Chapter 2:
“Hey Fred, can you read this and tell me what you think?” Buffy asked as she sat down in her chair behind the lobby desk.
Fred, who was reading a science magazine while taking her late lunch, glanced up at Buffy reaching out to hand over the party invite she got from Drusilla.
“The Midnight Society?” Fred read aloud the top of the invite with a cocked eyebrow.
“Ya, I’ve never heard of that before. Have you?”
“No, not really.” Fred shook her head but continued to keep reading on the rest of the invitation.
‘Starts at 11pm….’
‘Bring toiletries items…’
‘Provide your own protection…’
“Provide your own protection?” Fred repeated the last line on the bottom of the small designer square card.
“Ya…seems a bit weird, right?” Buffy asked while she opened a new internet terminal and began googling ‘Midnight Society’.
“This is a corporate party?” Fred asked as she put the invitation down and glanced over at Buffy’s computer screen to see what popped up.
“I’m not sure. Drusilla Pratt is hosting this thing; you would think it would be for her employees.” Buffy scrolled down with her mouse to check all the links of the ‘Midnight Society’, all she found was websites related to the show ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’, a kid show that was on during the 90s.
‘Hmmm…’ Buffy thought, ‘Maybe…’
“Do you think they tell ghost stories or…you know… something?” Buffy spun her chair around to look at her friend’s reaction. She knew it was a mistake asking the science queen like Fred when she saw how wide the girl’s eyes got at the idea, perhaps she was thinking a little bit too far out of the box.
“I don’t think so…” Fred shook her head and turned to her own computer screen to start researching the strange party theme. “Did you ask Angel what it was about?”
“He wasn’t upstairs at the time.”
“How about Drusilla? I mean, it is her party. She didn’t give you a clue?”
“No…I kind of told her I knew all about the party, sort of lied to her to make Angel look like a sharing husband kind of guy.” Buffy explained.
After rethinking about what she did and the way it sounded when it came out of her mouth, Buffy thought it was sort of stupid to be covering for how Angel really was when it came to work things. The truth was that he didn’t tell her jack about what happened up on the 20th floor. Whatever was going on up there seemed to stay up there, and Angel didn’t make any exception for his loving wife at all. Willow reassured her it was normal for him to exclude her on that part of his life—that if they started mixing work talk with dinner table talk that fights could start to break out. However, Buffy is starting to rethink that Willow was just saying that to humor her.
“Well you’re going to have to ask Angel, it may be code for something.”
“Code?” Buffy questioned.
“Ya…like it could be a pajama party but just called a different name.”
“A pajama party for a bunch of lawyers?” Buffy rolled her eyes to the side; it seemed that her ghost story party wasn’t looking to weird after all.
“Well it wouldn’t be that, but it could be code for some kind of other theme party. Costume party…Secret Santa, or black tie sort of thing.” Fred explained. “You know…like a formal or something.”
“Oh...well we can role out the Secret Santa one…being that it’s July…”
“Well what’s her personality like? Did that give you a clue to what kind of party she might throw?”
Buffy thought once again about how Drusilla was giving off a weird dark vibes while she was in the room with her. “To tell the truth, she seems like the kind of woman that would hold a vampire meeting in her basement.”
*~*~*~*~*
Later that night in bed, Buffy and Angel talked about Drusilla’s party that was being held that Sunday night.
“You’ll have fun baby, I promise.” Angel said as he kissed her neck. “Just go out and buy a new dress and do something with your hair.”
“But ‘The Midnight Society’?” Buffy once again scrunched up her face in confusion at the name. “I don’t understand that name still.”
“It’s Dru’s little title for her parties because she’s host so many of these….don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine. You’ve been to these kinds of parties before.”
‘I have?’ Buffy leaned away from Angel’s lips so she could have his full attention.
“I have?” she decided to not hold back anymore. Buffy was completely in the dark as to what was going on.
“You said you like swing parties when we were dating.” Angel pointed out.
“That’s what she calls swing parties?” Buffy thought it was it bit weird. ‘So the lady is holding a dance party and can’t actually call it what it sounds like?’ she thought to herself.
“She’s hosted a lot of them—her and her husband.” Angel explained.
“Huh…” Buffy nodded, “She really doesn’t seem like the type that would attend those kinds of parties let alone be hosting them.”
“Well people are just full of surprises you know…” Angel said with a smile as he leaned back in to kiss her, just talking about the party got his motor running.
*~*~~~*~~
All weekend Buffy was prepping for the party, calling Willow to help her go shopping for the perfect dancing dress and shoes, going to the hair salon Sunday morning to get her nails done, eyebrows waxed, and get her hair all fancy and shiny, and going downtown Sunday afternoon to go to the liquor store to get the perfect bottle of wine to present as a gift to Drusilla.
About an hour before the party Buffy pulled out the invitation that she had left in the kitchen and forgot about since Thursday. She felt confident that Angel already told her the jest of the party from their time in bed and that she didn’t need anymore instructions of what to do, but being the cautious person she was she had to double check.
‘Bring toiletries items…’
‘Provide your own protection…’
Buffy froze. Uh-oh, she forgot that little bit of information.
“Protection…protection for what?” Buffy whispered to herself as she went into her bathroom and grabbed her travel cosmetic bag that had all her emergency items if she ever needed to stay somewhere overnight.
‘Oh well, I’ll just borrow someone else’s if I need it.’ She thought to herself.
TBC....