CHAPTER THREE

The moon hung heavy and cold over London the night Spike returned to the house at 16 Queen's Gate Terrace. Settling the satchel containing his clothes, blood, and other sundry supplies against the iron railing, the vampire glanced at the stately Georgian townhouses proclaiming their numbers as 15 and 17. They shared a wall, but shadows shimmered over it--nothing a mortal or a demon would notice unless they knew it was already there, not to mention what it meant.

A woman named J.K. Rowling had informed the human world a few years ago of a little thing called a concealment spell, but not many knew how to do one. No vampire ever bothered with it, certainly, except for the vampire striding across the battered pavement.

Muttering a few words, Spike gestured at the shadows. They responded instantly, shoving apart numbers 15 and 17 Queen's Gate Terrace to make room for number 16. The shimmering became a tall, broad black hole until Spike muttered a few more words. His own personal townhouse then solidified, its windows shuttered and dark as they'd been over 150 years ago when he'd dusted his mum, after which he'd found a witch to set the spell.

Spike had come back once to check on the house after the war, to make sure it was still concealed and had suffered no damage in the years he'd been gone. It was the only place he had left to go, the only place to run now that Sunnydale was nothing but a huge, wet sinkhole, and Angel had taken on the senior partners in Los Angeles, but hadn't lived to tell the tale.

Drusilla was probably out there somewhere as Spike had never felt her dust, so there were two left of the line of Aurelius and perhaps more if Dru had decided to replace her defective black prince. Still, even as alone and lonely as Spike sometimes felt while trying to put some sort of unlife together in the aftermath of Sunnydale and Los Angeles, he had no desire to look up his sire. They'd been quit of each other a few years ago: better to let biting vampires lie, and non-bitey ones try to find out where--if--they fit in the world.

The door into the house opened easily enough, but Spike tripped over what appeared to be a mountain of mail on the other side. It stopped the door on its hinges, shoving itself beneath the doorstop and bunching up the entrance rug.

"Who the bloody hell is sending junk mail to an address that doesn't exist?" Spike snarled, kicking at the envelopes with his foot but making little progress to remove the mound of correspondence. Scowling at the mountain, he was puzzled to see that every envelope seemed to have the same handwriting.

"Buffy?" he breathed, recognizing the round scrawl.

Setting aside his satchel, he snatched up a handful of envelopes only to confirm they were indeed all from Buffy. Not only that, they seemed to be postmarked with the old Bath postmark--used before Spike had been turned--and this despite a lack of postage.

"What, did Red do another spell?" he grumbled. "Whatever, pet. You've got beautiful timing as always, I've got an electrician coming in less than ten minutes. Don't even know if the place is presentable."



Grabbing a wastebasket from the drawing room, Spike scooped up an armful of envelopes and dumped them inside. The basket soon filled, so he growled and had to grab the coal skuttle off of the hearth. After that had filled, Spike retrieved another wastebasket from the drawing room.

Setting aside everything, he finally managed to clear the front door. The electrician--a dour man in his fifties--arrived just as Spike finished.

"You the bloke wanting an estimate to update your gaslights?" he asked, without introduction.

"Yeah," said Spike. "They went in last century, but the house has been closed since 1880. Needs an all-electric conversion without damaging the paneling or the structure, basement to attic."

"Don't see too many of those nowadays."

"I'd imagine not."

Buffy's letters burned a hole in Spike's mind, and he would have liked nothing better than to tell the man to come back another day, but the vampire was planning on reclaiming his London home.

The gaslights had only been installed in the mid-50s, which meant they had less than thirty years of use before the stasis spell had been cast. It was a pity to rip out something so new, but the expense of natural gas alone was prohibitive of Spike keeping it, never mind the attention it would bring.

Thirty minutes later, Spike discovered the estimate wasn't quite as bad as he thought it would be. Still, he wanted two more opinions and told the man so.

"Ring me if you want me," was the electrician's benediction.

Spike made a beeline for Buffy's letters the minute the front door closed after the workman. Dumping the letters onto the drawing room rug where William had spent many a night curled up at his mother's feet, Spike then retrieved a bag of blood from the satchel still sitting in the front hall.

Need to see about getting the water turned on tomorrow, he decided. Plumbing's so new, I doubt it needs replacing.

He lit the candles in his mother's beloved candelabra with the new Zippo he'd purchased before leaving Los Angeles. A fire started on the hearth tried hard to banish any bad memories, but cold blood poured straight into a heavy tumbler from the china cabinet in the dining room did little to cheer the vampire. Draining the mug, he finally settled cross-legged on the floor before the mound of Buffy letters.

He took the time to sort them by postmark date and wondered at his patience. Must be the bloody awful poet in me.

By the time he'd gotten through the pile, Spike had worked out that Buffy had started writing a few months after he'd come back as a ghost to haunt the halls and basement of Wolfram & Hart. It looked like she'd been writing almost every day.

"You never talked this much when we were together," he muttered. "How much can you have to say to an evil, undead thing like me? Maybe you've just written the same thing over and over again, trying to get things out of your system?" He took a deep breath. "Right. I think I need some liquid courage before tackling this."

Spike took his time opening the bottle of whisky he'd bought on the way from the airport. Leaning against the drawing room's doorframe, he took a neat swallow and scowled at Buffy's letters.

"A few ground rules before we begin, pet." He gestured with the bottle. "First of all, I'm not writing you back. There'll be no contact between us, no matter what these missives of yours say. Got that? Good. Because you'll notice that I don't have a pen to scribble anything back at you. Don't have any stationary or envelopes on me. Reading what you've written is all I'm doing. Hope you understand, sure that you will because I had a great exit. Gave you the world, I did. Made it safe for the Immortal and your sis and you. I'm done making myself miserable by wanting what we both know I can never have. So there you are, a few ground rules."

