They'd caught her taking chances. Out without a stake, on Avenue D at three in the morning. She'd been doing that more and more as the summer went on—playing chicken with herself in bad neighborhoods, neighborhoods where humans were more of a threat than demons, where she could be assaulted by the crack-addled, by street toughs.

These were vampires, which almost made a change. She'd been fighting them for a solid half hour, but they were many, and they'd managed to pull her by degrees into the dark vestibule of an abandoned walk-up, where in the reek of shit and urine and rotting garbage she was realizing that she'd probably just run out of luck. Her arms were pinned on either side by slavering vamps whose golden eyes were all she could see in the blackness. More formed a barrier between her and the exit, and the biggest one, the leader, was closing on her neck.

Then first one and then another was extinguished—eyes blinking out with the familiar whoosh. She took advantage of the distraction, used the wall she was backed against as a fulcrum to kick up and out. Another vamp was gone, even as she launched herself feet-first at the big one.

She couldn't see who was helping her, but now wasn't the time to worry about that. The floor was slippery, smeared with she didn't want to think what, and she had no weapon beyond her own—out of practice—body.

But even out of practice, she wasn't helpless. Jumping up on the tall leader, who roared when she grabbed his head, she twisted his jaw, hard and fast, and landed on her feet as he dissolved around her.

Two sets of boots clattered away in opposite directions and were gone. It was over.

She darted forward, towards the fresher outdoor air, and slammed into something. Something that grabbed her sweat-streaked arm with a hard wrench, as another set of reflective eyes ignited in the darkness. "Not so fast, Slayer."

She couldn't see him, but she knew that voice. Her stomach roiled in a queasy rush.

No one was supposed to know she was here.

She'd gone far far away from Sunnydale. From herself. Her name. Her calling.

She didn't want any contact with the old life. Much less him. That pain-in-the-ass vampire.

"Spike." She punched at the eyes floating before her; but he ducked and she pitched forward. He caught her before she fell face down in the filth.

"What is this?" She wrenched herself free. "Since when do you help?" She was still whoozy, from the close-call, death right up in her face. She needed to shake him off, she needed to disappear.

"Didn't know it was you right off." There was something odd in his tone, surly and also sheepish. He plucked at her again. "Lucky for you I came along—you were never so sloppy back in SunnyD. What the hell are you doin' here?"

"Lemme go."

"You owe me an explanation."

"I owe you nothing. We're done here." She dived for the door, desperate to escape the stench. He caught her again at the curb. The block seemed deserted, the windows dark on the buildings that stood like rotted stumps of teeth between empty lots overrun with weeds and refuse.

"What did you do to me? You bloody little bitch, tell me!"

This time her punch landed true. He staggered. "Get away from me. I didn't do anything."

"We had a deal." He didn't back off, but at least now he was hands-off, arms akimbo in that stupid black leather coat that made her break into a fresh sweat just looking at it. It was so humid that she wanted to peel off even the thin cotton things she had on. The idea of leather against her skin was sickening.

She stepped around him. "Yeah. So? You took Dru and you vamoosed. That was the deal. Which I'm only gonna extend for another five seconds, so if you don't want me to stake you now, you'd better run."

"You ruined me."

He fanged out again. She blocked his next punch. Four quick blows and he was on his back. She dropped to one knee on his sternum, glancing around for something she could use to dispatch him.

"Pay attention! This is serious."

"Not to me." There was a piece of broken slat in the gutter but it was just out of reach.

"You know what you did. You're gonna reverse it. You have to reverse it."

"You're boring me. It's too hot for this." Even out here, this street stank. It was an open-air toilet. He must smell it even more than she did.

In fact, the high rank stink was making his eyes water.

She'd had enough of it—and him. "I'll give you a pass. Get out of here, Spike."

But when she rose, he grabbed at her ankle. "Not givin' a pass to you!"

She kicked him off and sped away. Got as far as the corner of 7th and Second, when he was suddenly there again, at her elbow.

"Look, just—just tell me how you did it. Just gimme a damn hint, so I can try—"

She wheeled, resisting her urge to punch him only because there were other people waiting for the light. The expression on his face startled her. He almost seemed ... distraught. "What? What are you talking about? I didn't do anything! Stop pestering me!"

"You really don't know."

"Clue train. In the station." The light changed, and she charged forward. The hell with him. Things were tough all over.

But Spike kept up.

"What the hell are you doing here, then?"

"What am I doing? I'm not the one who was supposed to leave the country."

"Did leave. ... Came back." He frowned. "Why're you in New York? An' walking around without a stake, too."

She was hoping he hadn't noticed that. A blush rose into her already heated cheeks. She wanted to be somewhere cool and quiet—not that her place, two small rooms which she shared with two other girls, was air-conditioned, or ever quiet, but she'd be able to take a cold shower there, and maybe get a nap before she had to go out again to work. She detested this city, and she detested him, and she didn't understand why she was carrying on this conversation. "I was trying to get lost."

Spike's brows shot up. She turned on her heel, but before she could take a step, he'd grabbed her by the elbow. "You're gonna talk to me. Come in here." He started dragging her towards the all-night luncheonette on the corner.

She yanked herself free. "No way. We were done back on Crawford Street. I've got nothing to say to you. "

"Always had plenty to say to bloody Angel. Now I'm just like him, shouldn't be too good to talk to me."

Just like him? Angel was dead. Angel was gone. She'd run him through and sent him to some far-off irretrievable hell. Spike, who was standing too close, and hacking her off, was nothing like Angel.

She was on the point of attempting her neck-breaker move again, onlookers be damned, when a tendril of curiosity unfurled in the depths of her angry indifference. She'd been numb for so long, it startled her like a cold slap on the back of her neck, to want to know anything about anything. Much less anything about Spike. But he'd never before have admitted to any similarity with Angel. And those watery eyes before—he was blinking fiercely even now—were those tears? This was all too weird, and probably some sort of trap, but ... the luncheonette would be cool inside, and there would be ice-cold Coke.

"I'll give you fifteen minutes. But you pay the check."

The restaurant, where the air was so chill that she almost immediately went from feeling pleasantly cool to cold, was half full of East Village night hawks, eating mostly from the Ukrainian side of the menu. The waitress led them to a table in the back. Spike indicated that she should go ahead of him—a polite, human, absolutely normal gesture that immediately filled her with suspicion.

"I'm not turning my back on you," she whispered. He shot her a look, but went on first.

It was beyond odd to sit down with him, like they were on a date, like they were friends. Especially since Angel had never taken her out for a meal—not even a carry-out at the burger stand. And Angel was all she'd thought about since she left Sunnydale. It felt like some kind of personal fuck-you from the Powers That Be that Spike should show up this way, when she was drowning in this hopeless sea of regret. She didn't like recalling how she'd brought him into her house, how she'd bargained with him. In the end their compromise was worthless and she lost everything she cared about.

The fluorescent light was bright and stark, so that across from her Spike's skin was chalky, each hair of his black brows and eyelashes distinct. She didn't want to look at him, but there was nowhere else to look; her back was to the room, and his to the wall. In the plate glass beside her was her own reflection, and all the other customers behind her, but not him. He looked thinner than she remembered, his lips pale, dark streaks under his eyes as though he hadn't been sleeping. If he'd been a man and not a vampire, she'd have thought he was getting sick.

The waitress was there before they found time to say anything to each other. Spike smirked at her, batting his eyes, and was rewarded with a warm flushing smile. Buffy wanted to yank on her apron and tell her that she was flirting with a vampire, and how could she be so dumb? Spike wasn't all that good-looking, was he? When she looked at him, all she saw was a skanky killer.

"My girl here will want a Coke, lots of ice. An' she's hungry, so feed her up with—what'll you have, Slayer? Stuffed cabbage?"

"Yuck. And I'm so not your girl."

"Bring her the cheese blintzes. No, nothin' for me. Just a beer." He watched the waitress's legs as she walked away, before he focused on her again.

"I didn't say you could order for me like that."

"You resemble somethin' I'd use to pick my teeth. Won't hurt you to eat somethin', even on my dime."

"You've used up your first five minutes, so you'd better talk if you're talking." She knew it would take that long to get the food, but now they were in here, amidst the savoury smells of Eastern European cooking, she was ready to eat something. She seldom had anything hot or what could be called a real meal—partly because most of what little she earned went on rent, and partly because she never seemed to get hungry anymore. Slaying used to make her ravenous, but she'd stopped slaying.

Pressing the glass of ice water against first one then the other burning cheek, she stared him down. "So why are we here?"

Spike was slumped in his chair, drumming his fingers uneasily on the table edge, as if that was all that kept him from overturning it, and every other table in the room. But when he spoke, he sounded calm. Preternaturally calm. "Want you to undo it. Just undo it, an' I swear, nothin'll bring me back to these shores again."

"Undo what?"

"You know what."

She started to rise. "If you're just gonna talk in circles, I'm leaving."

Spike clapped a hand down on hers. His eyes were alight with a desperate bright pleading. "Why'd you do it, Slayer? I said I'd take Dru an' go, and I did!"

"For the seventeenth time, I didn't do anything!"

"Then why—why can't I—" He fell silent, and turned to look through the window, at a couple passing by. A man and woman, her age, entwined and kissing as they walked. Spike gazed at them with sorrowful hunger, blinking again as if to control some overwhelming impulse.

"What?"

"Can't stand bein' all alone." His jittery fingers curled the edge of the paper placemat.

"Okay, none of this is remotely interesting or anything to do with me." She sprang up, and spun towards the front, only to immediately encounter the waitress, who had a platter of steaming sweet-smelling blintzes in one hand, and a can of Coke wedged into a plastic cup of ice in the other.

"Bathroom's the other way," she said, gesturing with her chin.

At the same time, Spike slipped a finger into the rear pocket of her jean shorts, and held her back. "Listen to me, Slayer. Listen. Gonna tell you what it did to my Dru." His tone was different than any she'd ever heard from him. Grave, with a stillness in it that belied the fidgetting of his hands. Impossible to ignore. She couldn't take her eyes off him.

She slipped back in her chair.

He stared blindishly at his outspread hands on the table, and his mouth barely moved as he spoke. "Dru cried for three days an' nights. Couldn't console her. In Mexico, when I stopped to put up somewhere, she ran off. Trailed her to the doorstep of a convent, where she was beatin' on the big wooden doors to be let in. Crying out that she needed to repent." He made two slow fists, then spread his fingers slowly out again, as if he wasn't used to being able to move his fingers. "She hammered on those doors and pleaded to be taken in. Weeping that she couldn't bear it, that she needed to be scourged and punished. I couldn't shift her. Her little fists streamed blood from banging on that door. But those canny nuns knew better than to open up in the night to the likes of her. When the dawn was beginning I tried again to drag her to the car, but she fought me like a little wildcat. Watched from the shadows across the way as she threw herself against that barred door, over an' over. Until the light reached her, and she went up in flames."

Buffy blinked. "She—what?

"You heard me, Slayer. She burned. Crying to the God of her girlhood for her sins, an' mine, she gave up an' burned."

She didn't want to believe it. There was no reason to believe it—this had to be some kind of ruse. Except that Spike looked so haunted. So completely emptied and sad.

He looked the way she felt.

Spike lifted the bottle of beer to his lips, took a long languid swallow. "That's when I figured it out, why I'd felt so queer since we left you, what you'd done to us. Why I can't feed, or sleep .... Know we're mortal enemies, Slayer, but that was a rotten trick to play on me, when we had a deal."

It played out again in her head, the swordfight, Angel's return to himself, his bewilderment and joy at seeing her. How she kept him from realizing what she knew: that it was too late, that he had to die. She'd protected him, made it easy for him, and skewered her own heart along with his. Nothing would ever be easy, or good, for her again. Her life was over. "I had nothing to do with it."

"Liar."

"Willow tried once to resoul Angel, and was interrupted. She must've been trying again."

"Willow?" Disgust reshaped his brow and lip. "Little bitch cast her net too wide." There was a strange lack of rancour in his tone. She almost laughed. They both sounded detached now, like they were on ether.

He took another swallow of beer, and made a face. "So where is His Broodiness? Ought to be lookin' after you, since you've forgotten how to take care of yourself. You were a goner if I hadn't come along."

She wasn't going to let him see her wince. So she dug into the paper cup of sour cream on the edge of her plate, started spreading it on the golden backs of the blintzes. "I sent him to hell."

Spike's jaw dropped. It was nearly funny. She took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. Mmm, cheesy. She liked cheese. Took another bite.

Spike was studying her now, his head at a tilt, eyes narrowed. "Oi ... you've gone AWOL, haven't you? That's why you're on the wrong side of the continent? Hidin'."

