“Anya calls Valentine’s Day a construct of big business.” Xander looked up from the tuxedo catalog; Anya had shoved it into his hands with a pointed, thin-lipped smile. “She says it’s a pagan fertility rite that has been hijacked by capitalism and encourages consumers to spend money on frivolous tokens of love in order to give the economy a post Christmas boost. Of course, coming from her, that’s a good thing.” The Magic Box was quiet, except for the occasional rattle from where the former vengeance demon had retreated downstairs to go through the perishable inventory. “What d’ya think of this one?” Xander flipped the catalog around and pointed at one of the pictures.

“It’ll make you look fat…” Spike, whose attempts at ignoring the boy’s constant prattle were being soundly thwarted, eyed the carpenter critically, “er.”

Xander leaned back and slapped his stomach, which jiggled a little under his Hawaiian shirt. “What’re you talking about? This is a gas tank for a loooove machine.”

The vampire looked at the human and smirked. “Too bad the axle’s shot and the hydraulics are a little off, huh?”

“Pfft. You’re just jealous.” Xander started flipping through the catalog again. “What about this one?”

“Not unless you’ll be parkin’ the guests’ cars. Go for something classic. This modern crap’ll make you look like a complete and total wanker.”

The carpenter looked back at the picture and shrugged. “So, you have some barbed beauty who’s gonna get a bouquet of roses this year? Or a posy of Fyarl tongues? Or whatever it is the fanged masses give one another?”

In a manner of speaking.

Harris, despite his recent improvements, was still as clueless about some matters as ever. Spike glared at him for a second, but soon resumed his own reading: an 1860s tax register. Dawn had this idea that some of the early gold miners had stashed some of their finds north of Sunnydale before California’s burgeoning government was entrenched enough to get its fair share. He was looking for any miners whose taxed incomes didn’t quite match with their standard of living. The work was kind of mindless, which was fine. At least gold didn’t screw with his concept of death and the afterlife.

That was apparently reserved for Buffy’s birthday presents.

When it became obvious that the vampire was pointedly ignoring his question, Xander turned back to his tuxedos. “Fine. Whatever. This one?”

If it was possible, the Whelp’s choices were getting exponentially worse. Pretty soon he’d be pointing at powder blue, frilly numbers with neon pink cumberbunds. Spike charitably doubted that the boy was even looking at the pictures anymore. It was the only plausible excuse the vampire could think of. “Those neck things make you look like Dracula. Who is a Eurotrash ponce. And still owes me money. Next.”

The boy grumbled.

Buffy stuck her head out of the practice room, and Meret’s crimson countenance soon followed. “Giles here yet?”

“No!” the vampire and carpenter yelled in unison. As they had the last three times Buffy had asked. And then they glared at one another, as if the idea of mimicking one another’s responses was a moral offense. As they had the last three times Buffy had asked.

Xander, of course, broke the silence again. “Wonder where the Watcher-man has gotten to.”

Spike maintained his scowl and kept flipping through his ledger. “Don’t know, don’t care. Probably got distracted cross referencing Zvirtan mating rituals.”

“What about this one?”

“No!”

*****

Giles never did show.

Not to be denied their weekly sparring sessions, Spike and Buffy had taken matters into their own hands. Theoretically, they were supposed to have chosen weapons for each other that evening, but when Spike presented his suggestion, a riding crop, matters had quickly dissolved into a flurry of fists and laughter.

Spike’s laughter and Buffy’s fists, to be exact.

The vampire discovered that it was very difficult to mount an effective defense when he was too busy holding his own sides to throw a decent block. It felt good. Okay, the slayer’s bony elbow sinking into his solar plexus didn’t feel so great, but the rest? That felt wonderful. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so hard.

When Anya stormed into the practice room, that was how she found them: Spike rolling on the floor, clutching his ribs from the effects of the slayer’s attacks and his own laughter, with Buffy standing over him, riding crop brandished above her head, shrieking a litany of her G rated insults at the cackling vampire. Meret, the traitorous chit that she was, had retreated with all haste to the top of the pommel horse, her mind an even swirl of amusement and watchfulness in the face of wildly waving woven leather.

