Forsake Me Not

"—the Summers girl. She's in my Cathy's class, they're friends, she comes here a lot. But I don't let Cathy go there anymore."

"No?"

"The parents are a little . . . odd. She's all right, I suppose. Kind of stand-offish. I haven't seen her in quite a while, come to think of it. She used to drive Cathy home from school once in a while, with Jemima, but not lately."

"What about him?"

"Father's unemployed, I think— he's always home, always hanging around where the girls are playing."

"In a creepy way?"

"He's British or something, he's kind of rough. Has a funny way of talking. I mean— of expressing himself. You know. Not quite what you expect, for around here. If you get my drift."

"What do you mean?"

"It's hard to explain. You'd have to see him. He looks . . . kind of thuggish."

"Thuggish?"

"But terribly attractive. I mean, you can see what she sees in him. In a way, you can see too much. He's almost indecent."

"Oh my."

Jemima left off what she was doing— she and Cathy were laying out a town in the gravel driveway— and went up to the porch where Mrs Miucci was talking to another lady.

"Can I get a drink of water?"

"Of course, dear. Come inside." Smiling, Cathy's mother held the screen door open. Her guest, sitting cross-legged with her little bag at her high-heeled feet, a drink in her hand, also smiled.

"You're Jemima Summers? And where do you live?"

She gestured. "Around the corner."

"They're on Revello," Mrs Miucci supplied.

"And you go to school with Cathy. Cathy's my niece. I'm Mrs Miucci's sister."

Jemima nodded at this.

"How old are you, dear?"

"Seven and two-thirds. Almost Seven and three-quarters."

The ladies exchanged a look at this, and she knew they were laughing at her.

"Is your daddy going to come get you today?"

"I walk home by myself. I have to be home before dark."

"Plenty of time," Mrs Miucci murmured.

"But he'll be there when you get home?"

She smiled. "He waits for me on the porch." Then she added, "He doesn't go out in the day."

"He goes to work at night, then?"

The two women exchanged another quick glance; Jemima thought they winked at each other.

"He used to. He used to work with my mamma. But then . . . something happened."

"Oh dear . . . what?"

"Just . . . nothing."

"Nothing? I thought you said something."

Jemima frowned. "She doesn't have to work any more."

Again the women looked at each other. Jemima was starting to regret this. She'd wanted to stop them talking about her like she wasn't within earshot, but that's not what was happening. Both of them were looking at her with such bright, intense gazes. She remembered how her mother always said that it wasn't necessary to tell people too much about their family. Family things were private. But how could she not answer when they asked her directly?

"What kind of work did mom and dad do, Jemima? Before they stopped?"

". . . Patrol."

"Patrol? What— were they with the police?"

"No." She hadn't really wanted a glass of water a few minutes ago, but she wanted it now. She held up her hands. "I think I'd better wash."

"In a moment, dear. What kind of patrol?"

"Just . . . I don't know. I go to bed at eight. Papa puts me to bed and they go to work after. When it's dark."

"So who stays with you when mom and dad work?"

"My aunties used to, but then they moved away. Then I had a babysitter. But now mamma and papa mostly stay home."

"Yes, you said. No more work. That must be very nice."

Jemima looked at the floor. It wasn't particularly nice, because the air in their house these last weeks was heavy now in a way it never had been before. But, recalling her mother's words about not being a blabbermouth, she just nodded resolutely. Up, down, up, a good firm nod. "Can I have that drink now?"

She didn't like Mrs Miucci's sister, whose fingernails were too long and who was too nosy; when she offered to walk her home, Jemima tried to demur, but Mrs Miucci said she'd better not go alone, you never knew what might happen and she didn't want to be responsible.

She kept trying to take her hand, but Jemima jammed them into her pockets.

"Your daddy will be waiting for you?"

She nodded.

"I'll deliver you right to him. Safe and sound. Will you introduce me?"

The afternoon was still bright when they made the walk; Papa was right there where she knew he'd be, on the porch glider, with the bamboo shades rolled down against the slanting rays, a book in his lap. She scrambled up the porch steps and threw herself against his legs.

Cathy's aunt followed more slowly in her high heels. She didn't need to come at all, but there she was, with that big phony smile, climbing the stairs, introducing herself.

"I wanted to make sure Jemima got home all right, Mr— Mr— " She stood in the direct sunlight and held out her hand to shake.

Not moving, he said, "Name's William."

"William. I'm Bobbi. I heard that Jemima's mother was— "

"She's all right, bit under the weather is all." Papa's hand was curled around her shoulder. "Thanks ever so for bringin' her back."

"She had a nice time. She's a sweet girl."

"That she is," he agreed.

Cathy's aunt should've gone then, but she continued to stand there. "This is a nice shady spot you've got here. Retired. Very pleasant."

Papa shrugged.

"Nice blinds, keep out the glare."

"Not partial to glare," Papa agreed. Jemima frowned, but Cathy's aunt wasn't looking at her. Her eyes were riveted on Papa, which was of course what always happened— ladies always liked to look at Papa.

"Well, I'd better be getting back. So nice to meet you, William."

Again she extended her hand; again Papa ignored it.

On the steps, she pretended to stumble. Jemima saw it very clearly, how she pretended. Stupid nosy Cathy's aunt. Papa got to his feet, asked her if she was all right, but he didn't go into the sunlight.

That was something else that people did— ladies and men both. They'd try to make Papa go into the sunlight.

"Goodbye," Jemima sang, loud.

They watched her mince off. Papa sat down again and she climbed up to sit on his lap.

"Did she bore you all afternoon, my Jem?"

"She asked me questions."

"People are a lot of nosy buggers, aren't they, sweetness?" He smiled at her and tugged on one pigtail. "All needin' to know why your papa is so bleedin' good-looking."

"Yes. That's what Mrs Miucci said."

He guffawed. "Did she now?"

"Yes. She said you were indecent. What's indecent mean?"

"That bloody cow. Never mind— go on in now, Jemmie, and see how your Mum's doing."

She pressed her head into his shoulder. "I wanna stay with you."

"I expect Mum's getting lonely, though. So run up and have a chat with her."

"What if she's mean to me?"

Papa smiled, and smoothed her hair. "She won't be mean to you. She was a bit cross this morning, that's all. She's sorry about it." He rubbed a spot on his temple that was bruised.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"Hardly at all. Give us a kiss, then go on."

Papa and Mamma's room was special: it was always candlelit, smelt of beeswax and somehow also like the beach, and she wasn't allowed to go in uninvited. Papa slept there in the afternoons while she was at school, and again with Mamma in the middle of the night when they got back from patrol, and before she had to get up.

Mamma wasn't there now. Since she came home after her accident, two weeks ago, she'd taken to spending most of her time in what used to be Auntie Tara's room, but which had been her room when she was a girl. When she got to the top of the stairs, Jemima considered just passing by, going to her own room, getting on with her book. Mamma wouldn't want to see her. Papa didn't always know what Mamma was like.

The door was ajar; Jemima started to pass on tiptoe, but then Buffy's voice sounded. "Jemmie?"

She peered cautiously in. "What are you doing, Mamma?"

"Nothing. There's nothing to do anymore." She stared for another second, her hand twisted in her long hair, then as if she'd flipped a switch, suddenly she was sitting forward, smiling and holding her arms out.

Jemima hesitated. But Mamma looked so sad, under her smile, that she couldn't bear to hold back. And when she scooted into her arms, it was all right.

"Where've you been today?"

After touching Papa, Mamma always felt warmer. But now, Jemima thought, she felt almost— fizzy. Her skin was hot, and seemed to jump, and when she was pressed against her, the beat of Mamma's heart seemed very very fast.

"Tell me all the news of the big wide world."

Jemima talked, snuggled into her mother's heated embrace, but she couldn't help looking at it, propped against the nightstand, and after a few minutes Mamma noticed, and then they were both looking.

Jemima knew that this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Mamma was not supposed to spend so much time up here alone, and she was supposed to wear it and practice and get used to it. That's what they all said— Papa and Uncle Giles and the lady from the hospital who visited to see how they were doing. But Mamma said she hated it and it didn't fit her right and anyway what was the use? She was finished.

It made Jemima mad— and scared. How could she mean that, when she still needed to be taken care of? Slithering out of Mamma's embrace, she picked it up and brought it over. "Put this on and come down to the kitchen."

Mamma made a face, but she took it, and threw aside the hem of her robe. Jemima turned her head. She didn't like to look.

"I'm sorry you saw that this morning, Jemmie, what I did to your father. You know that's not the right way for people to behave. I hope you'll never do anything like that to anyone."

She sounded, Jemima thought, like a recording, saying that. Like when you pulled the string on a talking doll. She shook her head, indicating she never never never would, staring hard at the corner of the bureau, waiting for when it would be safe to glance around.

"I was hurting and that's why I did it. But it's no excuse. I shouldn't have hit him with this," she said, snapping the artificial leg into place. She rose, steadying herself with a hand on Jemima's shoulder. "I shouldn't have hit him at all."

Buffy hated the stairs. Always felt like she was falling. She was the slayer, she was strong and graceful and coordinated, she shouldn't feel like a fragile old lady going down one step at a time, white-knuckling the banister. Jemima had darted ahead of her and was at the bottom now, watching her descent. She wished the child wouldn't do that, it made this harder.

She didn't trust the prosthesis. It was the best one money could buy, but no matter how many times they adjusted it for her, how many sessions with the physical therapist, it never was comfortable. She'd been shown videos, pamphlets, told stories, over and over until she wanted to scream, about people who performed amazing feats of athleticism with a prosthetic leg. She shouldn't have this trouble— she'd been in peak physical condition, and she was the slayer. I'm the slayer, I'm the slayer . . . apparently she'd repeated that like a broken record for a day while she ran that fever in intensive care, until they'd had the psychiatrist in to look at her.

The slayer healing thing still worked. The stump had healed right up in just a couple of days— they were all amazed by that, at the hospital. Miracle healing. No infection, no complications.

What good though was slayer healing when there was no such thing as slayer limb regeneration?

Some other things couldn't be regenerated either. Like what got cut off inside her when she heard Spike say those words.

It wouldn't have been so surprising coming from Giles, or Xander. But to hear it from Spike's mouth, and then to hear them all agreeing with him like a chorus of Pollyannas, to feel the daily pressure of it on her since, just made the whole thing worse.

Why couldn't they see that?

There were a lot of good reasons why she was on her own that night. She liked to patrol once or twice a week alone, because no matter what she was the Slayer, and it would be a bad thing if she got into the habit of always relying on having back-up.

Also, the latest in the long string of au pairs recruited from amongst the potentials at the slayer academy had flaked on them, so they couldn't just leave the house together. That evening Spike barked at her that if she'd just wait a bleedin' half hour, they could call around and find a babysitter and then he'd go with her. But she didn't want to wait, and . . . okay, that night she really didn't want him along, she just needed a little time to be on her own to breathe, right?

All day she was at the slayer academy, trying to teach those— God, was she such a nitwit when she was just starting out? So arrogant, so unwilling to be shown anything, told anything? Instruction really wasn't her métier, she lacked the right kind of patience. Spike, oddly enough, was better at it. He was annoyingly good at a lot of stuff, like teaching hand-to-hand skills to giggly girls, and reasoning with Jemima when she was stubborn. He was always pleased with her, even when she mouthing off.

Spike the soulless vampire had a quite a life going for himself. Somehow he got to be the hero instructor at the slayer academy. Half the Slayerettes had crushes on him and the other half were ambitious to slay him for real, and sometimes the distinctions there got kind of blurry, but he could always handle it with that charm of his while she'd just get mad and have to leave the room when they drove her crazy with stupid questions or mulishness. And Spike was the hero daddy too. It was so obvious, even though neither of them ever talked about it, that Jemima loved him best.

She always had. Spike had fixed it that way from the time she was born.

Easy for him. He wasn't the one who had to . . . who had to be the mother. There was nothing natural or easy about mothering and she knew she sucked at it.

She didn't like having to go on doing things she wasn't good at. It made her squirmy inside, a squirmy that didn't pass off, that just kept getting worse.

It was fucked up, she knew that, to feel jealous of her own daughter, to be nostalgic for the time before she was possible, when she was just the slayer with her wildass worshipful demon lover at her side. No normal woman ever wished her own child would just . . . not disappear, she didn't want anything to happen to Jem. Not really. Just . . . she fantasized sometimes about how things might be if the Trio had never sent her back to 1880. They wouldn't miss Jem if they'd never had her.