"We're not discussing that." Another bite. This was pretty good, but she was already starting to feel full. Or at least, restless and guilty. She wasn't supposed to sit and chat with vampires. She'd been a fool to ever talk turkey with Spike in the first place, and now he thought they were some kind of ... equals. "We're not discussing anything, in fact. I'm leaving in a minute, and you're not going to follow me."

"You can't walk out on me—this is your fault!"

She shook her head. "If I see you again, Spike, I take you out. And don't think I can't, or won't."

He folded his arms, his eyes going sharp and taunting. "I do think you can't an' won't, because you're not gonna stake a man with a soul."

All up her arm and into her chest, she felt again the force of that sword thrust, driving the steel into Angel's belly. Now she did wince. If I had merely dusted him! That would be bad enough ... but because of me, he's in hell. Neverending hell. His soul and his body and his everything suffering forever.

He leaned forward then. The detached air had evaporated; his rage shimmered. "You did this, Slayer. You took my lady from me. Left me starving an' bored an' full of nightmares so I don't dare shut my eyes. I'm at the end of my bleeding tether."

Buffy set her knife and fork carefully down. "Boo hoo. Poor old Spike can't be a bloodsucking fiend anymore because he got his soul back. I feel just terrible."

"Little respect here! You were all po-faced about Angel bein' different because he had a soul. So now I'm the same, you ought to be—"

"Nothing! I ought to be nothing! There's no comparison! He was good! He—he—was—"

"—was thoroughly pussy-whipped for the first time in all his existence, an' you found that quite charming and irresistible. I know all about it."

"You don't. Shut up."

Spike pulled some crumpled fives from his pocket and threw them on the table as he rose. His hand closed—with a gentleness she knew was deceptive—around her upper arm.

"Come on, Slayer. You're gonna undo my problem, or else you're gonna pay."

His grip told her that if she resisted now, he'd tear the whole restaurant apart. She let him steer her out onto the street. There was still an hour before it would start to get light; there was almost no one around, no buses in view on the avenue, barely any traffic. The air, at this hour that should've been the coolest of the twenty-four, was still laden and thick. In a moment she was once more coated in sweat.

And unless she slayed him right here on the sidewalk, there was no way she'd be able to go back to the apartment without him following her.

Spike put a hand out and stopped a solitary crawling cab. "My place'll be cool," he said, tipping his chin up and regarding her with half-shuttered eyes. "You can have a bath."

This was crazy, but these might as well have been magic words. He held the taxi door open and gestured her to get in. She met his eyes. "There's nothing I can do about your stupid 'problem'."

"We'll see about that."

The plastic seat was slippery and gross against the backs of her thighs, and the interior of the car stank of cheap incense. But there was no bathtub where she stayed. Just a rusty shower with lousy water pressure. And it wasn't like he'd be able to give her any trouble—she no longer believed this was a set-up. No one could be more solitary than Spike was now. And if she couldn't slay him, there was nothing that said she couldn't cripple him. Buffy slid all the way to the far side, and kept herself still, staring out the window, aware all the while of where the edge of Spike's leather coat just touched the side of her leg.

The driver caught every light; they raced uptown on the nearly deserted avenues, turning left at last off Madison Avenue to stop in front of a stiffly elegant bow-windowed townhouse, five stories tall. In the streetlight's yellow glow, Buffy saw intricate scrollwork on its smooth stone front, the parlor floor windows completely covered in heavy swagged billows, while those higher up were blocked by pale-colored wooden shutters with their slats closed tight. Similar houses, most just as closely guarded from the light of day, lined the block, which opened onto the facade of what she recognized from a postcard her dad once sent her, as the Metropolitan Museum. Spike sprang up the sharp flight of stone steps to the front door, which was also set with glass panels thoroughly curtained. She followed more slowly, steeped in suspicion.

"What are we doing here? Whose is this?"

"Never you mind." He rang the bell.

"I'm not going with you into some place you took over by killing the owner!"

"Told you you could have a bath. Now d'you want it or not?"

Just then, the door was opened by an unseen hand; Spike entered and she followed him into a nearly lightless entree made more obscure by its dark wood paneling. Immediately she was enveloped in air of the perfect temperature and dryness, and a delicious subtle aroma of figs. Overhead a magnificent chandelier came on, shedding a dim but crystalline light that revealed the subtle elegant curl of a wide staircase and the gleam of its bannisters. Spike shrugged out of his duster and tossed it across a delicate gilt-and-silk armchair against the wall.

A butler—he looked like a butler, in a formal Edwardian kind of suit-uniform thing, white hair slicked back from a high forehead, and a bland non-expression, shut the door behind her and gathered up the duster over his arm without the slightest sign of annoyance. "Will there be anything else, sir?"

"You can draw the lady a bath, an' then make yourself scarce."

When the servant, his tread completely silent on the thick carpet, had left them, Buffy expelled the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Who was that?"

"Reese comes with the house."

"He's not a vamp." She knew because the only thing giving her that light tingle at the nape of her neck was Spike.

"He's not. What he is, is extremely well paid. Knows how to keep quiet."

Rebuked, Buffy bristled. "Who pays him? Not you."

"You seem to know all about it, so do shut up, there's a good Slayer."

This was a Through-the-Looking-Glass-level World of Weird. The house felt almost sepulchrally quiet. She wouldn't have been surprised if the houses on either side and across the street were nearly empty too—it was the time of year when rich people fled to breezier places, after all. But that didn't explain how muffled it all was—she doubted she'd be able to hear a car alarm sounding right outside.

But this place seemed more preserved than shut up. When she trailed Spike into the large front parlor with its deep bowed window, just as deeply muffled, she noticed that everything that wasn't actually antique was just plain old—the lamps had thick dun clothish cords that were plugged into round sockets that might've been installed around the turn of the century and never upgraded since. She saw no evidence of a TV, a stereo, not even a radio. The books in the glass cases had matched leather and gilt spines, and included nothing, apparently, published after World War I.

At a gleaming cart in one corner, he poured some kind of brown liquor from a cut-glass decanter into a cut glass tumbler and drank it down all in one shot as if he'd forgotten her presence. Buffy heard the lip of the decanter clink against the glass. Could Spike be nervous? When was he ever?

He took out a cigarette then. She watched as he tried and failed to get his silver Zippo to ignite.

"Fucking hell—!"

She plucked it from his hand. The flame stood up proud for her. For a split-second she saw herself setting him on fire. His hair, with all that stuff he put it in it, would go up like that. He'd leave a smudge on the fine Asian carpet, and she'd turn around and walk out of here and walk all the way downtown into the humid beginning of the day. One old score for the ex-Vampire Slayer.

Instead she did something ticklish, naughty, like when she'd taken that lipstick at Bullock's. Making a pert face, she held the lighter out. His lip curled, like he was going to snarl, like he was going to fang out. But in the next moment he leaned in and let her light his smoke.

The lighter was heavy and shiny and felt right in her hands. She coveted as she toyed with it. Then she noticed that it was engraved; as she squinted, trying to make out what it said, Spike snatched it away from her and tucked it in his pocket. She wandered instead around the long room, almost skating on the thick silencing rugs.

The painting over the mantlepiece was so tall that, standing right beneath it, it took a few moments for her to puzzle out its subject in the twilight: a beautiful tall woman in a white evening gown that seemed to be made out of peppermint and which served up her bare shoulders and cleavage as if they were squeezed from a tube, was held by a man in evening clothes standing just behind her; her fair head was tossed back, as if she was laughing, and his dark one was buried in her pale pink neck, as if he was kissing her extravagantly beneath her ear.

Or as if he was biting her, and she was screaming. Buffy backed up to get a better look, but at that moment Spike switched off the one lamp and steered her back into the foyer. "I'll take you up."

She followed him up two flights to the threshold of the biggest most lushly-appointed bathroom she'd ever seen.

She didn't get it—in Sunnydale, he'd taken up residence in an abandoned factory, so what was he doing here in a house that was probably on the Social Register?

Again she thought of leaving. Spike wasn't her problem, because she wasn't the slayer anymore.

She'd spent the last two months subsisting, always glancing backwards, at what she'd lost, how she'd failed, even as she shied from those memories, that made her crumble inside, made her flail. She couldn't even think of her mother, of Giles and her friends, without being overwhelmed. Remembering Angel was so painful unto suffocation. So she tried not to think about anything.

Still, why rush back to her lumpy futon on the floor of a too-small, too-hot, too-roach-ridden apartment, where in a couple of hours she'd have to jockey with two other girls she barely knew for use of the miniscule bathroom, and then head out to her disposable job as a checker at Gristedes? The impulse to go with Spike was the first impulse she'd experienced since the one that had taken her out of Sunnydale. She recognized that it was an even worse one than running away, but it didnt matter. Nothing she did mattered now.

The bath, a huge gleaming clawfoot tub, long and deep, was already filled with fragrant bubbles. As soon as she saw it, she yearned to be immersed.

"There you go," Spike said.

For a moment she was apprehensive lest he propose to share it with her, but when she glanced around to warn him off, he wasn't there, and she heard a light click as a door at the end of the landing gently shut.

Whatever kind of freak thing he was planning, he apparently wasn't going to interfere with this.

As she took off her clothes and sank into the scented water beneath the froth, she recalled the jarring thing she'd managed somehow to forget it in the cab. The whole reason why she was here.

Spike had his soul.

Willow's spell—Miss Calendar's spell, really—had worked not just on Angel, but on all the vamps in the vicinity! A spark of excitement flared—Willow would be psyched when she heard, and Giles would probably want to consult a million books—or maybe at last write one. But the spark died at once. She wouldn't be telling them. They weren't a part of her life anymore.

She'd killed the man she loved. She'd left her friends forever. She gotten herself lost.

It hit her then, like a boot in the gut—she was back in that rancid dark vestibule, being forced against the wall, pinned, about to be devoured. Death had been so close—so close. All the air—all the power and will—had escaped her, she'd been sure it was the end, and she'd slipped into a vacuum, wanting and needing nothing And it was all right.

Then it didn't happen.

Buffy shuddered, and had to scramble up fast out of the water. She couldn't see a toilet in the room—she threw up into what she recognized only afterwards, as she subsided against it, shuddering, as a bidet.

Wiping her mouth with her hand, she staggered up. In the opposite corner was a large glassed in shower stall; she got the water running, deeply cold, and stepped in, turning her face up to the high pressure needles. Gasped, swallowed some with thirst, coughed, let it beat against her face, her chest. She cried because she didn't know if she was glad or sorry that Spike had come along and helped her. Maybe I want to die. Maybe I should.

After a few minutes, she turned on the hot water, and stayed beneath the warm stream until she'd cried herself out.

It was the first time she'd cried since ... since ....

Toiletries and things were set out—she wrapped herself in a fluffy white robe, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, breathing deep regular breaths. She was okay now. The vagueness, the numb distance that framed her existence now, was back. She needed that, like some gentle but inexorable drug, that helped her continue, from one minute to the next, without utterly collapsing.

The windows here too were covered in heavy swags. Buffy drew one up. The view was of the unadorned back of another fancy old house in the next block; the sky above was pink and limpid with the beginning of day.

Another day in which she'd never see Angel again.

She pushed the thought away. Thinking about him, especially—about anything prior to that moment when she'd kissed him and killed him—filled her with hot shame. Everything was her fault. Her fault for desiring, for loving, for taking him and letting herself be taken. She should have known that wasn't what she was supposed to do, to have, to be.

But ... it didn't matter anymore.

Her dirty clothes lay in a heap on the floor near the door. Buffy stepped over them, and into the hall. Reese appeared at once, moving silently. "Was everything satisfactory, miss?"

"Uh—yeah." Except I'd like to put a bell on you. "Tell me, whose house is this?"

"It belongs to a gentleman."

Spike's no gentleman. "So it isn't Spike's?"

Reese was never anything more than perfectly bland. "Is there anything else I can do for you, miss?"

"Never mind that. She's got an appointment with me at the moment."

Buffy turned. Spike was leaning in the doorway at the end of the short hall. She couldn't see his face—it was too dark there.

Reese said, "Very good, sir." When she turned to speak to him again, he'd gone.

"Huh. He's sneaky, isn't he?"

"Come in here, Slayer."

Buffy stayed where she was. "What now?"

"Now we get to the part where you undo your dirty trick."

"I already told you, I had nothing to do with that. Magic's not my department, anyway."

"No, that's true. You're the Slayer. The one girl in all the world. Only you've gone all slacker, haven't you? You've run off an' let down the side. How do you live with yourself?"

"That's none of your business. Anyway, you should talk."