Buffy noticed that they had company first, and her ensuing silence drew Spike’s attention.

The former demon looked at them both with her hands on her hips. “If you’re quite done scaring the customers away with your extremely loud and apparently ineffective sex games,” Anya paused, while Buffy whisked the offending item behind her back and turned the same color as Meret’s flight feathers, “I need to talk to you about Giles,” she finished on a more serious note.

“What’s up, other than his extreme case of tardiness?” Buffy asked, while digging the heel of her sneaker into Spike’s ribs in an attempt to quiet his latest round of laughter.

Anya tapped a toe until Spike managed to get himself under control and propped himself up on much abused elbows. “He just called with another private order.” The former demon handed a slip of paper to Buffy.

The slayer looked it over before handing it back. “Uh huh.”

Anya looked at her expectantly for a beat. “Wormwood? Imp hearts? Soil from unconsecrated graves?” With every word, her voice rose another step in pitch. Spike sat upright, attention focused on Anya’s litany, even as Buffy remained seemingly unconcerned. “Rabbit amniotic fluid?” she finally squeaked.

When the slayer looked down to her suddenly sober sparring partner for an explaination, Spike simply shook his head. “Not good, Slayer.”

“Okay, I get that imp hearts equal gross, but what’s the big deal? I mean, we’re talking about Giles here.” Buffy looked honestly confused. It would take an act on Congress, maybe a hand written missive from God himself, to shake the slayer’s confidence in her watcher, that much was obvious. “What’s the big?”

Anya took a deep breath and refolded the paper in nervous hands. “By themselves, these could be used for any number of benign spells, but together, we’re talking big time dark magic! The kind of stuff that I haven’t touched since my vengeance days.”

Spike sat up and wrinkled his brow in thought. “She’s right, love. Those ingredients? That’s getting into reanimations and the like. Nasty stuff.”

Buffy looked back and forth between the two. “Maybe he’s doing some kind of research thingy.”

Anya looked desperately towards the vampire. “Maybe,” he said to appease the slayer, but his dark glance told Anya something different.

Something else was going on.

*****

Giles’ apartment was dark and apparently empty. As a first order of business, Spike made a point to thoroughly search the liquor cabinet. After all, if he was hiding in the watcher’s flat, that’s where he’d be. No Rupert, but the vampire did find an unmarked flask in the back. Being the conscientious sort, he took a swig of the fiery liquid, just to make sure that no one had tampered with it.

Thus fortified, and after noting a few new additions to the watcher’s private stash, Spike joined Meret, who was nosing around the watcher’s shelves. There were a few noticeable holes in the rows of books. The vampire hadn’t spent much time perusing Giles’ personal collection, but it was obvious that many, if not all, of the missing books were rare and powerful magical texts. Spike tried to call the missing titles to mind, but none were forthcoming. Knowing the watcher, they were probably doing time on the back of his toilet or stacked on his night stand. After a while he gave up and turned his attention to the rest of the flat.

To the casual observer, the watcher’s apartment seemed normal, relatively speaking. A few dirty glasses in the kitchen sink, towels in the hamper, letters stacked neatly on the desk, a treatise on vampiric clans resting on the coffee table.

But Spike was not a casual observer.

In addition to his normally heightened senses, he had spent the last few years in and around this very apartment, as a refugee, a prisoner, and lately, a guest. Rupert might know the nooks and crannies of this flat better than anyone, but he was the only one who knew them better than Spike. There were little things, subtle clues, that something wasn’t right. The wrinkles in the couch’s afghan were a little too set, as if they had not been touched in days. There was a faint scent of blood mixed with something else, sharp and astringent, in the bathroom. There was a thin layer of dust on the dishes on the counter, and Giles’ scent, while still present, was fainter than it should have been had the watcher been spending his nights in the apartment.

And in case Spike needed another clue that something was definitely rotten in the state of Sunnydale, Meret had been sending him rapid-fire images: Giles pacing, Giles reading, Giles writing in a book, and in every single flash, the watcher had no mouth or eyes. It was distracting to say the least. Especially when she added words to her warning.