She hadn't realized adult life would be like this. The nitty-gritty moment-to- moment-ness of it. It used to be that she'd resented the time she had to devote to slaying, coveted what normality she could grasp, but lately . . . it was so the other way around. She wasn't built for this domesticity. Working all day trying to teach the unteachable, then having to deal with laundry and shopping and cooking, and the house could feel so small, Jemmie and Spike crowding in on her. Right up close and yet shutting her out somehow too. They always seemed to be talking about things she wasn't up on, and Jemmie would be exasperated when she asked questions. Always saying she'd told her already, accusing her of never listening in the first place.

Which was so not true.

Who knew she'd ever live this long anyway? Who knew she'd ever be, for all intents and purposes, a married woman? With a demanding career and a child and a house and a needy man to look after?

So that's why she was out on her own that night, loving the solitude and the moonlight and the chance to inhale, to run with no-one calling after her, to inhabit her power and freedom to her fingers' ends. Until she stumbled across those Hratholins, who attacked before she even knew where she was.

She'd be dead if Spike hadn't turned up. She couldn't remember anything— she'd been shocky— but he told her about it later. She did recall, all too vividly, that before throwing herself out the kitchen door to escape, she'd shouted at him, told him to just give her some damn space for once— she didn't need him babysitting her every damn moment. She recalled hearing Jemima's rising voice saying Mamma?, and breaking into a run to evade that sound and everything it meant. But Spike didn't mention any of that. He just said Good thing I went after you, love, smoothing the damp hair from her feverish forehead. Beast was about to have his one good day.

Of course she was grateful. Of course she didn't really want to be dead, and of course she loved him— he was Spike. He was hers. But the feeling that came over her a little later— was it the same evening or the next day?— time in the hospital didn't move normally— the feeling of being pressed under a very large rock that was squeezing every ounce of air out of her, and the sense that she was somehow floating on the ceiling and watching herself being slowly slowly slowly extinguished . . . she could never describe that to anyone, because it was wrong to experience it. Wrong to be so discontented and ungrateful.

All he'd said to her . . . all he'd said . . . so innocent, really. It was a loving, affectionate, innocent thing.

He'd squeezed her hand in both of his and pressed it to his lips . . . .Hate seein' you in pain, my queen, hate that I wasn't there to protect you. But can't help bein' glad a bit now. You're well out of it. You're safe now, love. Now I get to keep you.

He was glad she was mutilated, ruined, made useless, made into nothing.

She hadn't wanted to leave the hospital. Which was something else she could confide in none of them— not Xander, who was there nearly as much as Spike, always looking at her with that pindot of fear in his eyes, that she might be lost. Not Willow, who made so many small magical improvements to her private room, perceptible only to her— not just the never-fading flowers that scented the air with such forceful delicacy, as if they were still growing in the earth, but the noise baffling, and the glamour on the hospital food that made it so delicious, and whatever it was they'd done to the bed to make it seem as if she was floating on a cushion of air.

She almost told Dawn, but her sister might then have postponed her return to L.A., and lost that great part. It was just good fortune, if there was anything to be so labeled about this incident, that she wasn't in the middle of shooting and could come right away, and stay for two whole weeks, keeping the house from falling to ruin and looking after Jemima while Spike spent all his time at her bedside. That was enough. Buffy didn't want to interfere with Dawn's career— it was just taking off.

So she came home, and after the first night took herself into her old room, and Spike said only "Oh, are you more comfortable there, then?" which was good of him, because she didn't want to explain, there was no way to explain, and her mind was stuck in such a low place. So low that she just let things happen— let Jem work herself, in the space of three nights, into a schedule nearly identical with her father's, so that she was whooping around the house wide awake at three in the morning, and living on cold cereal and the horrible greasy fry ups that were the only thing Spike ever attempted to cook, and getting her sleep in on the sofa with afternoon cartoons chattering in the background.

She wasn't very hungry, and Willow hadn't thought to put any sort of glamour on the food in her own kitchen, so mostly she just stayed in the room and ignored things. There were some books in there, and she read them— they were old books Joyce had given her for long-ago birthdays, and she was much too old for them— she ought to have given them to Jemima. But they kept her interest now anyway— Black Beauty and The Secret Garden and Harriet the Spy . She received her visitors there. The Scoobies came every day, but always one at a time. Spike came too, but she didn't have to say anything to give him the idea that he shouldn't hover. After a few days he no longer even came in to the room; just talked to her from the doorway, in hushed tones, going away again after a few minutes.

Nobody would broach the subject of what was supposed to happen now.

Sleep was indistinguishable from fever. They all came back to her: the master, Angelus, the mayor. Talked to her, holding up the palms of their hands in gestures of peace. You're well out of it, Slayer. You're retired now. Not your responsibility anymore. Adam and Glory and Warren. Can do whatever you like now. You're free. Not the slayer anymore. Have that normal life you always wanted.

She's stir out of these dreams that felt at once both deep and shallow, stare at the streetlight beam from the window, or the red LED of the clock, and slip right back.

Faith. Swinging near on her swivel hips, dark circles under her eyes. Lookit you, B. You got off the train without slipping beneath the wheels. You get to walk away. Okay, limp away. But hey— own two feet, pretty much. Not like me.

When they spoke to her she stood before them, whole, weight distributed evenly on both feet.

The leg wasn't there, but it was there. Was there, and wasn't.

She could still feel it. Lying here in bed, she felt it. Could imagine wriggling her toes, except there was no need to wriggle toes, so she didn't. She was supposed to be sleeping.

Wanna trade, B? I'll be Miss Gimp, Girl Survivor, an' you can have heaven.

She missed Faith. Somehow it seemed like Faith might be the one she could really talk to, now.

Two in the morning and cold. She tugged the quilt higher on her shoulder. The window she kept cracked, for the fresh air. The radiator clanked, the way it clanked in this room when she was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. The problems that had kept her awake then felt . . . a little measly now, compared to this. Funny how that worked.

A sound on the overhang outside the window made her tense. Faint, like the footfall of a cat, that only the slayer could hear.

She opened her eyes. Saw movement. A fanged face on the other side of the glass, golden eyes gleaming. Fingers hooked under the sill, pushing up the window.

"Slayer."

He'd not looked like that in years: wearing the leather duster over the red shirt. Leaning in, he snarled; a deep animal sound that rolled all around the room.

She pulled the quilt up higher, nearly to her eyes. "I'm not in the mood for this. Go away."

"Big Bad's here. Gonna have you, Slayer. Don't need no invitation, nothin' to stop me getting in."

She rolled over, her back to him. "Grow up. And close the window as you leave."

She heard him slip into the room.

"I said get out. Window, door, I don't care, just go."

"Right here in your girly bed's where I've always wanted you, Slayer. You can fight me but you know in the end you'll just give in. You an' me . . . it's destiny."

"This really isn't amusing me. I don't want to play this game."

In the next second he was straddling her, pinning her shoulders; she got a quick close-up glimpse of those terrible fiery eyes burning between demon ridges before he buried his face in her neck. The fangs were cool against her humid skin, a touch that made her shudder. She tried to push him off, but her hands were trapped under the covers, weighted down by his knees.

He gnawed delicately at the scar of his original bite, then gave it a lick. "Ah, the taste of you. Sweeter than wine. My pretty missis." He shifted, pulling the quilt down to her waist. The game face was gone.

At last! Annoying stupid game over.

She sighed and passed an arm around him, suddenly in no mood to push him off. "Goddamnit, Spike. What the hell were you trying to do?"

"Tryin' to get your bleedin' attention. Rouse you from your torpor." He turned his head. "Am I too heavy?"

"No, stay put." She sighed again, and stroked his leather-clad back. "The window thing was a bit much. You're lucky I didn't plug you with an arrow before you got over the sill. Where've you been, dressed like that?"

"Did a round of patrol . . . . But got kitted up this way for you, pet. Thought bad old Spike might make an impression where William Grieves wasn't." He paused. "Usually been the case."

"Yeah, well, if the impression you want is on my last nerve— "

He caressed her face with his thumb, pushing the hair back from her forehead. "I miss you, treasure." He loomed again, and probed her lips gently with his. She didn't open.

"Want my marital rights."

"Christ." She gave him a push, but not hard enough to dislodge him. Her whole body felt weak.

"Want to give you yours, too. Want to look after you."

"No. I can't— you're such a horndog, it's disgusting."

He was so stupid, he really thought that making love to her was going to change things, change the temperature and color of this world she found herself in, where everything was flat and grey and bitter.

He kissed her mouth again, her chin, her neck. Began to unbutton her pajama jacket, the cool pads of his fingers gliding on her skin. "I miss the taste of your delicious wet little cunny, and I bet she misses me too. Been all on her lonesome, since . . . no kisses. That's not what cunny likes."

God, why'd she ever let him get into the habit of talking to her like that? She felt her cheeks flush with annoyance. "Spike— "

He slipped a hand between their bodies; his fingers finding her through the flannel. Pressing, rubbing, and the material was getting moist . . .

"Spike, stop it."

His hand stilled, but didn't lift. "You mean that?"

Nine years of living with him, and she still didn't entirely get it, accept it. His presence in her house, her arms, her child, still startled her. The responsibility of Spike's love was enormous, it oppressed her, even as he patiently accepted from her displays of temper and caprice that most other men would rebel against. His tenderness could be hard to endure; even before this, it sometimes scared her, leading as it did to thoughts of her own unworthiness, of how he poured all of himself into her approval. And thoughts of her mortality, how he'd suffer without her.

How he'd suffer with her too. Because when she got like this, sunken and immovable, no one around her could be happy.

Suddenly she felt pity for him, nearly as much pity as she felt for herself.

She rubbed her cheek against his.

"I'm sorry I clobbered you this morning."

"Built to take it, I am."

"No . . . nobody's built to take it. God, when I think how we used to try to kill each other." Sometimes I miss that.

He smiled, with his old wicked look. "Natural order of things, wasn't it, love? Us bein' like this, all ball an' chain, s'what's against nature. Positively transgressive it is. Good thing I've always been perverse."

"Me with one leg is against nature too."

"Like I said, good thing— "

She gave him a cruel pinch that made him cry out in surprise. "Do not say you like it. Do not announce you have a fetish for girls with one leg, or I swear to God, I'll— "

"'Course I don't like it. But don't you say you'd rather be dead. I know you've been sittin' in here alone thinking morbid thoughts. Should've stirred you out sooner. Littler Bit's unhappy because you're bein' so secret. Not to mention me. Why won't you talk to me?"

It was time to distract him. Buffy tugged at the lapels of the leather coat.

"Take this off, my Spike . . . be naked."

He let go of her, except to brush his fingers through her hair. "Only if you will."

She shook her head. The idea of her own nudity was sickening; she'd avoided looking at herself in mirrors, and taken to holding her head away or closing her eyes while she washed herself, or changed her clothes, or put the prosthesis on and off. "I'm not . . . I'm not ready. We can fool around, but I don't want you to see it."

"Doesn't bother me, pet. A lot less than those stupid pajamas, anyway. Take them off, sweetness. Fooling around's not the thing, anyway, want to fuck you proper. Need to both be starkers for that."

He thinks love can make this all right. He thinks sex can. He's always been like that. Sex is his magic, he thinks it can make broken things whole again. But nothing can. Stupid vampire. Stupid man who doesn't understand anything.

She wanted to get rid of him.

But there were ways far far less troublesome than arguing. Shoving him onto his back, sitting backwards on his chest, she undid his fly buttons. Not having to look into his face made this easier. She'd suck him off hot and hard and fast, then shove him out the door, or back through the window. You got what you came for, now leave me alone.

But the sight of his white cock in its patch of dark hair, engorging as she breathed on it, lifting its reddening head towards her mouth, shot a bolt through her.

Oh.

Oh, this.

Him.

She'd actually forgotten. Holed up here alone, with a lot of nagging language ricocheting in her head, she'd forgotten the tactile truth of things.

Suddenly craving his heft, his slickness against her palate, she wrapped both hands around the shaft, and engulfed the pink head in her mouth. Behind her he gasped, his hands clasping her waist. Pre-cum bubbled from the slit; she swirled it off with her tongue and swallowed it, sucking firmly, hollowing her cheeks.

"Buffy— oh do it, love, do it like that— oh you know me, you little genius, my own queen— "

Her eyes flooded with tears; she was glad he couldn't see her face. Lifting her head, she leaned forward to kiss down the shaft, towards the balls that were high and tight now. She had to shift her whole body, resting most of the weight on her good leg— damn missing knee!— but she reached them with her lips, while the wet crown of his cock slid along her jaw, into her dangling hair, and he moaned. One of his hands slipped between her legs, rubbing her hard clit through the flannel of her pajama bottoms.

"You're so wet, Buffy," he murmured. "Sucking me off gets you wet, doesn't it, love?"

It does, she thought. Not that it means anything. Thank God for sensation, which was simple. Thank God for not having to talk.

Licking his taut ballsac, rubbing the head of his cock against the skin of her neck as he panted, she wriggled back against his fingers, shivering into climax.

