Chapter Forty-Six




Dawn left Spike’s crypt just after daybreak. Overcome by a violent fit of awkwardness, neither of them had spoken after he disentangled himself from her arms; they hadn’t even said goodbye when she left. She felt uneasy walking away, but she knew it was what he wanted. Clearly, he felt embarrassed for breaking down in front of her, and when he moved from the sofa to where she had placed his blood on top of the sarcophagus, he carefully avoided her eyes. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, that she didn’t think any less of him for being so upset. If anything, she thought better of him, because, in a way, it proved her point to Buffy: he was capable of higher emotions, and he had changed. Still, she knew he wouldn’t believe her if she told him; even if he did, he wouldn’t want to hear it. The greatest kindness she could do for him, at this point, was to get the heck out of Dodge and pretend the whole thing had never happened. So, after a silent and very self-conscious pat on his back, she had slipped out the crypt’s broken door.

The latter worried her a bit. The demon population of Sunnydale being what it was, didn’t the lack of a door leave him defenseless to invasion? Then again, it wasn’t as if the door had a lock, and even if it had, it wasn’t like Spike would actually use it. Dawn figured that as long as he was careful to avoid letting anyone to see he was wounded, he would probably manage all right; she certainly wasn’t going to humiliate him further by suggesting otherwise. At any rate, she had other things on her mind.

What had happened between him and Buffy? The question kept circling her mind, as irritating and insistent as a mosquito. Something did happen; of that much, she was positive. And she was equally positive that she had all the clues she needed to solve the mystery, although she couldn’t quite put them together to find her answer. But there were so many odd things Spike had said, things about Buffy’s clothes and his certainty of time-travel being involved…the persistent way he kept needling her to say, yet again, that Buffy hadn’t wanted to return. And the jealousy with Angel, the enraged look in Spike’s eyes at the mere mention of him that wasn’t just jealousy, or rivalry. In fact, the look was almost proprietary, like the wrath of a wronged lover.

Of course, that was silly.

Wasn’t it?

Dawn gnawed on her lip as she crossed the lush green carpet of cemetery grass, weaving through headstones without any clear destination in mind. Angel’s ridiculous attempt at friendly banter had kept her from listening in on Buffy’s conversation with Spike, as she would have liked to do. So, she had no idea what was said out on the lawn that night. However, the mere fact that they had talked—that Buffy had defended him when Angel hurt him—spoke of some sudden change. Before she had gone away, Buffy—still angry with him for his (admittedly) violent and completely inappropriate attempt at wooing her—had been threatening to stake him herself. Although she’d never followed through with that threat, she had clearly gone out of her way to avoid him from then on. So, the simple fact that she had remained out on the back lawn seemed to Dawn to be quite significant. Not to mention the stricken look on Buffy’s face afterward. Something had happened between them, and no one was willing to talk about it; but Dawn was determined to find out what it was. She was positive that if she only knew what had gone wrong, then she could help them fix things.

She cut a sharp right across the cemetery, her strides becoming quick and purposeful as she headed through the side gates. Two thoughts kept coming back to her as she walked. The first was the mark on Buffy’s chest, a mark that looked almost like a bruise but that decidedly was not one. To put it bluntly: a hickey. The other was Spike’s response to her question about Buffy’s dress. It looked late Victorian. He’d seemed so troubled when he said it, his voice unnaturally soft and broken. Then, later, there was his insistence that her disappearance had nothing to do with dimension hopping and everything to do with time-travel. They bloody are wrong, he’d said about Buffy’s friends. Dawn thought so too, but how did Spike come by his conviction? How could he be so certain unless—

Unless, he knew.

