Buffy looked at the faces gazing at her and nodded decisively. “So it’s settled—we’ll sit back and wait.”
“Wait?” scoffed Spike. Seemed like a weak, wimpy, wankerish thing to do, as far as he was concerned. Something was out there? So go kill it! Don’t sit around waiting for it to mess with you. Spike had never been the waiting kind, for anything.
Well, except for Buffy. For her, he’d waited.
“Wait,” repeated Buffy firmly. “There’s no reason to go after it. It just created a bunch of weird illusions before, but it didn’t actually try to do anything.”
“The Bit said it made her breathe fire,” Spike protested.
Giles shifted uncomfortably. As much as he hated to agree with Spike, a passive response was seldom successful in combating evil. Wait for it, while simply trusting it not to kill them? Interfere with their lives? Whisper poison in their ears?
He couldn’t believe anything good would come of waiting.
Of course, rushing into action could also be disastrous. Giles shuddered as he recalled the horror of Buffy’s ill-advised assault on Caleb, leading to Xander’s crippling and the loss of so many Potentials.
Irritation pricked at Giles as he thought back on the last year. He’d never seen Buffy so willful, so insistent. What could have possessed her—rushing into battle against a force of unknown power?
You did, a voice whispered inside Giles. You told her again and again that everything depended on her. That she was a leader, and it was time she acted like it. She pulled the trigger, but only after you primed it.
So unlike him. He’d always advocated research and planning, not wild strikes, but what had there been to research? Everything was gone. They had virtually no intelligence about the First Evil—only the knowledge that it was powerful enough kill emergent Slayers the world over, and decimate an organization that had lasted millennia.
It had been an injustice to Buffy, expecting her to shoulder the weight of a bureaucracy that had failed her so many times. Failed her, disapproved of her, almost killed her. But Giles had been desperate.
And Buffy hadn’t sure at all, but she’d gone ahead. Tried to lead, as he insisted. And that rash action—
“Yeah … no offense, but your idea? It blows,” said Kennedy bluntly.
Giles snapped his head up at her words. “Kennedy, must you always dismiss my plans out of hand?” he asked in irritation.
A look of disbelief crossed Kennedy’s face, while Dawn hastily clapped a hand over her mouth to contain a giggle.
“Umm, Giles? The whole do-nothing thing? It was actually my plan,” Buffy reminded him.
Giles was far too old to blush, but he still had to fight the urge to fiddle with his glasses. “Yes, well, the point stands,” he said. He’d pushed Buffy back and forth over the last few years—leaving her after her resurrection, when she begged him to stay. Making sure she felt every bit of the world’s weight as she tried to fight against an evil so ancient it had no name. Going along with the Council’s insistence to weaken her for the Cruciamentum. Agreeing to Wood’s plan to destroy Spike, for her own good.
It was time he was her Watcher again, and not her keeper.
“You heard Buffy,” he told Kennedy—told all of them. “She’s the one who fought it before—the one who defeated it. If she says we wait, we wait.”
The others nodded. They were all in agreement.
Except for the two with disgruntled expressions. Giles ignored them. Kennedy would eventually learn that she couldn’t impose her will on others, while Spike—well, if Giles ignored him long enough, perhaps he’d disappear like a bad dream. Although god knows it had never worked before; he’d tried hard enough during the dreadful period Spike lived with him. Occasionally he still had nightmares about it.
Come to think of it, perhaps now would be a good time to check on their Scotch supply.
***
The living room was empty by the time Giles slipped in again. Kennedy had sulked off first, then Dawn announced she had better things to do when she had a day off school than sit in the living room. Andrew had declared, “You said it, girlfriend!” and followed her out. That left only Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Spike in the room, and that was too small a proportion of Giles to Spike to people who weren’t Spike, so Giles had mumbled an excuse and sought sanctuary in his library.
But the library was not as comforting as he expected it to be. When the house was purchased and Buffy suggested he dedicate a room for a library, Giles had been touched by her thoughtfulness. Yet somehow, it had never felt as comfortable and familiar as the Sunnydale High School library. Perhaps it was because Santa Rita was so quiet compared to Sunnydale—he had not nearly as much to research. There hadn’t been a single near-apocalypse since the Hellmouth collapsed; it was quite a strange feeling, really, not having to prepare for the next cataclysm. The school library had been the scene of countless all-night research and planning sessions, combat training with Buffy, emotional scenes with all the children. It had really been the center of their existence.