"That's it, my girl. That's it." He kept his hand where it was while she squirmed against his fingers, the waves of orgasm passing through her in long trembling gusts.

When they'd nearly passed, she moved again, and took the cock back into her mouth as she cradled the balls in her moist palm. It drooled even more wildly against her tongue, and felt harder; beneath her Spike was moving too, raising his hips in rhythm with her downstrokes.

How easy he could be, she thought, to delight. Even after so many years, her attentions left him humble and grateful and satisfied. So many years . . . it occurred to her to wonder how the time seemed to him— perhaps it was short, an eyeblink. An eyeblink, the time he'd had her when she'd been the slayer. Another eyeblink, the time when she was a cripple. A third blink, and she'd be gone. While he remained, eternally young and beautiful and hungry, watching Jemima get older than he looked.

It isn't fair.

She squeezed his shaft tight in her hand, tugged on it, sucked harder. Don't you forget me, Spike!

"Nearly there— nearly there— nearly— nearly— ah— ohGodfuck— !"

She laughed from her throat as she swallowed his spunk, holding him in place until he was empty.

He was quiet for a while, then murmured, "Ah, that was a nice surprise. You're beautiful when you laugh."

Easy. And stupid. And pretty futile, wasn't it? Sex just left you all drippy and limp and had no power to change a thing like this. If you were sad going in, if you only had one leg and your life was ruined, you'd still be sad and legless and ruined coming out. And he was a fool if he thought that laugh meant anything.

He was a fool.

"I thought I was always beautiful, according to you." She yanked herself around and collapsed against his shoulder. He'd put his arms around her now, cuddle her, and imagine she was glad to have him do it.

Stupid.

"It's special when you laugh. When you laugh I know you love me. When your hands are on me, and your darling mouth . . . I missed you so much, Buffy. You hidin' yourself in here, and me in the other room missing you. It's no good, is it?"

"Yeah . . . I guess."

"You're not destroyed, my girl. You'll be all right, you will. We will. We'll make love like always, an' look after our little girl like always, an' you'll come back to the slayer academy. We all need you there." He stroked her hair as he spoke. "Shall we strip off and have our fuck now?"

She smiled. He always was coaxing her to talk dirty. He was such a boy.

"Do you still love me, Spike? Even though I'm mutilated?"

She knew what he'd say already, and told herself she didn't care, that it couldn't matter, even as she strained to hear it.

"You know I do. Just the same. More."

"Do you love my cunt?"

He quivered then, pressed against her, and she knew he was very pleased.

"Love it an' want to fuck it every day. Want to have you all day. Stay hard for you as long as you want me."

She brought her hand down to his groin and found his cock stirring again. He pressed it there, then drew away and pulled off his clothes.

"Right," he said, standing at the side of her bed in all his easy nude glory. "Get your kit off, Slayer."

Hearing him call her that now felt like a cut. She shook her head. "No."

He cocked his head and stared at her, then reached forward in a business-like manner, and yanked the pajama jacket off before she could react, then grabbed at the waistband of the bottoms, ripping them with a loud crack that left the elastic band in place with nothing attached to it. "Good riddance. Never want to see this lot again."

A sudden mental image of herself— completely unshielded, her whole leg and her stump equally undefended— filled her with a horror; she grabbed for the sheets, but Spike was too quick; kneeling on the bed, he seized her by the hips and hauled her up into his lap, onto his cock. She grunted in surprise. Nearly doubled backwards, Buffy struggled to get up on her elbows until he caught her arm and pulled her upright. His gaze, right up against her face, was intense, impatient; she could see he was on to her. "See, Slayer? Just as limber as ever you were. Now put your arms around my neck and hold on."

His hands were under her buttocks now, taking the weight off her one doubled leg, and his prick inside her seemed to stir against her thudding heart. He breathed against her lips, barely touching them with his own. Teasing. She felt him smile, that shit-eating grin she used to hate, and liked now because it went with her power over him, and they both knew it.

But she was unbearably aware of her bad leg just there, sticking out along his hip; the stub felt cold and naked and she was terrified he might touch it.

If he touched it, she thought, she would die.

She hit him in the face.

"Oi! What the fuck— !"

They struggled, absurdly, angrily, awkwardly. Realizing he was not going to hit her back, she hit him again. He cried out, but still didn't let go. Then he had her pinned on her back, and he was still inside her, his eyes flashing yellow, a low growl rumbling from his throat.

"Do you want me, or don't you, you maddening woman? Tell me."

"Fuck you, Spike! Fuck you!" She thought she was struggling, but stopped when she realized she was only working herself on him, and forced herself to lie still, panting and throbbing and utterly thrown open to him.

"Tell me to get off you, an' I will. Tell me to leave you, an' I'll go. But don't play me like this, Buffy. Makin' us both miserable when there's no need."

"I told you . . . I told you . . . ." She couldn't put any force into her words, and let them trail off, turning her head, closing her eyes. "Let go of my hands." He did, and she reached for the top sheet; dragged its folds up around her bad leg. Feeling it safely shrouded, she began again to move beneath him. After a moment he said "hunh!" and moved with her. She circled his back with her arms, and they were really doing it now, long deep satisfying strokes, then faster and faster. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, tried to see herself the way she was two months ago, when she could dig both heels into the mattress to meet his thrusts. When she could run and kick and was the master slayer, the one like no other.

She was still like no other. The Council had never let a gimp slayer live on before.

Maybe, if she was still in the succession, they wouldn't even be so enlightened now.

She wanted to wrap both legs around him, squeeze him between her thighs. How was she going to be able to get off if she couldn't do that?

She'd never be able to do that again.

Everything was ruined.

She swore she hadn't spoken aloud, but Spike paused. "Where the hell are you? Open your eyes an' look at me. Be with me."

She peeked at him, half expecting to see game face. His gaze was cool. Hard as he'd been working up to that moment, there wasn't a trace of sweat on his face. Spike didn't sweat.

"What are you doing . . . ? Don't . . . don't stop."

"Kiss me, Buffy."

"Damnit— " She wriggled. "— why'd you stop?"

"Feelin' a bit anonymous here. Like I could be anyone. Kiss me nice, an' look at me. Come on."

"You come on." She tried to restart him with a pitch of her hips; needing the motion, the frenzy. Needing it and wanting to get it over with so she could be alone.

"Tell me you love me, and kiss me like you mean it."

"Jeez. You know — "

He glowered. "Right now, way you're actin', I know nothing, Slayer."

She turned her head then. "I'm not the slayer any more. This is stupid. I've had enough. Get off me."

This time he obeyed at once, swinging himself around to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to her, head in his hands.

Bereft, she stayed where she was. The air felt cold against her wet thighs, but she didn't close them, just tugged the sheet more securely around her stump.

"I know you're angry," Spike murmured. "I know it's hard. Can't imagine how hard, not gonna pretend I can. But all I want's to console you."

"Don't want to be consoled! What a disgusting word that is!"

"Not . . . not the way I mean it, Buffy. My darling missus you are, just want you not to drift away from us. Want to help you. I know you're sad, not askin' you to just snap out of it, but why can't you be sad in my arms? Don't you know I'm sad too?"

"Oh Spike . . . except it doesn't help. It . . . doesn't . . . nothing . . . does . . . ."

"Really? Are you sure?" He'd turned back to her. "Sure it's no good to you, when we do this . . . ?"

He stretched out beside her and pulled her up onto his chest. Kissed her, and she kissed back, even as she thought no use, no use.

"Sweetness, you know I'd give up one of mine— hell, both of mine— if it would bring yours back. But I love you just the same. Want you just the same. Dunno how many times, how many ways I have to say it. Wish you'd believe it. It's only the truth."

"I . . . I know."

"What's the use then of us fighting? You fighting yourself. Let's have our fuck and a good sleep. S'what we both need." He sat up again, still holding her. "Ought to be in our own bed, as well. This's not good for you."

"But this is my room."

"Long time ago," he said, gathering her up, rising. "You've got another now, with me. S'where you belong."

In the hall, he paused to listen. She hung onto his neck and listened too. The door of Jemima's room at the end was shut, all was quiet.

"You can feel her sleeping, can't you, Spike?"

She realized with a pang that it was the first she'd thought of her daughter for hours and hours.

"Hear her breathing, yeah, her little heart pumping. She's all right. But night's getting' short."

He carried her into their room. The flickering candles always made it seem like a sacred place— sacred to their strange strong passion. The sight of them all around, and of their large broad bed, brought on a gust of nostalgia that took her like a sharp cramp.

Spike seemed to read her mind. "Nothing's over, my queen. Just changed a bit. But we adapt. Haven't we been adaptin' to each other since we first began?" He set her down, and himself beside her.

She stared at him, blinking because her eyes were so dry. I'm not the slayer anymore and I'm a bad mother and a bad wife and everything is all wrong and if I say anything about it you'll just try to console me again, goddamnit. But then you touch me . . . .

His hand was on her breast then, stroking the nipple delicately beneath his palm until it was taut and hard. He lifted her damaged leg, touching it in a way that was both reverent and offhanded, and slipped inside her.

"Put your arms round me, pet. Hold me tight, my good girl. We're gonna finish this now, we're gonna get where we're goin' . . . ." He put his tongue out against her lips; she thrust hers out to meet it. Then he murmured, "Hang on, better still . . . " and rolled them over to their other sides. "Now put your leg over my hip . . . that's it, I'm home now . . . ."

This was a good way, she realized at once; she could almost pretend there was nothing wrong, in this position, where she could hug him hard with her top leg and both arms as she writhed against his belly.

"It doesn't hurt you, does it? Me lyin' on it?"

"No lover. Nothing hurts. It's all good."

"Yeah?" He smiled into her eyes. "I always want to be good for you . . . good to you . . . I'm a man for you . . . you've made me a real man, haven't you Buffy . . . you turned my nature, didn't you? Didn't you, pet?"

He was gasping now, moving in her in a quick rhythm. She clasped him tighter, intent now on nothing but getting to her pleasure, to his, relishing her power as he began to lose control.

Poor patient Spike. How hard she made him work! She was seized with a pitying urge to console him.

"Do you want to feed?"

He gave her an incredulous glance.

"Go on . . . I want you to. I want to come with you drinking me . . . do it . . . ."

She watched him fight himself; even when she offered freely, he often struggled to accept; his penchant for her blood shamed him. It was one of the things she loved him for, just as she loved his excitement at feeding on her, the bliss he radiated afterwards, along with her borrowed heat.

God, I'm so kinky, always was and always will be . . .

"Bite me, Spike . . . show me your fang face again . . . c'mon, I need it now . . . ."

That liquid noise of the shift into game face was almost drowned by his growl.

"Beautiful filthy girl— " His voice sounded different through the fangs— years hadn't made any of this less novel or exciting or— yes, agreeably scary. When his fangs broke through into her neck she bucked, cried out, yanking at the hair at the back of his head as she went over her own edge.

He drew a few long pulls that matched the snap of his hips; then seized up for one long long moment, and began to spend.

Panting side by side— he'd once told her he panted to keep her company, so she needn't pant alone— he turned and licked the salt from her glistening shoulder.

"There's a flood between my legs."

"Haven't come in a while. Been savin' myself for you."

"Yeah, but it's me too."

"I know. You get so wet for me, Slayer. You always have. Most flattering thing in the world, it is." He dipped his fingers into her and brought them up all gooey to his mouth. He was still game-faced, and she felt a frisson of pleasurable disgust at his wanton relishing of all their fluids. "This lot's too good to waste. Gonna lick it all up."

He lowered himself down her body. She heard the game-face go off just as he buried his nose and mouth in the sopping folds of her cunt.

"You're so gross, Spike," she murmured dreamily. Surrounding by all those tiny candles, wrung out and throbbing, she could almost have gone to sleep.

"Only thing better would be if you were on the rag as well."

She'd known he'd say that. Known he'd do this.

Knew he'd adore her until there was nothing left of her but a curl of hair in a watch-fob, and an album of photographs, and even then . . . .

Even then . . . .

She bit her tears back, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow. They seemed to freeze inside, making a smooth hard glaze between her and him, even as he brought her again to the threshold of pleasure.

The blare of cartoons, coming up from the living room, woke him. Buffy, head buried in disordered hair, was still out, her mouth inelegantly open, her eyes moving beneath their closed lids. Good. This was good. He'd brought her back. Yet again. Looked at one way, their whole relationship, from the outset, was about her fleeing, or floating, away, and him bringing her back. Don't leave me, she'd begged him at the beginning. But really it was so much more the other way around. Hence the engraving inside the gold ring he'd given her when Jemima was a year old. "W.G. & B.S.: FMN"

Forsake me not.

