"Woah, hold it," Buffy stopped William as he reached for the door. "Don't you think we'd better get our story straight before we go in there?"

"Story?" William blinked.

"You, me, him, fang marks on your neck, giant roaches, insect guts?" Buffy prompted, pointing at each of them before looking down at herself with a grimace. "How are you going to explain all this?"

"Well...by relating the events as they happened?" William answered, sounding as if it were the most logical thing in the world.

"Right, okay, let's think this through," Buffy shot a dirty look at Spike as he snickered and leaned back against the door frame. She began to pace. "So when your mother asks you where you were, you're going to tell her that you met a vampire and a Vampire Slayer on the road tonight, that they somehow convinced you that they're from the future and that one of them is you, and then you all fought a swarm of really big creepy bugs and saved the town from destruction?"

"Well...yes?" William said, a little confused now.

"Except for the part where we fought and he ran and hid behind a rock," Spike smirked.

"Not helping, Spike," Buffy huffed.

"Think you've got some wires crossed in there about mortal enemies and 'helping,'" Spike responded smugly.

Buffy opened her mouth for a snappy retort, thought better of it, and turned back to William. "Um, you don't think that it's a bit...far-fetched?"

"Does that matter, if it is the truth?" William asked, his clear blue eyes disconcertingly guileless.

It was Buffy's turn to be taken aback. "Well, er...maybe a little? I mean, would your mother really want to know that there might be an apocalypse coming featuring giant cockroaches and scorpions and other icky things, and, and that--"  she gestured at his neck.

"Ah." He looked away, and silence descended on the little group.

"Oh, for the love of-- Do I have to do all the work around here?" Spike grumbled, pushing back against the wall. "Right then. What you do is just use the same old plot device that everybody else uses: you found that poor innocent ingénue over there--" "Hey, I am not in a genie, whatever that means!" "--that miserable not-so-innocent tart over there wandering alone on the road, lost and amnesiac. She's got no idea what happened to her, who she is, or where she is. All she knows is that for some fantastic reason nobody can figure out, her mother named her Buffy and she's from some godforsaken placed called Crapo, Maryland. Later on you'll discover that she's actually your cousin twice removed from your mad aunt Nessie's side and that she's slowly dying from some funny brain disease--" he smirked at Buffy, "--that's funny as in hahah, though of course not from your perspective--"

"Spike..." Buffy said, eyes narrowing.

"--and being weak and helpless, she was kidnapped by the Big Bad Bandit--that would be me, obviously. But we lost our horse--finicky beasts, the annoying buggers, so I had to kidnap you too and force you to offer us the hospitality of your home. Of course, being a gentleman, you would never go back on your word. Later on you'll discover that we're actually brothers separated at birth and being the older brother I get to inherit the whole shebang and you'll meekly step aside because you know in your heart that it's the right thing to do, me having been brought up in the gutter and you living in the lap of luxury for all these years and all."

"So," William enunciated dryly, "in one night I have gained a mad aunt, a mad cousin, and a gutter-rat brother, and in one fell swoop I have been kidnapped, forced to share my home with two parts of the above, and divested of my title and my land. Have I understood your gist?"

"Well, it could work," Buffy said optimistically. "I mean, you at least look like you could be brothers." She eyed William's light brown curls, glasses, tie, trim, neatly-pressed jacket and trousers (rather less neat after the past few hours) and Spike's slicked-back platinum-dyed hair, scarred eyebrow, punctured, gore-covered leather coat, black t-shirt, and black jeans and hurried on, "I don't wanna be weak and helpless, though. Couldn't the brain disease give me super-powers instead? Not mind-reading, because that turned out to be not so fun last time. I still have that image of my mom and Giles on the police car--twice!" She shuddered. "How about flying?"

"Indeed. And did you intend our mother or our father to have made us brothers?" William asked Spike. "Or...both?"

Spike scowled and muttered to himself, but finally conceded, "Fine, you can make us cousins too, then, if you care about your dosh that much."

William sighed and turned back to the door, wondering how he was to make something remotely believable out of these flights of fantasy and whether such events could really have occurred so frequently in their future as to have become commonplace tales. However, the door opened before he could touch it, and the Viscountess of Wincott herself stood framed in the doorway.

"William?" she exclaimed, hurrying forward. "What has happened? You gave me such a fright when your horse arrived home without you! Are you hurt?"

"No, Mother, I am perfectly well," William hastened to reassure her, taking her hands but keeping his right side turned away from her. He took a deep breath and wandered haphazardly into an increasingly convoluted explanation about cousins, bandits, hospitality, and brain disease that presently turned Buffy and Spike into mad levitating bandit chiefs living in the bog whom he had invited to stay in his home on account of theirs being invaded by a horde of maddened insects. Eventually he turned to his guests a little desperately, having waded too deeply into his bog for even the hope of finding solid ground. "Miss Buffy, my mother, Lady Wincott," he said formally, begging her with his eyes to throw him a line.