Dawn had no idea what year Spike was turned; it had hardly seemed important before. She wasn’t sure that it was important now. Buffy could just as easily have met him after he was turned. But there was no chance that a meeting like that would have gone well. Spike was with Drusilla back then, and he wouldn’t have been interested in Buffy. She wouldn’t have been interested in him, either. Not for anything besides a good staking, which she would have to know wouldn’t be a good idea. Not to mention, that look in Spike’s eyes when Buffy came back, all the pain that her return seemed to be bringing him. Why would it bring him pain, unless he and Buffy had shared something pleasant in the way back when? It wouldn’t have. Yet, there was no way Buffy would have given him the opportunity for anything pleasant while he was a vampire. None at all.

Dawn had a vague notion that Giles kept all his Watcher’s books at the Magic Box now. He used to keep them at his house, but after he bought the magic shop, he started locking them in the store safe. It seemed safer, and that was where he, Buffy, and the others spent most of their time anyway, so it made sense. It also made things convenient for everyone involved.

And Dawn was now involved.

It was only six-thirty, and the Magic Box didn’t open until nine, so Dawn knew she had plenty of time to get there. Eager for answers, she hurried anyway, and drew up at the building’s back door before the sun was at its full height in the sky. She felt a twinge of shame even as she jimmied the deadbolt. This was not because of any moral qualms about breaking and entering, but rather because it seemed like a betrayal of Spike. Twice, he had said that he wasn’t ready to tell her what had happened. Didn’t that insinuate he wasn’t ready for her to know? Her shirt was streaked with blood and damp with tears; she didn’t want him to feel more upset than he already did. Buffy’s right to privacy, however, didn’t even enter into her head.

Nevertheless, curiosity won out over loyalty, and she continued her work.

Spike had taught her how to pick a lock a few months back. Or, if he had not exactly taught her, then she had learned by watching him do it. It was the night she found out that she was the Key, and he’d had the back door open in just a few seconds. This morning, it took her much longer, and she was glad she’d allowed herself the extra time. She didn’t have a pocketknife, as Spike had that night, so she had to use a strip of discarded metal she’d pulled from the alley dumpster. It was sharp and clumsy, and twice she accidentally cut herself. However, necessity being the mother of success as well as invention, eventually she achieved her goal and the door fell open.

She didn’t dare turn on the lights as she made her way across the sales floor, and the blinds were drawn over the big front windows, leaving the place very dark. Blindly, she groped her way through the shelves of merchandise without knocking them over, until, finally, she came to the closed door of Giles’ miniscule office. Here, there were no windows, and she flicked on the overhead lights without fear of attracting attention. The combination lock on the big wall safe posed no problem whatsoever; she’d watched them open it a dozen times, and she had sharp eyes. Anyway, the combination was Giles’ birthday, an easy one to remember.

The safe was almost as tall as Dawn, and she saw, upon opening it, that it held as many books as it did moneybags. More, in fact, because the money was banked pretty much every day, aside for the small amount kept for the cash register. The register tray and last night’s takings were stacked neatly on a shelf near the top of the safe, and piles of books resided on all the lower shelves. Piles upon piles of books, actually, for there were years of Watchers’ chronicles and research materials to wade through. The sheer number of them made Dawn anxious. Suppose she couldn’t find the right one in time? But, as she sifted through the heavy leather volumes, she saw that there was an order to them. Giles had the books heaped according to age, and the newest ones were on top. Since she had a rough idea that Spike was turned sometime in the 1800s, Dawn dragged out all the books listed for that century, and began to hurriedly rifle through them. His name leaped out at her from a volume from 1880. It wasn’t a Watcher’s diary; it was a loosely bound collection of vampires’ dossiers. As thick as the book was, there were only a few vampires listed in it, so Dawn figured this must be a collection of the worst of the worst, and the thought made her inexplicably sad.