He rose, put on jeans and a teeshirt. Went back to the other room to fetch her prosthesis and crutches and bring them to where she could reach them, then hastened down to silence the TV.

Jemima was sitting crosslegged right in front of it, staring in that way that made it look like her eyes were about to melt down her cheeks.

"Too much noise, Pudding, while your mum's sleeping." Spike said, leaning over her to turn it off. He was braced for protest, but all she did was continue to stare at the black screen for another five seconds, then crane up at him.

"Papa, what are we?"

"What . . .are we? Not sure I get the question, Treasure."

"I heard Mrs Miucci say you were unemployed. "

"Well, she's wrong. You know that. Thought we'd established yesterday that she an' her nosy sister are silly cows. Not— not that you shouldn't be polite to her, an' all, like your mum taught you."

"But I heard her say you're odd. She said you weren't what you expect around here. Why would she say that?"

"Just means I'm better lookin' than her husband, that's all."

"Papa, that is not what she meant."

She had Buffy's gift for grimness, a humorless intensity. He wasn't going to get out of this— whatever it was— with jokes or misdirection.

He plopped down onto the floor beside her. "What're you worried about? Whatever it is, you just tell me."

Her little face was suddenly so full of trouble that he thought of Dru, when one of her madnesses was upon her and she couldn't express herself or sit still.

"She thought we were funny! She was talking about us and laughing! She thought we were weird! And I don't know why they look at me like that and I don't know what we are! I want to be like Cathy and everybody else!"

"You are like Cathy. She's a little girl an' so are you. You're smarter an' prettier an' better in every possible way than her, but otherwise you're just like her."

She gave him that look that said don't even try it, Mister. "She said she won't let Cathy come here anymore because of you!"

God, she was making him dizzy with all the sudden turns. And this was coming on much sooner than he'd anticipated— he'd assumed the child wouldn't really start wondering or asking questions for another couple of years, at least. He'd had great faith in the idea that she'd just accept things the way they were— wasn't that what kiddies did? Anyway when they weren't asking why the sky was blue or what their belly buttons were for or what would happen if you ate the whole tube of toothpaste at once. Questions he'd become pretty good at answering and would've liked to revert to now. She could make his head spin, even worse than her mother.

"Look, you can't waste time worrying what everybody thinks about you. Passin' judgment on the neighbors is the national pastime, and that's just how it is. Got to just ignore it and go about your business. Cathy's mum's probably bored, an' it amuses her to make things up about other people. That's all it is."

Sometimes he really missed the days when he could just bite the face off anybody, human or demon, who looked at Dru cross-eyed. Hard as it was to countenance any criticism of her, it was a thousand times worse to think of anybody looking down upon his daughter, who was perfect, and a bona fide miracle to boot, and anyway his.

His and Buffy's, forever, ineradicably. Their link, their legacy, the walking talking singing dancing laughing pestering result of their amazing connection.

She looked, at this moment, very like her mother, with her honey brown hair hanging down on either side of her tense white wounded-looking face, her little body huddled in the pink nightgown, all knees and elbows and sharp shoulders. But her protruding lower lip was like his, and even more so when she pouted, as now; he thought too that she took after him in feeling everything more, perhaps, than other people did.

Although Buffy, too, felt things deeply. They were both extraordinarily passionate, and Jemima took after them. He recognized himself in her whirling tantrums, and her mother in her ability to sulk for hours without deviation.

"But— "

"But what, Jemmie? Let's not flog this dead horse— she's not so interesting to me as I am to her."

Her words spilled out in a torrent. "We're not like other people and I don't know what happened to Mamma and she hates us now and what's going to happen to us if she can't do her work? And I don't know what her work is!"

He put a hand to her face, to smooth back the hair, and she flinched. Flinched, and stared at it, and then stared at him, her face a mask of suspicion and fury. "Why are your hands always like that?"

Spike's heart sank. "Like what, Biscuit?"

"Not warm. Mamma's hands are warm, and Uncle Rupert's and Uncle Xander's and everybody but yours. Their hearts thump but when I hug you I don't hear any thumping."

"Your father's a vampire."

Jemima's head snapped around. Buffy had somehow managed to come down the stairs without them hearing her. She came into the room, moving on the prosthesis with a near-smoothness Spike had not yet seen. She was dressed in jeans and a blouse, her newly-washed hair hanging wet around her shoulders. Reaching them she knelt in one motion onto her good leg, and it was almost impossible to tell that anything was different, that the other leg wasn't flesh and bone.

"He's a vampire who put me in thrall a long long time ago," she said, steadying herself on his shoulder, " and now I'm powerless to resist his sinister attraction. Do you know what a vampire is, Jemmie? They're terrible monsters that drink blood. You know how you can tell that someone's a vampire? They have no pulse, they don't go out in the sun, and they leave big stacks of dirty dishes in the sink for other people to wash, even though strictly speaking they shouldn't eat solid food at all."

Jemima frowned, glancing between them. "I thought Papa had that . . . xero-dermo-pig-thingie."

"Nope. He's a real vampire. He's got big sharp terrible fangs. Show her your fangs, Spike."

What the hell was Buffy playing at? This was not in the plan. "She's a real comedian, your mum." He passed an arm around her waist, and pinched her where Jemima couldn't see, but Buffy didn't react.

"He's really very vain about his fangs. He thinks they're terribly handsome. Loves to show them off. Show her, Spikey."

Jemima's eyes were big as saucers now. She quivered with her efforts to follow, and to resist following.

"But you said— "

"Well, when you were a little little girl we had to tell you something. But now you're big and mature and can understand everything, you should know that— "

The girl was on her feet now, bristling. "MAMMA, STOP! YOU'RE HURTING PAPA'S FEELINGS!"

Buffy's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, do you think so?" Her arm tightened around his shoulders, and she glanced at him with eyes that— he couldn't quite believe it— sparkled.

"YOU SAID IT'S MEAN TO MAKE FUN OF PEOPLE AND YOU'RE MAKING FUN OF HIM AND HE HAS A DISEASE AND IT'S NOT NICE!"

Buffy put her hands over her ears. "Ouch."

Jemima's voice dropped to a near whisper. "It's not nice." She threw herself against him, burrowing her own hot little face into his neck.

Then Buffy's face was close on the other side, her lips against his ear. "There, she won't bring that up again for a long long time. Right?" And she bit his earlobe, giggling.

Rising nearly as easily as she'd knelt, Buffy started for the kitchen. "Who wants breakfast? I'm cooking."

From the refuge of her place in the circle of Spike's arm, Jemima looked up at her. "Are you going to be nice to us?"

"Yup. I'm going to be nicer than nice. I'm going to put a full sixteen ounces of nice into every pancake. How's that?"

"Sixteen ounces?" She glanced at Spike. "Is that a lot?"

"The absolute maximum the law an' physics allow."

"Those who help get to lick the bowl." Buffy headed for the kitchen, and Jemima scrambled after her, leaving him kneeling there, blindsided and astonished and not quite sure whether Buffy's maneuver was brilliant or idiotic or the meanest thing she'd ever done.

And even if Jem didn't bring the subject up again soon, what about all the other questions she'd blurted? The girl's curiosity, her ability to fret, was like one of those vast underground rivers that periodically expressed itself in floods and boiling geysers and cave-ins. Just because she didn't speak up didn't mean she wasn't riddling herself with worries.

She'd said she didn't know what Buffy did, or what had happened to her. She didn't know what he did. She didn't know what was to become of them. How, he wondered, did all this look through her eyes?

And how would she remember today, and the way they'd treated her, when she finally learned the truth?

"I don't think you should've said that. She'll remember it later, Buffy. Kiddies always do remember things like that. God, even now I remember things my poor ignorant nurse used to say. That woman could frighten me half to death with her remarks. You must too."

"I didn't have a nurse," Buffy said dryly. "And I really don't think she will." She gave him another of her blank looks, that seemed to set them back, way back before last night's lovemaking, to those early days after the accident, when she'd been white and drawn and wreathed in an impenetrable silence. Maybe even farther back than that— back to when she'd felt nothing for him but contempt.

"She's worried about you. About what you do, and not being able to do it any more. How're we going to explain all this to her?"

"Why should we?" Buffy slung the dryer door open and began yanking towels out with fast jerky motions. "Let her have her childhood. Even I had one. Even you, with your stupid old nursie. Didn't you?"

"Well . . . yes."

"She isn't even eight, Spike. I don't want her to know until she's old enough to be out after dark, which is when she'll need to be aware of what's out there. I figure that gives us seven or eight years to figure out what to say."

"You think we can wait that long?"

"I do, yeah."

He didn't, but saw it was time to change the subject. "You looked . . . wonderful when you came in before. I mean, you startled me, but . . . you were walking so well. It's stopped hurting, has it?"

She banged the dryer door. "It doesn't hurt. I just hate it. It's not real."

"It's a genuine prosthetic leg."

"Shut up, Spike."

Her obsession with the "real." Sometimes he wondered how she saw the reality of everything between them.

"Let me carry that for you."

"I can do it."

For a second they struggled over the basket, then he let it go. She wasn't looking at him.

"The council used to finish off maimed slayers. So a new one, who could function, could be called. Did you know that, Spike?"

"Never . . . never really thought about it."

"It's true. They have these goons, enforcers— like the ones who tried to take me when I was stuck in Faith's body. They send them out, and the problem . . . goes away."

"That's not going to happen now."

"Only because I'm out of the succession. But why should they go on paying me when I can't do anything?"

"'Course they'll pay you. Didn't Giles tell you there's no question about that? Pay you for your smarts. Your experience. Your work at the academy. Just because you can't fight like you used to . . . ."

"Oh, right, I forgot. I've got the fancy title now, what was it Giles called me— slayer emeritus.. What's an emeritus? Sounds like a hippopotamus. Which is what I'll get to look like, sitting around on my ass."

"Chance for you to rest, pet, isn't it? Pursue other interests. Clear conscience. Would like to take you places. Could take you to Europe. Show you Paris. An' there's other things we might think about. Another kid, maybe . . . ."

She flinched and gaped. "Another kid? How? How could we have another kid?"

"Wouldn't . . . wouldn't be mine, of course, exactly . . . but that's not so important. There's . . . other ways . . . could . . . Xander, for instance . . . he'll never marry, not anymore. Could be a sweet thing, to . . . ."

"You pig. You've really thought about this!"

". . . yeah . . . wasn't aware that wantin' another baby made me so despicable . . . just like havin' kiddies around is all. Just considering the things you couldn't do before. That you're free to do now."

"Is that what I am? All I'm good for anymore? Breeding stock for the Scoobies?"

"Buffy. You're taking everything I say and twisting it. Forget it, then. But what about us going off somewhere for a bit? We never did have a honeymoon. You've never been across the sea."

She straightened up, the laundry basket under her arm, and glared at him.

"You're consoling again."

"Might be we should move from here. I can't . . . I can't do that Mei Yi any good. Never gonna win her trust. I'm thinking we could get ourselves off the hellmouth and start again fresh somewhere else."

She squinted at him. "What's this about Mei Yi?"

"I wouldn't bring it up, only . . . she's getting good, Buffy. She's a fucking slayer, with a one-track mind. Can't trust her, is the thing."

"What— she's threatening you? Still? Why don't you— "

"What? Slam her down?"

"No, just— it's not like the chip works any more— you could— let her know— "

"Escalating's just what she'd like— give her a no-fault excuse to lop off my head when my back's turned. Thinkin' maybe we should talk to Giles."

"Guess so. He could send her away. There's always a lot of demonic activity in Cleveland."

"Not her. Thinkin' us. Got to be other places we could be useful— back in England, maybe, at Council headquarters . . . could pick up and move. Change of scene might do us good. You'd love London. Jemmie'd look sweet in one of those little schoolgirl unis they wear there."

"Has she actually done anything— ?"

He didn't want to tell her, but she got into his face, grabbed his shirt collar.

"Spike."

"Got me in the shoulder with an arrow couple nights ago, patrolling. Pretended it was an accident. All she's lacking is the last little bit of confidence to defy Giles, an' she'll do what she likes."

A choking sound came from her. She sagged then, let the basket drop to the floor, and followed it, staring numbly into her lap. "That bitch. I told her to leave you alone . . . ."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't approve of slayers an' vamps shackin' up. Made that pretty clear to everybody who'll listen. Not that many do . . . ."

"Yeah. Well, nobody likes her because she's annoying."

Mei Yi wasn't like Wu Xia, the Chinese slayer Spike had done in a hundred years ago, but her mere nationality reminded him of that now sickening memory. At twenty, Mei Yi was older than the other potentials, and spoke almost no English— the council had ferreted her out of a remote rural part of the inland Chinese vastness, an operation that had taken some years to effect, even with their web of sub-rosa connections. She'd been a student at the slayer academy for nine months when Faith died, and she was called.