She sensed that he was going to retort, but then nothing came except a stretching silence, as if he was thinking twice, or three times.

He drew himself up, and held out a hand.

"Come here."

Without really meaning to, she drifted towards him. The carpeting was deep and lush under her bare feet. As she came closer, Spike retreated into the room.

She saw that it was a bedroom. Large and baronial, dominated by the biggest bed she'd ever seen, like something in the movies. The lamps on either endtable were lit, casting soft light from under their graceful stained glass shades on the expanse of white linen. Spike stood at the foot, one arm wrapped around one tall post. He was barefoot, and he'd taken off his shirts. The unexpected white shield of his chest drew her eyes. He was smaller without his black coverings, too lean, but smooth, cut, and so pale, like something from which the color had been deliberately drained. The sight of his uncovered flesh embarrassed her, but still she stared.

"Don't dawdle. Let's get this done." He spoke with his usual arrogance, but beneath it, was something else, which she felt the same way she felt that tingling at the back of her neck.

"Get what done? I'm not letting you do any spells, so you can just forget that." Even as she said the words, comprehension broke. She blushed. Geez. Stoooopid.

She stepped back. "You are not touching me. That's a big negatory. Nein. Nuh-uh. And all the other ways to say N. O. No."

Even from across the room she could see how his cheekbone twitched. He was reining himself in. "Not really givin' you a choice here."

"Like you could force me, anyway. I'm leaving." She went back to the bathroom, where, as she expected, she didn't find her clothes. Reese had borne them off somewhere. Well, so yeah, she'd be out on Fifth Avenue with nothing but a terry cloth robe, but there was something kind of mad-cappishly Breakfast At Tiffany's about that which she thought she'd be able to pull off. Anyway, it was better than getting into a tussle involving Spike's boy-parts.

He caught her at the top of the landing. "You can go. I'll let you go." His breath was cool against her neck. He was holding her the way the man in the portrait downstairs was holding the woman in the evening gown. Lightly but firmly. "And then I'll go—have another chat with your sweet mum. She'll be desperate for news of you, she'll ask me right in. Expect she an' I will have ourselves a real nice time."

Buffy froze. "You wouldn't. You said you couldn't—"

"Why should I spare you? You've done nothing but hurt me since I clapped eyes on you! You unleashed Angelus who ruined my sweet set-up. Murdered my darling. I'll never get over her, never ... nothing's any good without Dru. Either you free me from this torment or I'll go back there an' do for everyone you love."

Buffy ducked forward and down, and then Spike was flying over her shoulders and tumbling noisily down the stairs. She followed at a leisurely pace, reaching him just as he sprang to his feet, and delivered a roundhouse kick that dropped him. Oww. Barefoot fighting's not like it looks in the Bruce Lee flicks. Before he could rise again, she pinned him down with one knee and planted a hard blow to his cheek that made his head snap to the side like a rubber bulb.

She hit him again, braced for his responding blow.

None came.

Somewhere in a recess of the landing, a grandfather clock began to sound. Idly Buffy counted the chimes. When they stopped, she let him up. Commence, round two.

Spike rose slowly, feeling his jaw.

"Slayer—please. Gotta help me. Just do this one thing—"

She couldn't believe he wasn't fighting her. What was wrong with him?

Oh, right. The soul.

The soul made him this way.

She couldn't wrap her mind around it, around him having it. It was too much like thinking about Angel, too complicated and mysterious. Everything was her fault, but why should she have to be responsible for anything that happened to Spike? She wished she could slay him, but he was right, her conscience wouldn't allow that.

Conscience. It came to her then. His threat was totally empty. He wasn't going to go attack her mother. If he'd had any solid intention of doing that, he'd have done it already. If it ever occurred to him to come for her, he wouldn't be in New York. He'd had no reason to think she was anywhere but in Sunnydale.

They'd met by chance—didn't know it was you, that popped back into her head—and he'd helped her because he thought she was a random girl in peril. Conscience. He had one now, and he'd just been bluffing her all along. Pretending to be his old dangerous sagacious self, when really ... well, she didn't know what he was now. And she so did not care.

"—just this one thing, an' then I promise I'll bugger off where you'll never see me ever again."

He brightened as she came up to him. "I won't hurt you. I'll make it good. You'll see."

She plunged her hand into his front left jeans pocket. Felt the wad of money there, pulled it out. Backed off quickly as he protested; smoothed the bills until she found a twenty, (for the powder room, like Holly Golightly) and let the others fall.

"Slayer—"

Ignoring him, she descended to the foyer and let herself out. The morning was already overbright, the air a moist heated slap. She descended primly to the sidewalk on her bare feet, in her white toweling robe, and walked slowly to the corner, where a cab pulled up for her before she even raised her hand.

The market—it was to laugh to call it a super-market, because it was about the size of a saltine compared to the stores back in Sunnydale and LA—was quiet in the late afternoon. The rush, such as it was, would start up after five, when people came home from work, and needed groceries for dinner. Right now Buffy could lean against her station and daydream while she waited. The plate-glass front of the Gristedes gave her an excellent view of the street—from where she stood she saw the bushes and flower beds of a small community garden, the traffic where Hudson Street turned into Eighth Avenue, and on the other side, a city playground with trees, and an Art Deco apartment house. Though the store was in a tony part of the West Village, it was strangely downscale—the shelves sloppily stocked, floors dirty, and an absence of arugula and ciabatta rolls. There was a much nicer market, a D'Agostinos, right around the corner, which seemed to do a much better business. But Buffy didn't care about the business—she got paid eight dollars an hour no matter how busy or quiet it was, and if she lost this job she was pretty sure she could get another, similar one, in a day. The discount on breakfast cereal, which, along with pizza slices, was about all she ate, was a plus too.

Since that morning she'd left Spike's house—the house that couldn't actually be Spike's—the brutal weather had continued unabated, three days and nights of unrelenting heat and suffocating humidity. The pavements and buildings gave it off like the walls of an oven. The only relief she got was in the air-conditioned store and in the shower. At night she stayed out late, continuing her new habit of wandering around, not patrolling, but ... getting lost. Staying lost. When she returned to her rumpled futon, it was hard to sleep; she'd lie there and sweat, and that's when the things she didn't want to remember would intrude on her. Angel would be there, right next to her, kissing her hair and her neck with gentle worshipful lips, the way he used to. Smiling at her out of his big head—he'd had such a big head, sometimes it used to make her laugh when he was right up close to her and she'd take his face in her hands and look into his eyes. He was so old but when he was with her and they were just kissing and smiling, she could believe he was just like her, a beginner at love, full of tenderness and delight at what they were starting out on together.

And then she'd remember what it was like to lie underneath him—how excited she was, and how unsure of herself, and how it—sex—was nothing like she'd imagined and also just like she'd imagined, and really really great and also somehow disappointing. Because it seemed to be over too soon, and her orgasm was sort of ... shy ... compared to the ones she gave herself, and then instead of doing it again, like she hoped and halfway feared, Angel settled her on his chest and murmured something to her and fell asleep. She'd waited for him to wake up so they could try it again—waited at least an hour, because she remembered checking the time, though she was also leery of moving lest she disturb him, because he had to be exhausted after all the fighting and the swimming and thinking they'd be parted for months and months. Then she'd fallen asleep, though how, in the midst of being so tense and alert and thinky was still a mystery to her. And then she woke up alone into the nightmare. That was just going on and on and on.

It was never going to be over. Angel was never coming back.

Days she managed not to think about the past, or home. The last few days, her mind was filled with Spike, and that house, and what he'd wanted from her. Even though she'd turned her back on All Things Slay-y, it was impossible not to be all whoa about the night she'd spent in that place, and the things Spike said, even though she didn't want to believe most of it.

Still, actions spoke, and his actions ... were not what she'd grown used to, from William The Bloody.

She didn't regret walking out. Even if she could do something about the soul—she flashed on the sight of him, half-naked, and fidgeted with her name tag—she wouldn't, because he was loathsome. Have sex with a stupid vampire so he could go be more evil afterwards? Uh, no! Even the prospect of dusting him wasn't particularly stirring.

She told herself that every day. He was ... well, he wasn't ugly, but he was repulsive. Knowing what he was.

Outside, the afternoon was getting darker and darker, the sky taking on the greeny-grey color of the overboiled green beans in an elementary school lunch. Inside, the fluorescent lights asserted themselves to give her the beginning of a headache. The store smelled musty, sort of meaty. No wonder the only people who came in here were the very old, or the poor, or distracted-seeming people in a hurry only buying two or three things. This place was broken. Which, for her, fit.

"Maybe the heat'll break," Emma said. She was the other checker on duty, two aisles down. "It's gonna storm. Glad I brought my umbrella."

"Yeah," Buffy sighed. She had no umbrella, and she was wearing vinyl sandals from Payless that would fall apart if she had to walk in them for long in a downpour. She'd noticed that in New York, when it rained, it always seemed to do it just when her shift ended. She stared out at the dreary windless street until the sound of someone dropping things onto the belt made her turn back to her register.

She rang up a six-pack of imported beer and a bag of beef jerky. Well, someone's going to have a repulsive evening. "Ten ninety. Cash or credit?"

"Don't I rate a courteous greetin'? Payin' customer, here."

She glanced up. A pair of dark sunglasses, almost like goggles, obscured the upper part of Spike's face, and the collar of his duster was flipped up.

He leered at her chest. "No way to treat a customer, Anne."

She gawked. "How—how did you find me?"

Spike grinned his go-on-and-bat-me-in-the-chops grin, and tapped his nose.

"What, you tracked me by—" She didn't want to say 'smell', but she was too flustered to think of another word. She didn't smell.

"Still a vampire. That's how we do it."

"There's like—ninety kabillion people out there! And this is nowhere near—"

"Talented vampire. Experienced. And your scent, Slayer ... is indelible."

She raised a hand to pop him, when something flashed, and the next second there was a boom that made her jump. On the other side of the plate glass, the sky let loose with a curtain of rain that immediately obscured the view. The few people walking by began to sprint along the streaming sidewalk. The tree limbs bent beneath the force of falling water. Lightning flashed again.

Maybe the atmosphere would change.

She shook open a paper bag. "Ten ninety. Cash, or credit?"

Now she looked at him again, she noticed that his mouth was bruised, the lip cut and only half healed. The bruise rose up his cheekbone and disappeared behind the big glasses, which she now suspected were more meant as a mask than as protection from that day's non-existent sun.

"Who beat you up?"

"Why do you care, Miss Anne?"

"I want to send a congratulatory telegram."

"Thought you'd come back to the house. Been expecting you every night."

"Yeah, about that, I thought I'd wait ... until the sun goes supernova."

Spike sidled closer to the moving belt, and leaned in. His voice dropped to a murmur. "What've you got to lose? No one'll ever know, an' like I said, I'll make it good for you. Show you a few things I know Angel didn't have time to—"

He fell silent because she was bending his hand back so hard towards his wrist that all he could do was work his mouth in a soundless plea to be released.

"You're a pig," she said. "Now if you're a customer, you can pay and get out, and if you aren't, you can just get out."

"Into that? No fear." The rain was striking the window with a loud steady tattoo. He rubbed his wrist. "You're cruel. Mistreatin' a wounded animal that only wants your help."

"You're a vampire. As you just reminded me."

His shoulders drooped. "Only I'm not anymore. I can't .... S'intolerable. Unnatural!"

"Boo hoo."

"I can't go on like this! It hurts. You could help me, if you weren't such a contrary little baggage, an' then I'd be gone to other side of the globe and you'd never have to see me again!"

She yawned. "Or, y'know, not."

"That's not the way to get me out of your hair though, is it?"

She put the beer and jerky into the bag, and scanned around behind him for more customers. If someone else would just get in line for her register, she could get him to go. But the store was deserted, as was the street outside.

"Come tonight. I'll make sure there's nice things for you to eat, yeah? Have another bath. Have two. Just let me have what I need, an' we'll be done an' done. You know you want to, Slayer."

"Dream on."

His voice dropped another level, and he leaned in even closer. "I'll go down on you first. For long as you please. That'll be somethin' new for you. You'll like it, I wager. I know my way round, in that department. Never fail to please."

Her clit twitched, her pulse leapt; she knew he knew it, as she shoved him back. But immediately her brain took her to the inevitable imagery—his face buried between Drusilla's thighs. Eeeuuwww.

"Get out."

Even from behind his glasses she was aware of the intensity of his stare; her cheeks burned. She turned her face away. "You can take the stuff, okay? Just leave."

Quietly, he said, "You know, he did it too."

Shit, he was reading her mind now? Her jaw went tight to keep from opening in a scream. "Shut up."