Spike was the fourth one from the front. The first page of his record was pasted with a newspaper clipping, an article gone soft and yellow with age. Dawn had to squint to decipher the blurred text. It read:






William the Bloody Strikes Again

Thirty-one-year-old William Hartley has claimed yet another victim. The body of David Havisham was discovered, Tuesday last, atop a refuse pile behind Pearson’s Livery Stable. The state of Mr. Havisham’s corpse was reported to be so grisly that police refuse to comment upon it, beyond the fact that it indicates torture by railway spike and death by severe lacerations to the throat. As our readers may remember, a Mr. Charles Archer’s body was found in a similar manner on the very lawn of Mr. Havisham several weeks ago. While the causes of their deaths are dissimilar, the infliction of wounds by iron spike is the known modus operandi of William Hartley, and police have no reason to suspect a different assailant. Since Mr. Archer’s death, no less than sixteen people have been found tortured in this manner and all, aside from Mr. Archer, have expired due to exsanguination.

Before these terrible crimes began to occur, Mr. Hartley was considered a model citizen. Says Marcus Dodgson of Oxford Street: “Mr. Harte [sic] was an odd fellow, very quiet. Yet he seemed gentle and was always exceptionally polite.” Following the abrupt disappearance of his mistress, Mr. Hartley himself disappeared for a short period of time. After receiving a hysterical report from a former coachman (one Matthew Collett), police launched an investigation. The body of an unknown person was found in the front garden of Mr. Hartley’s home, accompanied by seven more in the cellar. The latter were later identified to be house servants of the family. Both Mr. Hartley and his mother (Mrs. Anne Hartley) were nowhere to be found. A short time after this, Mr. Hartley was discovered to be connected to the murder of his one-time friend and business associate, Mr. Archer. The murders have escalated since that time, and “William the Bloody,” or “Spike,” as he has come to be known, is still a dangerous presence in our fair city. There have been no signs or sightings of the elderly Mrs. Hartley since early April.






Slowly, Dawn lowered the book onto her lap. Her heart was beating very fast. Perhaps, she should have felt appalled by the gruesome accounts of Spike’s early crimes (it was rather hard, reading about his mother), but she was a practical sort of person, and she’d never really hidden from what he was. It was the second paragraph that sent shivers down her spine.

Following the abrupt disappearance of his mistress…

She swallowed, clutching the ragged volume in a white-knuckled grip as she whispered to the empty room:

“Buffy?”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Willow sighed heavily as she pushed the stack of envelopes and receipts away from her. She leaned back in her chair and stared across the table at Tara in a gloomy sort of way. Her lover stared back sympathetically and offered her the box of doughnuts as if they would, in some way, help to solve her problems.

“That bad?” she asked, as Willow chose a raspberry-filled pastry and bit into it, showering her shirtfront with powdered sugar.

“Worse,” mumbled Willow, her mouth full. She swallowed and added, “There’s only thirty-five dollars left in the checking account, and the mortgage was due yesterday.”

Disturbed by this bit of information, Tara was silent for a moment. Finally, she asked, in an uneasy tone, “W—well, what about the savings account?”

“There is no savings account. We used it to pay off the hospital bills, remember?”

“Oh…right.” Tara’s face fell into the same melancholy lines as her girlfriend. “What are we going to do?”

“What can we do? Buffy’s back, and it’s her house. She’s going to have to get a job or—or something.”

“Yeah, but what about college?”

“She talked about dropping out when her mom died.”

“But only temporarily to take care of Dawn, remember? I’m sure she’ll want to go back once things are settled.”

“Yeah, but…”

“What else can we do?” Tara finished for her. “I know.”

“She doesn’t know yet,” Willow said morosely. “Oh, God. How can we tell her? Do you think she’ll even be able to hold down a job? I mean, she already has the slaying, and now she’s acting so—so strange. Not like herself at all.”

“Yeah…but…but we can’t keep holding off,” Tara said, tapping the stack of bills with her knuckles. “If we do, she could lose everything.”

Willow nodded absentmindedly; her thoughts were on a different track now.

“I wonder what went on last night?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject. “Why did Dawn storm out like that? And what was with Spike being here?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t Angel say anything?”

“No. We were upstairs when he left, remember?”

“But he didn’t call, or—”

Willow shook her head, and for a moment, there was silence.