Spike had taken a strong dislike to her on first sight. She was taller than he was, broad and muscular, graceless, and rather butch, with a face and manner devoid of every feminine charm. Even before she came, Buffy had teased him and Giles more seriously warned him, that his tendency to display favoritism for the more attractive trainees was obvious to the girls themselves. So he'd tried to compensate with Mei Yi. Show her a bit of kindness. Help her with her English conversation. Encourage the other girls to include her. The English speakers among the trainees had a tendency to club together and ignore the others, a situation it was difficult to legislate against, hard as Giles tried to foster a sense of universal camaraderie among them. Half the girls were counting the months until their formal training was complete and they could return home, there to resume something like normal life on the assumption that they'd probably never be called at all. The others were so drunk on their sense of specialness that they wanted to act as slayers even without being called— and were very resistant to the notion that they might just end up being regular people after all. Faith, like Buffy, was the longest-surviving slayer in living memory; each victory seemed to make her stronger. It was possible to imagine she would last forever, at least until that mythical point, upon which the watchers were disagreed, when she would age out of her powers and a new slayer be called though the old one yet lived.

In the midst of this soup of anxiety, ambition and hormones, Mei Yi bobbed, awkward, silent, miserable, intense.

He didn't know that her understanding was so imperfect. That she was unaware for a long while that he was a vampire. It certainly was no secret, but she just happened never to see him vamp out— he seldom did when working with the girls. And being impervious to their ordinary chatter, she didn't understand either what he was to Buffy. That knowledge came first, and brought with it a withdrawal, an embarrassment, that showed through her tremendous shyness and reserve how crushed out she'd been on him. This happened to plenty of the girls, but only Mei Yi was so ignorant of the disposition of Spike's affections. And only Mei Yi of all of them seemed to possess a sense of shame at her very being— that anyone so large and graceless and plain could feel desire.

That was the beginning of her antipathy towards him. He'd roused in her feelings she could not accept.

Shortly afterwards she understood more about him: someone, Spike never learned who, put into her hands transcripts of the journal kept by Wu Xia's watcher. This, as he learned later, coincided with a chance meeting away from the Academy— Mei Yi saw him, with Buffy and Jemima, doing an early evening shopping run at the Safeway. Through her newly-enlightened eyes, the sight of them together struck her as obscene: it was at their next training session that she made her first earnest attempt to kill him.

Although she was still only a potential, she was very strong, and had the advantage on him of surprise. Had Buffy not come in and launched herself at her back, Mei Yi's long blade would've taken Spike's head from his shoulders.

Spike clapped a hand to the bloody gash on his neck, and Buffy suffered a shallow slice herself before she wrestled the sword away and held it to the new girl's breast.

"Let me go! He is the enemy! He deserves death!" She'd made great strides with her English.

Trembling, white-lipped, Buffy pressed down on her. "I'm going to let you up in a second. But first you listen. Spike is a vampire, yes. We kill vampires, yes. But he is our ally, and he is my lover, and the father of my child. He doesn't kill people anymore, and we do not kill him. Say it. Say, we do not kill Spike.

"You are sick. You are all sick here! What is this indecency? You allow it, you Watcher, and you ask for my respect?"

Giles had hastened in, and stood over them now.

"There is much you don't yet understand," Giles said.

"I understand what I see. What I see— disgusts me."

Although Giles had held many further conversations with her about Spike, and Buffy, and what he expected of her as a potential, things had devolved when Faith died and Mei Yi was called. Faith's death left them all dizzy and sick and despairing, as if a huge meteor had come down on the town and blasted it. The identity of the new Slayer was at first something that none of the Scoobies could bring him or herself to care about. When it was clear that it was Mei Yi, their mourning only seemed to deepen.

Thinking of all this, Spike said, "An' she knows she's not Faith. An' that we all know it too. 'Spect she's jealous of you."

"Jealous? Of what I have? One and a third legs? Or, no— that's not what she envies. Jealous because I have you? Wanting to kill you's the perfect sublimation for wanting to— "

He shrugged. "Bint's lonely. Far from home." He wondered why he was making excuses for her; supposed it was another sign that he'd evolved. Could you grow a soul? Like kudzu?

"Oh, so it's the home she envies? Well gee— she could spend some time here indulging herself with what I have! The laundry, I'd be happy to let her have that. Picking up those thirty million tiny plastic toys Jemima scatters around day after day after day— that she can have. She can have the cooking and the bills and you slumped in front of the television in the middle of the day and those boring Pee Wee Soccer League games that of course you don't have to go to, and trying to figure out how to build one of those stupid model volcanos for Jem's science fair entry, and the Mamma Mamma Mamma that never stops— "

"Buffy." Spike gripped her arm. "Don't— you're mad at me, fight with me. But leave Jemmie out of this— don't say what you don't mean."

She tore away from him with a snarl. "Oh, now I can't even speak my mind? What's the matter, Spike— reality too hard for you? You think I'm kidding? Not living in Paradise, here! Not quite what I bargained for!"

"For Christ's sake, woman!" He growled, the demon riding his anger to the surface. "What's happened to you! She's our baby— only one we'll ever have together— an' what? She's too tiresome? She bores you?"

The expression on Buffy's face— or rather the lack of expression, was chilling. For a second, there seemed to be no one there at all. Like this epileptic kids who'd check out for a few seconds at a time, seem to leave their bodies vacant. Then Buffy rolled back in, a Fury rolling across the face of the heavens. The blankness coalesced into white rage.

"Shut up, Spike! Stop telling me what I'm supposed to do and feel and be— ! You— don't— know— anything! Just— shut— up!" She rose, not gracefully but fast, stepped back onto the prosthetic leg, and gave him a roundhouse kick to the head that sent him flying.

"You think I'm helpless now? You think I can't fight anymore? Mei Yi's the only slayer you've got to worry about?"

She wasn't as swift as before, or quite as agile, but she was still swift, still agile, and still, with her fists, as strong as ever: the succession of furious blows she rained on him opened his brow and cheekbone right up, knocked him back again and again, until he managed to duck and feint, then come around and grab her. If he could just get her to stop, to calm down— then her elbow jammed into his belly and he fell to one knee at the same moment that a piping cry ripped the air.

"STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! PAPA MAMMA STOP!"

He glanced up; Jemima was on the cellar stairs, both hands clapped over her mouth, body rigid with terror. When their eyes met, hers bulged, and she started to scream.

Buffy seemed turned to stone, her back to him. She made no move towards Jemima, who also apparently couldn't move, planted on the spot by shock and terror, sounding like her little vocal cords would rupture.

Spike was halfway to the stairs when she suddenly scrambled backwards, still screaming, slipped and slid down a couple of steps but then surged up them like a salmon fighting its way upriver, practically on her belly.

"Good God— what is happening here— Jemima! What's the matter, child? Where's your mother?"

Giles' voice preceded him; he caught the girl's shoulders, and took in the scene at the bottom of the stairs.

"Spike, you— you are frightening her."

It was that calm solemn declaration that released him enough from the moment to understand that he was in game face, and to shake it off. At the same time Buffy let out a groan, and dashed forward. But instead of snatching Jemima into her arms, as Spike, and clearly Giles as well, expected, she barreled past them up the steps and disappeared.

Giles gave Spike one further glance before carrying the hysterical Jemima up to the kitchen.

When he was alone, Spike went to the utility sink and did his best to rinse the cuts until the blood stopped coming. He drank some of the cold water from his cupped palms, and remained leaning there, shivering against the heavy porcelain, letting it run over his hands. Even with the faucet on and the distance between them, he could hear his daughter's sobbing, punctuated by an occasional wail, quite clearly from the floor above. Everything in him wanted to go to her, but the knowledge that at least some, if not the greater part, of her anguish was a result of seeing his true face made him hesitate. She ought to be calm before he confronted her again, she ought to be prepared. He heard a murmuring, too low for his sensitive ears to catch the words, from Giles. That was good; Giles was a champion at calming people down. But Buffy he could not hear, could not feel. She'd left the house.

He couldn't have told, in his misery, how much time went by when Anya appeared at his back. He was still slumped over the sink, mesmerized by the steady pouring of the cold water over his fingers, enveloping them like a moving glove.

She tapped him on the shoulder.

"Rupert called me to come help. What happened? Jemima is out of her mind."

He turned slowly. "So's Buffy. So . . . so am I."

Apart from the time she'd pulled over and peed behind a stand of bushes, this was the first stop she'd made, and she didn't even know where she was anymore. Keeping an eye on signs wasn't part of this— it was all she could do to keep the car between the lines, what with her eyes periodically flooding with tears of remorse and rage.

So now it was three a.m. and she might've been in California still, or Nevada, maybe Arizona, she had no idea, but she didn't really care. Exhausted, aching all over, head buzzing, she pulled up in front of the diner, its parking lot devoid of cars though it was lit up like a beacon in this middle-of-nowhere. The place was brightly lit with cold fluorescents, and empty save for her and the middle-aged waitress. The plate glass window she sat beside reflected a row of booths and a bunch of empty tables, faded pink walls and floors. The waitress wore pink too, and her bun was starting to come down. She brought coffee with the menu.

"Evenin', honey. What can I get you?"

"I don't . . . grilled cheese. On whole wheat."

She waited inertly in the booth. Her nose was stuffed up, eyes stinging as if she'd driven through clouds of ragweed pollen, and the stump ached. She'd never had the prosthesis on for such a length of time before, and even though it wasn't her driving leg, the hours in the car did it no favors. Even so, she wanted to go on. Wanted to just go on escaping, go on going. Not get anywhere. She hated this so much. This, what? Everything. She couldn't look too close at what she'd done, was doing.

The cup of coffee steamed in front of her, its oily surface shimmering as if it was going to reveal something to her.

The waitress reappeared and set the grilled cheese sandwich in front of her.

"Can I get you anything else, honey?"

The waitress, oddly, was now sitting opposite her. She looked so tired, but she leaned forward sympathetically. "What's the matter, hon? You in some kind of difficulty?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Hate to see such a pretty little thing as you looking so troubled. You come from a ways away, don't you?"

"Oh yeah."

Buffy glanced at their reflections in the plate glass window. Two tired women slumped in their seats.

"What happened to you? Go on and tell me, there's nobody else here 'cept the cook, and he's listening to the game on the radio."

Her haggard face was so kind, so entirely focused on her. The bubble of angry pain inside Buffy swelled, pushed up, and expelled itself in viscid, silent tears. "I'm bad. I'm a bad woman, I'm a terrible mother, I messed up on the . . . on the job, so now I'm . . . I . . . I've failed. I've failed at everything. I broke it all."

"Broke it all?" the waitress echoed. "Are you sure?"

Buffy nodded. Her eyes burned now, the tears felt like lava tracking down her face, like they'd leave deep red welts.

"Anybody dead?" the waitress asked.

"N-n-no."

"Then how broken can it be?"

"I've failed. I . . . couldn't do it. I couldn't do what other women do. I shouldn't have tried, I'm not normal. I can't love, like . . . they love me, and it just makes me feel, it makes me feel smothered, it makes me— " She put her hands to her throat. "All this time, they thought I loved them, the way they love me. But I can't love." Saying the words seemed to make the whole idea, which had plagued her for years, more real. She jerked with sobs, no longer caring what the waitress thought of her, of how she looked or sounded.

"Oh baby, haven't we all been there? I been through two husbands, I got five grown kids. I know what you mean." She put a hand out, patted Buffy's arm, then dragged herself to her feet. "Don't run yourself down like that. 'Course you can love, everybody can."

She gave her head a wild shake. "Not everybody! I'm one of the ones who can't!"

"Sssh, sssh. I'm sure that's not true." She pulled some napkins from the dispenser and pressed them into Buffy's hand.

"I can't love . . . I'm too hard. It's too hard . . . everytime I try, I fail . . . ."

"Well hon, maybe you just need to try again."

She was immensely tired, sunk down deep into herself, caught in blackness, stillness. Somewhere far away some kind of dull roar was happening, but it wasn't any of her business. A squishing noise came closer. She felt someone touching her, but again it didn't seem to be any of her business, and she didn't move. Couldn't move? Wouldn't move.

Slept.

When sleep receded, she was high and dry. Whole body an ache. She tried to move her lips. Mouth cottony, unbearable.

"Here."

Familiar voice. Small object prodded against her lips. A straw. She caught it, pulled. Water. Perfect water. All she ever needed or wanted.

Eyes're all crusty," the voice said.

Spike. She knew then, where she was. Hospital. Leg bitten off, floating on fever, Spike always by her side. She'd thought that was over a few weeks ago, but probably just dreamt about going home. Time not so meaningful. Dreams took over for reality, if there even was such a thing as reality. Who cared? So much of that, long convoluted narratives, visitations, going far far away.