"Everything I've ever done, Angel's done. Done first, done more, done worse. Not just talkin' about my darling's cunny now."

"You. Are. Disgusting."

"Just dunno why it is that you'll overlook every atrocity he ever did, but when it's me gets all souled up, you won't give me the time of day. Fair's fair, Miss Anne."

She faced him then. "That's easy, Spike. I don't like you. And quit calling me that."

His answer was immediate. "You don't know me. Might have hidden depths. Anyway, I don't much like you, either, but I'm willin' to do the necessary."

"You know just what to say to a girl."

"Isn't right. Me bein' like this, an' you like you are, missing your spark. I ought to be Big Bad, an' you ought to be the Slayer. It's in your power to put us both right, an'—"

"What if I do the necessary?"

Slowly, he drew off the glasses. Both his eyes were ringed in lurid purple, and one cheekbone seemed to have a dent in it. She winced. He looked resigned. "You'll do what you'll do. Least then, it'll be true slayer-an'-vamp. It'll be proper."

To make him go away, she promised she would come to the house that night.

During the rest of her shift, Buffy tried to plan. He could find her anywhere in the city. Could he find her anywhere? She had to leave New York. If she flew, wouldn't that keep him from tracking her by scent? Except ... she had no credit card, and she was beyond broke. She'd just paid her rent, and it would be another two weeks until her next pay day. All she had on hand was walking-around money. She could barely afford a bus ticket to somewhere close, let alone a flight.

Could she borrow from her roommates? Unlikely—they were just as poor as she was, and she'd never bothered to try to make friends with them. She knew for a fact that Donna didn't like her, and Gigi was out so much that they'd never really talked except to have little spats about whose turn it was to buy toilet paper. Her boss at the store would just stare at her if she asked for an advance, or a loan.

She was stuck here.

It was still pattering as she left the market, and without an umbrella she was wet by time she reached the corner. The steambath atmosphere hadn't broken. She felt herself on the verge of panic. Except I don't do panic. There's got to be a way. Ducking into the Starbucks near the subway stop, she spent a third of her daily food money on an iced latte, and sat down to ponder her options.

A man at the next table was writing in a notebook; after staring at him unseeingly for a full minute, she leaned over and asked to borrow a pen and a sheet of paper.

She'd make a list. Her mother always used to do that, when she was stuck on a problem in her business. Everything was clearer, her mom said, when you laid it out on paper.

So.

1. Spike! I hate him! He's never going to leave me alone!

2. I can't leave town because I'm broke.

3. He can't keep stalking me forever. If I just keep blowing him off, he'll give up. When I was Queen Bee at Hemery I blew off lots of boys.

4. Uh, this is Spike. He will never give up.

5. Hello, stalker! Sensible girls call the cops on stalkers!

6. The cops take him to jail!

7. ... and he eats the other prisoners.

8. Unless the soul will keep him from eating the other prisoners, and he'll just starve.

9. Or he'll dust in the sun when the cops move him from one place to another. End of problem!

But ... Buffy lowered the pen. —that would just be sentencing him to death, only without the guts to do it myself. And if not him, the people I sic him on by getting him arrested. Gloomy, she let that thought settle in. I can't fob Spike off on the police. Demons aren't their job. They're mine.

Used to be mine.

C'mon, c'mon. You're up to number ten and you're still stuck! She drummed the pen on the table. Think, think think!

I could just stake him and get it over with. He was a mass-murderer until a couple months ago.

But like he'd said, it really wasn't fair, that she could see past all that in Angel, but not him. Just because I don't like him doesn't make that right. He did help me the other night, without knowing it was me. Maybe he goes out every night, looking for people to help.

What if ... what if I give him what he wants? Scrunching her nose, Buffy wrote:

10. Uh, obnoxious and gross?

11. More than that—he wants to be rid of his soul! Why should I help him with that?

Because you know it won't work anyway. It takes perfect happiness—she wrote down 'perfect happiness'—to break the curse. Spike doesn't know that. She wrote down, 'unknown by S.' Then added a question mark. She wasn't sure what Angelus might have told, or known, or what other information Spike could've gleaned elsewhere since.

The little voice in the back of her head ... the little voice Buffy never liked to listen to, the one that said, 'Take the lipstick', the one that said, 'Finish the carton', the one that said, 'seventy-five pushups are just as good as one hundred', said, And you're lonely, and horny, and stop pretending you're not curious about him. You ARE.

I am not! He's grody and repulsive and just YUCK. And wrote:

12. I can just explain to him that it's not going to work!

13. Like he'd take your word for it.

14. And even if he did, he'd just go off and figure out how to break the curse by himself.

Good idea—not.

The only way through this was ... through this. She'd let him ... let him have sex with her ... her mind shied from the details ... and afterwards he'd either lose his soul and she'd stake him, or ... much more likely he wouldn't, and maybe he'd think then that there was no way out of the curse, and he'd go be a monk, or kill himself. At any event, they'd be finished.

This was all logical and sensible—as much as anything so insane could be—but.

She still didn't want to let Spike touch her. Be on top of her. Penetrate her.

She could just imagine how he'd look at her afterwards, how he'd speak to her, if it worked. Even if she could stake him at the same moment, it wouldn't be soon enough.

And when it didn't work, it would be the same ... he'd treat her like she was worthless. Nothing but the world's biggest disappointment.

Worked. Was that all that sex was ever going to be for her? Something that when she did it, she might be obliged to slay her partner afterwards?

Nobody had told her that opening her thighs for vampires was going to be part of the slaying thing.

Or that she'd have to feel so cornered and alone.

She tore the list up into tiny pieces and threw them into the remains of her latte.

She felt like a frog in a pot of water being over a high flame. She wasn't going to be able to get out. She was going to be boiled.

It was nine o'clock by time she emerged from the subway on Lexington at 86th Street and headed west and south to the house. Once she left the lively cross-street, the neighborhood had a hushed feel, the shops shut on Madison Avenue, their windows full of pricey merchandise lit up for no one. It seemed like all the apartments above were empty, their normal human inhabitants away at beaches and mountain lakes, and there was no one but the shop mannequins forming a gauntlet for her to walk through, taunting her.

She climbed the marble steps slowly to the house door, and rang the bell.

Reese opened the door. "Good evening, miss."

She offered him the shopping bag in her hand. "I brought back the robe."

"Thank you, miss, it was quite unnecessary."

"Whose house is this?"

"My employer is a Mr Vaux."

"William Vaux?"

"Your friend is a guest here. Mr Vaux is abroad."

"Spike's not my—where abroad?"

"Mr Vaux has various houses. He travels a great deal."

"He's another vampire, right?"

"This way, please. You're just in time for supper."

He led her into a room she hadn't visited before, a small glassed-in breakfast room that overlooked a walled garden, its flowers and shrubs illuminated by artfully-placed spotlights. A table was set for one with pretty gold-rimmed china and silver that glowed with the low burnish of the good and old.

"I thought you'd be more comfortable in here, miss, rather than in the dining room."

"Where's Spike?"

"You'll be joining him later."

That's what I'm dreading. The ... joining. She was going to say that she wanted to see him now, but Reese was pulling out the chair for her to sit.

A moment later he was back with a demi-baguette, a bowl of pale soup, and a large green salad. "Is there anything else you'd like?"

"I ... can't think of anything."

"Very good, miss. When you're ready, please step upstairs. Your bath will ready, and of course the clothes you left here the other evening will be awaiting you." Reese took a thin book from the sideboard, and set it down at her elbow. "I will leave you now, but there's one final thing. I was asked to give you this—you might wish to turn these pages while you enjoy your meal."

When she was alone, Buffy sniffed suspiciously at the food, but the soup—cold creamy potato with tiny herbs sprinkled on its surface—smelled wonderful, and the salad was very fresh. Might as well eat. She'd need her intestinal fortitude in a little while.

The book looked hand-made, like something you'd find at an antiquarian's. It contained colored drawings, on rag paper. The drawings were very delicate and detailed and pretty. The first one showed a man and woman in evening clothes—like the people in the painting she'd seen the other night. The man was kissing the lady's hand. On the next page, he was in her arms, kissing her mouth. There was only one drawing on each set of two pages—the back of each sheet of paper was blank. In the third, he'd drawn up the skirt of her long satin dress to caress her thigh, as he kissed her neck.

What the hell?

In the fourth drawing the woman was reclined in a chair, with the man kneeling between her parted legs. She clapped the book closed, and pushed herself away from the table. God, what was this? What was Spike thinking? She hated that Reese knew exactly why she was there. He probably thought she was some kind of call-girl, or—

A moment later she snatched the book up again. In that fourth drawing, the woman's head lolled back against the cushion. Her small pink mouth was half open, as if she was gasping—she looked tipsy and blissed out. Buffy turned a few more pages—the couple went on from there, more naked and abandoned on each leaf. They did everything, in every position. She'd seen dirty pictures before, who hadn't?, but never quite like this. These were ... delicate, polite even, in an old-fashioned way, like even while they were fucking they were calling each other mister and miss. And the woman always looked so into it. In spite of herself, she went on looking, turning the pages back and forth. The expression on the woman's face as the man knelt to her, the languid lines of her body, her small tapered hands, one on his head and the other caressing her own breast, drew her eyes over and over, even as she flipped between that and a later drawing, where she lay on her side while he entered her from behind. Her legs were spread wide, one knee up, and the man's hand was starfished on her mons, her pink clit showing between two fingers. Her own was twitching now.

This was too much. She wouldn't let him manipulate her like this!

She tore out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time, up both flights.

She didn't have to search for Spike. He was standing, as before, in the doorway of the master bedroom.

Buffy lobbed the folio at his head.

"Whoa!" He snatched it out of the air. "Careful with that, it's rare, an' my host wouldn't like it if it got damaged." He smoothed the covers with his fingers. "Thought it might help put you in the mood." Spike sniffed delicately at the air. "It has."

"Don't do that. Pig."

"Can't help it. Come here, Slayer. I'll show you something."

Loathe to seem intimidated, she followed him into the room. This time she'd brought a stake; it was tucked into her waistband at the back; she felt for its reassuring bulk as she crossed the threshold.

All was as before in the room, with the lamps lit, the bed turned down, and Spike undressed down to his jeans. But this time, as he gestured, she noticed something she hadn't seen before.

There were bolts in the walls beside the headboard, and trailing from each, a stout chain ending in a shackle.

"Oh, no way! No way are you putting those on me!" She drew the stake, brandished it at him.

For a second, he looked surprised. "Slayer. Meant you to chain me up. So ... so you'll feel safe."

"W-what?"

His voice went liquid. "Said I wouldn't hurt you." He turned his back.

Oh no, is he crying?

Her gorge rose. She hated this.

"Stop—stop feeling sorry for yourself!"

"What do you know about it?" His back was still to her. "All those people ... the ones I hurt, killed ... they're here." He tapped the side of his head. "They're here." He threw an arm out, to indicate the room, all the space around him. "All the time, I feel them, every moment. It's hell. It's hell. Dunno how he stood it."

"You can't talk about him!" She almost shouted. Then more quietly, "I decided ... we're not going to talk about him."

"Yeah, well, I am feelin' sorry for myself. An' my Dru. Can't exist like this. Got to get shut of this scourge inside me." He thumped his chest.

Eyeing the chains, fingering the stake, she wailed, "Why can't you just live with it? Why can't you just be good, and—"

At once, his energy changed. He came at her, frowning. "Would rather have five seconds of bein' myself again before you dust me, then go on like this."

When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she shivered. She shivered, and her nipples stood up hard. She knew he was aware of it. She punched him. He regarded her for a moment with an expression almost of tenderness, and a slight smile. "Seein' me suffer gets you hot, does it, Slayer? Well, well."

"No. It's not ... it isn't that. I mean ... I'm not!" She prodded a finger against his cheek. "How did you get these?" The bruises were a little less than that afternoon, but still livid; she could see that he was half-starved and not healing.

"What do you care? Aren't they what I deserve?"

"Yes." But she was still dissatisfied. "How did you get them?"

Spike's lip curled, and he laughed. " ... like ... like when I ran into you, the other night."

"And did you save her?"

He hesitated, and she could see that he hated the word 'saved', hated admitting he'd done a thing to help a stranger. "No." His eyes flashed again. "No! An' what's more, I finished the dregs they'd left. I was so hungry ...."

"Oh God." She couldn't do this. She couldn't. She was in over her head. He was out helping people ... but then he'd drunk from the victim ... how was she supposed to judge him, decide about him?

It still wasn't too late to leave.

"Disgusts me as much you. Soul makes things cloudy an' pathetic. Which is why you've got to put me right."