“Did Dawn ever come back?” she asked finally.

“No,” Tara replied. “I kept checking her room all night; I left both doors unlocked, just in case. But she never came in. Willow, I’m really worried about her.”

“Me too.”

“Well, should we—should we go looking for her? Maybe something happened.”

“Yeah, but where would we look? We don’t even know what direction she was heading in.” Suddenly, Willow’s eyes brightened. “We could do a locater spell!”

Tara’s face relaxed into a smile. “Good idea. I think we already have all the stuff we need—”

She ran upstairs to check and was back in only a moment, carrying a bag of ingredients and a book full of incantations. They’d hardly gotten started, however, when the back door slammed shut.

“Dawn?” Tara called, shooting a hopeful glance to the doorway. “Is that you?”

The prodigal teen poked her head into the room, noted the box of doughnuts on the table, and allowed the rest of her body to follow.

“Dawn!” exclaimed Willow in her best maternal tone. “Where have you been? We’ve been beside ourselves!”

“Yeah, you look it, being all breakfast-having,” Dawn answered blandly. She pulled three doughnuts from the box, holding two in her hand as she ate the third.

Tara looked sober. “Dawn, I know you’re upset with Buffy, and I don’t blame you. But this isn’t the way to show it. W—we were really worried about you. We were just about to do a locater spell—”

“Well, now you don’t have to,” Dawn replied. She bit into her second doughnut.

Frown lines scored Willow’s forehead. “You know, Dawn, I don’t think you’re really being fair here. Buffy’s been through a lot recently.”

“Yeah. And whose fault is that again? You sent her away.”

Willow stood up so fast she tipped her chair over. “Now, you just wait a second,” she began angrily. “If it wasn’t for me—”

Quickly, Tara grabbed her girlfriend’s sleeve, diverting her attention. “Honey, don’t say anything you’re going to regret.”

With an admirable show of patience, Willow closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. “You’re right,” she said finally. Then, to Dawn: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. We’ve just been…” She opened her eyes and immediately, her voice trailed away.

Dawn was no longer there.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




The heavy wooden bedroom door shut with a satisfying bang, and Dawn leaned against it sighing with relief. Without turning around or otherwise moving, she reached down and twisted the small lock on the doorknob. In a way, it was a blessing that Willow had acted like a jerk, she thought. It meant that she had an excuse to be angry, an excuse to lock her door against them, and an excuse for refusing to go to school. Because, there was no way in hell she was going to school today. She hadn’t slept all night, and she had too much on her mind to worry about Algebra and American Literature.

Unzipping her jacket, she pulled from the waistband of her jeans the leather book she’d stolen from the Magic Box. Thank God, Tara and Willow hadn’t noticed it. Despite the care she’d taken to conceal the book behind her jacket, there was a telltale bulge at her stomach, giving her the odd, lopsided appearance of one suffering from late-stage abdominal cancer. Of course, she needn’t have worried so. Tara and Willow noticed nothing these days. No one did. At least, no one noticed anything about her.

With a small sigh, she opened the book, flipping through the brittle yellow pages until she found the section on Spike. There was a lot there; he’d gotten down to serious business as soon as he was turned. But that wasn’t what interested her. It was that first page, that intriguing newspaper article. There was a picture next to the text. It was small and blurred, dark sepia; but it was undeniably him. A really, really different version of him, but him just the same.

Following the abrupt disappearance of his mistress…

Dawn read the line again, her brow furrowed with thought. It seemed so crazy, she almost dismissed the notion altogether. What were the odds, anyway, that Buffy would be sent back in time to the exact city Spike lived in, in the exact year he was turned, and just before he was? That she would actually find him there and have a—a relationship with him. Buffy hated Spike. Surely, she wouldn’t…

Still, as crazy as it seemed, it was the kind of crazy that made a lot of sense.