Something cool and moist against her eyes. Wiping them. Then something a little less cool, a little less moist.

His lips. Reverently kissing one eyelid, then the other.

Didn't want to open, but she did. He'd expect it.

"How're you doing?"

She could feel them both. Weirdest thing. That's how it always was in the movies— the phantom limb. She'd never quite believed it, how could you feel something that was so completely gone? But she did. Both heavy, weighed down by the folded blanket, but she could swear they felt the same, right, left. Wriggled the toes on one, then the other.

"Want to move?" he said then. "Nurse said I could help you up if you want to walk a bit."

That didn't make sense. How could she walk, only one leg? Too weak and rubbery to manage crutches. Was he going to hold her up? Drag her around like a rag mop?

"Think you should, really," he added, and drew the blanket down. "Sit up now, sweetness."

She didn't want to look, but then she wasn't fast enough, jamming her eyes closed.

So she saw them. Her two feet. Pink frosted polish on the toes. Not even chipped. Spike gripped her ankles and drew her gently around so her legs dangled off the bed.

Stood in front of her, ready to help haul her up. That's when she felt it. Her belly, thick, empty, the wad of moist padding between her legs. Understood.

"I had the baby," she blurted.

Spike froze.

She looked up into his face. He was white. White, papery, eyes ringed in dark circles. He looked like . . . he looked like a vampire. Like Nosferatu, all drawn and ancient. A bubble of wondering enquiry expanded in her, pushed upward, threatened to overwhelm her altogether. The bubble pushed mystery before it, left clarity in its wake. "And she's . . . she's gone."

He averted his eyes then. "Did you forget?" he said, his voice low. "While you were sleeping?"

"Our baby's dead."

"Slippers are here," Spike murmured. "Stand up an' I'll put your robe round you."

The bubble burst then, and washed her in . . . what? She felt so light. She felt, under the weakness, and the nausea . . . oh God . . . .

She felt free.

She tested some words on her tongue. "Spike, I'm sorry." They made his face crumple. He turned from her, grabbed up her robe from the chair nearby. His shoulders shook.

He did not feel free.

Oh, this was bad. This was bad. She was bad, because her baby was dead and she only felt relieved . . . because Spike was in such pain, and yet he seemed so far away, and even if she put her arms around him she wouldn't be able to feel what he felt because she didn't have it in her.

She didn't have any love in her. It was true.

But she'd be able to go on hiding that, the way she'd been hiding it all along, now the baby was dead.

The baby would've given her away, for sure.

Tara still lived with them, and she hadn't moved out in anticipation of the new addition to the household. Which was good, because she was the one who took care of things in the days after the hospital. She kept the house running, made sure Dawn had good regular meals. She came in and made Buffy put fresh sheets on her bed. Gently pointed out that she ought to brush her hair, maybe take a bath. Brought her sandwiches and mugs of soup, remarking that she knew this must be so hard, unimaginably hard, but that she hoped soon Buffy would feel more like herself.

She also held Spike's hand when he cried. Buffy knew this because she caught them once, when she woke up earlier than usual and went quietly downstairs. Face hidden in one hand, Spike stood at the kitchen island, weeping convulsively, and Tara stood next to him, squeezing his other hand in both of hers.

Buffy watched for a moment, then retreated back to her bed.

Spike didn't cry with her. He kept away; she wasn't sure where he was sleeping, because she didn't check— didn't open any of the closed doors on the upstairs hall when she climbed up after lunch to lie down for her own nap. All she knew was that he'd reverted to the vampire thing of resting during the day, because at night he left the house altogether. She didn't ask him where he went. She was just glad he was giving her her space. Sometimes she missed him, when she was patrolling, and would've liked him there to trade quips with, to show off to. She didn't need any real help, though. She was the slayer.

Patrolling nightly for those couple of hours— or longer, she liked to make it last— was the only time she really felt fully awake. The air in the house might've been suffused with some soporific drug— even on the sunniest, freshest day, with all the windows open, all she could do at home was nod and yawn. She was jealous of her free time, but didn't do anything with it except watch a little television and nap. Sometimes she baked, large sugary cakes with inches of icing, sheets of gooey cookies. She felt really proud of these productions— they seemed to indicate that she was still a real woman, because wasn't it the height of womanliness, to manipulate sugar into shapes? Was supposed to have something to do with love.

But then she ate most of what she'd baked while watching Home Shopping Network, and when the others came in there wasn't much to show for it, or to offer them.

She knew this, but that's the way it was. Nothing to offer. She wondered occasionally what this change of venue for her life was supposed to mean. Was this not real? It felt real. Did it mean that the other reality, where she'd lost her leg and Jemima was alive, had never happened?

It occurred to her that she ought to mention it. Giles was around, she should tell him.

Maybe he'd just think it was a manifestation of her grief. That she'd make up some alternate reality where her baby survived. He might want her to see someone, a therapist or someone like that.

So she didn't say anything.

Sometimes in the late afternoon when the shadows were getting long, Spike would appear, hair standing up in tufts, shirt open, blinking sleep from his eyes, and join her in front of the box. They'd even cuddle, and that was good, so long as they didn't have to talk. He didn't try to talk. Which was so unusual for him, Mister Talky Mouth. He'd just smooth her hair with his palm, and she could tell he imagined this was soothing to her, that she liked it.

She did, she liked it all right.

Once she woke up so early in the morning that it was still dark. She'd been dreaming about him, he was fucking her with her legs hooked over his shoulders, his mouth was against hers and he breathed between her lips with every undulation. His breath was musty, it smelt of old dry plasterboard. Despite that strange detail, she came awake feeling sexy. First time here. Funny, she thought, that she hadn't even noticed how unsexy she'd felt since she got home from the hospital. Someone— doctor, social worker, might've said something to her about that— there was a counseling session she'd sleep-walked through, info she'd let slide off the surface of her consciousness.

Kicking the sheet off, she stretched her legs wide. Her clit was hard and slick, it seemed to spin under the pad of her finger like a ball bearing. Hunh. She panted, building. Nice. Didn't think about anything in particular— it was hot enough, just picturing herself, her own hand, her own wetness.

The door creaked. He sidled in, hands in his jeans pockets. "Pretty sight."

She turned her gaze away. Closed her eyes for good measure. Kept her hand moving.

He said, "Join you?"

She gave her head a hard shake.

Another couple of moments went by. She clenched around an imaginary cock, going for that rippling spasm inside, breathing hard. It was all about the breath. The breath and the finger moving fastasshecouldgo. Gulping down big air.

He made no move towards her, but she felt his gaze. Felt pinned by his gaze. He said again, "Pretty sight."

"Get out."

"Thought . . . door was ajar, love. Thought you wanted to attract my attention."

"I don't need you. Go away."

When she'd come, when everything subsided and she was the quieting thub of her heart and fingertips curled into moist curls, she opened her eyes.

She was alone.

She knew they talked about her, Tara, Xander, Giles, Anya, Faith. Spike too, probably. They talked about her amongst themselves, reassuring each other that she was grieving, that it was normal, that she'd get better, want to be with them more. They thought, of course, that she was recovering from losing her baby. Had no idea that she was visiting here from somewhere else, that this was some stop-off on the way to . . . fuck, who knew? Perdition. She'd been plucked up out of her life because she'd failed at it, and dropped off into this one, where failing at it seemed a little less obvious, because she had all this slack being cut for her, a great harvest-home of slack. Wouldn't last forever, but for the moment she could go with it.

She wasn't so isolated. When someone suggested a movie, a night at the Bronze, a trip to the mall, she dolled up and went.

One night she even let Spike take her to the drive in, just like they were high-schoolers on a date. She gave him a handjob in the DeSoto while staring at Keanu Reeves twenty feet tall through the windshield. After he came he hugged her close, his lips in her hair. Whispered that he loved her and she'd feel better soon, they'd be all right. Wouldn't be sad forever.

Well sure, she wanted to say, the only one of us who's forever is you.

When she came across Faith treating Spike to a knee-trembler up against a mausoleum at Restfield a few nights later she wasn't really surprised.

The surprise came in when something happened in her chest that felt like the heat death of the universe.

The tears that started from her eyes were scalding, they slid down her face and seemed to solidify like candle wax, burning her as they went.

She didn't mean to make her presence known; the cry came out of her quite unbidden.

Spike glanced around. Cursed, pulling away from Faith, stuffing himself back into his clothes. Faith seemed unconvinced there was any reason why they should stop what they were doing; she gave Buffy time to see more of her than she ever wanted to, before starting to set her own clothes to rights.

"You . . . you always do this to me." This had to be what it felt like for them, the vamps, when she drove in the stake. Slow motion end-it-all explosion. She'd been in this kind of pain before. But not lately, and that was what made it so enormous now. The realization that some stopped clock inside her— stopped so long she'd forgotten its existence— was starting up again with a massive scree of agony.

She was wide awake now.

Faith shrugged. "Hey B, you leave your toys lyin' out, someone's gonna pick 'em up and play with 'em."

"Oi! Not a plaything, here."

"Yeah," Faith laughed. "Sure. I'll leave you two to do whatever it is you old marrieds do in these sitches. Have fun." She sauntered off. For a second Buffy envisaged leaping after her, beating her down, screaming My man— mine! as she killed her.

Spike stood off from her, hang-dog, watching. "Didn't . . . didn't plan on that happenin'."

"Let's go home." She was still crying, but that didn't seem important. Even Spike himself, walking at her side, tense and apprehensive, didn't seem important up against this immense sensation inside. Knew she'd been dead before because only life hurt like this.

"Look— it didn't mean anything. Just . . .just . . . she came on to me. An' I've been kind of pent up here."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Yeah, well maybe I do! Maybe I want to know why you do treat me like some doll you're outgrowing!"

"Shut up! I just caught you f-f-f-f-fucking Faith! You don't get to be angry!"

"Because you're gone!"

"It's not my fault you cheated on me!" She rounded on him, hit him. It felt very very good, her fist connecting with his face. So good she did it again. Until he knocked her down.

Not such a doormat, this Spike.

Stood over her, regarding her with his head tilted to one side, mouth agape. She started to get up, but he matter of factly put his boot on her shoulder and pushed her down again.

"Gettin' something here . . . seein' it now. You're glad, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You're glad baby was born dead. Glad to be rid of her. An' now you want rid of me. You're leaving me, aren't you? Except I'm the one's supposed to realize it, an' up and go."

"No!"

He laughed, a terrible sound. "Not no. Oh, I got you sussed Slayer. You . . . you're finished with me. In here." He tapped his temple. "Maybe a good thing we didn't have a child. Might not've worked out too well for her, having a mum who's all hot'n'cold like you are."

"I can't believe you cheated on me and now you're trying to— "

"Got. You. Sussed."

"Where are you going?" He'd started to walk away. She leapt up. "To Faith? You bastard— are you going to— "

"Don't want her. Want you. Fucking hell, dunno what I want. You're a meat grinder, Summers."

Nearly blinded with tears, heart hammering at her breast bone like it wanted out, she drove.

For most of the way she doubted she'd find the place again. She hadn't been paying attention when she went there in the first place, because she hadn't been going to anything, just running away.

But after a few hours of driving, she sensed it, the right place to turn off. And there it was, the diner, just as lit-up and empty as before.

Buffy slammed in the door.

The waitress— same one, thank God— glanced up from behind the counter she was wiping down with a damp rag.

"You back, hon?"

"I want my life back!"

The waitress glanced around, as if the tables and stools and napkin holders and light fixtures were her witnesses. "This is your life. Why don't you drink a cup of coffee and tell me how it's going?"

"Why don't you tell me who you are?"

"That's not important. You fetched up here because you keep making the same mistake over and over."

"Because . . . I . . . ."

"Well c'mon, honey." The waitress put her head on one side. "Don't you? I don't mean to be harsh here."

Buffy looked at her hands. The knuckles were a little sore, where they'd connected with his face.

"But . . . but this isn't my life! I gave birth to a live daughter. I had— I was— look, I know I messed it up! But I can do better! There's this . . . something blew up in here and now I feel it, I feel how much I need them, and— and— you have to fix this! I didn't ask for this!"

The waitress sighed. "Well, dear, you'll have to see if you can do better. Do you think you can?"

In the room he shared with Buffy, Spike had progressed from the disorderly— the boot through the television— and on to the drunk.

The sudden voice in the doorway made him jump.

"Whoa— what'cha doing?"

Startled, he whipped around, splashing Jack Daniels onto the flickering votives so that they flared up with a loud hiss. He gestured wildly with the bottle, trying to ward her off. Not her room anymore. Willow couldn't just come marching into their house, into their room, like she owned the— oops. Fire.

His shirt cuff was a ring of flame.

