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  Even better, she was opening the front door to her apartment complex. When Xander was in high school, this kind of thing never happened . . . unless the female in question was a some kind of demon.

  She was talking to him, saying, “Boy, I still can’t believe this is happening. I mean, even with this town’s reputation for, you know, unexplained weirdness.”

  “Right,” Xander riffed. ‘Sunnydale: come for the food, stay for the dismemberment.’ ”

  She smiled. “There’s good food?”

  Not only was it a moment, but a moment with sparkage, as they went back and forth with talk about phone numbers, and her coming right out and announcing that she was hitting on him.

  And then—of course—the lights flickered and the glass in the door shattered as rumbling more intense than any thunderstorm or sonic boom took over the air waves. The wood of the doorframe splintered and the floor beneath them buckled, furrowing in a deadly way straight line heading their way . . .

  Something is plowing through the ground, Xander realized. Chasing us.

  He grabbed her hand and together they raced the length of the floor, then took the stairs. The burrowing thing followed. Tiles cracked and scattered as it pursued them.

  He got her up the first few steps before it burst from the hallway floor—demonic, a giant eyeless worm creature that was mouth and teeth and little else, and in his panic did he register the teeth. It lunged, with the teeth, perilously close to Nancy . . . but it couldn’t get to her no matter how hard it tried.

  With a roar of fury, maybe some desperation, it disappeared back into the floor.

  Once it was obviously over, Xander ventured, “Two attacks in one night. I’m thinking this is more than just coincidence.”

  “Ronnie would love this,” she said mournfully. And as she started talking about her psycho ex-boyfriend who had been, like, her stalker, never letting up on her, never leaving her alone, and how she had wished it would all stop . . .

  Xander caught an earful of that all-important word: wish.

  And then he had another moment.

  An “oh, great” moment.

  * * *

  Buffy led the way to where Anya was seated in the Bronze with an earnest and upset woman. Xander’s exfiancée was not pleased to see the Slayer, her sister Dawn, her former kinky sex toy Spike, and the creep himself, Mr. Xander Harris, all accompanying a former client.

  She asked her current client to get herself a drink, then she and the others skipped the formalities. They asked a lot of questions and she gave answers. Why, yes, she had turned Nancy’s ex-boyfriend into a giant worm. A Sluggoth demon, to be precise, same phylum as worm, just a bit of tweaking with the wish there.

  “I had a quota, the guy had it coming, what’s the big?” she asked, already bored and more than a little defensive.

  And then, as Spike ordered her to cancel the spell, she stared at him “What are you staring at?” he demanded.

  “Oh, my God!” she said again.

  “Right. Let’s go.” He tried to walk away, but she grabbed his arm.

  “How did you do it?” she insisted.

  “Spike, what is she talking about?” Buffy asked suspiciously.

  Anya was gaping at him. “I can see you.”

  “Nothing. Let’s go. Got some worm hunting to do.”

  Spike tried to walk away again, but Anya kept prodding. At last he lost his temper and punched her in the face. She fell to the floor, then she kicked him across the room. He landed with a crash on the pool table.

  She rose with her full demon face on as Spike got off the pool table. He vamped. They began to fight in earnest, and Buffy tried to intervene.

  She rained blows on him, and he began to goad her. “Working out some personal issue, are we?” Buffy punched and kicked him. “I guess this would be first contact since, uh, you know when. Up for another round up on the balcony, then?”

  She hit him again, and he landed on the floor, laughing.

  “Right you are, love. I haven’t changed, not a lick.” He was in her face, sneering at her. “And watching your face trying to figure me out was absolutely delicious.”

  * * *

  “Buffy! Nancy. She’s gone,” Xander interrupted. “And out there all alone, she’s worm bait.”

  “I’ll go find her,” Buffy told him. “Stay with Anya. Get her to reverse that spell.”

  * * *

  The worm had turned up by the time Buffy caught up with Nancy. Problem was, it had turned on Nancy.

  She was halfway up the ladder outside a building when Buffy located her—the hideous Ronnie-sluggoth shaking her loose from her moorings, getting ready to rumble, as only Anya had made it possible for him to do . . .

