Despite the Crawford Street mansion’s looming façade, Spike’s senses were still humming when he, Buffy, and Giles parked the watcher’s car on the curb and walked their way to the building’s front door. While his unbeating heart could not pump adrenaline through his veins as it once had, the demonic force that animated his body thrilled in the fight, heightening his senses and hastening his moves better than any natural process. Even though their battles were no longer serious, at least not in a life or death way, nothing could stir Spike’s passion and make him feel more alive than when he was dancing with a slayer. The fact that the slayer in question was Buffy tilted the balance even further. It was more intoxicating than any drug, any blood (save one) that he had ever tasted.

It turned out that they had guessed correctly. Buffy had wielded a padded sword and Spike, his staff. Their dance had been even more complex than before, weapons twirling, jabbing, and intertwining as the opponents slid around one another. To keep things interesting, their fists and feet were still involved, sweeping, kicking, and punching whenever the opportunity presented itself. Giles had cut their dance short when a particular heavy blow from the slayer had snapped Spike’s staff in half, prompting the vampire to flip the lengths of wood in his hands and start fighting double handed. The ragged ends must have made the watcher nervous, because he called for them to stop before things could get really heated.

The broken pieces of staff had started to go into the dumpster behind the shop before the vampire had retrieved them with a mumbled promise to carve the pieces into stakes. In reality, he just wanted a memento of the weekly sparring sessions. Then the watcher had made an interesting proposition: in order to improve Buffy’s depth of weapons experience, he asked them to choose each other’s weapons for the next week.

Even though Spike couldn’t see Giles allowing a whips and chains get-up for his slayer, he was more than happy to deck out the slayer in other weapons of his choosing. The idea provided a great deal of food for thought, with more than a few entertaining mental detours, on the drive to the mansion. The possibilities were endless: kamas, katars, glaive, tomahawk, daggers… Despite the feather-light touch in the back of his mind that was a fair approximation of a raised eyebrow from a creature lacking the requisite body part, Spike could almost forget where they were going in the play of his thoughts.

Giles obviously couldn’t though. As Spike trailed the man into the building, there was a stiffness in the watcher’s back, a coldness to his demeanor that wasn’t hard to interpret. The vampire understood him completely. What’s more, he felt the same tightness in the pit of his stomach that he was starting to associate with guilt. Not the fresh guilt of failing the slayer or allowing Dawn to get hurt, but old guilt. The kind that made him think about past kills. The kind a vampire was unaccustomed to confronting.

Buffy took the lead, walking them quickly though the main hall. The vampire wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to the statue of Acathla.

Pro’bly locked in the Council of Wankers’ basement.

They moved past the room where Giles had been tortured by Angelus. Spike scowled and picked up his pace, noticing that the watcher did the same. They moved past the garden, gone wild with time and want of care, down the winding stairs, and finally into the basement. While Spike retrieved their equipment, Buffy took their rope and tied it back around the exposed pipes that lined the far wall. They were old, but they were also thick and sturdy. Besides, the basement was solid concrete, block walls and poured floors with a couple of bare light bulbs illuminating its stark grayness. The pipes were the only things in the room that could serve as an anchor for the ropes.

When Spike reappeared, he dropped the bag next to the false panel and yanked the stone plate free to reveal the hole into the basement. “Your turn this time, Slayer.”

“You’ve got Giles?” she asked dubiously.

The two men looked at one another. Spike shrugged. “He’s not that fat.”

“I am going to pretend that I did not hear that,” replied the watcher in a huff.

Spike just smirked, and the slayer eyed them both dubiously before shrugging and jumping into the hole at her feet. A few moments later, her voice called back up from the room.

“Clear!”

In went the bag, and Spike picked up the rope at his feet and tossed the main coil into the dark hole in the floor. “You comin’ or what?”

Considering Giles’ expression when he had walked over to the vampire, Spike was heartily surprised that the watcher didn’t try to twist his head off from behind once they were in sight of the floor. The two had made the descent in silence, the human hanging heavily from the vampire’s neck. Nothing like the famed British stiff upper lip to make an uncomfortable situation somewhat more tolerable.

When Spike’s feet touched the floor, the watcher stepped away with an awkward cough. The vampire smirked, and spent a few seconds brushing himself off with exaggerated care. The expression on the watcher’s face, indignation that he tried to cover with forced indifference, set Spike laughing.

Buffy appeared out of the thick darkness and slapped the back of the vampire’s head. He ducked away, still chortling, and slipped to the other side of the inky curtain.

Even though he couldn’t see it in the dark, even with his enhanced vision, he could remember the location of the skeleton, and he kept to the other side of the room. The same feeling, of being watched, of disturbing something that should best be left alone, assaulted his senses, crawling up and down his back, making him tense, his mirth abruptly forgotten. The feeling did not recede, even when a few chanted words from the watcher dispelled the unnatural darkness, revealing the room in a more natural light.

There was the skeleton again, staring at him from the far side of the room. He couldn’t help sneering at it, irritated by the creeping uneasiness it created in him.

