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Chapter 27: What's My Line (Part 1 of )

It had been another in a series of frustrating nights for Buffy. She'd been searching Sunnydale for Angelus for almost a week now. She'd staked what seemed like a record number of vampires, but she was no closer to finding him than she'd been before.

Although tonight she'd caught a couple vampires stealing from a tomb. Unfortunately, one of them got away.

Wearily, she started to climb through the window of her room, only to find Spike standing in front of her mirror holding Mr. Gordo, who seemed to be floating in the mirror. Without saying a word, Buffy threw her bag through the window and onto the floor.

Spike jumped at the sound and turned around.

"Buffy! You startled me, pet."

"Score one for me."

She crouched down by her bag and reached into her hair to pull out a few clips.

"Just dropping by for some quality time with Mr. Gordo?" she asked, as she started her nighttime routine.

"Huh?" Spike was confused.

"The pig."

She opened her trunk and dumped the bag inside.

"Yeah, I was wondering about that." He regarded the toy. "What sort of girl has a stuffed pig an no teddy bears or dolls?"

"I think I'm a little old for dolls. And don't you dare say anything bad about Mr. Gordo. You're far more replaceable than he is."

"You're in a snit tonight." He carefully set Mr. Gordo down on her pillow. Then he sat on her bed and stretched out. "Don't suppose I could do anything to cheer you up?" he smiled suggestively at her.

She dropped her hair clips into a desk drawer, then faced him.

"You could start by getting you boots off my bed," she said annoyed. He complied. "What are you doing here anyway?"

He reached out for her, and pulled her to him by the waist.

"Can't a fellow come see his girl without a reason? And why'd you come in through the window?"

"Huh?"

"Thought your mum was out of town."

Buffy crinkled her nose. "Habit. And how do you know that?"

"Your mum and me are friends remember?"

"So you wait for her to leave town so you can take advantage of her daughter?"

He stood up, very close to her, and looked her in the eye.

"I would never take advantage of you." His voice was quiet, but deadly serious. Then he plunked back down on the bed and smiled widely at her. "There really is a bee in your bonnet today, isn't there?"

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," she apologized. She sat next to him and rested her head against his chest. He moved his arm to put it around her. "Look, I've been Cranky Miss all day. It's not you."

"So what's bothering you, pet? Besides the obvious."

"We're having this thing at school," she admitted.

"Career week?"

"How did you know?"

"Once a stalker. . ." he joked.

She smiled. "Right. Well, then you know it's a whole week of 'what's my line', only... I don't get to play. Sometimes I just want. . ."

"What do you want, luv?"

Buffy glanced into her mirror. She was alone in the reflection.

"The Cliff Notes version? I want a normal life. Like I had before."

He pointed to a picture on her desk of her as a child, ice-skating.

"That the life you want?"

"Oh my God." She laughed and stood up. "My Dorothy Hamill phase. My room in L.A. was pretty much a shrine. Dorothy dolls, Dorothy posters, I even got the Dorothy haircut. Thereby securing a place for myself in the geek hall of fame."

"Why'd you want to be like her?"

"I wanted to BE her. My parents were fighting all the time, and skating was an escape. I felt safe."

"So when'd you last put on your skates?"

Buffy sighed. "About a couple of hundred demons ago."

"There's a rink out past Route 17, it's. . . closed on Tuesdays."

"Tomorrow's Tuesday."

"So it is, pet. So it is."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Giles walked to the center table in the library, balancing a large stack of books. He carefully set them down and leaned over a bit to straighten the stack, but he leaned too far and the books began to fall over.

"AH!" he cried as he rushed to stop them.

Buffy put her hand on top of the stack just as he did the same, and they pushed it back up.

Relieved, Giles said, "Buffy. Thank you. I've been, uh, indexing the Watcher diaries covering the last couple of centuries. You would be amazed at how numbingly pompous and long-winded some of these watchers were."

"Color me stunned."

"So, uh, I trust last night's patrol was fruitful?"

"Semi. Mm, I caught one out of two vamps after they stole something from this jumbo mausoleum."

"They were stealing?" Giles asked with interest.

"Yeah! They had tools, flashlights, whole nine yards." She paused. "What does that mean anyway? 'Whole nine yards'? Nine yards of what? Now it's gonna bug me all day," she whined. Then she noticed that Giles was ignoring her and pacing furiously. "Giles, you're in pace mode. What gives?"

"Um, this vampire who escaped, did you see what he took?" he asked.

"No, but I could take a guess and say it was something old."

"You made no effort to find out what was taken?" Giles asked with anger.

"Have a cow, Giles! I just figured it was your everyday vamp hijinks."

"Well, what if it wasn't? This could be very serious! I mean, i-i-if you'd made an effort to, uh, to be more thorough in your observations. . ."

