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Business as usual by Lilachigh
 
Chp 31 A Purrfect Night
 
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Business as Usual

Chapter 31
A Purrfect Night


The night air was warm, almost tropical: a slight breeze coasted through the trees, hardly moving the leaves. Scent from the clusters of flowering shrubs hung heavily in the air but for once, Agnes Pringle was not enjoying her walk up the main street towards her Old Willow Tree Tea Shoppe.

She would be late opening this evening but – she frowned and forced herself not to change face - some things came before money and profit. Some things were far more important. As Certain People should realise.

In her arms she was holding a large wicker basket.

“Agnes – wait. Slow down!” Spike’s voice rang out behind her, but Agnes’s steps never faltered. She heard the heavy ring of his boots on the road, the creak of his long coat, then he was there at her side, but she refused to look at him.

“Aggie – I don’t understand why you’re so miffed. I said I’d get you a kitten – and I did! A pretty white one.” He dodged around and walked backwards in front of her, looking puzzled.

Agnes stood still and drew herself up to her full height, the basket held fiercely against her chest. What she had seen tonight had seared her very – well, to be fair, she didn’t have a soul, but the place where her soul had once been hurt a lot. She glared at Spike who tried hard not to smile at being confronted with five foot two inches of English womanhood with a cause.

“You were playing poker, Spike! Not only were you gambling, which is the plaything of the devil, but these poor, poor creatures were being used instead of money.” Her grip on the wicker basket tightened as she flashed into game face and the occupants inside squeaked.

“We always use kittens,” Spike said, who’d never really understood or learnt the lesson of when you are in a hole, stop digging. “Even when humans play, they call the money in the centre of the table the “kitty”. Why do you reckon they do that if the game wasn’t supposed to be played with kittens?”

“I neither know nor care about what the Unturned do when practising their unspeakable habits. I am, however, deeply disappointed that you would be involved. What happens to the poor kitties when you have finished your game? What happens – ” she took a deep breath she didn’t need – “when they grow up?”

The words “snack before bedtime” hovered on Spike’s lips, but the same deep instinct for survival that had kept him unstaked for so long prevented him for uttering them.

“We let them go,” he said smoothly and realised, with a flash of horror that childishly, he had crossed his fingers behind his back so that the lie wasn’t really a lie. There, in his mind, was a picture of the namby-pamby William he had once been, standing in front of a teacher at his dame school, insisting he had not spilt the ink over the floor when the black marks were heavy on his fingers.

Spike sighed. Sometimes he wondered if being Agnes Pringle’s friend was good for his street cred.

“I do hope that is so, Spike,” Agnes said quietly, shaking her head more in sorrow than in anger. “But just to be on the safe side, I will release these kittens myself.”

“But you will keep the white one, won’t you? Dawn will love it.”

Agnes’s face softened and she continued on her way to the tearooms. “Why don’t you give her a kitten as well? To keep at home. It’s sad if she just has to share mine.”

Spike absently took the wicker basket from her. She had carried it a long way and it was no lightweight. “Would love to, Aggie, but when I suggested it, Willow insisted they already had a cat, although I never see it around.”

“Willow is the red-headed girl, isn’t she? The witch?”

Spike nodded gloomily. “That’s the one. She’s moved in to look after Dawn.” His voice softened. “To be fair, she’s brought Tara with her. I like Tara. She’s Willow’s – ” he hesitated. Agnes would probably be shocked if he said partner – “best friend. She’s all right is Tara. Cares for Dawn really well. Worries about her, like I do. Willow – well, sometimes I get the feeling that she doesn’t like Niblet.”

They had reached the tearoom and Spike handed the basket back to Agnes who took it thoughtfully. She’d met plenty of girls like Willow before. Not witches, of course. Winchester didn’t have too many of those, although there had been one …. “Willow was the Slayer’s friend, wasn’t she?”

Spike frowned. “Yes. Willow, Buffy and Xander. Best mates at school and all that rot. There was a cracking girl called Cordelia who hung out with them too, but she had the sense to get out of Sunnydale. Went to L.A.” His thoughts flashed back to a day a couple of years before when he had made his last visit to L.A. “Anyway, Buffy’s mates called themselves the Scoobies. Bloody silly name.”

“I’m sure Willow was devastated when the Slayer died – ” Agnes paused as the vampire in front of her flinched as the truth rang home once again – “but perhaps now, because she is a witch, she finally finds herself the most important person in their little group. And that can be a heady experience.”

Spike nodded. “Makes sense. Not much fun always being the bridesmaid and never the poxy bride. But why would that make her dislike Dawn?”

Agnes bit her lip and ran her finger up and down the wicker bars, listening to the purrs inside the basket. She wasn’t going to tell Spike but she quite understood the relationship between Willow and Tara! Goodness me, she had gone to an all girls boarding school – not a very good one, admittedly - and had seen crushes and ‘friendships’ at close hand.

She could try and explain to Spike that every time Tara showed Dawn any affection, Willow felt jealous because she wanted all her attention, all the time. But it was late and she didn’t feel Spike, being male, would ever fully understand. Friendship was a very powerful emotion. Spike was her friend, but Agnes knew that next to the Slayer and Dawn Summers, she came in a very poor third.

“Dawn reminds Willow all the time that she is only in charge by default,” she said slowly, wearily. “Like pushing your tongue against a loose tooth to see if it still hurts. She’s living in the Slayer’s house, looking after the Slayer’s sister, and, for all I know, trying to do things the Slayer would have done. But that’s someone else’s life she’s leading, isn’t it? Not hers. That’s - worrying.”

Spike ran his fingers through his hair. He didn’t want to think about Buffy tonight, well, not until he was home in his crypt with a whisky bottle at hand. But at least Agnes had forgotten about the sodding kittens for a while.

Agnes sighed. “I must open the shop. It’s way past midnight and I can see several customers lurking. I’ve promised devils on horseback to a party of vampires tonight and I still have to stuff the prunes with cheese, wrap them in bacon and see if I have enough hot sauce to go round. So I will wish you a very good night, Spike.”

“Night, Aggie.”

He waited across the street as she went inside, turned the Closed sign to Open and switched on the lights. Agnes would never know that he often stood there in the small hours of the morning, when he knew Dawn was safe in bed, watching to make sure none of the bigger, rowdier demons decided to walk out without paying, or use the Willow Tree as their personal battle-ground.

Inside the tearoom, Agnes hurried into her bedroom and placed the wicker basket on the floor. Lifting the lid, she smiled in pure pleasure as an explosion black and white, tabby and tortoiseshell hurtled round the room. She shut the door on them and hurried to the kitchen. As soon as she had a moment, she would pour them some milk. There would be a mess by morning, but nothing she couldn’t clear up.

But as Agnes served her impatient customers, baked savouries and worried about Spike’s dreadful habits, she realised she was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. The hairs on the back of her neck were flickering and that always meant there was an Unturned around somewhere. Somebody was hiding in her tearoom, watching her.


tbc
















 
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