His hands were on her shoulders again, barely touching, and he nudged her backwards, not towards the bed, but towards a low deep armchair in the corner. Before she could stop him, he'd reached up under her skirt and pulled away her panties; they snapped between his fingers like bubble gum. "Sit."

She sat. He seemed to melt to the floor; one second he towered over her and the next he was at the level of her knees, gently coaxing them apart. The pictures from the book flashed in her mind; already she felt whoozy. "Let me. You'll see. An' when you're ready, we'll clap me in irons and get on with it."

"N-n-no." She sprang up. Felt again for her weapon.

Maybe, if she asked him, he'd want to be dusted? She could do it, couldn't she, soul or not, if he wanted it?

He seemed miserable enough, maybe he'd say yes.

Spike raised a scolding finger. "Ah, ah, pet. Not ready to die just yet."

"Did you get a mind-reading power too?"

"Got quite a tell. You keep handlin' that stake like it's—"

"Okay, okay!" She held up her hands. "Leaving it alone now."

"So sit."

"Spike! Do you have to be so ... so one-track?" She didn't quite know why she was stalling—she certainly had meant to get this over with quickly—the sooner it was done, the sooner she could add it to all the other things she was working so hard to blot out of her mind.

"What, you want me to get out my Spanish guitar an' serenade you first? Take you out on a date? Drinks an' a show? You want to be romanced, Slayer?"

"You ... you play the guitar?"

He rolled his eyes. "No."

"Well, how was I to know? You said I didn't know you. I don't." She hesitated. "Pardon me for not just wanting to get Down Tonight with someone I don't even know."

"You said we were mortal enemies."

"Like that's any better!"

"Look—not gonna fill out a questionnaire for you! Told you I'd lick out your cunny long as you like, an' then believe me, all you'll want to know then is how quick we can do the other thing. Ought to be glad of a chance to have a good time with no strings an' no risk."

"You're proposing to maybe put your fangs that close to my ... down there ... and that's no risk?"

"Can't put you up the spout, can I? Can't give you the clap. An' I already promised not to hurt you once you've put me right. Ought to be glad of a chance like that, to learn a thing or two."

Oh God. She froze. "He ... Angel ... he told you about me. Didn't he?"

Spike backed up a little, jammed his hands in his pockets. "You said he wasn't to be mentioned."

"Answer me!"

"Well ... yeah."

"What did he say?"

"D'you really want to know?"

"Tell me!"

"Slayer ... Angelus an' me, we never saw eye to eye where women were concerned."

"What does that mean?"

"It means if you sit yourself back in that chair an' open your girlish dimpled knees for me, you won't be sorry."

The chair. She glanced at it, and almost instinctively moved off in the other direction. The room was a generous size, but the bed was large, and she wasn't ready to go there either, so she ended up drifting towards a door in the opposite wall. Spike kept up with her, at a distance. She could feel his mounting impatience, but there was nothing she could do about that.

She halfway expected the door, with its ornate glass knob, to be locked, but it opened easily, into a small dark room that smelled of cedar and sandalwood. She felt for a lightswitch, and found the two-button kind, like in her mom's bedroom, that lit up a small convolvulous fixture in the ceiling. The room appeared to be lined with wood panels, etched with art nouveau designs.

"That's only the dressing room," Spike said from behind her. "Nothin' in there for you."

"Mr Vaux's dressing room? Who is this Mr Vaux?" She felt along the edges of the panels.

"An' old old comrade."

"Someone you used to rip throats with?"

"Hosts fabulous parties for our sort. Always admired Dru—her style, how she'd dance. He was kind enough to offer me refuge when he heard about her bein' no more."

"Kind?" When were vampires kind? "So you told him you had a soul? Was he kind about that?" The panel opened; it was a closet. Inside it, dark suits hung in transparent plastic garment bags; highly polished shoes, each containing a cedar shoe-tree, were lined up on slanted shelves beneath. She opened another. It was like a dresser inside, lots of drawers, but no mirror. She started to go through them. They were beautifully neat: a drawer of white handkerchiefs, another of pocket squares, another of undershirts, snowy and pressed.

"Told him I'd lost her. He didn't ask for the details. He's not a details man. But he understands the things of the heart."

"The things of the heart? Geez Spike, you sound like a soap opera promo!" She made a deep voice, like a TV announcer: "Next on The Young & Restless: explore the Things Of The Heart."

"You don't know about devotion, an' loss."

She wheeled around. "Wha-aa-at? How can you say that?"

Spike leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. "You're a child, you are. You an' Angel, what was that, maybe six months of kissy-face among the grave markers? Teeny-bopper stuff. Me an' Dru were together for more'n a century. We ranged over five continents ...."

"You said yourself she was a slut!"

Spike's growl seemed to circle the tiny room before climbing right up her spine. "She made me. I belong to her. That's real love." Gingerly, he fingered the bruises on his face. "Real tragedy."

"You're sick." She threw a punch that he dodged, but his return caught her in the cheek.

"That's it. I knew this was a lousy idea! I'm out of here."

He blocked the dressing room doorway. "Tsk tsk. Slayer in hiding. Slayer on the run. You want them back in Sunnydale to know where you are?"

"Huh?"

He ticked them off on his fingers. "Can write a letter. Can send an email. Can make a phone call. Giles an' those watcher types'd be down on you like a ton of bricks for walkin' out on your calling. Am I right?"

"I hate you."

"Keep your side of the bargain, an' I'll keep mine. Go sit in the chair an' we'll get on with it."

She was halfway across the room again when she stopped. "No. No chair. I don't want to be here all night. I don't want to be here at all. Let's do it quick before I change my mind."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself." Matter-of-factly, he skinned out of his jeans. She tried not to look, to keep focused on his face, or at least his shoulders, but her curiosity betrayed her. She'd never really seen a naked man before—with Angel it had been dark, and were under the covers all the time anyhow.

In the low light his slim body was the color of the pages in the folio, parchment. He almost glowed. The bruises were everywhere, his chest, his belly, arms and thighs, like he'd been pummeled and kicked over and over. He wasn't aroused; her gaze skirted the dark patch of hair, took in the dangling length and width of him, made hasty comparisons that brought up her blushes.

Calm, and deliberate, Spike snapped one shackle on his right wrist, climbed onto the bed, and held out his other arm. "Key's in the bedstand drawer if you need it later."

She stepped to him, laid her stake on the table, and secured the other shackle. He was half-lying, half-sitting now, against the plump pillows, his arms out on either side. There was enough play for him to move some, but not enough to bring his hands up more than six or seven inches from the mattress, nor to hold her, or attack her, when she was astride him.

Astride him. That's what she'd have to be, to get this done. She wanted it to be over, but she didn't know how to begin.

To get it done, he'd need to be erect. Which he completely wasn't.

He was watching her with amusement, taking in her hesitation. "Show me your tits, Slayer. Or could do a little dance, maybe."

"No!"

Didn't want to undress, or be naked, in front of him. And wasn't in a whole lot of hurry to touch him either. Maybe she could turn out the lamps. Though she knew he could see in the dark.

Spike gestured towards his groin. "Might give him a kiss hello. Would be the friendly thing to do."

"No! No friendly. This isn't friendly."

"I'll say."

"Shut up."

"You climb up here, then. Just as you are, can keep your clothes on." He slid down until he was supine. "Come sit on my—"

"Ugh, don't say it."

"Fine. Come on now. Need the taste of you to get started. An' you need to be juicy for me."

This was beyond embarrassing. She didn't want him to see her from that angle. Well, from any angle, but especially that one. Still, there was one thing to be said for straddling his face—she didn't have to look at it.

"Like—like this?"

"View's great, but my tongue's not that long. Just relax, said I'd make you like it, remember?"

Okay. Let's just do this. It's just one of those demon-related tasks that you motor through until it's complete. You've made it through worse. Eyes screwed shut, heart racing, Buffy firmly rejected her own mental image of what she must look like kneeling over him, and what he must be seeing ditto, gripped the headboard and let herself down until she made contact. Her imagination was serving her up big scoops of vamp-face, teeth teeth teeth tearing at her; her whole body was so tense it hurt. But what she felt was completely different.

"Ahhhhhhhh!"

He laughed. The chains rattled as he tried and failed to reach for her. He did the same thing again, his tongue, slithering ... and this time she sank into it, felt his lips moving against her, and the rumble of his amusement vibrating through her.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw his cock filling out, lifting. Result!

"Okay, stop!" She scooted back.

Spike's mouth was all slick, like he'd been into the lipgloss; he waggled his tongue and made eyes at her. "Was just getting interested."

"I see that. So, we can get this over with now."

Again, she realized, she'd have to do this herself. Would have to climb across him, and put him inside. And then she'd have to—

"Lemme bring you off first. It'll go easier then. C'mon, Slayer."

"Don't call me that."

"All right, Miss Anne. Come back here. Was gettin' into it, your sweet little notch."

"Stop that." The way he talked, made her so self-conscious. Her skin was fiery. Avoiding looking at this face, Buffy stared at his cock. It was ... it was ... erect. It was there. That was all she was going to think about it. It was there, and that was all.

She did it then, in one swift movement, threw her leg across, like getting on a bike—that's what this was, just like riding a bike—took his erection in her hand, and sank down on it.

She hadn't remembered Angel's skin feeling so ... tepid. Maybe because they'd been under a blanket, and she'd been so warm.

Spike felt inert. Like a big doll she was fooling around with.

But then he stirred under her, and grunted, and she could no longer pretend this wasn't real. She started to move. It felt awkward—she wasn't wet enough. Couldn't find an angle that didn't ache. It didn't matter how it felt to her. She just wanted it to be over. Squeezing him with her thighs, she shifted forward, trying to get more comfortable.

"Oi—careful there! Bruise."

She stopped. "Am I hurting you?"

He grimaced, but it turned into a grin. "Yeah, an' it's not bad for a beginner. Go on, then."

Be quiet."

He was looking at her. Taking her in, like she was wide open, like she was naked. A straight-on gaze that evaluated her.

Penetrated her.

It made her squirm inside.

"Yeah—so warm an' tight. That's lovely. Now just keep up the pace. Set me free."

"I said, be quiet. And stop—stop—looking at me!"

"Nothin' to be ashamed of, Miss Anne. Know you like to be checked out. Seen you at the Bronze, switchin' your little tail at the boys. Like to pretend you're all demure, but you're a hot one, you are."

Buffy stripped the case from a pillow and threw it across his face. Like putting the cover on a parrot's cage—to shut him up, shut him out.

It worked. She didn't have to endure his gaze, and he didn't speak anymore—though he breathed, and grunted, straining at the chains, and once made a noise that was sort of like a sob.

The effect on her was immediate. The urgency, the anxiety, eased. She could sort out what she was doing.

She could look.

At Spike's body, which was kinda whoa without a face, and with the chains, but ... intriguing too.

And at what they were doing. She lifted her skirt to get a peek.

She was starting to feel a little overdressed.

Spike wriggled then, groaned.

"What?"

"Losin' focus, Slayer. Come on, do your worst."

"I said—be quiet."

There was something kind of silly about him talking from behind the pillow case. She wished she'd thought to blindfold him before they started. Maybe gag him too.

That would, in general, be ... an improvement.

She moved faster, working the long muscles in her thighs, up and down, up and down, remembered to squeeze with her inner muscles—in Cosmo she'd read that that was key—and counted down silently from one hundred. She'd make him come before she reached one. And then she'd leave.

Beneath her, Spike bucked and rippled; inside her, his cock seemed to expand. That had to be good. He'd come soon. She speeded up, lost count. Do it hard, do it hard, and then you can leave.

Spike's head snapped back, he seized up, and ...

... it was over.

She scrambled off him—there was a smeary sensation that made her wrinkle up her nose—and grabbed the stake from the table before she lifted the pillow case away.

She wasn't sure what she expected to see. Spike's eyes had been closed; he opened them—in the glow of the bedside lamps, they were so blue; had she ever noticed their color before? Azure. Like the sea in those commercials for Caribbean cruises. He narrowed them, his nostrils flaring.

"Get these shackles off me."

She drew herself up. Between her legs, something softly squished. "Why?"

He closed his eyes again. Spent, pale, bloodless—he seemed on the edge of a faint, but there was a fury in all his lines and sinews that reminded her of what he was. The monster.

"Didn't do it right. Still got this thing inside me."

"I told you—"

He roared. "Didn't do it right! You didn't come. An' was no good, me bein' chained up—got to run it. That'll be the ticket. I fuck you, good an' proper, so you spend, an' then I'll be all right. That's it, isn't it? Get these off me, an' get your kit off, an' we do it again."

Do it again? It was going to take days of scrubbing and soaking and exfoliating and possibly douching to get over having done it once.

