The women were for doing the spell right there in Giles' study, where Willow had performed the mind-probe the day before. But when Spike insisted that this time, with real transformative magic being performed, they'd better chain him up, Giles quietly agreed, and would brook no arguments.

So here they were in the bowels of the castle, the locks-ups. Not much used, because Buffy was never about taking prisoners. But they had a handful of cells, all fronted by heavy, close-set bars.

"I'm not putting shackles on you," she said, shutting the door on him, softly so it didn't clang. "When this is over, in a few minutes, I'll let you out."

She'd promised herself that she wasn't going to do or say anything embarrassing in front of Giles and Willow, but at the last moment she couldn't resist kissing him through the bars, and really, for all the times she'd seen Willow, if not Giles, kiss people, wasn't she entitled?

Spike went and sat on the shelf-bed. "This all right, Willow? Or need me closer?"

Willow was lighting the candles she'd set out on a small low folding table, and unpacking little shallow bowls of herbs from a tote bag, deploying them amidst the candles. Giles stood to one side, arms folded, looking rather far-off, a man day-dreaming at a bus-stop. Buffy had wrapped a hand around a bar on the cell opposite, as if she needed to be anchored in place.

Willow said, "Right there is fine." She was almost ruthlessly calm, and smelled already of magic. Spike could feel it stirring inside her, full of power like a topped-up battery.

He folded his hands in his lap. He'd fed on two pints of the finest hog, had a hot shower, and was ready as he'd ever be for having himself ensorcelled. Willow had explained, up in Giles' study, how she'd chosen the particular spell, out of the many that effected memory. She'd given a right scholarly little dissertation on its origin and variations, how it worked, and why she felt it was the best one to start—and she hoped—end with. An elegant speech he'd stopped listening to fifteen seconds in and which he knew Buffy couldn't hear either.

Willow lit the final candle. The air smelled of burning sage and some other herbs he couldn't identify, of cold dank stone, and Buffy's subdued anxiety. As Willow began to chant in Sumerian, Spike closed his eyes.




This's how you do me, bitch? This is how you do me?

His voice echoing over and over, no place she could run to escape it, it filled her head even back in Willow's study, five levels above the dungeon where they'd left him.

It was all he would say. Over and over. Shouting it. Whispering it. Looking out through the bars at her, ignoring Giles and Willow. Looking at her out of eyes like black holes.

Not answering any of their questions. Not responding to anything they said. He'd fanged out a couple of times, snarling, snapping, but not crazy like before. No throwing himself against the bars like a goaded animal. Just This's is how you do me?, and that stare.

They'd left him there, two slayers posted outside the outer doors at either end, just in case. Left him there because after a while it made them all feel like idiots, like charlatans, trying to figure out what had happened—what had gone wrong, right there in front of him and his burning eyes.

Willow said, "He's still compos mentis. If—"

"You don't know that."

"He was talking in complete sentences, Buffy."

"One sentence. One complete sentence." She kept having to uncurl her hands; fists kept forming, wanting something to smash, to undo this rotten scenario.

"He didn't seem to be in pain. Physical pain, I mean." Willow wasn't looking at her, Buffy realized. She was looking everywhere else. She was shuffling papers, flipping through books, like someone at an IRS audit whose documents weren't quite in order.

"We don't even know if he's still Spike."

"He certainly sounded like Spike," Giles said. "Let's not make this out worse than it is."

"I warned you that it might not work the first time," Willow said. "We just have to regroup. There are other things I can try."

"You don't even know what you did."

"I can go back into his mind for another look. And then—"

"No. I don't want you to do that."

"Buffy, I'll have to, if—"

"I knew this was a terrible idea! Okay, okay." Uncurling the fists. "I'm sorry. Calm now. Look, I'm going to go back down there and talk to him. Maybe ... maybe I can get something more out of him, that might buy us a vowel."

Giles began, "We can—"

"No we. I'm going to talk to him alone. After all, it was to me he was talking. Maybe he'll have more to say if there's no one else around."



He paced it off. Ten steps square. Ten steps square. Ten steps square. Deep underground, he could nose that. The other cells empty. Faint stink of demons long gone. Air clammy, dusty, unpeopled, old. Nothing like the Initiative, but if it didn't reek of those army brats, it certainly felt like their work. Who else could clap him in a cell with no memory of how he'd been snatched, how he'd got here?

Slayer and her people in league with them, like he'd always known. Made sense really. It all made sense, except ... he didn't know why. Why they'd bung him into another prison. Bit extreme really, for what he'd done.

Far off, a clanging.

Then footsteps, coming closer. Another clang. The door at the end of the cell block, out of his line of sight. Shut with another metal echo, and he felt her there. The slayer. Not coming closer, just standing inside, breathing.

"Why're you doin' me like this?"

His shout echoed through the cells, against the stones. Then her steps started up. She came into view.

Looking pale, tentative, then quickly going steely. Girl he knew, her shining eyes, shining hoops at her ears. Staring at him like she did, like he was an affront to nature. All he'd done was try to help her. Show her what she needed to see.

"What did I do to you, Spike?"

Oh, games. We were playin' games. Twenty questions, round two. She'd left Red and Rupes out of it this time, but it was going to be the same thing, asking him a lot of nonsense, the three of them dithering more and more the less he said. He knew how to play. Had learned a thing or two from them, wasn't going to run his mouth for no purpose.

She leaned against the bars of the opposite cell, fingers hooked in the front pocket of her jeans. Eyeing him. "Do you know who I am?"

Bloody hell. This could get boring in a hurry. "Slayer. Always thought Buffy was the stupidest name out."

