“… So after the dream, Melia tried to help us scry, but whatever it is that’s upsetting Meret is also blocking us. Willow tried to force her way through the barrier, but her spell rebounded and fried all of the electronics in the house.” Tara’s voice was worried and rushed, words crowding their way out of the usually quiet witch’s mouth. Or mind. Or whatever. The mechanics of telepathy spells weren’t all that clear to the vampire, despite his experience with the coatl. Either method of communication seemed to work just fine.

Spike quirked his lips while he jogged. Concentrating on the conversation with Tara, much less Meret’s continuing stream of emotions and images was more than a little disorienting. “Including Red’s precious laptop?” he panted, more from muscle memory than any physical connection between his lungs and legs. He had started his run at full tilt, but the first bombshell Tara dropped on him was partnered with a particularly vivid flash of warning and the smell of roses from Meret. That hadn’t ended well. It had taken him a while to extricate himself from the mangled rosebush without shredding his coat, thus the slower pace. The coatl had snickered in her airy way and started scouting a little further ahead.

“She’s been doing so much better, but sometimes…” Tara’s voice wavered with a different kind of worry, and the vampire instantaneously regretted his sarcasm. “I think the computer made more of an impression than Althanea’s lecture and the nosebleed.”

“Look, Glinda. Didn’t mean to…”

“Spike, it’s okay. Things are still kind of hard sometimes.” The sound of a steadying breath whispered through the vampire’s mind before she continued. “I remembered your hair after we figured out that the phones were dead. Yvonne is helping me with the spell, and everyone agreed that this couldn’t wait until we could drive into town and find a payphone. Whatever is going on, it’s going to happen soon.” Tara paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was low and scared. “I don’t know what it is we touched, it felt oily and dead. But it was strong, Spike. I know I’m not explaining it well, but it’s bad. Buffy and Mr. Giles need to know.”

Spike’s hand tightened around the shoebox that was tucked under his arm. “Don’t know if that’s possible, pet. Don’t know what, but something’s gone seriously pear shaped with the watcher.”

“What d…d…do you mean?” her voice cracked, and she stuttered over the question.

“Well, he’s been acting right strange as of late, Meret won’t have anything to do with him, and he’s been ordering the kind of spell components that make our resident vengeance practitioner a mite twitchy. Went to check him out tonight and found his room trashed and a nasty artifact we dug up sitting in the middle of it. ‘Cept it doesn’t reek of dark mojo like it used to.” Spike’s jaw clenched, indulging for a moment in the frustration that seemed to be characterizing the evening. “Don’t know if Rupes is even Rupes anymore. Won’t lie, least not to you,” his voice was heavy with foreboding. “A little mystical help wouldn’t go astray right about now.”

“Oh no.” The witch’s voice was tiny, but filled with worry. “You don’t think…?”

“Don’t know, Glinda. Don’t know bugger all ‘bout what’s goin’ on, but I’ve lived too long to believe in coincidence.”

Tara was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, but even. Determined. “I need to talk to the rest of the coven. We might be able to do something. I’ll get back in touch in an hour or so.”

“Glinda?” Spike asked into the night. “Glinda?” Nothing. “Tara? Damn.” She was gone again.

He put his head down and ran for all he was worth.

*****

“Slayer!” The vampire burst into the foyer of the Summers’ residence, and Meret flew over his shoulder, making a bee line up the stairs. When her disappearance was soon followed by a piercing scream, Spike dropped the shoebox, completely forgetting why he had come in the first place, and flew up the stairs.

He knew the Bit’s voice when he heard it.

The little serpent’s touch was colored by surprise that had turned into overwhelming amusement by the time the vampire had reached the second floor and thrown Dawn’s door open.

He gawked at what he saw.

Meret was collapsed on the bed, wings sprawled and whole body shuddering with airy laughter. Dawn was gaping at herself in the mirror, and her face was somewhere between horror and laughter. But her hair! Spike found himself completely at a loss to explain what he was seeing. The girl’s hair was literally standing on end, not in the badly backcombed, fashion victim way, but in the literal, gravity defying sense.

“Nibblet?” he choked.

“Spike! Crap, crap, crap.” She started fumbling with something silver on her dresser. When the vampire finally started snickering, she whipped around a scowled fiercely, her hair swaying drunkenly in the air. “Gawd, don’t look at me!”

The vampire had to lean against the wall in the hallway for support while he continued laughing. Dawn glared for a moment longer before lifting the silvery thing in her hand, a compact, and wrinkling her nose in concentration at her reflection. Spike’s wheezing laughter stopped short when her hair abruptly fell back down, arranged itself into three tendrils, and started braiding itself. That was just… weird.