No no no. She had to get out of here.

Buffy picked Spike's jeans up from the floor. Felt in all the pockets while Spike struggled with the shackles, imploring her to unlock them. Where was that nice big wad of money he'd had before? It wasn't stealing, really, was it, to take money from a vampire? Who'd certainly stolen it himself? It would take him a little while to pull those chains out of the wall. With money she could get away from Manhattan meanwhile, so that by the time Spike tipped Giles off, she'd be gone.

The pockets were empty.

Spike made a frantic rattling ineffectual grab in her direction. "Think again, Miss Anne. Either I'll find you, or they will. You'll never be able to relax."

Again with the mind-reading! She threw the jeans at his face.

"So you're stuck in a situation you hate! Join the club! Suck it up. That's what people do, they quit crying about it and they deal!"

"Oh yeah, like you are. You're a cheat, Slayer! When are you gonna quit screwing me over?"

"No one asked you to come to Sunnydale." She glanced around the room. What could she steal, and pawn for ticket money? There was a clock and ornaments on the mantel, some small gilt-framed pictures on the walls.

"Had no choice! Dru was sick. Had to fix her."

"See how I care. It's your fault, for being all moony over someone so ... unreliable." Going to the mantel, she hefted the clock. Was heavier than it looked, not that that was a problem for her. She tucked it under her arm.

"What the hell're you doing?"

"I'm leaving."

He threw himself against the chains. "Slayer." The muscles stood out on his arms and chest. "You mind me!" He reset his expression. A smile appeared, that didn't reach his eyes. "Pet. Come back here. There's a good girl."

As if. She tugged at her skirt, which was feeling too short. His spunk was dripping out of her now, it was disgusting. She needed a quick wash before she fled—maybe she could find her clothes from the other night.

At the door she glanced back. "Have fun with those shackles, Spike."

The knob wouldn't turn.

She tugged at it. Nothing. Stepped back, and gave it a sharp kick that should've sent it swinging on its hinges. Her sandaled foot crashed into what might as well have been solid rock. Over her own harsh gasp she heard Spike chuckle. Grabbing her ankle, she hopped. Should've worn her patrolling shoes.

"Didn't think I'd just give you the run of the house, did you? Now you get back here an' keep your bloody promise!"

The rattling, and his face, his abject nakedness, would've been funny, if she wasn't so angry. How dare he lock her in? She'd come here willingly, they'd had an agreement!

A phone? There was none. A bell to ring, to call Reese? She looked in all the places she could imagine—based on her extensive viewing of movies and TV shows where servants were so summoned. Abandoning the clock, she went back to check the dressing room. The panels all opened up to closets—enough clothing for five Beau Brummels—and the last one let into a bathroom, only a little smaller than the one she'd visited the other night. She scanned for a window, but there was nothing.

Back to the bedroom, then. There had to be windows here.

She dragged back the thick velvet drapes.

The windows here was triple-thick, sealed, unopenable. She threw herself against the glass, and got nothing but a sharp pain in her shoulder. Next she grabbed up the chair.

"Forget it, Slayer. Mr Vaux's thought of everything."

"No." Suddenly she was on the verge of tears, not that she was going to let Spike see her break down. She drew a deep breath, counted five. There had to be a way out. There had to be.

"Unlock these, an' I'll open the door."

"Wha—?"

He was so calm. His voice sounded almost ... almost soothing. When she looked at him, he'd stopped straining, was sitting up, the sheet pulled across his groin, watching her with eyes that were ... sympathetic.

"Let me out of these, and I'll let you out of here."

"W-w-why?"

"Just do it."

She approached him slowly. Undid one shackle, and put the key in his hand. "Ta." He rubbed his wrist.

"Even with a soul, you're a shit."

He freed himself, and immediately wriggled back into the jeans she'd thrown at him before.

"That I am." He didn't seem annoyed. He went to the door. It opened easily at his touch—she couldn't see how he did it. But it was wide open now, and Spike was standing back from it.

"Go on then, Slayer."

"I don't trust you."

"An' right you are. Not lettin' you off your promise. But go on, you're no-one's prisoner in this room anymore."

She walked past him, onto the landing. All around her, the house was silent—it dripped with silence. As if it was suspended, from the street, from the city, maybe from the whole universe.

She glanced back at him. "Newsflash, Spike. We can go to bed together a million times, but it's not going to work. It's never going to work." She needed to pee. She needed to run away. Why am I talking to him? But now she'd said this much, she was rooted to the spot. A chill ran through her.

She could flee from here, but then what?

Go back to her grotty shared flat, her job at the market, and then what?

Oh God, then what, then what? What is my life? What am I doing???

He was leaning on the doorknob now, watching her out of his bruise-ringed eyes, his fatigue apparent in every lineament of his body.

"Sure it will, it's got to, when we do it right."

His voice, and her own, echoed in her head. They both sounded so tired. Detached, like the other night.

"You're missing the whole point." She hesitated.

The point. She'd shied away from thinking about it very much, because it was like stabbing herself repeatedly with a rusty knife. In her mind the scene played back—Jenny telling her and Giles about the curse. How just one moment of perfect happiness would pull the soul out of Angel.

She still didn't know exactly how it happened. At what moment. They'd barely said five words to each other while Angel made love to her. It just happened, in a way that felt inevitable, because they were both aching for each other. She'd been too excited, too scared and eager and, yes, happy, to do anything but follow his lead. They'd wanted this for weeks, and it was her birthday, and she'd almost lost him that night. All she wanted was to be his, and that seemed to be all he wanted too. He'd been so gentle, so smiling and tender and sort of worshipful of her, but it felt like everything they needed to say was said in kisses, in caresses. And then they'd gone to sleep. And when she woke up she was alone, and the next time she saw him, he was horrible. Her mind still shied from retrieving that first post-bed meeting—how he'd surprised her in his apartment, the callous words, the easy, mocking expression on his face. I'll call you, he'd said. Like she was trash.

And ever since then, that's what her life had felt like. Something gone down the crapper.

But what did it? Exactly what combination of sex and pleasure and acceptance and love had the fatal effect? All she knew was that it was her fault. She'd caused Jenny's death, and the deaths of she still didn't know how many others. She'd unleashed that menace on the world.

Why tell Spike?

Well ... telling him wouldn't give him any advantage. He was no more likely to have that moment of happiness with her if he knew that was required. Less likely, in fact. Like when you heard 'Don't think of a white elephant' and of course couldn't think of anything else. No one could be happy on demand.

He sighed, and for a moment she thought he might just shut the door in her face. "What point?"

"You still don't get what it was that made Angel lose his soul."

"Yeah, well, think I've got it figured. Angelus told us all about his one night of bliss with the Slayer. You just let me out of these chains—"

One night of bliss. Could Spike know? Had Angel known? About the happiness clause? She didn't think so ... some instinct told her he'd have mentioned it in their subsequent clashes. That was the kind of thing Angelus would find ripe for the taunting, wasn't it?

No ... he couldn't have known. Spike was just talking. Spike thought it was sex with her, in some particular way ... he wasn't thinking about emotion, he was thinking about positions. Climaxes. How many times, in how many ways ....

A little voice, that sounded remarkably likes Giles, popped into her head: If you tell him the truth, he may go seek happiness elsewhere, and succeed.

But if I tell him only part of the truth, he never will. "The curse is very specific. It's not just having sex with me. There has to be a moment of perfect happiness." A further inspiration took her. Why not? She realized she was smiling. "It has to be simultaneous. In order for you to lose your soul, Spike, we both have to be perfectly happy at the same time."

His expression then was anything but happy. His eyes flashed gold, the ridges started to rise in his forehead. Then abruptly, as if something inside him had snapped, his face fell into defeat. "Fucking hell."

"It really really will be. For both of us."

He'd let her go and shut herself in the bathroom after that.

Beneath the hot shower spray it came to her, with the same sort of surprise she always felt when she did well on a test at school, or noticed that she'd gotten away with something with her mother, that she was in no hurry to leave Mr Vaux's house.

Maybe she'd just stay on here indefinitely. Cool air, no rent to scrounge or bad smells to endure, and no annoying roommates or customers to deal with—just Spike, who transcended annoying to the point where she could start to tell herself that dealing with him was, after her monumental FUBAR at home, just about what she deserved.

When she'd emerged from the bathroom after an hour's dawdling, wrapped once more in a fluffy robe, Buffy began wandering through the house, trying to make up her mind about what she was going to do next, trying to still her anxiety about the indeterminate future—which would start in the morning and stretch on indefinitely, lonely and alone.

She encountered Spike again in the library, where he was sprawled in a chair, still bare-chested in jeans, staring into space, a crystal tumbler containing a finger of scotch dangling from his hand as if he'd forgotten about it. He'd washed too—his hair was wet, and his bruises seemed revived by scrubbing. His pale bare feet were stretched out before him, looking strangely naked against the intricately patterned rug.

When he saw her, he seemed mildly surprised. "Thought you were goin'."

"Not yet."

She continued to explore, trailed by a disconsolate, watchful Spike, peering into all the dark, neat, dustless rooms. In the basement kitchen she helped herself to a banana and a glass of milk. There was no sign of Reese, but the huge stainless steel refrigerator contained an unmarked bottle of what she assumed was not beet soup. Spike didn't go near it, but collapsed again into a chair.

"What're you doin' here, anyway?"

"I'm here because you'll just stalk me if I leave, remember?"

"Here. New York."

"It was as far as I could get without falling off the edge. Or needing a passport."

"Ought to go home. No place for a girl all alone, without money."

"Oh, now you're giving me survival tips?"

Rolling his shoulders, he craned his neck, one way and then the other, rubbing at it with his hands. He wasn't looking at her. He looked like he wished he was dead, or dead-drunk. Now she thought of it, she wondered that he wasn't drinking. It seemed like the kind of thing a vamp like Spike would do. Maybe he'd done it already—if vamps could get drunk—been blotto all June and July and come to the end of what drink could do. She thought of how her father used to get drunk after those fights with her mother. And then he stopped doing it.

And then he moved out.

"S'sad here, is the thing," he said, as if making a concession.

"Everywhere's sad when you're sad."

"Don't I know it." He threw his head back, sighed. "Shouldn't have ditched your friends an' family over Angelus. Even with a soul he was never any good for you. Your mum's worth more in her little fingernail than Angelus or Angel ever would be. Don't you miss her?"

"I get what you're doing. Don't try to make me go all Stockholm Syndrome, with the probing sympathetic questions."

Even as she said it, Buffy knew it was already too late for that. Her comfort-level had subtly shifted in the last hour; whereas before it was directed only at getting outside, now she dreaded returning to the wild, overpopulated, overheated city. Here in this quiet deserted place she had company. A mortal enemy, but one who would at least look her in the eye.

"Never heard of a slayer before had people like you do. Leavin' them behind'll get you killed. Bloody hell, you'd be dead right now on Avenue D if I hadn't come along."

"Don't pretend to care."

"Why not? You're a fool is what you are, leavin' a sweet mum like that. An' your watcher—he's a stout fellow, all in all."

"Oh, shut up. Quit pretending to be sincere." She peeled another banana, and willed away the tears that threatened to well up. She'd been doing so well, not thinking about her mother, not specifically, longingly. Why did Spike have to go mention her little finger, so that now all she could see in her mind's eye was her mom's hands, those soft, caressing, careful, capable hands, and along with them, everything else came back in 3-D and full color, sensurround, the works—the soft cologney smell of her hair, and the different, sort of floury scent of her neck when they cuddled together on the sofa.

She'd made such a mess at home. Telling her mother off, shoving her.

She could never recover from that. Never return.

"Just chatting to you, Slayer. Passin' the time. No need to get your back up."

"What about you? As long as we're having this sincere chat. What's it like, huh? Getting your soul back. I'd really like to know."

"So far it's a bad acid trip that just. does. not. stop." He paused, staring at his hands. "It's all gone. Everything I relish, an' need. My girl, an' ... my self."

"So start fresh." Huh. Vamps have acid trips?

"Oh, ta. You first an' I'll be right behind you."

She wolfed down the last of the banana, avoiding his eye. It was not fair that Spike could tease her about what they had in common. They had nothing in common.

God, we have everything in common right now. She got it then, what he was saying about needing to get things back in their proper line—him pure evil, with nothing to interfere with his nefarious urges, and her pure righteousness, dedicated to taking him down. That was always, as Angel once said to her, simple.

"What's in here?" A door at the other end of the kitchen gave onto a downward flight of stairs. "I thought we were already in the basement."

She descended, expecting to find at last the dungeon this wealthy vampire's house must certainly contain, with all the whips and restraints and harnesses she imagined as the playthings of the ancient undead.