And there was only one way to find out for sure. She had to talk to Buffy.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Buffy wasn’t asleep. She hadn’t slept at all, having spent most of the night lying awake on her bed, worrying about Dawn. After Angel left, she’d considered going out to look for her younger sister, but that seemed a fruitless exercise. She was almost positive that she already knew where Dawn had gone, and it was the one place she refused to visit.

Spike.

Damn him.

She’d known he would come, of course. It would have been naïve to assume she could avoid a confrontation with him. But she hadn’t expected it so soon, and she wasn’t prepared for it. She hadn’t meant to hit him; she hadn’t wanted to hit him. Demon or not, he had William’s face, and the last thing she wanted to do was strike him. But he just kept pushing, hurling accusations in her face. Blaming her for everything. She had done wrong by not telling William the truth, but that didn’t change things. Nothing had happened afterward that didn’t happen before. Obviously. Spike’s very existence proved that.

What right did Spike have to be angry anyway, she wondered. Even if it was her fault, and she’d put William in a position for Drusilla to find, it wasn’t exactly bad news for his successor. If William hadn’t died, Spike would never have been able to set up shop in his corpse. So, what the hell was he complaining about? He wasn’t the same man as William. He wasn’t a man at all.

But, Jesus, his eyes...

You’re imagining things, she told herself firmly. You’re seeing the things you want to see; you’re seeing William in Spike because you want to see him, not because he’s there.

There was slight comfort to be taken from that line of thought, and for a moment, Buffy flirted with the idea of getting out of bed. But going downstairs meant facing Willow and Tara, and whoever else might have taken it upon themselves to show up. The very idea of conversation seemed too painful to contemplate, and it effectively squelched her desire to rise. It didn’t matter if she got out of bed anyway. It wasn’t like she was still enrolled in classes; she didn’t have anywhere to be. She draped an arm across her face to block the morning sun from her eyes, and willed it all to be a dream. If only she could wake up to William’s warm breath on the back of her neck, his soft voice mumbling that he must leave her now, for the servants would be rising soon. If only—

The soft click of a door closing snapped her out of her reverie in an instant, and she sat up quickly, barking as she did so: “Can’t I even get a second to myself?”

Kicking the door shut behind her, Dawn stared back at Buffy impassively. She was clutching a book to her chest, and she didn’t say a word. Her abrupt appearance startled Buffy so much she didn’t say anything either, and for an uncomfortable few minutes, silence prevailed.

Finally, the elder of the two sisters found her tongue.

“Where on earth have you been?” she demanded in her characteristic, overbearing way.

“Out,” Dawn answered, her jaw set with a stubbornness that perfectly mirrored her sister’s. “We need to talk,” she continued.

“Yeah, we do,” Buffy agreed. She pushed her tangled hair out of her face and glared at Dawn, adding, “We need to talk about the lack of respect you showed me last night—”

Dawn made an impatient sound, and swiftly moved away from the door and toward the bed. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” she demanded. “I’m not stupid, you know. I don’t need you to tell me things, but it would be nice if you did!”

“Tell you about what?” Buffy asked, bewildered. Dawn snorted.

“About where you were! I know where you got sent!”

Wearily, Buffy crossed her arms over her chest and prepared for battle.

“Oh, yeah?” she asked sarcastically. “And how do you know that?”

Dawn threw the book on the bed. “Go ahead,” she said when her sister looked at her in confusion. “Open it. I bookmarked the right pages.”

By now completely certain she didn’t want to see what lay between those dog-eared pages, Buffy nonetheless picked up the book. Dawn had stuck a shoelace between the leaves, and the covers fell open and the pages turned almost of their own accord. When her eyes fell to the newspaper article that introduced Spike’s section, she gasped. She barely glanced at the text before shifting her gaze back to her sister.

“Where did you get this?”

Dawn just raised her eyebrows.

“Read it,” she answered. “And then try to tell me I’m wrong.”

But Buffy shoved the book away from her and climbed out of bed. “Did Spike tell you about this?” she demanded. “Did he show you this?”

