Author’s Note: Big thanks as always to Kar for her quick turnaround. To all of you who are reading, thank you for your patience and I hope you’re still interested. I’ve moved into the homestretch on this story now; hopefully I can finish it off in another five chapters or less. And if I can find some time to sit down and write, I’ve got some scenes in my head that I’ll get typed out. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Previously: Buffy jumped off the tower to save the world about thirty years ago. Twenty years later Dawn was killed in a car accident and left her daughter Anne in Spike's care. While Anne was dying in a hospital with Spike at her side, slayer Lieuko was being slaughtered by Drusilla. This caused a rift in the Scoobies when Jesse Harris blamed Spike for her death. Buffy's return has gone a long way to reuniting Xander with the few remaining members of the group, but the slayer is struggling to find a place in a much-changed world where her friends are old and grey, Angel is human, Spike has a soul, and Willow might want to kill her. Recently, Buffy and Spike spent the night together and Jess did a lot of thinking about why he’s so angry with Spike.

In our thirteen installment the vengeance demon expert comes to town.

Chapter 13


When Spike awoke, she was still there, curled in on herself and leaving a few inches between them. She shifted slightly when he brushed her hair back from her face. He lounged back on his pillow, just watching her breathe. Buffy alive and warm and in his bed. It was, he now knew for certain, too good to be true. Some trick of Willow's, some bastardized wish granting, creative interpretation of who knew what innocently blurted whim.

Daft cow needed three slayers to raise Atlach-Nath, whatever that was. Anya had made it clear the Council was terrified that somehow she'd rip the third from their careful watch. Normally he gave anything Anya said as much notice as the wind, but in this case she might be right. If he killed Buffy now, sank his teeth into her throat or snapped her lovely neck, it would all be over.

His stomach rolled over and he pushed himself up out of the bed. A cup of tea did nothing to wash the bad taste out of his mouth and it was too early for anything stronger.

'That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die.' There was no way to know, of course, what would happen if the great horrid thing woke from its eternal nap. Willow and her nutty followers likely hoped that it would fulfill the Ashram-ha Scroll prophecy, wiping humanity off the earth and making it 'pure' once more, whatever the bloody fuck that meant. A planet overrun by demons seemed like possibly the least pure thing he could reckon.

Buffy stumbled into the kitchen looking bleary and wearing his robe. He'd picked up the habit of wearing things to bed when he'd brought Anne home.

"Is there more of that?" she asked quietly, eyeing his tea cup.

"Give us a minute." He still wasn't sure what to make of their easiness. They weren't meant for it. When he'd been spending his evenings lurching under her bedroom window he'd imagined a mad, passionate affair full of hidden assignations in alleyways and violent arguments followed by even more violent mating. Not that it wasn't pleasant having her tottering about the morning after in his clothes, drinking tea with him. It was just that he didn't trust it. It didn't seem like her.

Or maybe it was him had changed. Was it just the soul? Was that why she was in his bed, in his apartment, looking relaxed and at home? Did it matter?

"Are you okay, Spike?"

"Lot on my mind," he muttered in reply, handing her a cup.

"Yeah, that's going around," she agreed. She blew across the rim. "This is weird isn't it? You and me and..." She waved her hand around. "It's not what I expected."

"Disappointing you, am I?"

She frowned at him. "I don't remember you being this moody. But no, you're not disappointing me. I like you, in case that isn't, you know, obvious by now." The slightest tinge of pink appeared in her face. She pushed her cup away and rose up to kiss him. Her warm hand sneaked in under the band of his pajama pant. Perhaps it wasn't such a passionless little setup after all.


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Tashi turned her test paper over and sighed. All around her the other students were busily writing away. In the council's school she had been a mediocre student at best; at Sunnydale Memorial High she was at the top of her class. Shutting out thoughts of enormous, rampaging demons and imminent apocalypses, she laid her pencil on the desk and took a deep breath.