Willow started forward. "Extingue!"

Every candle in the room went out at once, along with his shirt, leaving them in near dark, with the concentrated stink of beeswax and charred undead flesh.

"God Spike, what is this? The last time you were like this you managed to-to-to ruin my whole life, just about! So you'd better not be— "

"Not about your bloody life this time, is it? You're the one's barging in where you're not wanted! None of your bloody business!"

"Giles told me to check on you. He said there was a fight, that Buffy took off."

"I didn't lay a hand on her!"

Willow shouted back. "No one said you did! I'm checking on you, I'm not here to— "

"She— she— why do I let her do that? Anything at all's the matter, she pops me one in the face . . . it's Buffy's way, used to it, I am . . . but since— since . . . she doesn't care if Littler Bit's by, what she sees . . . not right, is it? Not right . . . " His voice cracked.

A lamp came on. In its light Willow's stern face appeared.

"What's happened, Spike?"

"She . . . she doesn't want us. We've lost her."

"What? Who— ?"

"Me an' Jem."

"I don't get it."

"She's not coping, Red. She sits by herself an' broods, and when we come near her, she's just . .. angry. Angry at me, an' at Jem. We try to show her we love her, an' it's just a torment to her, the way she takes it. Last night I thought she was worried about me losin' interest— she talked about that. Doesn't want me to see her pretty body or touch it anymore. I tried to show her it isn't so, because I adore her an' I always will. Made love to her and thought I'd soothed her, but next morning she was bitterer than before. Got Jemmie all frightened and upset, telling her— an' then lighting into me again when— She knows right well how we love her, an' need her, the both of us, but . . . she just doesn't care anymore."

He'd not consciously thought it through before saying the words, but as he pronounced them he felt so strongly that they were so, and that he'd been a fool not to understand it all sooner, that his knees buckled beneath him; he sat down suddenly on the floor, still clutching the bottle of bourbon, and began to sob.

"Oh Spike . . . hey— stop that. Gimme." Willow knelt before him and yanked the liquor away. "It's not helping."

"Nothing's bloody helping. Don't I know she's in trouble? Don't I try to help her? Girl doesn't want to be helped! An' what's the excuse for takin' it out on Jem? Jem! How's it possible Buffy doesn't feel the wrong of that? She's not world's best mother but she loves our girl— ! I . . . I always have thought so. I can't believe she . . . she doesn't . . . ."

"Of course she does. Spike . . . people lose their tempers, they do stupid things, it doesn't mean . . . I mean, ask Dawn. Things between her and Buffy were pretty rocky at times, but they've always loved each other. Always forgive each other."

"Losin' everything here, Red. She abandons us, what does she think— Jemmie won't get taken from me? I won't end up with nothing?" He snatched at the bottle— Willow scooted back to keep it from him.

"Wait a minute— who's taking Jemmie anywhere? She's spending the night with Giles and Anya, that's all. And who said anything about abandoning? Buffy'll probably walk in here any minute. It's not even four o'clock in the afternoon. If you stop drinking now you'll be sober enough to go tuck Jemmie in."

Spike grabbed her and made a feint at the bottle. "Shut. Up. You witch-bitch. You don't know anything— !"

"Hey-y-y-y— hands! Unpleasant flashbacks here!" Willow leapt to her feet. "Look, I was just trying to help— "

"Can't bloody go on like this, can we? Can't be doing with the fist in my face every time I turn around— an' her playin' mind-games with the little girl, that's worse. Should've seen her this morning, Will, Jem all riled up because she knew her mum was mocking me. Buffy thinks kiddies don't suss these things, but they know— know more'n we do, half the time, I think. How's littler bit to trust us when she's jerked from pillar to post on Buffy's moods? But what's my recourse? Ought to take Jem and leave her. But I can't, can I?"

Willow's face dissolved into a sadness that made her look as young as she'd been the last time he moaned to her about his relationship woes. "Oh Spike. You're not really . . . you're not . . . God. I'm sorry it's like that. I guess I haven't been paying attention."

"Not that. Buffy's good at hiding it when it suits her."

"Yeah, I know. She's . . . she's always been a clam."

"Christ . . . look, sorry you had to find me like this. We haven't always been on the same side, but these last years . . . know you've been my friend as well as hers."

"I've tried to be, Spike." She dropped her gaze. "It's okay."

"You in a hurry now? Like to get cleaned up and go see littler bit. Could use a bit of help."

"Sure. Of course. I'll brew up some coffee while you take a shower."

Beneath the shower's hot needles, he began to think of what he'd been unable to face when he dove head-first into the bourbon. What if Jemima was too frightened to see him? What if she thought he'd been hurting her mother? What if she'd never trust him again, never come near him, always shrink with horror at the mere mention of his name?

It was a horror. To have a father who was an undead, unclean thing, whose true face was a feral mask, a weapon for ripping throats. To know you were his natural and easy prey.

How many vampires had he met in his century who spoke nonchalantly— or boasted with proud fervor— of eating their own children?

I'm not that, I'm not that, not now . . . no danger of that. But would she understand?

Willow met him at the bottom of the stairs with a steaming mug. "You look better."

"How's my face? Cuts sting."

"A couple of bandaids might be good. Shall I?"

He followed her into the kitchen, where she got the first-aid kit out. "I always wondered— how do you shave? And— subsidiary question— do you have to shave?"

"Hair grows, yeah, but not so fast as when I was alive. Couple times a week keeps things smooth. Could grow a beard if I wanted to. Don't need a mirror to shave so much, or keep myself neat. Used to fix Drusilla's hair, make her up, when we were travelin' without minions. She could get pretty disheveled without help. Got to be pretty good at the lady's maiding."

"Huh." Willow pressed the final bandaid of three to his brow. "All covered."

He sipped at the coffee. "What . . . what if she won't see me?"

"Spike, she adores you."

"When she saw me all fanged out— Willow, she panicked. She panicked an' scrambled away like . . . God, like every single child I ever— "

The expression on Willow's face shut him up.

She sighed. "Sometimes I forget— "

He frowned and swallowed more coffee. "Sometimes I do too. Sometimes I actually think I'm a man, with a job, an' a woman an' a child— like I'm really alive. Like I'm really good." He let out a laugh. ". . . Thing's been sliding for a while, though. I'm getting that now. Maybe since . . . since we lost Faith."

"Faith? What's she got to do with— I mean, that came out wrong."

This idea was new, and threw him nearly as much as it did Willow. He had to think it through. Faith's death hit most of them hard, no one more so than Xander, who'd become so inextricably meshed with her that the strain had showed even in his friendship with Willow. But Buffy . . . "They were pretty thick, last few years. The two slayers."

"Yeah . . . " Willow said. "I guess they got pretty close."

Spike could see that still bothered her. "Yeah . . . In a way . . . in a way . . . like her an' me, innit? Lots of history between 'em, a lot of it not too pretty. Hurt an' betrayal an' rage. Then the big turn-around. Forgiveness. Understandin' each other in ways no one else could, an' the camaraderie that comes out of that . . . Faith always used to tease her 'bout being a happy little wife an' mum— Buffy said how it was like Faith used to press her nose up against our window, wanting to be inside even while she made fun of us— "

Willow let out an angry grunt. "Do you know how many times Xander asked her to marry him? Do you know? He'd have given her anything she wanted— ! She wouldn't trust him enough!"

"I know. She flirted with that life an' she didn't dare take it on. Buffy an' I have talked about that a time or two. But it was important to her, that Buffy have it. An' while Faith was there, shiverin' on the outside, I think it made Buffy appreciate us more."

"Spike, I think maybe you're attributing a little more importance to Faith than she really deserves here."

"Maybe yes, maybe no. The last few years— them working together, been the best. Buffy learned to love bein' the slayer. But now Faith's dead and Buffy's not a slayer anymore— everything's different. She's not coping. What're we going to do about that?"

"I don't know," Willow said. She put a hand on his arm, then withdrew it. "C'mon, let's get you and Jem together, anyway."

"You want me to come in?" Willow said as she pulled up in front of the house.

Spike peered at her from beneath the blanket tented around his head. "Thanks, but better not."

"Call me later, okay? And if I hear from Buffy I'll let you know right away."

She could be decent, Spike thought, darting out of her car and up to the door. Years had changed her for the better. He'd have said that of all of them, but now he wasn't so sure. He felt as if he'd awakened from some huge bender, confronted by a chunk of lost time. How had he let Buffy sink so far into her own turmoil right there beside him, and not done anything about it?

Anya was at the door before he could knock, and stepped back to let him in. The foyer of the house was dim and quiet; the antique barometer on the wall showed change.

"Heard anything?"

"From Buffy?" She shook her head, leading the way further in.

"Have you two been talking to her?"

"Rupert told her. We're not sure how much she understood. You'll probably have to explain it to her again. Apparently Buffy told her this morning? And then you denied it? That was unclear, and very confusing for us."

"Buffy was taking the piss. How'd she react this time?"

"She cried a lot. She was scared."

"Where is she?"

"In the kitchen. She was quiet the last couple of hours, thinking it over I guess, but then Willow called and she got teary again. Rupert's speaking to her. Spike, don't be surprised if . . . if . . . ."

His throat constricted. "She's afraid to see me."

"She might be."

"PAPA!"

Jemima came tearing through from the next room, then stopped still a couple of yards away, like a pointer dog, staring at him, quivering. She was so small and slender and lost looking, and also, Spike thought, so very there, so very powerfully herself, the most enormous thing in the universe, the dearest. Hair swinging in her face, her pinched little chin trembling, eyes huge, liquid, pleading with him, with the whole world.

Spike dropped to his knees, stretched out his hands. "Pudding."

With a small wild cry, she threw herself at him, her strong skinny arms wrapping around his neck, sharp knees digging into his flanks. She scrambled close, weeping now but not afraid. Her body was hot, and felt, in his embrace, impossibly busy— he could feel and smell all its furious workings, could smell all the crazy force of her emotions, the flailing thoughts. Her heart raced, pressed so close to his chest that it seemed to beat for both of them— for a long time he couldn't find his voice, just squeezed her, his nose in her hair. Her tears soaked his shirt.

"Sssh, sssh, my good girl. It's all right. It's all right now." He rose, hitching her tighter; she clung to him like a monkey as he carried her to the sofa and sat down.

"Papa. Papapapapapapapa."

"Here, sweetheart. Right here."

"Where's Mamma?"

"She's taking a little break. Sorting herself out."

"She hurt you." Jemima's fingers touched the band-aids on his face. "She promised me she wouldn't do that again."

"It's barely anything."

"When is she coming back?"

"Soon. Any time now."

Her face drew down, and she dropped her gaze. "You don't really know, do you?"

"No, treasure. I don't. But I think she won't stay away long."

"She scared me." A long pause then, while she twisted her hand into the collar of his teeshirt, then let it go, twisted, then let it go. "You are a vampire."

"I am."

She drew back and looked at him then. She was, he thought, so like Buffy as he first remembered seeing her, that round-faced teenage girl whom he'd sensed, even in the midst of his plans to destroy her, would somehow destroy him. She had— she'd ended what he was, made him what he'd never thought he'd be.

Given him what he'd never thought he'd have.

He smoothed the slippery hair from her forehead. It needed combing. Her wan little face was blotched, the corners of the mouth sticky.

"I am a vampire, but I will never never hurt you, or anybody we know. What did Uncle Rupert tell you about vampires?"

"He said . . . he said . . . I don't remember." She began to cry again, more quietly this time. "You lied to me. You and Mamma lied. And then this morning Mamma told the truth but it sounded worse than a lie. She was making fun of you. Why does she do that?"

"Mamma was hurt very badly when she lost her leg, and when grown-ups are in pain, sometimes they say things, do things, that . . . that they don't mean. That they're sorry for instantly after."

"But she says her leg doesn't really hurt."

"That's not the kind of pain I mean, Biscuit. I mean the kind like . . . like you're in right now, because things are happening that you can't control and that make you feel bad. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"And we didn't mean to lie to you. We didn't want to burden you with too much information until we thought you were old enough. But now . . . now I'll answer anything you want to ask me."

"Am I a vampire?"

"No precious." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "No no no. An' you never will be."

"So it's bad to be one?"

"Sweetheart . . . this is why we wanted to wait until you were older, so you'd understand better. Vampires . . . are dangerous creatures. They . . . they subsist— live— on human blood. Your mother . . . your mother— did Uncle Rupert tell you this? Your mother is a vampire slayer. She's a great hero, it's her job to protect everybody, to keep the world safe. Years ago, before you were even thought of, I was as wicked a vampire as ever was. Your mother an' me were enemies. We fought some battles, she and I. After a while . . . things were different . . . an' I fell in love with your mother. Because she was so good, so strong, and so beautiful, and I don't know how it is exactly, because all vampires are bad and like to be bad, but your mother made me want to change. It took a long time, but I gave up my wicked ways, an' your mum found she loved me too, and then a bit later you came along, and we were a family. So, like I said, I don't hurt people anymore, and I'd never hurt you. But sometimes when I'm very emotional, my vampire face shows. And that's what you saw." He felt, telling her this, that she couldn't possibly be comprehending it, that the longer he went on the less sense his words made to her. His story seemed to enter her through her eyes, which were so wide and deep and open, blinking slowly as she watched his face.