But instead the air grew moist as she went down, and she was aware of a gentle susurration, an echo of non-sound, that affected the resonance of her own tread, and Spike's, on the stairs. She came out into a vast chamber, the same size as the footprint of the whole house, whose walls and ceiling and floor were covered in glimmering tiles inlaid with mosaic designs of Grecian maidens playing lyres and dancing in groves, all surrounding a pool faced in gold, gently glowing with undulant underwater lights.

"Oh my God."

Buffy stared, then turned to confront Spike.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me this was here?"

He gestured. "Other things on my mind."

"Wow. This brings a whole new meaning to flooding the cellar."

"Have a dip, Slayer."

She glanced around at him.

"You going to try to drown me?"

"If I wanted to kill you, I'd have done it already, and not by drowning. I'd have drunk you dry."

True. She wasn't seriously worried, but challenging him seemed like the thing to do, even as in her imagination she was already immersed in the glittering, tempting water.

"Turn your back."

"Just fucked you, think it's a little late for you to be clutchin' your modesty."

"Turn your back."

He sneered, but he turned. She went to the lip of the pool, dropped the robe, and slipped into the water.

It was perfect. Not cold, not warm. Deep. She swam out to the middle, in calm, deliberative strokes, and looked up at the ceiling, which featured more intricate designs from antiquity.

This was the height, the pinnacle, of luxury.

How weird was it, to find herself in a place like this, at the same time she was dangling over the abyss, empty-hearted, empty-pocketed? Weird.

Then Spike was in the water, cutting close to her, rounding and splashing.

She threw up an arm. "No! Don't do that. Let's just ... let's just swim, okay?"

Again he gave her that narrow-eyed, assessing look. "Yeah, all right. Just swim."

She kept her distance from him, but after a while it got boring, just paddling around.

How 'bout a race," Spike said, "will you condescend to race?"

She was on the verge of saying and the winner gets—? when she realized it was probably better not to open that subject. "Okay. To the end and back."

"Go!"

Head down, she surged forward.

Spike won, so they had to race again. And then she won, so he had to change the race—twice up and back, with a different stroke.

After the seventh race and many lengths, Buffy called time out. She'd forgotten to worry about concealing her body, and floated on her back, even though he could see her breasts that way, and her ... everything. After the exertion, her limbs were just pleasantly numb. Spike treaded water nearby; she felt him watching her, always watching her, but tried not to show that she knew it.

"So ... what's it take to make you happy, Miss Anne? Gimme some pointers."

The question was the blade sinking into the chink in her armor. It blasted through the lovely numbness with a queasy headrush. She headed for the edge.

Spike swam lazily closer. "Know what made my Dru happy. Simple things, really. Pretty dresses, presents, dances in the moonlight, an'—"

"Yeah, well, I will never be happy again."

He moved to her, where she clung to the edge. "There's different kinds of happy, though."

She understood just a moment too late what he was going to do; by then he was already submerged in a barrage of bubbles as he expelled the air from his lungs.

She could've kicked him away, kicked herself away.

But no one had ever done this to her before, and she wanted to experience it. What better way than in this underground chamber in this secret hidden house, in the water where she could hold her head above what was going on under the surface, where no one would ever know that she was giving herself, again, to a vampire?

She squirmed.

It wasn't like anything she knew—it wasn't like fingers, her own, or his, or Angel's. It wasn't like a cock. It wasn't—yet—like her fantasies. At first she had to fight against her own pesky squeamishness—That's Spike's tongue down there! His TONGUE!

Then it began to feel good. Her legs were over his shoulders, and he held her in place with his hands, exploring her in a way that felt first delicate, then hungry. As her excitement grew, he set to licking over and over, inexorably, at the one hot spot. She forgot about it being Spike, it was just this amazing sensation going on under the water line. With her eyes closed, she could let this be Angel—who so would've done this for her, and more, if only they'd had time.

She thrashed, but he kept her in place, and then her own loud moan startled her, and it all began to rush—she couldn't hold back anymore—all the reasons for holding back evaporated. It didn't matter.

Didn't matter.

Didn't matter. She was humping his ever-moving mouth. He stayed with her, never pausing, never coming up for air. She came all at once, before she was ready, her breath sawing the air, her body snapping, water slapping up her chest.

He didn't let her go. His hands shifted; she felt his fingers slide inside her, probing at her vaginal walls as she squirmed and gasped, and now he was sucking on her clit, and it happened for her again, from there and from inside.

And again.

Finally she screamed no more! and dragged him up by his hair.

Spike surfaced in front of her, his eyes a little red, his nervy smile replete with I-showed-you satisfaction. Mind reeling from what her body could do, from the wildness of it, she tugged him in, pressed her mouth to his.

He slapped her aside so hard she went under, her nose filling up with water.

"The fuck you thinkin', Slayer? We don't do that—my kisses are only for Dru."

In one sleek movement he vaulted out of the pool.

Her vision clouded, heart hammering even as she couldn't feel the rest of her body, didn't know if she was right side up, breathing air or inhaling water. She needed to make him know that she hadn't meant to kiss him—it was reflex. But what came out when she screamed was, "That's not the way to make me happy!"

He rounded then, tall and oddly dignified above her in his stark nudity, the water streaming off him. "Don't really want to make you happy, do I? All I want is to want to kill you! But you took even that away from me. Devious bitch."

Going to the wall, he drove a fist against the beautiful mosaics until they cracked. Then sank to his knees, bowed his head, and howled. The cry reverberated off the tile, the water, the curved ceiling. It chilled Buffy to the bone.

She crawled out of the pool, and approached him.

She wanted to slam him into the wall for what he'd just done. The humiliation of it filled her with stinging irrepressable shame. Every time she got to feel good that way, it was followed by something ugly, that ruined it.

"Spike."

He glanced around. She planted her punch square in his face, and had the satisfaction of feeling his nose crunch before his head bounced against the wall.

He snarled. They exchanged a flurry of blows before she lost her footing on the slippery floor, and went down.

Spike let this opportunity go. Turning his back on her, he stood staring at the broken wall, as if his off-switch had been thrown.

Buffy rose, aware again of being naked, and found her robe. When she came back, Spike hadn't moved.

She struck at a piece of broken mosaic with her toe. "Mr Vaux isn't gonna let you house-sit again after this."

His eyes were closed. Blood trickled from his nose.

"Just now—let's be clear—I wasn't really—I never even wanted to—"

"You an' me, Slayer, we're never going to be happy at the same time."

She couldn't think of any reply to this.

"I'm sorry."

"You—huh?"

"Said, I'm sorry. Wasn't ready for ... overreacted."

She wasn't sure how to take this. Was he really apologizing. "Oh."

"It's just ... that was our thing. How I thought of it. That we kept that for each other." He glanced at her then. "Know you don't care, Slayer, but I loved her. Don't remember the last time I snogged anybody else."

"Uh ... okay."

Spike ran a hand down the wall he'd damaged, as if assessing his work. He spoke in a musing way. "Think I'm done now. It'll be light out soon. Think I'll go for a walk in the park. See the sun-up from the Sheep's Meadow."

Good. Best idea I've heard all night. I'll come along and watch. She was going to say that, when an image flashed into her mind. The Crawford Street garden. Angel on his knees, trembling, looking up at her with tears in his uncomprehending eyes. Wanting to know what was happening—overwhelmed at seeing her again. His soul returned, but too late for him to have a second chance. She'd had to send him and his soul to hell forever.

No one knew that but her.

And now here was Spike, with his soul back, part of the enormous mess she'd made.

Her fault.

"I can't let you do that. While you have this soul ... you're something real. Don't you see it would be wrong, to kill yourself?"

"My Dru did."

"She was crazy. You aren't."

"Was plenty real before. Was a real vampire. Real killer, real monster. Was real happy then. Could get happy twenty times a night, easy-peasy. Jesus fuck, it's all gone forever."

"Something else could take the place of all that. Something should."

"You sound like those poncey Jehovah's Witnesses I used to eat." He turned to look at her then. To sneer at her. "Don't tell me you're not burnin' to see me back in my real state, so you can put your fist through my face an' your stake through my heart."

I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy that. She struggled with herself. Enjoy. Did she enjoy it? Should she? She never wanted to think about that much—slaying was what she did because she had to, and yeah, she was good at it—at the actual slaying. Not so much at the mind games required to keep her clever enemies from picking off her associates one by one.

"You told me you've been going out looking for people to help."

"Told yourself that."

"You helped me. You said there were others." All her arguments, her reasons, were a twirling jumble she couldn't express. And since when was it her job, to be Sob Sister to a souled vampire?

She laid a hand on his arm. "Don't ... don't destroy yourself. Not yet."

"An' why shouldn't I?"

"I just said. Because you have something now, that means you're—"

"What? What am I, Miss Anne? Want me to be your next pet? Quite a thing for a young girl, innit, havin' a big strapping vampire man, with his fangs an' his muscles an' his cock all subdued to her bidding. Makes her feel all queenly, like ridin' a half-broken stallion. 'Spect you miss that."

"No!" She pulled back. "You're not listening. I'm not saying that at all."

"Right, 'cause you've walked off the pitch. Quit bein' the slayer. So you don't need any help, from defanged vamps or anyone else."

"Don't you understand? It would be more murder. Your soul ... makes it murder." She blinked back the sudden onrush of tears. "I can't let you murder anyone else, Spike."

He cocked his head. "Can't let me?"

"I'm asking you. Not to."

"What will you do to make it worth my while to go on? Gonna make me happy?"

Her cheek ached where he'd struck her, and yet for the first time he seemed different to her. Still irritating and unpredictable, but ... not a thing any longer. A person.

"Spike." She said it gently, quietly, like reminding him of something.

"Can't do it, can you? Can't make you happy, an' you can't do it for me. So I ask you, what then?"

She saw Angel disappearing into the maw of Acathla, with all that death on him, and she hadn't saved anyone, not his victims, not him. "I ... I can keep you company. For a little while. Until ... until you stop wanting to go out in the sun."

He was looking at her now, scanning her face with those hot-cool eyes of his. His gaze took her apart; it took all her strength not to avert her own. Spike looked and looked, as if he could see right down into her soul. See all her failings and insecurities, all the ways she lied to herself. But she held steady. Met his eyes, let him see.

He went on looking as his clean right hand came softly around her neck, drawing her in. His gaze narrowed, extinguished. She felt his cool considering breath against her lips. And then he kissed her.

It was a slow kiss, gentle, contemplative, and when it broke, Spike stayed close, as if warming his lips at hers. Confusion, relief, pleasure, reluctance, anger popped up like whack-a-moles as she tasted his mouth. She hadn't been touched like this in a long time. She thought again of how Spike had apologized to her just now. The last thing she'd ever expected to hear from Spike was an apology—for anything.

He murmured, "An' good company you can be, too."

The remark, friendly, approving, made her cheeks heat. Why should I care what he thinks of me?

Yet she liked this moment. She nudged his mouth again with hers, to make him be quiet, and also to see if this time he would let her. He kissed her again, readily, steadily, his hand heavier on the back of her neck. He was a good kisser, not sloppy, not too wet or, amazingly, aggressive. She liked sitting in the circle of his arm, exchanging soft tonguey kisses that didn't probe too far.

Something else he'd just said came back into her mind. That challenge about being her pet. Big strapping vampire man, with his fangs an' his muscles an' his cock. Okay, he wasn't so big and strapping himself, but he was ... he was right next to her, without a stitch on, and his smooth skin, the undulant lines of him, seemed to call out to her palms. She kept her hands to herself, even as their kissing grew more urgent. If he thought that was all her love with Angel was about—well, he didn't know them. And she didn't want anything remotely like that with him. Even if she could ever love again.

Which she never could or would.

"I still don't like you."

"Right. It's just that I've got this inconvenient soul, makes you so sure I shouldn't be thrown out with the rest of the trash." He laughed. "Same as makes me so sure I should."

"I know." Except she didn't know. Even with what Angel had told her about himself, she couldn't fathom it, the horrible acts committed as terrible deep pleasures, and then the horrible torment of constant remorse.

She didn't understand the soul, couldn't define it, except that it was everything, because without it one was nothing, a pestilence to be cleared away. But put a soul into a vampire, and the rules changed. That she knew. She'd learned it with pain and suffering.

He pulled her in closer, and she felt that he wanted to be taken into her arms. An answering urge took her over with a tremor, powerful as thirst, to gather him in, to hold and be held.

Everything had changed in the last few minutes. But—not that much. She might forget herself, but Spike wouldn't—instinct warned her not to yield too much. She sprang to her feet. "I ... I need a little alone time. I promise I'll come back, but you have to let me out now."