  * * *

  While Xander, tried his best to get her to change back the spell. She was not eager to cooperate.

  “I’m in enough trouble as it is,” she said. “D’Hoffryn is not pleased with my work.”

  He tried another tack. “Buffy’s the Slayer. You’re a demon. You kill people. How long do you think it’s gonna be before she has to do her job?”

  That gave Anya pause. “Buffy wouldn’t slay . . . me.”

  “Not if you stop now,” Xander asserted.

  Xander’s words worked, and Anya hurried out into the night, watching from afar as Buffy swung down from a rooftop on the end of a rope and grabbed Nancy as the Sluggoth—Anya’s creation—burst from the pavement. Rows and rows of teeth loomed wide—What was I thinking? Well, what I was thinking of D’Hoffryn, of course, and saving my butt—and then Spike was at Buffy’s side, with a big pipe—how symbolic—yelling, “That’s right! Big bad’s back, and looking for a little death—” He rammed the pipe into the demonic snake just as Anya reversed the spell—oh God—and Sluggoth became naked, filthy Ronnie, with a pipe through his shoulder. He screamed as Spike screamed too.

  Has to be the chip.

  And then the vampire said the most incredible thing: “I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  The ambulance came and loaded up Ronnie while Spike carried on like a crazy man, moaning and sobbing and completely insane.

  “A warm-up act. The real headliner’s coming, and when that band hits the stage, all of this . . . all this . . . will come tumbling down in death and screaming, horror and bloodshed. From beneath you, it devours! From beneath. . .” And then he sobbed, “Poor Rocky.”

  Spike ran away. Anya wished she could, too.

  “I know this is bad,” Xander said gently to her, meaning, of course that because of her, Spike had nearly killed a human being. “But it could be worse.”

  “Oh,” Anya assured him, churning with resignation, “it will be.”

  * * *

  Once she was sure that Ronnie was safe in the ambulance, Buffy trailed after Spike.

  In a cemetery, one of the twelve within Sunnydale city limits, she found a chapel on the hallowed ground, and in it, a single light glowing like a tentative searchlight.

  The twin doors were heavy; no matter for someone with Slayer strength. Nor for a vampire.

  Once inside, Buffy found a religious picture of Jesus and his Mother hung on the wall and stained-glass windows. It was a place that reminded her—painfully—of her mother’s funeral. Her heart fluttered at the memory. Steadily, she walked toward the plain stone-and-metal crucifix, startling when Spike spoke to her from the darkness.

  “Hello,” he said simply.

  She whirred around. “What the hell are you—?”

  The vampire was naked from the waist up; the terrible wounds on his torso had begun to heal. But from his demeanor, she sensed that other wounds . . . deeper ones, hadn’t even started to get better.

  His shirt was in his hand. He held it out to her in a pathetic gesture very much like surrendering as he said, “It didn’t work. Costume. Didn’t help. Couldn’t hide.”

  She kept her voice firm and almost cruel as she replied, “No more mind games, Spike.”

  Even though he st
ood directly in front of her, he kept his gaze trained on the ground in a submissive posture. It was frightening her a little.

  “No more mind games. No more mind.”

  She had it in herself to be kind to him, even if she didn’t trust him. Tentatively she reached out her hand, nearly grazing his injuries, as she said, “Tell me what happened to you.”

  He flinched, jerking away, and frowned at her. “Hey, hey, hey! No touching. Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you?” He began to calm, to re-adopt his whipped-dog eagerness to please her. “Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark.”

  As if she had reacted in some way, indicated her wish, he nodded. “Oh, fine. Flesh then. Solid through.” He began to unzip his pants. “Get it hard. Service.”

  Shocked, disgusted, embarrassed—I slept with him, this sad, pathetic, terrifying . . . thing—Buffy smacked his hand. “Stop it!

  Reacting instinctively to her violence, Spike caught her by the throat; in turn, Buffy grabbed his shoulder and hurled him across the room. Wood splintered and split as he crashed on top a row of pews.

