[Reviews - 318]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 1266 times

- Text Size +




Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry it took so long to post, the site was down, and then I was out of town. Good news, another chapter coming soon.
57. A cake in the oven

“Something smells in here,” Dawn was wrinkling her nose as she walked in on Buffy in the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m baking a cake.”

“You can’t bake a cake. You’re a worse cook than I am, and that’s saying something. Besides, I’m pretty sure that you don’t put diet coke in a cake mix. You’re supposed to follow the recipe on the back of the box.”

“I’m not making that cake. I got this recipe from Willow. It’s a diet cake. Less fat in it this way.”

“Right. You save calories because it tastes like barf, so no one eats it. I get it. But why are you baking in the first place? It’s not a very Buffy thing to do.”

“I want to have Giles over for dinner. After all, he is our father. Besides, I want to thank him for what he did for Spike.”

“He didn’t do anything. The whole thing was stupid anyway. Who goes to jail for selling condoms?”

“It was illegal, Dawnie.”

“This isn’t the dark ages. Women are not chattel. I can’t believe anyone would send a man to prison for selling birth control.”

“Not everywhere is the United States, Dawn. Some cultures have different laws, different views on things. If they’d sent him overseas it could have been bad. I’m just happy it didn’t come to that.”

“Then you should tell Spike, not Giles.”

Buffy dropped the spoon, and looked at her sister before replying. “I’m not sure I’m ready to do that yet.”

“I don’t understand why you and Giles assume that Spike must be some kind of monster. I just don’t get it at all. I lived with the guy for months. He never as much as looked at me, let alone touched me, and believe me, there were times when I really really wanted him to. I don’t know what happened between you two, but it wasn’t that.” Dawn reached over and dipped her finger in the batter to taste it, made a face, and wiped the rest off on a napkin before looking up at her sister thoughtfully. “Besides, Giles doesn’t even know about that, does he? I mean, that’s not really the kind of thing you tell your boss… or your father, is it? If you had told him that little story, I am sure there is nothing in heaven or earth that could persuade him to help Spike.”

“No, Giles doesn’t know about that. He doesn’t trust Spike because of something else.”

“What Buffy? If there’s something else I need to know about it. Because I just can’t believe that he would put something in your drink. In the first place, he wouldn’t need to, cause you’ve been crushing on him something bad for months. If he’d pushed, you’d have slept with him sure. And in the second place, its not the kind of thing that he would do. Ever. You keep forgetting that I lived with him. Even though he owns a drug company, he like, doesn’t even take aspirin. It was kinda weird. So tell me what Giles has against Spike, so I can tell you the truth.”

Buffy considered Dawn’s request as she poured the batter into the pan and put it in the oven. It really did look kind of disgusting. But she knew she had followed Willow’s recipe exactly. The cake should turn out fine. It was her sister she was worried about now. She was right, she needed to know all the facts.

“Have you ever seen Spike’s studio? Have you ever seen him paint?”

“Paint? No, I knew he was interested in art. Didn’t know he painted himself. Is he any good?”

“That’s how all this got started. He sold some paintings that turned out to be forgeries, and I was supposed to investigate. Turns out he’s a painter as well as a collector, and some of his paintings are just well, creepy. But when we ran his fingerprints through Interpol, we found something much worse. Somehow, oh, years ago, he was involved in something that left three young girls dead in three corners of the globe. No charges were ever filed, but why would the same fingerprints be at three different murder scenes if he didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“Surely you didn’t leave the investigation there. What did you come up with?”

“Not much. The Chinese didn’t even really want to talk about it. They’re heavy into the Beijing Olympics, and couldn’t be bothered.”

“Chinese? Boy when you said three corners of the globe, you really meant it. But I take it none of it ever came to anything, or it wouldn’t be selling contraceptives he’d be in jail for.”

“No. It was all circumstantial evidence. Nothing that would hold up in court.”

“And what did Spike have to say about it? Did you even ask him? Maybe he was trying to save those girls. Did that ever occur to you.”

Realizing she had forgotten to turn on the oven, Buffy turned the dial up as far as it would go so that it would warm up quickly. She’d turn it down again in a minute or two.

“Yes, Dawn we asked him.” She decided to leave out the part about the lie detector.

“We? As in not just you,” Dawn humphed. “Well, what did you find out?”

“Not much. Nothing to prove conclusively that he is guilty or innocent…”

“But if there was, Giles would have locked him up right then. Giles WANTED to lock him up. If he didn’t, that must mean that Spike is innocent.”

“It’s not quite that simple, Dawn. I mean, what are the chances, three different girls in different parts of the world? Even if we can’t prove that he did it, it’s just too much to be coincidence. And then there are the paintings. There are dead and tortured peoples in his paintings, Dawn. That’s not normal.”

“For some people it is. Rodin, Bosch, Bruegel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Artists. Famous artists. They painted really disgusting things sometimes. No one called them murderers because of it.”

“Dawn, this is entirely different.”

“Is it?” Dawn narrowed her eyes at her sister. “YOU think he did it, don’t you? That’s why you can’t bring yourself to like him. You think he killed some girl who knows how long ago, and you let that belief color everything else you learn about him. Buffy, he’s not like that. I don’t know what else happened in China or wherever else he is supposed to have been, but I have faith in Spike. I know the man, and whatever the evidence, I don’t believe he is capable of such a thing.”

“He as much as admitted it. The girl in China…”

“You just said there was no proof.”

“Let me finish, Dawn. The girl in China, he admitted that he killed her, but he said it was self-defense. And admittedly, it probably was her weapon. But why she would attack him with a sword, he said he didn’t know. And the girl in New York, he said it was drug overdose. Giles had the autopsy results pulled, and it fits. Or at least it could. But the third girl, the most brutal of the three. He said he didn’t even remember being in Romania, let alone the girl who died there.”

“And Giles let it go?”

“Yes. Tara confirmed it. She’s known about the gaps in his memory for years. It’s one of the reasons he first started seeing her.” For whatever reason, she was still hesitant to share the whole polygraph experience with her sister.

“So, you still don’t know for sure. That’s what you’re saying. You believe the circumstantial evidence, even if you think that a jury wouldn’t.”

“I’m saying I’m not sure. Even before…before this incident at the party… Well, taken together, there’s too much there for me to trust him, Dawn. And if I’m not sure if I can trust him…”

“Then how can you love him?”

Dawn just smiled as Buffy looked shocked. “Please. Even I know what this is all really about. But you have it backwards, Buffy. You just have to decide - if you love him, you have to trust him. And if you don’t love him, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

On her way out of the kitchen, Dawn turned the oven back down to a reasonable temperature. Just because the cake was going to be inedible, didn’t mean it should be burned to a cinder. She figured that she’d have to be the one to take it out again in an hour too, her sister had some thinking to do. If she could save her any more disappointments in life she would, but Buffy was going to have to work this one out on her own.

A/N: The cake recipe is real. I am told it is a weight watchers trick, to replace the oil and egg that usually go in a cake with diet soda, and then replace the frosting with diet jello poured into (not on top of) the cake. Sounds really nasty to me. I haven’t tried it. If you’re brave (or foolish) enough to try it, let me know how it turns out.





You must login (register) to review.