~*~
Chapter 10
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"I’m proud of you, Giles. You were always a better man than you showed around Spike. I’m sure Buffy will be really happy to see you making this effort for her." Willow had heard the last part of the Watcher’s conversation and knew how much it cost her dear mentor to reach out a hand of truce.

She strongly suspected the biggest problem for Giles was the same one they had all had at one time or another. The horrible events when Angel, whom they had
all learned to like and even trust, lost his soul had scarred them all. Giles had had the worst of it, next to Buffy herself. He had lost his love Jenny to
the horror that was Angelus. Spike had been viewed through a glass tinted by the dark specter of Angelus ever since. Any benefit of the doubt Spike might have been given had been withdrawn before the vampire had even begun his journey of redemption.

They should have all learned their lesson after Spike’s sacrifice in the Hellmouth; certainly she and Xander seemed to have done so. Seeing how Buffy had
reacted to the death of the vampire should have moved Giles as well, and it had to a degree. Giles made an effort to admit to Buffy that his attempt to help
Principal Wood get rid of Spike had been wrong. He and Buffy made peace of a sort, but their relationship had never been quite the same. It was one of the reasons Buffy had moved from London to Rome. It was painful to be near her father figure with the bad feelings that lingered.

Buffy was going to be furious finding out Spike had returned and that Giles had known and not told her. Giles and Spike being at peace with each other would go a
long way towards healing all three of them. For Buffy’s sake, Willow hoped it would work out that way. She had never really mended fences with her own
parents over their casual disregard of her feelings for Tara. It had left deep wounds.

"Yes, well, I am a middle-aged man and Spike’s quite a lot older. Time we act our age, I suppose", Giles replied. He was a bit pleased and a trifle embarassed that his effort had not gone unnoticed.

"Okie dokie, what do you say to a bit of house and office painting?" Willow smiled widely and held up the black paint and brushes she had located for them
to use in painting the mystical glyphs.

"I can’t imagine why the former Council didn’t incorporate these into their old building. It would seem mystical cloaking would be quite valuable and the answer was right there in one of their own books", Giles mused.

"We didn’t snap to ‘em either. Maybe the old Council never had a reason to research that particular book", Willow offered. She privately felt they must have had something along these lines in place all along, even if it weren’t identical.

"Yes, I suppose that must be it. I agree that if we put a few of these up, we’ll sleep a bit better and I, for one, am quite exhausted." Giles reached out an took a brush from Willow’s hand and prepared to paint the symbols strategically around the office.

~~~

Dawn awoke to the glare of a stern-looking vampire. She remembered, too late, that she hadn’t told Spike about her adventures the day before and knew what was coming.

"Anything you’d like to share, Bit? Somethin’ ‘bout bein’ followed home, maybe?"

"Sorry. I wasn’t holding out on you, so pull your fangs back, ‘k? It slipped my mind when you came back with all the fun reading. I would have remembered and
told you today. I was fine, Spike. I think whoever it was only started following me a few blocks from here. I never saw them, just felt like I was being
tailed, you know what I mean?" I take it Giles mentioned the paper I faxed to him? Did they find anything out about the symbols? I thought they looked Chinese or something. Remember the potential slayer Chao An? She had a book with Chinese writing and they looked kinda like that." Dawn took the paper from her
nightstand and handed it to Spike.

He looked it over as he told her what Giles had said. "Red’s puttin’ together some talisman or such for us both to wear. They seem to think these will be helpful. Can’t do any harm. Still think we need to be careful, but a mystical ward’ll come in handy."

After having something to eat, they began to draw the mystical symbols around the windows and doors of the apartment. Something about them seemed familiar to Spike, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

"Do you think that’ll be enough or should we really piss off the landlord and do the walls, too?" Dawn grinned as Spike wiped a bit of paint from her cheek.

"I think this’ll do, least for now. I’d better get those flowers ordered for Ms. Costa Bianchi. Roses, I think. Need to call her and explain about her noddin’ off, maybe set another date in a few days. That’ll give us a bit of time to decide what goodies I should bring home next time I get in her drawers."

"My ears! Spike, I don’t want to know what you get in anyone’s drawers", Dawn teased.

"Not like that, you great goof, and you know it! Don’t want in anyone’s unmentionables ‘cept your big sis and she’s not here. Probably still not interested
either. You got school today, Bit?"

"Just a couple of classes this morning, but I missed them. That leaves me free, even if failing my required courses. Summers family tradition, I guess. Buffy had trouble getting anything done that first year in college, too."

"Well, not every student has to save the world nightly, or look for supernaturally missing sisters either. But neither do they have a friendly neighborhood
vampire who can tutor them back into a decent grade."

Dawn squealed and threw her arms around Spike in gratitude. "Great! That means you’ll do my calculus and my paper on the evolution of Italian city-states?"

"No, that means I’ll help you study and make sure you keep your nose to the grindstone. ‘Sides, Eduardo’d be your best source for the paper, livin’ it and all.
Maybe he’d better become your preferred boyfriend for Sis, if schoolwork’s all you want." Spike ducked from Dawn's playful swat, smiling at the easy comraderie that had returned between them.

"As if! Nope, gonna pass on the Italian stallion and stick with the punk vampire I know and love." Dawn kissed him on the forehead before he could expect it.
If Spike could have blushed, he would have. Dawn had never kissed him before. He could get used to affection like this; would love to, in fact.

Suddenly Spike remembered where he’d seen those glyphs, those EXACT glyphs: the apartment of Lindsey McDonald and that Eve chit back when Lindsey was pretending
to be Doyle and yanking Spike’s chain. The whole apartment had been covered with them and Lindsey had them tattooed on himself as well. Yeah! They were to keep the Senior Partners from knowing what he was up to. Spike wondered if Eve was the one who put the paper under the door. It didn’t seem likely she’d care about what
was happening here and no one had seen her since the night of the battle, but she was a possible source. Spike decided to put a call in to Giles even before ordering Ilona’s flowers.