Ironic that it was directly over the Hellmouth, really.
Here, the library was just a place to keep his books. As much as he loved them—as much as he relished the feel of old leather and yellowed parchment—he was discovering that he needed more.
He missed the children. It was clear to him when he was in England, after he’d left Buffy following her resurrection. He missed her terribly. That was to be expected, but his wistful longing for Willow, even for Xander and Anya, had surprised him. And now he was back, but the library isolated him from the others. And so he was thinking that perhaps it was good to come out of his library every so often.
Of course, now that he did, they were gone.
“It figures,” he sighed, sinking into the sleek black leather couch. It was nothing like the stiff leather couches Giles had grown up with, and gave luxuriantly under his weight.
“What figures, mate?” asked a voice from the big recliner in the corner. Giles ground his teeth in frustration. It was Spike, of course; who else would it be?
“Nothing,” Giles answered with restrained annoyance.
Spike sat forward and peered around the edge of the chair. “Well, I’m not sure why you’d—god, Rupert, drinking at this hour? You know something I don’t?”
“Safe to say,” muttered Giles.
“No need to get all superior, lad, considering we’re not all that far apart,” Spike chided, not very maliciously. Didn’t seem to have the heart for loathing Rupert that he used to, which was odd, considering how Giles and Wood had tried to kill him and all. Maybe he was growing soft in his old age.
Or maybe he’d just let Rupert have that one time. Spike had messed with him often enough, back before he became Buffy-addled; Spike would give him a flyer on that one, in the interest of family harmony, as it were.
Family harmony. Just thinking of the apoplectic look Giles would get at the term made Spike smile broadly. He had to remember to file that one away, to be used later for maximum effect. Perhaps when Rupert was pouring his tea.
All the same, he was glad Wood didn’t belong to this happy little household. That would be a few too many people who wanted to kill Spike in the same house.
“That can be easily remedied,” snapped Giles, getting to his feet.
“Settle down, now, that wasn’t what I meant.”
Giles frowned at him. “What could you possibly be talking about now?”
Spike opened his mouth to enlighten Rupert about how similar their backgrounds were, but shut his mouth abruptly. First he said he went to Cambridge, next thing you know he’d start babbling about the Pre-Raphaelites and Wordsworth and then he’d start reciting that rubbish he used to write. Giles didn’t need to know anything about that, none of them did. Bad enough Spike remembered it. You’d think enough grain alcohol would destroy that type of memory, but no luck.
Besides, the look of frustration on Giles’s face was priceless.
“Nothing,” said Spike innocently.
Giles glared at him suspiciously, then turned to free himself of Spike. There were advantages to an enormous house. Numerous rooms, all with locks, was first among them.
“Don’t you think we should talk a little, though? The men of the house, as it were?” Spike asked. Yeah, playing with Ripper was fun. Without even seeing his face, Spike could tell how much Giles hated the suggestion.
“Spike, I hardly think this is necessary—”
“I don’t think Buffy wants me to go anywhere,” Spike said, suddenly serious. Typical for him—he always did have the attention span of a toddler who’d gone nuts with the Pixie Stix. “So I’m staying put. You telling me you’re planning to leave?”
Giles swung around to meet Spike’s gaze. “I didn’t say that,” he denied sharply.
“Then I’d like to know I can rely on you not to, say, stab me or otherwise arrange for my demise,” said Spike dryly.
“And I’d like to think I can trust you not to harm Buffy or Dawn,” Giles returned evenly.
The answer was out of Spike’s mouth immediately, without thought. “I’d never hurt either of them.”
“Really? That’s not what I heard,” returned Giles bitingly, and Spike suddenly knew, with a cold certainty, what Giles was referring to. What had happened—what he’d tried to do—in the bathroom, to Buffy.
The two men were silent for several moments, the only sound in the room their breathing, harsher than it needed to be. As if they’d been running, or fighting. “Buffy told you?” Spike asked finally.
Giles’s mouth twisted. That would be the natural assumption, of course. But Buffy held things too close ever to tell him something like that. She had revealed enough of herself to Giles when she told of him of her involvement with Spike; she wouldn’t even have told him that much if she weren’t dazed with relief at his return.