"Y'know, if you don't like the way I'm doing my job, why don't you find somebody else?" Buffy was genuinely annoyed. At times she thought Giles didn't appreciate the risking of life and limb she did on a nightly basis. "Oh, that's right, there can only be one. As long as I'm alive, there is no one else. Well, there you go! I don't have to be the Slayer. I could be dead."

"That wasn't terribly funny. You notice I don't laugh."

"Wouldn't be much of a change. Either way I'm bored, constricted, I never get to shop, and my hair and fingernails still continue to grow. So really, when you think about it, what's the diff?"

"Do we have to be introspective now? Our only concern is to discover what was stolen from that mausoleum last night."

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Drusilla sat on her bed, waving her hand over an intricately carved gold cross held out to her by Angelus on a red velvet pillow.

"Would this be it then?" Angelus asked her.

"It hums. I can hear it," she told him.

"Once yer well again, we'll have a coronation down Main Street, and invite everyone, and drink for seven days and seven nights." Angelus promised his favorite Childe.

Behind him his bookish minion asked, "What about the Slayer? She almost blew the whole thing for us. She's trouble."

"And who's fault would that be?" Angelus asked. "No matter though. We'll do somethin' about her. Can't have her interfering now can we. I'd wanted to play with her some more, but perhaps it's time to pass the job along. The Order of Taraka should do."

"The bounty hunters?!" the minion gasped with fear.

Angelus was annoyed to think that some ancient order inspired more fear than he did.

Drusilla had dealt out three tarot cards: a Cyclops, a centipede and a panther.

"They're coming to my party," she said excitedly. "Three of them."

Angelus looked absently at the cards.

"Uh, yes, but. . ." stuttered the minion. "The Order of Taraka, I mean... isn't that overkill?"

"No such thing," Angelus said with a smile.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Buffy skated around the rink, trying not to think about anything related to Career Day or slaying. It almost worked. At least she was able to forget about the awful test that had told her she was doomed to a life as a cop.

The slayer stuff was a little harder to forget about. She and Giles had discovered that what the vampire the other night had stolen was something related to some guy named Du Lac. Not only that, but the vampire that had stolen one of Giles' books had stolen one written by Du Lac. Giles was afraid that the two together could be used to bring about some bad mojo.

Slowly, though, the rhythm of the skates on the ice even pushed these thoughts from her head. Until she slipped and fell, sliding backward into the sidewall of the rink.

As she started to get up, an arm wrapped itself around her neck and lifted her off the ice. A large, less than pleasant looking man with only one eye, had her by the throat. He began to choke her against the railing of the rink. Buffy tried to pry his hands from her throat as she struggled to breathe.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Spike come running across the ice, his eyes blazing gold.

"Buffy!" he cried.

He leapt toward the man who held her, and tackled him, knocking him off of Buffy. She fell back onto the ice. Spike lifted the man to his feet and punched him in the face. But the man wasn't even fazed and punched Spike in the stomach, sending him back into the wall. Spike came off the wall and jabbed him in the face again, but the one-eyed man just shrugged it off. He punched Spike in the face and gut in rapid succession, making him stagger into the wall again. The man then grabbed Spike by the throat and lifted him up.

By this time, Buffy had finally caught her breath and gotten to her feet. She came skating toward them at a fast pace. The man turned to face her as she grabbed a net that was hanging on the wall of the rink and and used it to swing up with her foot and hit him in the throat with the blade of her skate, crushing his trachea.

He let go of Spike and grabbed his own neck, unable to breathe. He took a few steps onto the ice and collapsed there, dead.

Angry, Spike rushed over to the corpse to examine it. Seeing a ring on the man's finger he took a close look at it.

"The Hellmouth presents: Dead Guys On Ice. Not exactly the evening we were aiming for," said Buffy.

"Fuck." Spike said, looking closely at the ring. "We have to get out of here."

He began to pull her toward the exit.

"Hold on!" demanded Buffy. "What's the deal? I just killed a Super Bowl champ or something?"

"I'm serious!" Spike snarled. "You need to get out of here." Then he softened. "Are you okay?"

She put her gloved hand on his cheek and looking at the cut above his eye.

"What about you? That cut!"

"Don't worry about me. This is bad, Buffy. We gotta get you outta here."

"What, you mean hide?"

"Well, yeah. That's a good place to start. At least till we know how many we have to deal with."

"How many what?" Buffy asked. She was getting annoyed.

"Assassins. Look, Buffy, someone's called out the big guns. Will you just. . . I need to know you're safe. Till we know what's going on. Okay?"

"Hey," she called gently to him, looking him in the eye. "It's me. I'll be okay. You're not getting rid of me that easy Mr."

He couldn't help but smile at her.

"You're right. You're the Slayer. I just. . . It's hard not to worry."

"Maybe this'll help stop you from worrying?" she said, as she moved in to kiss him.

He wrapped his arms around her and returned the kiss. They were both so enraptured by each other, that neither of them noticed the strange girl watching them from the shadows.





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