Buffy walked over to the skeleton, looking it up and down as if sizing up an adversary. A moment later her watcher joined her, commenting on the skeleton in a quiet voice as if loathe to disturb its rest. Not to be bested, Spike ambled behind them, sliding easily into their whispered conversation.

“The net’s magic, but weak. Crystal barely blipped. It’s Pandora’s jar there that’s got me worried.” His voice shattered the silence, making the watcher jump.

“I, yes, um. Quite,” Giles said, gathering his composure. He bent over and removed his glasses to look at the jar more closely.

“You know Giles, we could just…?” Buffy nodded towards the net and made a ripping gesture with her hands.

“It does just seem like a strength or preservation spell. That might be best. Give me one moment to get the gauntlet and steady the jar.” The watcher went back to their equipment bag and fished out a heavy glove of metal links. It was nondescript, impressively plain in design, but Spike could recognize Tiran handiwork from the smell alone.

The jar was small and fit easily in the watcher’s hand. He steadied himself and nodded to his slayer and the vampire. Buffy grabbed one side of the net, Spike the other. As if by some unspoken cue, the two threw all their weight and strength into the net.

And went stumbling across the room when the mesh unexpectedly gave way easily in their hands. Catching the watcher in their wake, they went down in a tangle of silvery net, arms and legs. Muffled curses from the watcher added desperation to their efforts to free themselves. When Spike finally got loose, he grabbed the slayer by a flailing arm and dragged her free.

After a few confused moments and more than a few loud curses from the vampire, the watcher was free as well, still muttering imprecations under his breath.

“Giles! Are you okay?” Buffy started looking him over worriedly, patting down his arms in search of wounds or who knows what else.

The watcher made a reassuring gesture, looking embarrassed by the slayer’s attentions. “I can assure you, I’m not injured. I just,” he looked at his left hand, the right still clutching the jar. He finally finished ruefully. “Well, I’m afraid that when we started to fall, I grabbed the jar with both hands. There doesn’t seem to be a reaction, though.”

The slayer heaved a gusty sigh in relief. “Don’t scare me like that! I thought I had a squished watcher on my hands.” Giles smiled awkwardly and Buffy tittered a nervous little laugh that Spike had come to associate with the slayer blowing off a little post-emergency nerves.

“You sure it didn’t do anything?” Spike muttered, unappeased. The jar certainly didn’t seem any different. It still reeked of the darkest magics, but he had learned long ago not to trust magic. Even when the watcher restated his certainty on the subject, Spike gave the man and the vessel in his hands a wide berth. Giles might have dodged the bullet this time, but the vampire still didn’t want anything more to do with it.

Slayer and watcher went to the duffel bag, and Buffy was soon rooting around in search of the protective container they had brought. Giles stood nearby, peering closely at the jar as if able to see through the corrosion of many decades that covered its surface. Spike looked around while the other two worked, eyes falling on the skeleton where it lay, scattered on the floor. Its hollow eye sockets gazed up at him from the floor, but they seemed less vigilant than before.

Less imposin’ now you don’t have a leg to stand on, as it were.

The vampire smirked at the skull and stooped to yank the metal mesh out from under it, which sent bones and dust flying. At the slayer’s disapproving glower, he simply shrugged. “Waste not,” he said blandly.

“You should show a little more respect, one dead guy to another, you know,” she said, sarcasm light but present in her voice.

“One – it’s not a bloody table-cloth I can whisk out without disturbin’ the dishes. Two – Anya’ll want this whats-it for sure. And three – anyone who lived here before the Poof deserves more than a little disrespect.”

The slayer shrugged in equal parts amusement and resignation. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Necromancers!” she shuddered dramatically. “Bleh!” She looked back at the skeleton. “I wonder who he was.”

“She,” said the watcher. “Look at the flared hips and the sharp angles of the skull. That is a classic female skeleton.” At the disbelieving looks from the slayer and vampire, the watcher huffed. “I studied more than ancient texts and weapons arts you know. Regardless, I believe I will send another anonymous letter to the police department. Their coroners will be able to tell more about our mystery lady, and Willow assures me that her hacking abilities will in no way be hampered by her distance.”

After settling the newly stuffed bag on the slayer’s back, the two Brits watched Buffy climb the rope back into the world above. Spike kept his back to the watcher to conceal his admiring gaze, not wanting to antagonize a watcher who was about to be hanging from his neck again. Self preservation was one of the few things that could give the vampire a sense of tact.

A few minutes later, they were driving away from the mansion, Giles actually speeding in his unvoiced but obvious desire to put as much distance between himself and the building as possible. Spike was slouched in the backseat again, glaring balefully at the bag next to him on the back seat. Even though he knew it was impossible, thanks to the dampening chest, he could have sworn he could still feel the jar bristling with dark energy.

The vampire was starting to regret not simply keeping the gift he had left as a peace offering on the watcher’s kitchen counter: a bottle of Scotch with a note simply saying “I hate that bloody building.” In addition to providing a liquid outlet for his ill temper, if he had kept the alcohol for himself, he wouldn’t have to ponder the reason for his uncharacteristic empathy. There were two options, either it sported crimson scales and feathers or it had blond hair and hazel eyes.

Either way, he was whipped.