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Author's Chapter Notes:
Song Lyrics for Ghost Story by Sting.
The moon's a fingernail
and slowly sinking
Another day begins
and now I'm thinking

That this indifference
was my invention
When everything I did
sought your attention

You were my compass star
You were my measure
You were a pirate's map
A buried treasure

If this was all correct
The last thing I'd expect
The prosecution rests
It's time that I confess:

I must have loved you

Ghost Story, by Sting


Nights seemed darker in London. The cemeteries were older, and the night sky when it rained looked like worn black flannel. It was comforting, somehow. Buffy liked London. She liked the busy-ness of the city, with its topple-likely lorry buses and well-lit subway stations. She liked the scrubbed-ness of the buildings and the sidewalks and the shops. It was like in Mary Poppins, when she would say, ‘Spit spot’. That’s what London was for Buffy.

Even the vampires here seemed, well, polite. She sometimes hated to dust them. They were all, ‘Oh dear,’ and ‘Goodness, gracious me.’ She half-expected them to carry around their own dustpans, in order to clean up after themselves.

Buffy liked their apartment on Meteor Street. She and Dawn occupied one suite, a two-bedroom, on the second floor. Andrew had the other, much smaller bed and bath adjacent. Upstairs, Giles had a three-bedroom suite. Willow and Kennedy stayed in another two-bedroom there, even though Kennedy owned a house of her own in Westbury, near Devon. Xander had the one and only apartment downstairs, on the main floor. There, they also had a nice kitchen, a dining room, and a TV room. Oh, and there was a garden, which was really just a backyard, but in England, they were called gardens whether they had flowers or not. The basement served as a general spell-room. It was Willow’s design. She painted wards on the walls, stored all necessary items in locked chests of custom Xander design. They kept basement furnishings to the barest minimum, to cut down on damage done by spellage debris.

So they were all flat-mates. It was nifty. They all lived together, without living together.

And yet... Buffy preferred, or rather craved, her time alone. Xander had been partly right when he said that she didn’t want to share her vamp-killing time with the new Slayers. In a lot of ways, she still felt apart from them.

Buffy clutched the stake in her coat pocket. The path to the Wiltshire Cemetery was familiar enough to her feet that she could walk the path on cruise. She neared the gates, ready for just about anything. What she found did give her a bit of a surprise.

A pair of vampires, new ones by the looks of their clothes, wrestled over the carcass of a freshly slain rabbit. They were so intent in their bunny brawl they didn’t hear her approach.

Buffy casually walked up to them. “Hasenpfeffer, is it?”

They two vampires, both middle-aged men in tweed jackets, the professor-ly kind with suede patches on the elbows, looked up, wide-eyed and rightfully concerned. One had tufty white hairs poking out of his ears. The other would have been bald before Christmas, if he’d lived that long.

“’Cause I’m pretty sure it’s duck season,” Buffy said.

The vampires exchanged a look of confusion. Tufty Ears shrugged. Would Be Baldy just tilted his head.

“You know?” Buffy said, drawing her stake. “As in duck.”

She lunged for Baldy, and staked him before he could even drop his end of the rabbit. Tufty looked decidedly alarmed and, thankfully, gave chase. He leapt over a tombstone and bolted downhill, sliding on the dewy grass. She tackled, and they tumbled, until his head collided with a marble grave marker. He rolled over on his back, using the bunny as a shield.

“Oh, come on,” Buffy whined. “A rabbit?”

He tossed the rabbit aside and raised his hands in surrender.

“Sorry, guy” she said, feeling genuinely sad for him, “It’s my job.”

She staked him, then dusted her hands of his dust.

Needless to say, Buffy left the cemetery feeling less than satisfied. She thought about hitting one of the other cemeteries on her way home, the Carlyle, or the Wallace Home, perhaps. But it was late, and soon, cool drizzle began to fall. She opted, instead, on taking a new way home. There was a neighborhood park she’d always intended to visit during the day, but had not yet made the detour.

Buffy took the pathway into the park through stands of slender, graceful looking trees. The rain pattered pleasantly on the leaves, and her boots crunched the gravel under her feet. The path wound its way around a small lake fringed with reeds. As she neared the pool, the rain turned to mist. The clouds parted, revealing a sliver of moon that shone down in the smooth mirror of the water. A soft breeze whipped over the lake, stirring a flock of geese to flight. Buffy paused, feeling almost breathless at the scene. Chills coursed down her arms. She was suddenly, achingly aware of how quiet it was. Quiet, and still.

Buffy drew a deep breath to fill the void, then closed her eyes. Her thoughts were still, and below that, silence. She felt a momentary spell of lost-ness. It kinda made her dizzy. Buffy opened her eyes, and uttered an uneasy laugh.

“I really miss you, you idiot,” she said. “I wish you were here.”

Her voice was answered by more quiet, followed by more rain. A stronger wind blew across the lake, this time with more force. A storm was on its way, and Buffy could take a hint. She tugged her coat more tightly around her waist. As she mounted the path, she turned to glance over her shoulder at the pretty lake with his ring of silver-trunked trees.

“I must be finally losing it,” she said to herself, and struck off for home.





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