No one was watching her, she assured herself as she slowly rolled the pencil up and down the desk. Her fingers itched to grab the pencil, to stop doing something as dangerous as a spell in public. Tashi clamped her hands to the desk and rolled the pencil back up.

She got a rhythm going, a steady movement. If she scanned the room quick enough she could even keep it going while she briefly looked around to be sure no one was watching. But then it started spinning. Tashi blinked at it a few times, then out of the corner of her eye she saw another girl's hand moving in a quick circle against the top of her desk.

The bell rang and the pencil went skittering to the floor. She hastily passed her paper up along with the others. Her classmates started packing their bags and she tried not to stare at the girl with her black and blue hair and winking smile. Finally Tashi started gathering her own things. A folded chunk of yellow paper smacked into her bag. Huddled in the back of her trig class, she opened it. Meet me in the library after school. I'm Bianca.

Tashi felt her heart pounding, her palms sweating. Someone had found her out! Well, not the whole thing, but still. She couldn't concentrate the rest of the day, but no one seemed to notice. No one really ever noticed her. The librarian didn't seem to notice her either as she slipped through the double doors and into the stacks.

"I know who you are." Tashi spun around to see the girl smiling at her. "Don't freak out or anything. My birth mom grew up here too, and she tells some wild stories." The smile faltered for a minute. "I was a little wigged when they turned out to be true."

"I'm Tashi. I don't really know what you think I--"

"Bianca Chase. And I do know what you are. You're a slayer."



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Jess felt tired the minute he saw her, sitting primly in the restaurant booth. She looked cool and polished and impatient, tapping her nails against the table. When she saw him her whole face lit up like a neon sign.

"Sweetie! There you are!" She sprang up out of the booth and threw her arms around him. Under her tweed suit she felt uncustomarily plush. One thing she and his dad had in common, finding comfort in comfort food. It looked good on her, but there were bags under her eyes and her hand shook a little when she lifted her glass of water. She was tired, working too hard probably.

"Good to see you, Mom," he sighed.

"Oh, don't be like that!" she chided, ruffling his hair. "I'm sorry to have to be here on business, but at least I get to see you too. I've missed you so much since... since last time."

Last time. The funeral. All that mess with the twins sobbing round the clock and his mother trying to be strong and brave for them. His shock when the reverend said that Rupert Giles was survived by his wife, his son, and his two daughters. That's what he wanted it to say, sweetie. He always thought of you as his son, no matter what. Giles had never said that to him; probably he hadn’t wanted to be improper. Or maybe he was just avoiding rejection. Jess did not want to think about that, about any of it. And he certainly didn't want to talk about it, so he changed the subject.

"Oh, right. Aunt Willow wants to destroy the world, but at least we can have coffee."

His mother's face tightened. "That woman is not your aunt!" The waiter approached the table, then quickly backed off as his mother's face turned colors. "She is a menace, and if your father could locate his testicles for ten seconds, she wouldn't be here anymore to cause all this trouble in the first place."

Jess wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream. She called him my father. "Let's just eat, Mom," he suggested, deciding to let it go. They put in their orders and he pretended to listen as she yammered on about his two sisters and how she was having a hard time keeping up the roses on her own and how fulfilling it was working with Keiko.

He had never met his mother's slayer, but he had heard about her constantly. It was like having a third little sister. "Mom? Who is the other one?"

"The other who, sweetie?"

He shook his head. "The fourth slayer, Mom. I know there's a fourth."

She gave him a concerned look. "Honey, there is no fourth slayer."

Jess felt a squirmy feeling in his guts. He had assumed that the Council knew everything there was to know about slayers, that there was some trick they were keeping up their sleeves. If they really didn't know about the fourth, but Willow did? That couldn't be good.

It suddenly hit him. If there were four slayers, Willow didn't even need Keiko. They were all worrying about the wrong girl. Willow wasn't going to try to steal away his mother's slayer. She was expecting someone else entirely to come to Sunnydale. Someone they might not even know was a slayer. Which meant the creepy, world-ending monster could rise tomorrow for all they knew.

He swallowed. "I know someone who says otherwise."