It was only one rule, but it seemed to Spike that it mattered the most.

Slouching down on the floor once more, the vampire picked up the first letter and leaned back against the couch. He could remember playing soldiers on this floor. The rug had been different then, but the view was the same. The house was as quiet now as it had been then. He'd been seven and happy with his toy soldiers, winning all of his battles and worrying about nothing but that he not get too close to the fire.

Didn't heed that warning, did I? Got close to the Slayer, went up in flames, and look where it's gotten me. Back in my childhood home, a hundred-fifty years on. Little to show for it but a soddin' soul and a love that won't die. Hell, I can't even seem to die myself. Survived Sunnydale. Survived Angel's little self-centered apocalypse. Everyone else died, but not me. Gunn, Fred, Illyria, Wesley and Angel...all gone.

He fingered the envelope he held. "Awww, bleedin hell, stop brooding like the great poof, and just open the thing!"

Wait! said the William-git voice in his head. Don't tear it! Find the letter opener.

He grumbled, but went to his mother's desk and found what William wanted. Truth be told, Spike didn't want the seal broken or the parchment marred either. Removing the letter, he unfolded it carefully and braced himself for whatever might be inside.

"Dear Spike," she'd written. "I've never used a dip pen before...."

She prattled on about ink and blotches and the ills of Victorian penmanship so that the first thing Spike felt was acute disappointment. His disappointment turned to rage as he read, "I'm sure if you were here, you'd tell me anything that slows me down is a good thing."

"Pen and ink and...and PATIENCE?" the demon roared, shaking the paper. "That's what you've sent parchment and wax to me to talk about? What the fuck!"

His shouting was so loud, he was certain the people in the flat next door could hear it. Crinkling the letter in his fist, Spike took the stairs two at a time to burst into his old bedroom and light the gaslights with irritated haste. Stalking to William's rolltop desk, he yanked out a stack of blank paper.

"Where's the bloody pen and ink? I'll answer the stupid bint and tell her what she should have written. Talk to me about trivialities, will she? No surprise that the Slayer sends me a letter through bleeding time and space--a fucking miracle--and then she fucking wastes it!"

His temper had not cooled by the time he located a bottle of ink and filled his inkwell. He knew that couldn't write in a mood like this, he'd break the nib. Not that breaking a nib was the end of the world, but he wasn't certain where he could buy a new one.


"What am I thinking?" he said to the room at large. "It's the bleeding twenty-first century, don't need a nib pen anymore."

Tonight, however, he needed one, if for no other reason than they were the only writing instruments available in the house, and all of the shops were closed. Vampires don't normally need pens, is that my fault?

Sitting down at William's old desk, Spike shoved back the discordant familiarity he felt when he dipped the pen into the inkwell, for his hand remembered all too well to tame ink on paper. He wrote furiously for some minutes before shoving the letter into an envelope and addressing it back to the address Buffy had put on her letter.

"I'll send you off tomorrow," he told the envelope. "In the meantime tonight, I'll burn the entire lot of letter. Never read another one. Be better off, the both of us, after that."

Spike leaned the envelope up against a pideonhole crowded with ancient bills. He tapped Buffy's name, careful not to smudge the still-wet ink. "Can't seal this thing, have to get the post office to tape it shut for me. Now, for the burning time."

Spike cleared all of the old ashes from the fireplace opposite the bed and lit a new fire, only to halt with Buffy's letter in his hand as the flames licked hungrily at the dry wood.

You really should read the entire letter before destroying it, the voice of the poet within urged.

"Sod off. Last thing I need to read is more of her--"

You'll always wonder what she wrote if you don't.

"Fine," Spike growled, knowing that the problem with the inner poet was that the sensitive wanker was usually right. "But don't blame me if she hurts you so much that you get sniffly and start crying. Won't get you anywhere if that happens. I'm still burning the lot."

Swinging back around to the desk, Spike sprawled in its chair to finish reading the Slayer's letter.

"...you died and--oh God, Spike, I miss you so much. You died and I'll never hear your voice again. I can write all these words to you, but you'll never see them or know anything about how I feel about you....

"...I know you didn't believe me down in the hellmouth when I told you that I love you. I can't blame you for that because of the way I treated you, but I still miss you so much, it hurts. Every minute and every time I breathe, it hurts so much that you're gone. I miss you like I miss Mom, only worse. How is that even possible?

"...I wish you could know how I feel now. How much I love you, and how much I miss you. You didn't believe me when I told you I love you. Stupid vampire."



"She hurts because I left her?"

There. You see? The poet smirked. It's not all triviality, she is actually talking to us. Since she never knew we'd see her letter, we can be assured that what she has written is what is truly in her heart. Satisfied, the poet receded.

Spike read the letter again to make sure her words didn't change. Smoothing the parchment on the desk, he felt sorry he had crinkled it so badly.

"That thing I wrote to her earlier," he muttered. "That's the thing should be burned."

He reached for the envelope, only to discover it was no longer propped up where he'd left it. A quick search yielded nothing. Gathering up Buffy's letter, he read again, 'I wish you could get this and write back to me, because that would mean you were still alive and we could talk about...what I never would talk about before.'

"I wish..." he echoed. She wished and it's bloody well come true, hasn't it? Her letters are all here. But I didn't wait and read this thing through, did I? Spike shook the pages. "Shot off my mouth is what I did, and now--" He stared at the empty pigeonhole. "Oh, God. What have I done?"