  His madness undaunted, he half-sat up, propped on his elbows, and said, “Right. Girl doesn’t want to be serviced. Because there’s no spark. Ain’t we in a soddin’ engine?”

  Buffy came toward him.

  “Spike, have you completely lost your mind?”

  And then, in that lucid way crazy people have of snapping out of the scramble for an instant or two, he blinked at her and said disdainfully, “Well, yes. Where’ve you been all night?”

  She was still struggling, still confused. “You thought you would just come back here and . . . be with me?”

  He shrugged. “First time for everything.”

  “This is all you get,” she said quickly. “I’m listening.” And then, more earnestly, more carefully, “Tell me what happened.”

  He remained matter of fact, but she saw terrible disappointment in his eyes. “I tried to find it, of course.”

  “Find what?

  “The spark. The missing . . . the piece that fit. That would make me fit. Because you didn’t want . . .” Spike started to cry and looked away. “God, I can’t . . . Not with you looking.”

  He rose and walked away from her to one of the beautiful windows. Shaded and shadowed, his injured body directed away from her, he dared to look at her from over his shoulder.

  “I dreamed of killing you.”

  The Slayer went on alert.

  Keeping him in her sights, Buffy bent down to pick up a large splinter from the broken pews at her feet. She had a stake now—but it’s not the power. It’s not. I can’t forget that. He’s still a vampire. He’s always been a vampire.

  He began to pace, highly agitated now. Warily she watched him unwind as he spoke in a jumble . . . but one that began to make sense.

  “I think they were dreams. So weak. Did you make me weak, thinking of you, holding myself, and spilling useless buckets of salt over your . . . ending?”

  My death. He’s cried before. He thinks he loves me.

  He’s crazy.

  “Angel—he should’ve warned me. He makes a good show of forgetting, but it’s here, in me, all the time.”

  He walked around her from behind. She kept herself on alert, kept focused. He could turn on her at any moment, become a target at any time.

  “The spark. I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it. They put the spark in me and now all it does is burn.”

  Oh, my God.

  “Your soul,” she said slowly.

  His laugh was hollow. Joke was on him. “Bit worse for lack of use.”

  Buffy turns to face him.

  She said it again, because it was so hard to believe. “You got your soul back.” A beat. “How?”

  He looked at the ceiling. “It’s what you wanted, right? Looked up. What He wanted?” Pressing his fingers to his temples he walked toward the cross.

  “And . . . and now everybody’s in here, talking. Everything I did . . . everyone I . . . and him . . . and it . . . the other, the thing beneath—beneath you. It’s here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go . . . go . . .” He gazed at her. “. . . to hell.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?” she asked, her voice rising.

  He had enough dignity to snap, “Buffy, shame on you.” And then, more brokenly, “Why does a man do what he mustn’t? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev . . .” Again, he looked away, awash in shame and self-loathing. “. . . to be a kind of man.”

  He continued toward the cross. He murmured, a chant of sorts, perhaps a quotation from an ancient book of comfort.

  “She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved.”

  He stopped directly in front of the cross and stared mournfully at it.

  “So everything’s okay, right?”

  He sighed. Slowly, deliberately, he slung one arm over each side of the cross bar, and laid his head in the corner of the intersection, an angle of repose, in the arms of the angels. His body sizzled from the contact; smoke rose from his flesh.

  Oh, Spike . . . He had sacrificed himself; he had gained his soul only to lose his hope.

  “Can . . . can we rest now?” he asked. “Buffy . . . can we rest?

  Exhausted, the man who loved her . . . burned.

  Chapter Three: “Same Time, Same Place”

  Sunnydale Airport Terminal

  It was 9:24 P.M., and Willow’s plane was about to touch down.

  My buddy’s coming back, Xander thought as he, Buffy, and Dawn waited in the terminal. Around him, humanity swirled—the passengers deplaned, some guy bent down to pick up his kid’s sweater, ah, life . . .