He fades.

Well, that didn’t make much sense, and Meret was steadfast in her refusal to contact the watcher or explain her own behavior, but there was only one place in the flat left to search. Spike scaled the stairs to the watcher’s bedroom.

He wasn’t expecting what he found.

The bedroom looked like a war zone. Drawers were hanging askew and clothing was strewn about the room haphazardly. The closet door hung on a twisted hinge. Spike stood for a moment, head cocked and blinking at the unreality of the scene, but Meret proved to be a little more proactive. She dove into the pile that covered the watcher’s dresser and started tugging on one of the shirts with her mouth, wings beating frantically.

“What’re you on about, little one?” Spike walked over to the mess and started helping her toss the piled clothing into the floor. He finally pulled a starched, white shirt aside and froze at what he saw. The jar, the one he and Buffy had found clutched in the hands of a skeleton and handed over to Giles, so many days ago.

The one that had been sealed up in an underground vault, reeking of dark magic and even darker dreams. The one that was now torn open, its lid dangling precariously from a strip of blackened wax. The contents had been some kind of grayish powder, but they were now spilled across the dresser with drag marks, the kind that might be left by curious fingers, marring the dusty pile.

But even more unsettling, at least to the vampire, was the feel of the jar. The magic that had made his skin crawl from the second he had entered the Crawford Street mansion was completely gone, as if it had evaporated into thin air.

Or taken up residence somewhere else.

Meret hissed deep in her throat, and Spike jerked his hands away with a curse. What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Ripper?

He glared at the jar for a moment, but he trusted in his instinct and the signals of his vampiric senses. No matter what the jar had once contained, it was inert now.

Spike dug around in the watcher’s closet, upending the already chaotic piles of clothing and half open boxes until he found something that would suit his purposes. After some careful maneuvering, the jar and most of the dust had found its way into a shoe box along with the cable bill with which he had shoveled them. Even without the stink of magic, there was no way in hell that he would voluntarily touch the stuff.

After putting the box on the stairs for safe keeping, Spike started an enthusiastic, somewhat systematic, search of the room.

First he tore everything off of the bed, sheets and all.

Nothing.

Then he shook out the bedclothes and piled them back on the bare mattress, after he had flipped it over and checked the box springs as well. Meret followed behind, poking through the things he had already searched.

Nothing.

Clothing from the floor soon followed.

Nothing.

Then he turned to the piles covering the bedside tables, dresser, and chairs.

Nothing.

Even though the pile on the bed was growing precariously tall, Spike continued. Anything left in the dresser and the closet came out next. Knick knacks, baubles, books, and boxes followed, all to no avail. There simply wasn’t anything to find. It was eerie, and more than a little irritating.

Well, maybe the letters from someone named Olivia stashed in the back of one of the drawers counted as something, but they didn’t appear to have anything to do with the problem at hand. The vampire pocketed them anyway: future blackmail material.

Meret hissed her disapproval.

Spike’s only reply was a shrug and a wicked grin. When it came down to brass tacks, he was still a demon and reformation only went so far. The coatl fluffed her feathers in a serpentine approximation of a snort and went back to burrowing in and out of the pile on the bed.

He searched, and re-searched, and okay, thoroughly trashing the watcher’s bedroom did have some perverse pleasure to it, but when no other clues seemed to be forthcoming, Spike rapidly started to loose patience. This was obviously pointless, and besides, he needed to get that jar back to the Scoobies. Research would be a right bitch, sans the witches and the watcher, but something had to be done. He didn’t know exactly what had happened here, but he could make a few guesses, none of them good. He suddenly regretted keeping the evening's search secret from Buffy. Another perspective might have been enlightening. Maybe Anyanka would know something.

The vampire turned to leave, and nearly jumped out of his skin, face rippling and fangs descending in defensive instinct, when a disembodied voice echoed through the empty room.

“Spike!”

Realization hit and a rueful chuckle chased the ridges from his face.

It was Glinda, of course.