No, she would never have shared so much with him, and it hurt. The most painful things, he always had to find out from someone else.
“Dawn told me,” he said flatly.
Spike flinched. “Dawn,” he repeated softly, looking down to stare at his hands. She hadn’t referred to it since the first time he’d seen her, when he first came out of the basement. His first, disastrous trip out.
Giles surveyed him coldly. “You’re not a vampire any longer. You can’t hurt Buffy,” he observed. Spike flinched again, and Giles felt only vaguely ashamed at the dart of pleasure he took in the sight. “But you can hurt Dawn.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“A minute ago you said you’d never hurt Buffy.”
Spike didn’t answer. There was nothing he could say.
Giles eyed him coldly. “You’re human now. I don’t kill humans.” A second later, the memory of holding his hand over Ben’s mouth as he struggled and gasped up on the tower returned to Giles. He pushed it away. Spike knew nothing of that. None of them did. There were some things it was better they not know.
They knew as much of Giles as they needed to. It was best, he thought, that no one knew everything that went on inside another person.
Perhaps Buffy was right. Some things really were best kept private.
“I wouldn’t kill another human. Not without provocation,” Giles added after a moment. He turned to leave the room, and then paused.
“Be sure you don’t give me any.”
***
They drifted out to meet her on the back porch. Not together, because that would be a dead giveaway, but a few minutes apart.
“Do you think they know?” asked Willow quietly.
Buffy glanced at Xander, and he shrugged. “I don’t think so,” she said finally. “But we should be quick about it anyway—I don’t want them to become suspicious.”
Xander nodded. “Okay, but what was the big with the secrecy? Why didn’t you just—”
“Look, do you remember last time, when I came back? And it could be any one of you?” Buffy pointed out. “I don’t want it to get any ideas by hearing us talk about it.”
Xander and Willow glanced at each other in understanding. The demon created by thaumogenesis hadn’t just done borderline cool stuff like make Dawn breathe fire; it had hidden in Xander while they researched, until it learned that in order to stay around, all it had to do was kill the person whose resurrection had created it.
Buffy.
“So, we don’t talk about it,” agreed Xander. “But how do we keep the others from researching it? The demon can speak, so it can probably read—right?”
Buffy nodded, the stress of the situation beginning to show around her eyes. “This thing’s really rare, right? It took you guys forever to find it, and it was only in one book.”
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed Willow, seeing where Buffy was headed. “So you want to get rid of the book, so no one else can read it, and so the demon doesn’t find out the you-know-what?”
Buffy nodded. “Exactly.”
Xander shook his head. “I think I may have spotted a small flaw in your plan, Buff.”
“What?”
“Uh, Watcher-Man had his books shipped over when we moved in here. If we had a book with thaumogenesis in it, you can bet he does.”
Ugh! Nothing was ever simple, thought Buffy in frustration. She swung back to Willow. “He’s right,” Buffy agreed. “Go through all of them. Take any that refer to thaumogenesis.”
Xander gave her a skeptical look. “Don’t you think Giles might notice it if she went around lugging big armloads of his books? Most of them are the size of a water buffalo, give or take an inch or two, so it’s not like she can just stick them in her pocket and hightail it out of there.”
“I don’t have to take them,” said Willow suddenly.
Buffy looked at her, frowning. “Yeah, you do. Or we do. We can’t let the demon know that—”
“I mean, I don’t have to take them to do that. Just make sure that no one else can find them,” said Willow with a little smile.
“What’d you have in mind?” asked Xander.
Willow’s smile grew. “Do you remember when I came back from England?” she asked. “The books don’t have to go anywhere—I’ll just make them invisible, and shazaam! No messy lifting and carrying. Giles can be right next to the books and not even see them.”
“Hidden in plain sight,” observed Xander with satisfaction.
“Plain sight that’s not actually in sight, yes,” specified Willow. The others laughed, and after a moment she laughed with them. It seemed like a long time ago that she’d been so frightened of how they’d react when she came back; now it was natural again to be with them, happy and laughing. This was the way it should be, the three of them. Like it always had been—almost always. Things were always better when they were together.
They were so involved in their conversation that none of them noticed the slim figure hidden in the shadows of the kitchen, or saw it turn and slip away into the house. They hadn’t said everything, but they’d said enough. More than enough.
And if they thought hiding a bunch of books would stop anything, they were wrong.
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