  “Giles wouldn’t let her leave unless she completed whatever recovery course,” he added, having been in mid-conversation with Buffy and Dawn about the very weirdness of this welcome. He had made a WELCOME HOME sign with a yellow crayon to remind Willow of how he had literally stopped her from destroying the planet with his very own words. Its very yellowness belied the fact that she had flayed Warren alive and tried to kill Dawnie as well.

  Dawnie, who piped up, “Right.”

  Then both of them noticed that Buffy was not so on board with the joy.

  Dawn repeated, “Right?”

  “She kinda didn’t finish,” Buffy admitted.

  “She didn’t finish?” Dawn’s voice rose, and why not? “She didn’t finish being not evil?”

  “Guys, I just noticed something,” Xander said. “Everyone’s off the plane . . . so where’s Willow?”

  * * *

  It was 9:24 P.M. Willow’s plane had landed exactly on time.

  Where is everybody? she thought as she deplaned. The passengers moved into the terminal, the dad in front of her picking up his daughter’s sweater.

  They didn’t show, she realized. No open arms for the black-haired murderess . . . I worried about this all the way over here. Worried that we wouldn’t connect.

  “Welcome home, me,” she murmured.

  She caught a cab to Buffy’s house and knocked politely—I used to just walk right in . . . and eventually, when no one answered, she got the key under the rock and . . . walked right in. By then it was almost eleven, and she was exhausted. She wondered hopefully if she’d missed them at the airport—they might have gotten a late start, gotten mixed up about the schedule . . . there were so many reasons why they might not have been there.

  There was some new furniture downstairs, but the bigger changes had taken place upstairs. Buffy had moved into her and Tara’s room. There were pictures of Dawn and Xander, other friends . . . but none of Willow.

  In Buffy’s day planner, there was contact info for Xander and Dawn.

  It’s like I stopped existing.

  She heard a dog bark, a door opening, and brightened. “Dawn?” she called.

  No one came into the house. No one at all.

  Confused, hurt, she curled up on the couch.

  *
* *

  Giles was wrong, Buffy thought, worried, as she, Dawn and Xander returned home. She wasn’t ready to come back.

  Since it was nearly eleven at night in Sunnydale, it was a decent hour in the morning London time; not that that would have stopped Buffy. Meanwhile Dawn and Xander scoured the house.

  Of Giles, Xander asked, “Is he throwing a tasteful British wiggins?”

  They all sat down on the couch.

  “Oh, with extra wig. He’s blaming himself pretty hard, like he should’ve known she wasn’t ready to come back. I—I kept telling him, you know, it wasn’t his fault. Maybe there’s something about us she couldn’t face,” Buffy said.

  Xander said, not without some extra sauce, “Like she didn’t think we were ready to forgive her? I get that.”

  Dawn was irritated. “So Giles is blaming Giles, and we’re blaming us. Is anyone gonna blame Willow? Oh, don’t give me shock face. I mean, will anyone around here ever start asking for help when they need it?”

  Buffy knew her sister had a point. “Look, if Willow flipped out, it’s her bad. We can only be here for her so much if she won’t be, you know, here.”

  They sat together on the couch, and tried to process.

  * * *

  Willow woke up, fuzzy-headed, until she realized she had fallen asleep on Buffy’s couch.

  And Buffy and Dawn were nowhere to be found.

  She called Giles in London, but he was in a day-long meeting with the Watchers Council, probably about the looming apocalypse, so that would be good. So she wandered around, bewildered.

  Did they move in the middle of the night?

  After awhile she left the house in search of them. Though other people were walking on Main Street, she felt completely alone.

  Then she saw the Magic Box, burned and boarded up.

  Oh, my God. That’s my doing.

  Then Anya bustled out, a box in her arms. Thrilled, Willow ran toward her, crying “Anya!”

  Anya was not thrilled. Stepping back defensively, she said, “What are you doing here? I thought you were with Giles studying how to not kill people.”

  Willow tried to stay upbeat. “I just got back.”

  Anya stayed downbeat. “Just got back, as in you’re all better, or just got back to bring about a fiery apocalypse of death?” she asked suspiciously.