“’Bit, what the hell is going on?”

After tying off her hair with a purple, glittery band, Dawn clicked the compact shut and showed it to the vampire. It was Vianne’s Mirror.

Spike glared at it. “You’ve fucking got to be kiddin’ me.”

“What? I said you were getting Buffy a present.” She flipped the braid over one shoulder and looked at the vampire disparagingly.

Spike snorted. “Thought that was just an attempt to get big sis off my case.”

“Nah, check it out,” Dawn dug another folder out of one of her dresser drawers and tossed it to the vampire where he was slouching against the door frame. “Look at the key.”

Spike made a play of eyeing her.

“You suck!” she rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth was losing a battle against a smile. “The color key, stupid. What does pink say?”

Spike flipped the folder open and looked. “BBP?”

“Buffy’s Birthday Present.” When the vampire made a disgruntled sound deep in his chest, the girl scowled. “What?”

“L’me get this straight. You sent me up against an army of extras from a Romero flick for,” he gestured, “that?” He filled the word with so much disbelief and venom that Dawn bit her lower lip and started fiddling with the compact in her lap.

“Um, yes?” she said with a hopeful grin. At Spike’s disbelieving stare, she continued. “You said you didn’t care what you went after, as long as you got to fight a lot. And… And Buffy’s the slayer, and I thought she might want something girly for once, and you know how she gets about her hair. So big fight, personal hair dresser, problems solved!” She dropped her eyes in what looked like contrition, but Spike could see blue glittering at him from beneath the lowered lashes.

The vampire sighed. Even if she was playing him, she was also right. “Just ignore me, Little Bit. Been a rough night, didn’t mean to take it out on you.” He flicked a finger in the general direction of the mirror. “You sure that thing’s safe?”

Dawn sniffed and shrugged, trying to play it cool again. “Duh, I’ve been e-mailing Willow and Tara about it. Tara thinks it’s kind of frivolous, but both of them agree it’s safe. The spell is barely stronger than a glamour.”

Spike tended to agree with the blonde Wicca, but then again, a pampered Buffy tended to be a happier Buffy. He had no argument against that. And hey, that meant he was off the hook as far as an expensive gift went. “How’s it work?”

Dawn shrugged. “You think about a hairdo, and the mirror styles your hair. It’s way fast, and you don’t have to use hair gel or spray or anything. Just accessorize and go. Neat, huh?”

“So that Bride of Frankenstein thing you had going…?” he couldn’t help teasing a little.

The girl glared at the coatl, who had regained some of her dignity and was coiled neatly on the edge of the mattress. “Look, I was kinda startled, okay?”

Spike quirked an eyebrow at her, and Dawn turned her nose up in a show of brittle teenage dignity.

“Fair enough.” He finally relented. The not-another-Dawn-disaster and magical weirdness firmly under control, the vampire suddenly remembered why he was standing in the Summers’ house in the first place. “Any ideas where I might find big sis?”

“Oh, she’ll be home soon. She went to some kind of poetry thing for extra credit, but it was over a half hour ago.” The girl eyed him slyly. “Unless she’s found some hottie who has swept her off her feet with the promise of prose.”

The vampire scowled, but quickly schooled his features to his normal, bored expression. He wouldn’t give the manipulative teen the pleasure. Dawn had started making similar throwaway statements recently. It was maddening not knowing if she knew more about his past than she let on. He wondered if she had found one of his stashed journals in the crypt, or if she was just getting exceptionally good at throwing barbs blindly.

Dawn slipped the mirror back into one of the dresser drawers, under a stack of hair scrunchies and makeup cases. “Why didn’t you call her?” she asked over her shoulder.

The vampire blinked for a second before remembering the cell phone in his back pocket. He had completely forgotten about it. Oops. “Battery’s dead.”

“Yeah, right.”

Well he certainly couldn’t use it now, not while maintaining any face whatsoever. “’S kind of important. Can you…?”

“Whatever,” she picked up her purse and started shuffling around in it. Out came the phone, a replica of Spike’s own except for the little glittering heart stickers. “One bossy sister coming…”

The front door burst open. “Spike!” Buffy’s voice called from below.

“Right up,” Dawn finished flatly.

From the sound, the slayer was taking the steps two or three at a time before nearly bowling into the vampire when she rounded the corner towards Dawn’s room. “What’s wrong?” she panted, out of breath.

Spike glanced from the hallway back into Dawn’s room. The girl shrugged and pointed at the coatl. Meret flexed her wings and started preening. Her disparaging thoughts translated pretty obviously to, ‘Moron.’ The vampire refrained from banging his head against the door frame.

“Get the others over here. Something tells me we’ll be needin’ the cavalry once all’s said and done.”