She slipped then. The steely control gave way, her eyes opening, lips parting. "Spike—you are back—"

Back? Back from where? He'd been minding his own business in his crypt with a nice bottle of filched port, and then all of a sudden he was here locked down tighter than a gnat's arsehole.

She started towards him, then caught herself. "Why are you angry at me?"

Duh. He sketched a rude gesture at the bars that confined him.

"If you'll talk to me, I'll let you out."

Oh, no fear.

"I don't like seeing you locked up. But I need to know what happened."

"Like you don't know all about it. I'm the one in the bloody dark."

"In the dark about what?"

"Oh bloody hell! So I showed up soldier-boy for the suckjob-john he was clearly born to be! Did it for your own damn good. An' you pay me back by slammin' me into some subterranean cell, an' messing up my head!"

She gave him the hub-cap eyes treatment. "You .... Are you talking about Riley?"

"No, I'm talking about Marco bloody Polo."

"You ... you think you're here because you took me to that vampire whorehouse?"

Double-duh.

"What do you mean, that I messed up your head?"

"Must've done somethin' to my chip. Made it so it hurts all the time."

"Your head aches?"

"Oh, that an unintended side-effect? Don't pretend to look so bleedin' concerned!"

"Is it really bad?"

"Yeah. Not like if I was to have the satisfaction of stovin' your pert little face in, but ... yeah. Aches like a bloody bitch, you really want to know."

"I'm sorry. Is that all you meant, about messing with your head? Or is there something else?"

"Look, what's this in aid of, Slayer? This isn't your usual way of goin' bout things."

"Spike, what year is it?"

"You mad?"

"Please just tell me."

"How should I bloody know? Dunno how much time I've lost. Feels like a lot, feels like ... dunno what .... What did you do to me? How'd you get me here? You look different. Older. Makes no sense."

"What year was it when you took me to see Riley in that place?"

"Two thousand. Everywhere, even up your nose."

He saw how carefully she didn't react to this, which was another big tip-off right there. It ought to be two thousand, and it wasn't. That explained why she looked different, but ....

The whole time they talked, the pain was getting worse and worse. When he'd first opened his eyes on the cell, it was just a headache, the kind you'd have expect to have after a bad drunk, and he'd been in the middle of a real stinker of one, last he could recall. But now it was starting to feel like they'd clapped a metal band around his cranium and were tightening it bit by bit.

"Please answer my question. Is there anything else besides the headache, that makes you say we messed with your head?" Little by little, she drifted closer. Then she was right there, and her fingers hooked onto the crossbar. Pink nail polish. She smelled like coffee and agitation and fucking.

God, she did his head in. He wanted to touch those fingers. Wanted to kiss the little tips and taste the salt of her palm. He'd told Riley he envied him, and goddamn it he did, every single second. Slayer broke the soldier-boy's heart, but what Spike wouldn't give to have even that much of her attention, to be hurt by her that way. Trampled 'neath her neat little feet.

"Spike? You can tell me."

"Something's been at my head. Don't know how. But here I am, an' you lot have done it."

She met his eyes then, looked at him for a long time, without any particular expression, but more intently than she'd ever done before. "Spike. What's your real name?"

"What?"

"Where are you from? London, we know that, but where? What part? What street?"

What the devil was she playing at now? His name? His street? Why not rank and serial number? He didn't know those, and he didn't know about any streets either. Not that he was going to let on.

"You don't know, do you? What's your girl's name?" Buffy asked.

"Don't have a girl's name, I'm a man. I'm Spike."

The corner of her mouth ticced, a laugh repressed. He'd show her, laughing at him—

Before he could snatch at her fingers, she withdrew them, stepped back. "You misunderstood. I meant—the name of your girlfriend. The one you came to town with."

"You're tryin' to trick me. Not goin' along with it."

"No trick. I'm trying to—look, of course you don't believe me—but I'm trying to help you. I need to situate you, so .... Can you tell me her name?"

"Don't have a girl. No girl. You know that."

"But you did."

"Did I?"

"Don't you know?"

"Bugger this for a game of soldiers!" He threw himself on the bunk. His head felt enormous, throbbing, and she was dicking him about, teasing, fucking with him.

"You don't remember Drusilla?" Buffy said.

Drusilla? Where'd she come up with a cockamamie name like that to throw at him?

"But you recognize me. You recognized Willow and Giles. You remember Riley."

"Well, yeah."

"When did you come to my town, Spike?"

"To Sunnyhell?"

"You know that!"

"Course I do. Always ... guess I've always been here. If that's where we still are." The pain was getting worse. He thought he might hurl. Didn't want her to see that. Mustn't come across as weak.

"You were never anywhere else?"

"Bloody hell, quit questionin' me!"

She came back then, right up to the bars. Her lips in a pout. He'd have liked to bite them off, except he was feeling too sick, and the prospect of more pain if the chip fired just made it worse.

"Beetle off, will you? Leave me be."

"I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be like this." Then she stepped away, but in a moment she was back, pushing something through a little hatch at the bottom of the cell door.

A thermos. "It's warmed up just how you like it. I'll go get something for your headache, I'll be back in a little while. And you won't be locked up in here very much longer, I promise."

"What're you playin' at?"

"It's all right Spike, the blood isn't doctored. It's just pig blood, it won't hurt you. It might help you feel better, if you feed."

"You. Look like her—almost exactly. Smell like her, identical. But clearly you're not her. What's your game?"

She just shook her head, and then she was walking away.

He dashed a fist against the bars. "This's how you do me, bitch?"