“He didn’t say anything! I figured it out on my own. I went to the Magic Box and looked in the book to make sure. Your name isn’t in it, but it wasn’t that hard to put together. Spike knew what year your dress was made; he hurt himself when you came back. The newspaper talked about a mistress, and—and—” she faltered.

“What?”

“I saw that mark on your chest, Buffy. I saw it, and I know what it is. You haven’t been acting right since you got back; you haven’t been happy to be back. You won’t take off that bracelet.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then, tell me I’m not right.”

Buffy opened her mouth. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell her, to lie, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Before she could stop herself, something entirely different passed her lips.

“You’re not going to tell the others, are you?”

Dawn’s eyes softened at that.

“I won’t tell them,” she said quietly. “But you should.”

“Well, I’m not going to.” Buffy turned away from her, made a pretense of looking through her closet for something to wear. “Can you imagine what their reactions would be?”

“What about Spike?”

Buffy glanced over her shoulder, her expression hard.

“What about Spike?” she echoed.

“What did you say to him last night to make him storm off? He was freaking out—he—he was—” Dawn stopped abruptly, causing Buffy to glance at her with curiosity.

“He was what?”

Dawn looked away from her.

“Nothing.”

Buffy turned back to her closet, tearing through her clothing in agitation. “I didn’t say anything to him,” she said finally. “He was—he just kept—acting like it was something I’d done to him.”

“Well, wasn’t it?”

The blue sweater Buffy was holding fell to the floor, and she didn’t look up at Dawn when she knelt down to retrieve it. “You know better than that, Dawn. The person I met in London, he—he was—”

“He was what?” prompted Dawn, impatient with her sister’s stammering. Stung by the harsh tone, Buffy snapped back:

“He was good! He was a good man…he was a man. Not a vampire. He wasn’t Spike.”

“How can you say that?” demanded Dawn. “If you’d seen the way he reacted to your coming back…Buffy, there’s no way he isn’t the same person.”

Tightly clutching the blue sweater against her chest, Buffy gazed up at her younger sister. “Look,” she began, her voice trembling with restrained anger. “The man I knew—William—he would never have chosen to become what Spike is. I don’t know what happened that night with Drusilla, but I know he didn’t choose for it to happen, and that it wasn’t his fault. All the things Spike has done—murder and torture and God knows what else—William would never—”

“But how do you know, Buffy? Whatever left him when he was turned, it wasn’t the thing that made him who he was. Maybe it just—”

“Explain Angel to me then!” Buffy burst out. “He lost his soul, and he became a completely different creature! He killed Jenny Calendar—he would have killed Giles—he tried to kill me—”

“Maybe Spike is different from him,” Dawn argued obstinately. “Or, maybe Angel’s lying. But I’m telling you, Buffy; Spike remembers you.”

“Well, of course he does! He shares the same memories as William, because he took his brain when he took his body. He’s just dumb enough to think that it means something.”

“You’re saying it doesn’t?”

Dawn’s tone was disbelieving, but Buffy met her astonished eyes coldly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Dawn shook her head and snorted. “Then, I guess that makes you the stupid one, Buffy.”

She turned on her heel and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Buffy watched her leave, and then slowly returned to the bed. She sank down onto it, reached for the book Dawn had left. It was still open to Spike’s page. The article was of little interest to her; it focused mainly on Spike wreaking havoc in London, and she was pretty well versed in that story anyway, having heard it direct from the source. But beside the fading text, there was a picture, a small and slightly wrinkled reminder of what she had left behind.

It wasn’t a very good picture. Aside from the poor quality of the image and the deterioration of the paper it was printed on, he also looked stiff and uncomfortable, if not downright unhappy. He wasn’t smiling, of course; it wasn’t the fashion back then. And his eyes looked a little staring. Knowing him as well as she did, Buffy realized that he was embarrassed to find himself subject to the close scrutiny of the photographer, and that he was trying to avoid taking notice of it. From the set of his shoulders, she could see he was feeling very tense.