He looked up at her. His left hand was coated in dried blood; his cock was half erect. Would he go on keeping her prisoner, or had they really crossed back over that line?

"When will you come back?"

She tried not to let him see the relief that flooded her. The fine skein of trust that had sprung up between them in the last minutes would support her over the next few steps. "By the end of the day."

"You're not goin' back to that job, are you?"

"I ... I don't think so." Gristedes seemed impossibly far away now. She could find another job the same way she'd found that one, once this ... period ... with Spike was over. "I just ... I need to get my things, and—I need to see the sky."

"Thought I needed to see it too." He bowed his head. "Still do."

"But you won't, because you keep your promises. And you're promising to wait for me, just like I'm promising to be here later." She felt almost like she was talking to a child, and there was something in the way he looked at her, with a hunger in his eyes that, despite his physical excitment, was like a child's too, revealing more loneliness than lust.

"Got my honor there, yeah," he allowed.

You ... you sleep in the day, don't you?"

"Used to do. Have barely slept a wink all summer."

"Maybe you will now. Go to bed, and I'll be back when you wake up."

She thought he might remind her again, of how he could track her down, how she couldn't really escape him. But he only nodded. She went to the stairs, and he didn't follow her; didn't follow her up through the house to the bathroom where she showered again and put on the set of clothes she'd first worn to this place.

When she went back down to the foyer, Reese was there, sketching a slight bow of good morning, opening the door to let her out into the soft morning sun. "Another warm one today, miss," he said.

"I'll see you later," Buffy said, not wanting him to see her take the high flight of steps at a single jump. She waited until she was a couple of doors down before she broke into a run, the plastic soles of her sandals sounding a thwock thwock thwock as she careened around the corner onto Madison, then decided to forego the subway for a clean airy run instead south through the park.

In the park, beneath the trees, there was still a tinge of cool freshness to the air. The paths were filling up with walkers and joggers, people with dogs and strollers, people on skates and scooters and bikes, regular grown-ups going to their work with briefcases and backpacks. As she ran in and out among them, Buffy felt as if months had passed since she'd been abroad in normal daylight, among normal mortals. None of it felt quite real, and she herself, running and running—it was such a relief to move, after the house's stillness—couldn't shake off a dizzy sense of displacement.

Finally she just let herself fall, on the damp grass in the middle of the Great Lawn, and squinted up at the sky. A pale blue that foreshadowed the gathering humidity, the airlessness of the mature day. She lay still, breathing and sweating in the glare, and finally put an arm across her eyes, to block it out.

That's when Angel started talking to her.

He's nothing like me.

I know.

You don't know. You don't know anything about him.

I don't know anything about anyone. Except what they tell me. What can I know? I'm only seventeen. Her chest tightened. It was true, it was true, how was this fair, that she should have so much responsibility, have to fend for herself alone, when she was still barely done being a child?

He wasn't the kind of man I was.

What does that mean?

I had to teach him. I taught him everything. He was a prodigy. He was a creation.

Evil, right. You always said he was one of the very worst. I KNOW.

You're not listening.

I don't know what you're saying. Anyway, you're not even here.

When she woke with a start, the sun was high in the sky, and she had to pee. Hours had gone by—it was late afternoon. She was slick with sweat, heart hammering. When she passed a trash basket, Buffy threw up into it.

A voice behind her said, "Hey, are you okay?"

She turned. A girl around her own age, looking concerned. "I fell asleep in the sun."

"That's bad. Look, you're all burned. You need some water."

"I—I'll get some." She couldn't exactly remember what had happened, but it was something she wanted to forget, get away from. "I'm okay, really. Thanks for stopping."

She had a twenty and two ones, which was all the money she owned. At a cart just outside the park Buffy bought a bottle of water and two hot dogs, and ate them as she walked to the subway. Her thoughts were spotty, like her brain was blinking in a too-bright light. On the train she wanted to close her eyes again, but she didn't feel safe. There was nothing odd going on—the car was full of late-afternoon commuters. The sense of menace came from within, and she couldn't pinpoint it. It dogged her when she exited in Brooklyn, walking the few blocks to the shared apartment, where at this hour, her two roommates were out.

Inside the cramped, dirty apartment, she couldn't believe she'd stayed here. Knew she'd never come back.

She washed, examined her pinkened skin, changed her clothes, and threw her things into a shopping bag. Her wardrobe was small, and except for her hair brush, it didn't seem necessary to bring other toiletries along.

She wrote a note. "I'm moving on. Rent's paid for the month." She considered adding an apology or a thank you or something, but really, why? Those girls weren't her friends.

She had no friends.

All she had now was Spike. She was his semi-hostage, and he was ... well, he was her hiding place, now.

No one would ever find her, with him. She'd lose even herself.

She walked back into Manhattan, across the Williamsburg Bridge, and up First Avenue. When she passed the UN, the sun was setting, casting long golden beams down the side-streets. When she reached the Upper East Side, it was the early blue hour of the night, and she was tired, hot, her shirt stuck to her back, the shopping bag handle digging into her palm. No one she passed seemed to see her. Maybe I'm already inivisible. She liked the idea.

Spike, in his full regalia of black leather duster and big boots, was sitting on the steps of Mr Vaux's house. His cigarette glowed, and his eyes did too. The museum was closed, and on this one side-street, there were no other pedestrians.

"An' here she is, with all her gimcracks in a paper bag."

"Did you sleep?" she said.

He took a drag of the cigarette, and blew the smoke out in one long stream. "You're a lucky girl, Slayer. To be in possession of a light conscience. Never done nothin' you can't be forgiven for."

"You are so wrong."

"Wrong about most things, but not that." He laughed softly. "Used to have such a guilty conscience once-upon-a-time. But now I know was nothin' but innocent fancy brought on by too much religion."

She climbed the steps, sat beside him.

"Any religion is too much. Have a smoke?"

"No. So you didn't sleep because your conscience is heavy. Like it shouldn't be."

"Not sayin' it shouldn't be. You think I'm takin' all this pretty coolly, don't you, Miss Anne?"

"I don't know." I don't know you. Though ... I know a bit more than I used to.

"You missed my fireworks show. After Dru ... let herself immolate, I ... I ran mad. For weeks, an' hundreds of miles. Made everythin' worse before it got better, 'cept of course that it isn't better. Just ... quieter."

"Quiet desperation."

"Exactly."

"I've been learning about that myself," she said.

Spike flicked his cigarette end out to the gutter, and rose. "Come inside. Reese has your supper for you, an' if it dries out he'll be cross."

"He won't care. He's paid too much to care about that, right? I want pizza. Can we get a pizza?" Buffy pulled her pocket inside out. "This is the only money I have left, so you'll have to buy."

He gave her a look—a soft, strange look. "Oh, Miss Anne. When you start to trust a fellow ...."

"I don't," she said, avoiding his gaze. "I'm just hungry. And I don't care."

"You'd better not care about anchovies either."

"I'm not afraid of the anchovy."

"All right then. Come inside."

In the small back sitting room on the second floor, a television was tuned to an old black and white movie that she'd never seen before and Spike claimed to have seen a dozen times. In the final bit, when the shooting was done and the chips had fallen, the heroine's eyes brimmed, and her lip trembled; the hero looked at her with an expression of passionate renunciation, but couldn't leave her without first taking her in his arms. Buffy stared, transfixed, until the screen faded to black, then hit mute on the remote.

Nothing remained of the pizza but a few gnawed crusts, and Spike, sitting on the floor in front of the deep sofa she was curled up on, had finished four bottles of Heinecken to her almost-one-and-a-half, which made his eyes sleepy when he tipped his head all the way back against her knees, and his cool mouth taste pleasantly earthy when she leaned forward to taste it.

Her hair fell down around his face. Spike's fingers combed through it as he kissed her. Trippy, warm-bellied, floating, she gnawed at his lower lip, then drew away.

"You're upside down."

He turned to kneel before her, and slipped an arm around her waist. "This better?"

She showed him her tongue. "You think you're good-looking, don't you?"

"I know it."

"You aren't."

"Like this better, pet?" The game face came on with a soft sound like a slow-motion crunching of cartilage.

"I'm not afraid of vampires."

"That's not what I asked you."

"I don't care."

"You keep saying that. You keep saying you don't care, or that it doesn't matter."

"Well ... duh."

He looked at her close-to, leaning against her knees.

"What?" Buffy demanded, when he'd let the silence lengthen.

"Just wonder at you, Miss Anne."

"I'm only here at all because it doesn't matter. You want me to be here, don't you? You think I'm going to sleep with you, and that's all you care about."

"Do I? Is it?"

"I will. I don't care."

He dropped his gaze then; his hand caressed her kneecap, and when she parted her legs, his fingers traveled up her thigh. "You don't care if you do," he said, lightly mocking. "It's all the same to you, whether big vampire man makes you come 'til you scream."

His words excited her despite herself. She could smell her response, her dried sweat and the aroma of her pussy.

"Because," she said, "it's not going to have any effect on your soul."

"What effect'll it have on yours?" He raised his eyes to hers again. The game-face was gone, and his gaze was very soft and blue in the shifting TV light.

She frowned. What was he talking about? Why was he talking at all? Grabbing his head, she yanked him in, pressed her mouth again to his. Spike chuckled, and kissed her hard, his other arm tightening around her body as his hand teased at the sensitive skin high up on her thighs.

"Always wanted to fuck a slayer. Always knew I'd get around to it sooner or later."

She gasped. "You talk too much. Kiss."

"When I first saw you in the Bronze, I thought, 'maybe that one. Maybe I'll have her'. Tasty piece you are."

She gave his hair a sharp tug. "Shut. UP."

"You like it. Gets. You. Hot." At that moment he discovered that she wasn't wearing any panties. He grinned.

She squirmed against his gently invading fingers, and let her legs drop open wider. "I'm not a slayer anymore."

"That's not how it works. You're the slayer 'til some lucky vampire does for you an' all."

She caught his wrist, and squeezed it until the cocky grin faded, and became a grimace.

And then they were just staring at each other.

"You want to kill me."

"I did. I don't now."

"You don't."

"Now I want to see your face when I fuck you. Want to see how you look when you come for me."

She searched his expression. She didn't exactly disbelieve that he'd stopped wanting to destroy her, but she couldn't quite understand why. What was a soul, that it could turn purpose on and off like that? It seemed too easy. Plenty of murder happened every day among the souled. Her mind coasted, far far above the sensation that even now rippled through her, as he flexed his hand once more against her sex.

Spike cocked his head. "What about it? Does that matter? Do you care?"

She blushed, and pushed him away. Rose to her feet. "Stop it." The words came out on a whisper.

For a moment she just stood there, while the room spun around her and she wished she'd never tasted the beer. She'd never been drunk before.

With the deliberation of a gourmet over a fine piece of cheese or fruit, Spike took in the aroma on his fingers, and one by one, ran them into his mouth. "There was a moment, the split-second before I did for each of my two slayers ... when each one stopped caring. I saw it, in their faces, in their eyes. It was when they let me in. It was when they were ready. An' I was ready too, an' I snatched their lives."

She wished she'd drunk more, because if she'd drunk more she could go and be sick. But she was nowhere near that. Just high. High and skimming along above herself like a bird.

"You were a murderer."

"I was a great vampire. One of the greatest ever. Slayer of slayers. An' now ... I'm not. Now I'm nothing."

" 'I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us—don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.'" Buffy hiccuped. "I memorized that for school. Emily Dickinson. Except it's the opposite. You're not nobody anymore. You have to be a person. That's your curse."

"An' you have to be the slayer, that's yours."

"I've quit."

"You can't bloody quit." He tugged on her skirt; she sat down again abruptly, and held her head.

"Why'd you run away, Miss Anne?"

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

"Why'd you leave home? A nice home, it was."

"I ... I had to."

"Had to leave your dear Mum? Because of that Angelus?"

"Don't talk about my mother!"

"She must be so lonely without you."

"You don't know! You don't understand!"

"So tell me."

"Why should I? You're not my friend."

"Ditched your friends, haven't you? Might as well talk to an enemy, then."

His questions were tiresome, and confusing. Why should he want to remind her of her mother? Particularly now. Buffy gripped his belt buckle, undid it and started on his fly. His jeans bulged over his erection; why would he want to talk when he was hard? Stupid vampire. She slid down onto her side, a less dizzy place to be amongst the sofa's soft cushions, a place where she could more easily confront the part of him that most interested her at the moment.

She was far from jaded yet about cocks, especially erect ones. Especially erect ones that belonged to very experienced, very talented, quite old vampires whose motives were unclear and whos