"Hi," Buffy smiled weakly and raised her hand in a small wave. What was a mad bandit chief supposed to act like? Did she have to drool? Shout "argh, matey?" (Or did pirates have dibs on that?) Wave a saber? (She discreetly patted her lower back, but unluckily it appeared she'd lost both her stakes sometime during the Great Sodding Bug Skirmish.) She decided to settle for "I'm very happy to meet you, Mrs. Pratt." At the expectant silence, she added, "Um, Buffy Summers at your service?" She nudged Spike, half-hidden in the shadows of the doorway, and unobtrusively grabbed a corner of his coat in case he decided to do something vampire-y and stupid.

Spike raised his head to allow the lamplight from the hall to illuminate him for the first time, and for a long minute mother and son simply stared at each other. Then he murmured, "Mum."

Both Buffy and William's mouths fell open. "Wha--? Buh--" was all Buffy could manage in the way of salvaging the situation when an urgent clatter of hooves coming quickly up the path caught all of their attention. A group of four horses skidded to a stop right outside the door, and the lead rider, a tall, genial-looking man in his mid-forties hurriedly dismounted and went up to William as Buffy and Spike stepped back.

"My lord! I am so glad to see you safe!" He turned back to the rest of the group and said, "Mr. Gable, thank you. You may retire." From the shadows of the doorway, Buffy could see Gable, the older gentleman with gray hair whom she had seen driving William's mother earlier, bow and walk off. "Mr. Avery, please see to the horses." The two remaining figures, a thin red-headed man in his thirties and a boy around twelve or thirteen who must have been his son, both dismounted and led the horses away.

When they were gone, he turned to William again. "My lord..." he hesitated.

William said, "I am perfectly well, Morgan. I thank you for your concern."

Lady Wincott asked, "What is it?"

He shook his head slowly. "It was the oddest thing, my lady," he answered. "We got to about a mile down the road, and suddenly all the horses flat refused to go any further, and no amount of coaxing or prodding would make them budge an inch. I've never seen anything like it, and neither had John Avery. We tried going around, and had to circle almost to the town across the fields before they'd set a hoof on the road again. Well, by then we knew it wouldn't do any good, so we turned back."

"It's all right," Lady Wincott said. "Thank you for your efforts tonight, Morgan. Please send Miss Connelly to me in the library and get some rest."

Morgan bowed and went past them. Once inside, he paused and looked back, but disappeared into the hall and down the stairs without saying anything more. Lady Wincott turned to her son. "Ask your guests to step inside, William. I will tell Lily to prepare the guest rooms and Mrs. Dale to warm some dinner. Join us whenever you are ready." She hesitated, eyes straining against the darkness outside the pool of lamplight into which Buffy and Spike had retreated at the arrival of the horsemen. Then she turned abruptly and vanished into the wide double doors opening into a room to the left of the great hall.

Buffy entered after William at his invitation, and Spike, after surreptitiously feeling the air in front of him, followed. Buffy looked around in awe at the beautiful hall, while Spike looked in silence after his mother. After a moment they all looked at each other. "Well, that went..." Buffy began cheerfully, "...um...I have no idea how that went," she finished sheepishly.

"Bloody disaster," Spike muttered.

Buffy caught William's eye, and both their lips tilted at the corners. "Well, I must confess I am relieved to be able to leave the bog behind," William admitted.

"Yeah, you were in there pretty far," Buffy grinned. "I thought I was going to have to break out the faux Indian tribal dance I learned in third grade to part the waters for you or something."

"Yes, that would be a sight to see," William murmured. "But for now, allow me to show you to your rooms so you can refresh yourself before dinner--or perhaps breakfast, as the case may be."

Having installed both of his unusual guests in the guest wing (and, for precaution's sake, as far apart from each other as he could arrange it), William hurried to his own rooms to wash and change before joining his mother in the library. She turned to him immediately at the sound of his footsteps.

"Is it true, William?" she asked, strained, hands clutched tightly to each other in her lap. "Is that man my son?"

William went to her and knelt next to her chair. He had never had reason to doubt his mother's judgment or wisdom--and so he gathered his thoughts and began to tell her of his adventures after leaving her on the road in as logical a sequence as he could construct, keeping back only his vampire counterpart's true nature and that unnatural creature's recounting of his own death.

She sat absorbing the story for a long time after he finished. "The twentieth century," she murmured at last. "How extraordinary, and what a curious tale. Are you quite certain you have not been practiced upon, my dear William? Not...taken in by a fanciful story made palatable by the sudden appearance of these strangers on your path?"

"Quite certain, Mother," William said firmly. "Indeed, I think I would have to believe them capable of witchcraft otherwise, if they are able to make me experience with such verisimilitude what was mere make-belief. But I am sure--" he smiled at her with a touch of resignation-- "you will come to your own conclusions."