my mother is? I lost touch with her when Kakistos ran me outa Boston, but now with so many people comin' out of the woodwork, maybe we can…See how she's holdin' up."
"Actually, I was just going to ask the same thing." Buffy said quietly. "My dad left some letters when he died, they mentioned family members I've never met. I wanted to try to track them down."
Amber smiled, "I know a few Summers relatives…" Several people chuckled, getting the joke.
"What? What's funny?" Vi asked from her spot in New York, where she'd been quietly waiting her turn to update the group about ongoing negotiations with the Masters of the city.
"Amber's last name is also Summers, and we're distant cousins, but not through the Summers family." Buffy explained. They'd had to explain it a lot since Amber had been in London with her.
"How is that possible?" Chas asked, fascinated. He hadn't heard the whole story when they were in LA.
"So, in 1881, Michael Worthington married Tiffany Paulson and took her last name, as part of a deal with her father, who wanted someone to take over his family's law firm in Atlanta. We're both descended from their kids. It's just that, in the 1910s a Paulson married a Summers, and then in the 1940s a Paulson married a different, unrelated Summers."
"Weird." Vi proclaimed, causing a few chuckles from the group.
"As far as the elder Ms. Lehane is concerned," Chet said, drawing the conversation back to topic, "I'd be happy to make inquiries, I feel sure that someone has kept track."
"Thank you, sir." Faith offered quietly.
"Now, after Magic I believe we had reassignments on the agenda. I'll go fast. After thorough consideration of the matter, I'm agreeing to the reassignment of Sean Barry, but not to the school in Los Angeles. I believe the conspirators didn't just object to his choice of spouse as we'd previously thought, but they had reasons related to his research for keeping him out of Headquarters. I want to reassign him to the Research Library to work with Mr. Wyndam-Pryce on his new project."
Buffy and Chas both sighed. "Andy's gonna be pissed if she has to have that baby on her own." Buffy said.
"Not to mention," Chas said, "That you promised us at least one Watcher to teach Research Methods and Ancient Languages. Will can probably do the Latin and Greek, but he's not certified and somewhat out of practice. And he has no idea about the Council's modern research methods."
"He's also sitting on this call, mate." Spike said. "Although, I agree with Chas. You aren't thinking efficiently here. I started the research into historical Council operations, and Wes'll continue to develop it into a proper report and some proposed guidelines, so if you think Andy's hubby can help, why not just send him along to LA with Wes and I. Then we have enough teachers, and we can do the work that's needed together."
"Wesley is the next person on the agenda. He's going to be moving back to London full time in the fall. I'd already spoke with Jezebel about staffing for the school. At this point, Wes was only slotted in for weapons and hand-to-hand training, so Buffy can take that over." Chet responded.
Spike blinked at Buffy, "You knew about this, luv?"
Buffy shrugged, "I asked Wes to help out with some stuff at the library while he was in London, the same as you. You had this amazing idea for the research into how the Council's been run in the past, and what we can take from that going forward. Wes just started to…Fix things. Like, he went to the old-timers working on esoteric research in the sub-basement and refusing to come up for their new security reviews. He just sat with them for the day, and did the interviews, and found out what they were working on…He actually managed to get two researchers' work finished, because they needed texts that were lost in the explosion, and he got them other copies.
"I offered him a role at the library in London, but I didn't know the details he'd worked out, or even if he'd taken it until now."
"Oh. Right." His frown promised further conversation later.
"So, the third person transferring is Andrea Barry. When Wesley returns to London after the Paulson wedding, he'll be escorting Andrea to meet her husband. Then, two Watchers from the Research Library who Wesley has recommended will move to Los Angeles and teach. Those names are Donovan McNamara and Nigel Crawford. If anyone else has transfer recommendations, please let their section head know, or come directly to me via e-mail."
"Should we be making plans for Nigel?" Spike and Chas both asked, drawing chuckles from a few people and confused looks and noises from others.