Chapter 28
The sun was just setting, the last tendrils of light sweeping across the manicured lawns of the mansions littering the Beverly Hills. Angelus loved his luxuries, Eline thought, loved flirting with the bored housewives desperately clinging to their youth, seducing the spoilt girls that thought they had everything. He loved taking it away. In a way, he was like a child. An evil, overgrown child, a center of his own universe who believed nothing could touch him.
“Your head is full of clouds,” Drusilla’s voice drifted as she sank down on the king sized bed next to her, the raven ink of Dru’s hair spilling over the golden sheets.
“And you… have blood on your lips,” Eline said, the pad of her thumb brushing over Dru’s lower lip to wipe away the scarlet smear. “It’s not completely dark outside yet. You haven’t been out have, you?”
“Hmm… stars are always in the sky even if you can’t see them. They’re always there, quiet, so quiet… Waiting their turn.” Her eyes fluttered closed as Eline teased a long strand of hair away from Dru’s cheek.
“Like us?”
“Shh,” Dru whispered and shifted closer. “The church bells are not ready to ring yet.”
Eline sighed, let Dru wrap herself around her smaller body. Yin to her yang, dark hair merging with pale as they embraced. One an adult eternally locked within her thirteen-year-old shell, the other an eternal child in her mind. Discarded toys Angelus couldn’t care less about. And why would he, when he’d already broken them both?
“When?” Eline asked, her voice reverberating with impatience that was never a step too far.
“William bought me a Christmas present. He thought I didn’t know.” She giggled, and Eline frowned over the sudden change of subject. “But I did. He bought it because he knew it was my heart’s desire. Little butterflies… when I would look at it in the shop window they would shimmer, tiny wings fluttering like fairies skewered by a toothpick, struggling to get free. Trapped and beautiful.” Dru’s voice trailed off as she curled her hand against her chest, her eyes deep and dark like a well spilling over with dirty rain.
“Why are you telling me this?” Eline couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy at the mention of her twin brother. Then a pang of regret because they both knew Dru never got to wear the necklace.
“Because if we don’t, we’ll get strung up too. Insides turning out.”
The protest was ready to rise to her lips but Eline held it back, knowing to trust that Dru’s eyes were open to the truths beyond reality.
“The girl is so shiny, don’t you think, sweet Eline? Like a petal trapped between rocks?”
“I don’t care. I just want to snap her neck.” Just to see William hurt, to feel a glimpse of it through him. There was a connection between them, one that he’d never be able to sever. They were joined in blood, two halves of the same mold. When he hurt, she hurt. And it felt better than not feeling anything at all.
“You shan’t. She’s the key to our lock,” Dru said in an insistent voice. “He will never see it coming.”
*******
It had been three weeks since Spike had left and the time had staggered drunkenly from January to February. Buffy wasn’t thinking of him at all. Nope. And she definitely wasn’t avoiding his house for the memories that clung to the walls like sticky molasses. She’d slipped in once. Just to look for her necklace. Even though she didn’t want to wear it ever again, she’d needed to find out whether touching it would stir up some kind of wiggy response she may have not noticed before the whole magic-is-real wackiness ensued.
She’d ransacked the entire living room, even forced herself to go through his bedroom, convincing herself that seeing the thin layer of dust coating the furniture made her feel nothing at all.
It had been for naught anyway.
The necklace was gone.
As she sat on her bed, her fingers hovering over her sketchbook, she wondered why he would have taken it.
God, she hated him. Even gone, the ghost of his presence crouched in her thoughts.
The core of her trembled, like one of those ancient towers tilting off its axis, as she flipped the sketchbook open and scanned the pages again. The face of a girl with dazed, hollow eyes stared back at her. Raven hair curled around the girl’s porcelain cheek, deep cracks running through her flesh as though she was a crumbling statue. The metaphor behind it was a subconscious kind of knowledge. One that Buffy didn’t feel comfortable contemplating in depth.
That horrible, self-centered part of her wanted to feel petty jealousy she had no right to feel in the first place. Yet it was impossible to let that take her over when she had glimpsed those flashes. Had felt the love Spike harbored for this girl as though it were Buffy’s own. She suspected he’d never love anyone the same way again. Not that she’d ever want anything from him. Least of all love. He was gone and she didn’t give a damn.