"Vampires are bad."

"They are. And I know that's hard for you to understand, because I am one, and I will never hurt you— " this bore repeating, he felt, infinitely "— but other vampires are not like me."

"Mamma kills vampires?"

"Yes."

"And you help her? That's what you do when you patrol?"

"That's right."

"But she doesn't patrol anymore. Did vampires eat her leg?"

"Not exactly. There's other monsters— demons— that your mum fights too. One of them, a big nasty thing— overpowered her an' took off her leg. Oh precious, I hate having to burden your sweet little mind with all this. But it's the world we all live in, and . . . sooner or later you have to know about it. We wanted to protect you, is all. Your mum an' I love you so much, we just want you to be happy and not worried about anything."

"What happened to your face?"

"That's— I told you— that's my vampire face. It's not . . . it's not anything to do with you. It's— " He couldn't think how to explain it.

"Where does it come from? I want to see it."

"Oh no. No you don't."

"I want to see it! Where is it! Where does it come from! I want to see it!"

"Ssh, ssh. Don't shriek like that."

"I think it would on the whole be best to satisfy her curiosity."

Spike glanced up; he'd not been aware of Giles coming into the room.

"The more we can demystify this situation . . . ."

His demon visage, in the years with Buffy, had become so compartmentalized, unleashed at home only in the context of the bedroom, that it felt as if the watcher had demanded he strip in front of his child. All his benign instincts agitated against it, even as, deep down, the demon laughed and strained towards the surface.

"I know it seems . . . perhaps counterintuitive . . . ." Giles said.

"Yeah. Yeah, all right." He focused again on Jemima. "I'll show you, but . . . are you sure? You won't be frightened? I don't want you ever to be frightened of me, my Jem."

She shook her head earnestly.

She was sitting on his lap, one arm still flung possessively round his neck, but he shifted her gently off onto the sofa cushion beside him. Gestured to Giles, who came to sit behind her.

"All right then. Are you ready?"

She nodded, staring intently into his eyes. Only such a small child could look unflinchingly into anyone's eyes as she did. Spike wondered how long she'd retain that willingness with him; perhaps this would end it forever. He put his hand through her hair again, with a dim sense that this might perhaps be the last time he'd be permitted to do so.

Then he changed. Tried to do it slowly, but it wasn't so easy to control. Bringing up the demon augmented all his senses, though they were already preternaturally sharp; he could feel the blood moving through Jemima's veins, through Giles'— could smell Anya though she was upstairs, and the olfactory notes of all the other people who'd been in the house in the last week. He blinked slowly, aware of the mesmerizing quality of his golden demon eyes.

Jemima gasped and shrank against Giles at the first alteration. Now she stared, and after a moment in which Spike wished to be invisible, or dead, she put out a hand to touch.

It was all he could do not to jerk himself out of her reach. But a sudden move, even backwards, might scare her. Jemima's hand was cool-moist against his cheek. She traced the ridges, her own mouth falling open. Her fingers touched his lips, which he'd tried to keep closed, but at their prodding he parted them so she could see the cruel fangs. Buffy's voice of that morning echoed in his head, the way she'd said He's really very vain about his fangs. He thinks they're terribly handsome.

"Does it hurt you, Papa? When your face does that?"

"No, sweetheart."

" It looks like the bones are pressing out of your skin! How can it not hurt!" She was in tears again. Spike shook off the bumps and drew her back into his arms.

"All that hurts is seeing you so unhappy, my Jem. That's all, my darling. Sssh."

She sank her head against his neck, her sobbing starting to subside. Spike was on the verge of suggesting a session of face-washing and hair combing when she burst into sobs again.

"Mamma forgot that you aren't really bad! She tried to kill you! We have to tell her she made a mistake! We have to tell her!"

Over the top of her head, Spike met Giles' eyes. He frowned, cleaned his glasses, put them back on.

Attacking vampires was Mamma's job, and this was supposed to be a good thing, because both Papa and Uncle Giles said that she was a hero, and Jemima knew what a hero was, like the Powerpuff Girls on TV. Even though Papa was a vampire he thought it was right that vampires should be killed, he helped Mamma kill them, which must mean that he was ashamed of what he was.

Mamma was, according to Uncle Giles, a very fierce warrior in the battle against good and evil, and she herself was very very good, but sometimes she could forget herself and do things in the heat of the moment, which was why she hit Papa with her fake leg, and why she tried to kill him in the cellar. This must also be why, Jemima decided, Mamma was often so distracted and snippy, because she had so very much to think about that was important to protect the world. And now she'd lost a leg and couldn't work to protect the world anymore, she was angry and that made her bad moods worse.

Except it was hard to understand in what way she couldn't fight vampires anymore, because when she'd seen her that morning hitting Papa she'd seemed fine. Maybe Mamma had been able to fly, like the Powerpuff Girls, but she couldn't fly without her leg. Maybe that was the change. Because she could punch and kick just like the heroes on television. When she'd seen Papa's monster face she'd tried to kill him just like she killed the other vampires, the ones whose pictures Giles had shown her earlier in that big book.

How could she do that? How could she forget that he wasn't bad like the other vampires? Because he wasn't, she was sure of that. Or else . . . or else she was somehow bad too, and that's why he didn't seem bad to her?

But Mamma wouldn't love him if he wasn't good like she was. Uncle Giles had said that, over and over in different ways, and he always told the truth. And Mamma did love Papa, or had, at any event, at least up to the accident. She knew this because even when Mamma was being cranky and hard, she would always melt when Papa looked at her, when he took her in his arms. She couldn't remember a day, before the accident, when she hadn't seen them kiss.

But now that the leg was gone so were a lot of things that Jem had never had to think about before but which she recalled now and missed, like how good it was to wake up in the night and hear Mamma and Papa talking on the porch as they returned from patrol, their voices low and calm, with sometimes a little laugh. Or lying on the sofa sandwiched between them, watching television, and seeing Mamma sigh and let her head droop against Papa's shoulder, her face turning pink when he stroked her hair and called her my queen. Or how Mamma would heat up his medicine for him in a mug and stand by him while he drank it down, running her fingers through his hair.

Thinking of this, Jem started, realizing all of a sudden that the stuff in the mug wasn't medicine, it was blood, because Uncle Giles had explained how vampires needed to live on blood just like she needed to live on Cheerios and yogurt and chicken legs.

Where did the blood come from? She couldn't buy it at the store, because Jemima went with her to the supermarket and she'd never seen her buy anything like that. Was it Mamma's own blood? Papa had said he would answer anything she wanted to ask, but there were too many things and she didn't think he really would want to answer them all, especially because he was ashamed. And then there were the parts she'd just figured out for herself, but preferred not to mention to him because she didn't want to remind him that he ought to be angry at her.

Like that all of this was really her fault. Because she'd made that fuss this morning about how his hands weren't warm and pulsing like everybody else's. Which was what made Mamma say all those things about him being a vampire, which, while it turned out not to be a lie, still had made Papa unhappy. Made something happen when they were in the cellar together so that Mamma lost her temper.

And it was her fault even more than that, because she knew she'd been a pest that day that Mamma's leg was hurt, and that was why she'd been in such a hurry to go out. She'd done it again today— as soon as Mamma saw her there on the cellar steps she'd run away and hadn't come back.

Mamma was so hard to understand, it was difficult to know when she would love her and when she would not, and this news today about her being a hero made it easier and harder to understand. She was a hero and Papa was some kind of monster, yet he loved her all the time, and even when he was busy or angry or watching something on television he'd always break out of whatever it was for a second and smile at her so that she'd know that whatever was going on that had nothing to do with her still didn't take her place. That was the difference between them, and it must have to do with being a hero, so she was glad Papa wasn't one.

Papa held her now the way she liked best, both arms tight around her, and her face tucked into the crook of his neck. She understood now why he felt different than the others, but she didn't care because he was still Papa and he needed her more than ever because, as Uncle Giles had explained, she was the only girl in the world who had a vampire for a father, and he was the only vampire who had a daughter he loved and would always take care of. Papa must be very special if the hero vampire slayer would fall in love with him, and if ladies like Mrs Miucci's sister would always want to stare at him. Did Mrs Miucci and her sister know that Papa was a vampire? Did all the grown-ups know? She'd have to watch closely and find out.

"Shouldn't we go home now?"

Both Papa and Uncle Giles started at that, as if she'd interrupted them talking, although they hadn't been talking.

"Don't you want to stay here and have supper with Rupert and Anya?"

"No. I want to go home. What if Mamma comes and we're not there?"

"Well, I think she'd guess where we are."

"Maybe, but wouldn't she wish we were there waiting for her?" Then the thought came to her that perhaps she wouldn't; this made her chest feel heavy, and her head, so she had to lay it back on Papa's shoulder.

"We'll go then, Sweeting, if it seems right to you." He put her gently off onto the floor. "Run and say thank you to your auntie Anya, and ask her to give you a bit of a wash, and we'll set off."

She paused at the doorway. The men, she knew, were going to talk, almost certainly they were going to talk about her. About her and about Mamma. She wanted to listen, but when she glanced back Papa's eye was on her. He tilted his head in that way he had sometimes of looking at her as if she was very far off, and which usually made her feel funny so she had to yell and jump into his lap to make the funny feeling go away. But now wasn't the time to do that, so she gave him a little finger wave and went to do what he'd told her.

"I swear, when Jemmie touches me, when I look at her . . . feel like I have a soul."

Giles actually blushed when he said this, and smiled briefly. "No one could have been more pessimistic about your . . . your alteration, Spike, but you have proved me wrong again and again. You've caused me to revise many of my dearly held beliefs."

"Wasn't fishin' for any compliments. An' I wouldn't revise any of those beliefs— vamps're rotten. Me, I'm some sort of sport of nature. Exception that proves the rule. Or— fucking hell. I dunno. Expect deep down I'm still evil. It's just love makes me want to do things . . . more than the demon does."

"I don't think I've ever told you how impressed I am with how good you are to Buffy. All these years. To her, and for her."

"Oh yeah. I'm good. We're the happiest couple in Sunnydale."

"Spike, you mustn't reproach— "

"She never talks about her feelings, I know that, I've always known it, an' I've always been able to read her like a book— long before I wanted anything from her but her dripping heart ripped straight out of her chest. But this time I find out I've not been keeping up. She doesn't like our life, and she was waiting for me to notice, and I didn't."

"So you're assuming all the responsibility for this state of affairs?"

"Well, yeah . . . I should've sussed her out sooner, I should've— "

"Let's go home now!"

Jemima bounced back into the room, trailed by Anya.

"Let'sgolet'sgolet'sgolet'sgo!"

Giles tried to give her a quelling look, but Spike only rose distractedly and took her hand. "Thanks you two. I expect we'll see Buffy 'fore bedtime. Phone you in the morning, all right?" He let Jemima drag him out of the house and down the walk.

On the sidewalk he knelt beside her. "Shall I carry you?"

"On your shoulders?"

"I thought upside down by your ankles, trail your hair along the pavement an' see what we could pick up . . . ."

She let out a shriek of laughter, and scrambled onto his shoulders. Holding her legs, he rose slowly. "How's the atmosphere up there?"

Giggling, she said, "It's raining . . . it's raining really really hard . . . it's a shitstorm!"

"Oi! Where'd you learn to say that?"

She was laughing harder now. "Is it a bad word?"

"It's a damn good word, but it's not for the likes of you."

"Uncle Xander said it."

"Might've known. Don't repeat it where your mum can hear."

She went quiet. Her two hands, clasped around his hairline, grew moist.

"You all right, Biscuit?"

"I love you just the same, Papa. I'll love you no matter what."

His throat tightened. He wanted to question her, press her, make her say it over and over. "I never doubted it."

"I'll still love you even if Mamma doesn't."

"Your mum an' I are all right. Don't you worry about her— she's loyal an' true, an' she loves us both."

"She loves us both . . . " Jemima murmured, as if she was sounding the words over, searching for the sense of them.

"She does," Spike asserted, and squeezed her leg. He loved carrying her like this, practically wearing her like a comforter, enveloped in her pulsing warmth, her delicious familiar smell, which was a sort of cousin to her mother's aroma, the merest note of which still set his every sense alight. Sometimes when he was with Jem