Still, it was him.

She stroked the tip of her finger across the newsprint, caressing it as if she were caressing him. It seemed almost a sin for his face to be sharing the same piece of paper as that disgusting account of Spike’s crimes. On an impulse, she ripped the page from its bindings, and then used her manicure scissors to carefully trim away the picture from the rest of the article.

“Same person my ass,” she muttered, and held the photograph against her cheek.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Angel didn’t make it back to LA until well after midnight, but when he walked into his suite at the Hyperion Hotel, the phone was ringing. He didn’t have to think twice before knowing who it was.

And he was right.

“Angel, it’s Willow.”

“Yeah, I guessed,” he said dryly. A slight pause on the other line told him that she was taken aback by his hostile tone, and he quickly relented. “Sorry, I’m just tired. I didn’t mean to snap. What’s up?”

“Well, I was calling to ask you the same thing. You just sort of took off last night, and Buffy said she didn’t know where you went. I wasn’t sure if you’d left Sunnydale, or, uh…”

“What else did Buffy say?” he interrupted.

“What?”

“After I left. Did you talk to her?”

“N—no. Not really. She’s not…she wasn’t feeling too well.”

“I’ll bet,” he muttered.

“What was that?” Willow asked.

“Nothing.”

There was a long silence then, but Angel knew she hadn’t hung up, because he could hear her breathing. He clutched the receiver against his ear and waited for her to say something more. When she did, it came in the form of a question.

“I was wondering…we were wondering…what Buffy said to you last night when you guys were alone on the porch. Did she tell you where she was?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“It’s…it’s like I said before,” she stammered. “Buffy’s really not feeling all that chatty. I’ve tried talking to her, but it hasn’t really gotten anywhere. But I thought—”

“Did Spike come back?”

“Huh?”

“After I left…last night…tonight. Did Spike come back?”

“N—no, we haven’t seen him at all. I was kind of surprised to see him last night, actually. He hasn’t been around lately, and I thought we’d made it clear to him…but then Dawn invited him in the other night. I was thinking of putting up the barrier spell again, but she wouldn’t let me.”

An involuntary growl rose in his throat. “Buffy wouldn’t let you?”

“No…Dawn wouldn’t let me. She’s got some weird notion about him…she’s friends with him.”

“I see.”

“There’s something else,” added Willow tentatively.

“What?”

“I thought…I mean…the reason I’m calling is that I…I think there’s something wrong with Buffy.”

“Well, she’s been through a lot.”

“I know, but it’s more than that. She’s not acting right.”

“How so?”

“Well, yesterday morning, I was trying to talk to her, welcome her home and all that. When I said that, she acted angry; she said she wasn’t home. Then, she just walked out.”

Angel could have choked on his jealousy at hearing that. He cleared his throat twice before he could speak. “What else?” he rasped finally.

“She was dressed weird when she came home. Giles thinks we might be able to figure out what happened to her by her clothes. After she changed last night, I took the dress downstairs for him to look at, and this afternoon when I got home from class I—I found her—”

“You found her what?”

“Sitting on the floor in the living room, with the dress on her lap. She wasn’t crying or anything like that. But she looked really…lost. You know what I mean? When I tried to talk to her about it, she got angry. Before she went upstairs, she threw the hall mirror against the front door and broke it. Angel, I’m starting to think that she’s acting like she didn’t even want to come home.”

She loved me in a way she could never love you.

The memory of Spike’s words came back to him, and Angel could feel his temper rising. Jealousy overtook him so he couldn’t even think, and before he could stop himself, he was snarling at Willow angrily: “And you—what? Want me to tell you what to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” she answered in a startled tone. “I just thought—”

“You want my advice?” he demanded. “Here it is: get her a PPD and a home pregnancy test.”

And before Willow could ask what he meant, Angel banged down the phone.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~