Gnashing her teeth, Buffy jumped off the bed. The sketchbook tumbled off her lap and to the floor and she pointedly ignored the girl haunting the worn pages. Everything about this was wrong. Her conscience recoiled, insisting she wasn’t supposed to be the voyeur to his existence. She didn’t want to see glimpses of secrets he’d never given her the key to unlock.
Most of the time, she managed to block it out, to build a wall holding the tide back. Yet she’d already seen more than she had any right to. Yet she wondered whether she sometimes didn’t let the stream trickle through deliberately.
She saw the way his family died. The way he longed to say ‘I love you’ to the girl from her sketches but forced himself to choke the words back because he’d been forbidden. The day he’d lost the love of his life.
Buffy kicked the sketchbook under her bed, her chest burning with a myriad of conflicting emotions. No more peeking. No more thinking of him at all.
All of a sudden, the idleness of sitting around made her skin itch as though the walls were closing in on her. In less than five minutes, Buffy bundled up and slipped into her boots before racing down the stairs and out of the house.
*******
Buffy’s knuckles rapped on the smooth mahogany of Anya’s front door. Enough of avoidance. Every time Buffy would try to approach her, Anya would manage to disappear. Buffy was starting to suspect it was on purpose.
The door finally swung open and suddenly she hesitated, unsure of what to say.
“Buffy.”
“That would be me,” she said with a small shrug. “Can I come in?”
Anya glanced over her shoulder, her brows meeting in the middle. “I’m not sur—”
Aware she was being more than rude, Buffy pushed past Anya into the house. Nice décor. Very minimalistic and economical. “You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?” Okay, so apparently subtlety was not on the table today.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anya closed the door and looked so convincing Buffy faltered. Faltered but persisted.
“Yes, you have. Look, I know I reacted badly after… well, you know—”
“Seeing my demon face?”
“Yes.”
“So why are you here anyway? I thought avoiding people was a sign of not wanting to talk to them,” Anya tossed over her shoulder as she made her way deeper into the open space of vast living room furnished in whites and greys. “You can go now.”
“No,” Buffy said, pursing her lips as she followed Anya. Buffy was a dog with a bone and she wasn’t ready to let go. “I just want to talk to you.”
Anya’s gaze flickered to her, her muscles tensing just for a barest second. Finally, she sank down on a white leather sofa with a dramatic sigh. “Well, are you going to stand there and glare at me or are you going to sit down?”
With a flash of a smile, Buffy chose option number two.
*******
“I’m a what now?”
Anya started. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, yes you did! You said—”
“Oh, whore!” Anya burst out, shocking Buffy into silence.
“Um, excuse me?”
“Not you,” followed by impatient cluck of Anya’s tongue. “Me.”
Well, what was she supposed to say to that? “Uh… That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I mean, it’s not like you’re anti sexual frolicking.” Wait. “I can’t believe I just said sexual frolicking out loud.”
“I didn’t mean it literally,” Anya said. “Although I do think prostitution should be made legal. Then we could tax them.”
Yay. A state where prostitutes ran legitimate businesses and moral quandaries were thrown into the already polluted air. It was probably a good thing the President wasn’t a demon. He wasn’t, was he? “Is our president a demon?”
“Not that I know of. But a lot of his lackeys are.”
Oh, joy. “I regret asking now.”
Anya shrugged.
Was everyone a demon these days? Was she? “So are you going to tell me why you called me a … a Potential? A potential what? Ballerina? Truck driver? Elvis impersonator?” This was making sense that was not. She was just Buffy.
“Well, you’d look good in a black wig—”
“Anya!”
“Fine.” Anya threw her hands up in the air in a show of exasperation. “God, you need to loosen up.”
Buffy looked at her expectantly. “So?”
“So?” Anya blinked. “Oh! I forgot to offer you a customary beverage. Want some coffee? I bought this brilliant little machine that makes the most amazing macchiato—”
“Anya, would you please—” Buffy halted. “Macchiato?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had one. It’s delicious. Much better than your regular black coffee.”