~~~

Giles thought deeply about the possible implications of the information he had just received from Spike about the symbols and where they had last been used. The person who had slipped the note to them might not be trustworthy. Still, it was good that the glyphs had proven effective in masking people and plans from the Senior Partners in the past.

If their benefactor had been this Eve woman, what was her motive in helping? Someone clearly knew more than they were willing to reveal. It would be a very good thing to discover where this woman was and ask her a few pointed questions.

Giles placed a call to the number given to him by Angel’s son Connor. The boy had been wanting to help again in the search for his father since his adoptive parents had been murdered. Now he had more than one reason to solve this mystery. Spike had agreed that Connor and Nina would be able to handle the search for Eve.

Since the former liaison had been last seen in L.A., California was the logical place to begin the search. Giles had been quite disturbed to hear that Angel had first used and later ordered the murder of Lindsey McDonald. Perhaps Angel was not so dissimilar to Angelus after all, merely having a veneer of civilization to go with the shortened name.

Giles decided he should find out as much as possible about the doings at Angel’s L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart to try to fit all these many pieces together correctly. Spike could tell him of the events and decisions leading up to that last disastrous battle. Giles picked up his phone and arranged a flight to Rome. Better to discuss this at Dawn’s apartment with those wards in place; telephones
would be too easy to monitor.

~~~

Xander was the next lucky recipient of a cryptic message. He was enjoying some quiet time and having lunch al fresco in a small café that faced the blue waters of the Aegean. He had come to Mykonos to locate yet another spurned woman in Eduardo de’Medici’s life. She had a fondness for wind surfing and was said to be staying at an exclusive hotel here on Kalafatis Beach. Since she was related to a royal family, Xander was not having an easy time securing an interview.

He had been thinking of Anya all day, something he hadn’t done this obsessively in over a year. Hearing all those stories from abandoned women seemed to have
picked the scab that was over Xander’s heart. He had burned the image of Anya’s betrayed face on the day that would have been their wedding and held it in his
heart, never fully healed. She deserved so much better from him and well he knew it.

So preoccupied with his sorrow over wasted opportunities and lost love was he that Xander didn’t get a good look at the person who placed the postcard next to his plate of suvlaki. It was a standard picture postcard sold to tourists everywhere and on the back was one word: Tezcatlipoca. ‘Okay, I know they say ‘it’s all Greek to me’, but that doesn’t look like Greek at all. I’d better call Giles on this one. since I’ve joined the group of recipients of chain letters from the beyond, or whatever this is.’

Once more, Xander got Willow on the line instead. Giles was on his way to Rome while Willow was still busily working on talismans for the group to wear.

"I didn’t get a good look. I was kinda day dreaming," Xander admitted. "It was a woman though, long legs, dark hair. I only saw her from behind--nice
behind, too. Couldn’t even tell how long her hair might be. It was styled up though, so it must not have been too short. Oh! She was wearing a sleeveless top with a turtleneck! Kinda odd not having sleeves with one of those; I’m only used to seeing turtlenecks on sweaters."

"Yup, you were right that it isn’t Greek, Xander! I was Googling while you were talking. It’s the name of an Aztec god or demon. I’ll have to do some more
research. Weird, first glyphs from Nepal, now Aztec demon gods. These clues get around as much as The Immortal did!" Willow was excited at the prospect of
research to sink her teeth into. " Good job getting even a glimpse of the letter carrier. That’s more than any of the rest of us have done. I wonder if that Eve woman has dark hair. Then again, she could have dyed it. Giles promised to call as soon as he got settled in at Dawn’s. I’ll tell him then."
~~~

Nina and Connor had little trouble finding Eve. Her broken body had been the only one identified from the rubble that was the former offices of Wolfram and Hart. Two bodies were found by the search and rescue team that sifted through the remains after the building collapsed in the first volley of the grand battle. One was an unidentified male Connor was certain was Hamilton. The man had died from a broken neck and blood loss from some kind of neck wound. The other body had been positively identified as Eve. She had been buried under the rubble, crushed to death.

Naturally, since W&H was directly involved in all the events they were investigating, the Scoobies couldn’t assume the mystery woman hadn’t been Eve simply because she was dead. The only thing they could be certain of was that if it were Eve, she was definitely a supernatural entity at this point.

"Hey, Willow, since that god name is Aztec, maybe Mexico is a clue of some kind," Connor suggested. "You sure your locator spells scoped that out completely? I don’t mean to be a pain, but I kinda don’t trust magic much. It’s a thing." Connor remembered the witch from her visit to re-ensoul his dad. She seemed powerful, but magic still was kind of iffy in his mind.

"Trust me, Connor, if your dad was in Mexico, we’d all be there having margaritas and trading stories right now. No, if they are someplace that this demon god is
involved in, it has to be some other dimension. I’m trying to find a way to search without having to go through them all. There are a blue million dimensions
out there, then you add in those that aren’t demon-controlled and it gets really crowded. At least we have the demon’s name and that’s a start. Of course, we are assuming the clue was about your dad. It could be about Buffy. Then again, maybe they’re together." Willow blanched at the thought of her best friend and her first love in some demon dimension together. Poor Spike, like he needed that!