“I like black coffee,” Buffy said with a pout then remembered she was supposed to be getting answers instead of fancy shmancy coffee concoctions. “So what about the Poten—”
“I’m going to make the coffee.” Anya rose and hurried into the kitchen, so Buffy jumped up and wandered after her.
“Anya, please, just tell me!”
Anya’s hands stilled on the coffee machine, her shoulders hunched, warding off unwanted truths.
“You know, I shouldn’t have let it slip in the first place.”
“Well, you did and now I want to know. Because this is me being completely clueless. And I hate being the queen of unclue!”
“Maybe we should just forget I told you at all.” She still wouldn’t look at her.
“No. I want the truth. Of all people, I’d have thought I could trust you to be honest with me.”
Anya’s shoulders sagged as though the fight had gone out of her. Although Buffy wanted to let her feelings get in the way and tell Anya she didn’t need to tell her anything more, the need to learn the truth was much stronger.
After a moment of silence, Anya said, “Potential Slayer.”
Huh? “Potential Layer?” That sounded a bit skanky.
Anya snorted and punched the tiny buttons on the machine with skilled precision. “For a virgin, you seem to be really fixated on the sex thing. Not that I blame you.”
Buffy’s cheeks turned crimson.
“But no, I said Slayer with an S.”
“Now everything’s so much clearer!” Buffy said with exaggerated perkiness.
“See? I knew you’d… wait, are you being sarcastic?” Anya spun around, regarding her as the machine gurgled and whined.
“Sorry.” Buffy shrugged. “So, what’s a slayer again?”
*******
“The big ponce is in LA.” Spike strutted into Rupert’s office, earning an irritated sigh from the older man.
“Have you ever heard of knocking?”
Spike sprawled in an opposite chair. “If you were watching porn, you should have put a sock on your doorknob.”
Giles rolled his eyes. “Why would I watch porn? I’ve got a beautiful wife whom I can—”
“Shag six ways to Sunday anytime you wish?” Spike smirked. “You kinky old sod.”
“I was going to say ‘look at’.”
“Sure you were.”
Flustered, Giles pushed the glasses further up his nose. “So, about the necklace you gave me.”
Spike arched his eyebrow but let the abrupt subject change go. Not like he wanted the down low on Rupert and Joyce’s bumping of the uglies. “So, you got any news on that?”
“I haven’t found it in any of my books. I scanned it for residual magic but it just doesn’t work. There isn’t anything. Are you sure it was the trigger for breaking the memory wipe?”
“Well since I believe in coincidences about as much as I believe in vegetarian vamps, I’d say it had something to do with it.”
“All right. I’ll give it another go, but you might be disappointed.”
His gut told him there was something up with that Liz Taylor trinket and so far his gut had led him out of one trouble too many. “That’s all I can ask for, Rupes.”
“Please do refrain from calling me that.” Giles gave him a reprimanding glance that made Spike smirk. “There was another matter I wanted to speak to you about.”
“Yeah?”
“Angelus. Do you have any news?”
Spike’s half-smile slid off like melted wax. “Yeah, the ponce is living it up in LA. Heard he bagged himself another one. He’s getting closer, Giles.”
“I know.” Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m almost finished with the translation. The buggering script is written in a dialect of Canaanite I’m not quite familiar with.”
“Such language.” Spike shook his head in mock disappointment then leaned over in his chair to look Rupert straight in the eyes. “How long do you think it will take? I need to find that weapon.”
“Give me a month.”
Spike gripped the arms of the armchair. “What if we don’t have that long?”
Giles collapsed back into his armchair with a sigh. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“I know,” he acquiesced. “But it might not be good enough.”
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Your eyes are not deceiving you. I'm updating! Finally! Even though I'm working on another essay while I'm doing so. Can't the lecturers understand that they're keeping me away from my addiction?? How rude.
Previously: We found out that Anya is supposed to kill Buffy but we're not sure why. Also, Spike's determination crumbles when faced with diabetes inducing treats.
Betad by the swift All4Spike. She's made of win!
Previously: We found out that Anya is supposed to kill Buffy but we're not sure why. Also, Spike's determination crumbles when faced with diabetes inducing treats.
Betad by the swift All4Spike. She's made of win!
Chapter End Notes:
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