Chapter 11: Coping

“Picked up something extra on patrol tonight,” Buffy announced, as Spike and Susan followed her into the magic shop. “This is Susan Rodriguez.” The Slayer grimaced. “She’s a reporter for the Sunnydale Press.”

Giles pulled her aside and whispered, “Buffy, do you really think it’s wise to bring a reporter in here? Do the words ‘secret identity’ mean nothing to you?”

“Giles, she saw me stake a vamp. What was I supposed to do?” Buffy looked around at the gang. “Plus, she knows a lot about those people that killed themselves. Maybe she can help. Any luck with the research?”

Xander looked uncertain. “You sure it’s okay to talk in front of” – his voice dropped to a stage whisper – “the reporter?”

“We’re completely off the record,” said Susan. “I want to stop this killer, and I think Buffy knows how.”

“Well, first we need to know what it is,” said Buffy.

“Think I’ve got you covered,” Willow told her, holding up a text, open to a picture of the demon. “It’s a glarghk… guhl… kashma'nik,” she said slowly, sounding it out. “That’s what it looks like.”

“That’s… not human,” Susan said.

“Yeah,” Buffy replied. “You know all those mysterious things you kinda suspected exist, but you never told anyone because ‘monsters aren’t real’?” Susan nodded. “They do exist, and they all live in Sunnydale.” Buffy turned back to her friends. “What does it do?”

“It injects its victims with venom from a spike that comes out of its wrist,” Giles filled in. “The poison causes vivid hallucinations, incapacitating the victim.”

“But this demon hasn’t killed anyone,” Buffy pointed out. “What’s the point of incapacitating someone if you’re not going to kill them?”

Willow and Giles looked at each other, and then down at the book. “It, uh, doesn’t say,” Willow said.

“It’s a defensive mechanism,” Anya replied, drawing on her extensive history and knowledge of demons. “The glarghk guhl kashma’nik doesn’t eat people, so it doesn’t bother to kill them. When the demon feels threatened by a human or another demon, it hits them with the poison, giving it the chance to get away.” Xander gave his fiancée a proud smile.

“When the demon feels threatened by a human?” Buffy asked with disbelief.

Spike gave her a look. “Not all demons attack humans, Slayer.”

“Yeah, but if they got in a fight, the demons are usually stronger, right?”

“I never said it was bright,” Anya said. “It’s non-sentient. Just like an animal. If it gets scared, it gets defensive.”

Buffy nodded. “Any idea where we might find it?”

“Still working on that one,” Willow said. “The locations of the two victims are so far apart… it could be anywhere.”

“Keep working on it, okay?” Buffy replied. “Listen, I don’t like Dawn being home alone. While you guys make with the research, I’m gonna stop by the house and bring her back here.”

*****

“Dawn?” Buffy called, as she opened the front door.

She spotted a pile of mail sitting on the foyer table that she hadn’t noticed earlier, when she’d been distracted by the singing and the dancing. She sifted through the pile – bills, bills, and more bills, she noticed with a growing sense of dread – until a thin envelope caught her eye. Addressed to Miss Buffy Summers, with her father’s office as the return address. She ripped it open and quickly scanned the letter.

“Dawn?” she said again, this time with shades of suspicion and confusion in her voice. Dawn came down the stairs, and Buffy held the page out to her. “What is this?”

“What is what?”

“Why is Dad’s office telling me to fax over the forms he needs to sign and they’ll forward them to him?”

Dawn’s mouth gaped open.

“Dawn? Do you know something about this?”

Her sister suddenly seemed to get smaller as she shrank into herself and gripped the banister until her knuckles turned white. “I… tried to contact Dad. I thought – I thought maybe he could help us, with money and stuff.” The words began to spill out faster now. “I called the office, and they said he was out of the country, and I asked for the number, but – but they wouldn’t let me call him. He didn’t want to talk to me, so I thought, maybe, if he thought it was something important, some – some kind of obligation, he’d contact us.”

“So, you lied.”

“….Yeah. But I just wanted – I thought he’d…” She looked at the letter. “Doesn’t he even care about us?”

Buffy sighed. “Dawn…”

“He’s our father, Buffy! We don’t even know where he is! Shouldn’t we be able to find him?”

Buffy came around the banister, pulled Dawn into her arms, and sat her down on the steps. She didn’t want to tell her sister that their father hadn’t even kept to his actual obligations, let alone made-up ones. After going three rounds with a secretary, trying to get the child support he owed them, Buffy had come to a painful realization. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe he just doesn’t want to be found, Dawn. Maybe we ought to accept that.”

“But he’s our dad.”

“I know.” Buffy stroked Dawn’s hair. “I know it’s hard. Everybody always makes it seem so magical and exciting to be an orphan. Annie, Pippi Longstocking…” She paused, searching for another example.

“Party of Five?” Dawn supplied with a sniffle.

Buffy was pretty sure they’d all been pretty depressed orphans, but she just gave Dawn a sad smile. “Yeah. But it’s not, really. It’s lonely and scary, and there are times when you just want Mom to be there to hold you and make everything better.”

“Are you scared, too?”

Buffy paused for a long moment. “Yeah,” she admitted, letting out a sigh. “But I promise we’ll be okay, Dawn.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out, somehow. I promise.”

*****

Susan stood up abruptly, headed for the door. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Where are you going?” Willow asked suspiciously.

“To my car,” Susan retorted. “Is that okay with you?”

“What for?” Giles questioned her, in the same tone Willow had used.

“God, what is this, the Inquisition?”

“Look,” Xander jumped in. “We don’t know you, lady. Just because Buffy brought you in here, doesn’t mean we have to trust you.”

The reporter let out an annoyed sigh. “I have a police scanner in my car. I’m going to see if there’ve been any crimes in Sunnydale tonight.” She gave them a pointed look. “It’s sort of my job.”

“Perhaps Spike should go with you,” Giles suggested.

Susan and Spike shot the Watcher matching glares. “I don’t need to be watched!” Susan said indignantly.

“It’s dangerous out there,” Giles reasoned. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Not her soddin’ babysitter,” Spike said with a growl, crossing his arms over his chest and planting himself stubbornly in a chair. “She can go out and get eaten if she wants to.”

*****

Spike let out a sigh, fiddling with the knobs and buttons on the dashboard of Susan’s car. He flicked the air conditioning on and off, spinning the dial to full blast and back again. Even though he had a lighter in his pocket, he pushed in the car’s cigarette lighter to heat it up. He noticed a series of buttons alongside an LCD screen, and he pushed them each in turn, sending the trip computer scrolling through Susan’s average speed, trip milage, gas milage, and alarm clock.

When he accidentally flicked on the radio, drowning out the police scanner she was listening to, Susan reached over and swatted his hand away from the dashboard. “Stop that,” she snapped, turning the radio off and settling back in the driver’s seat.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he replied. “What’s the point of this?”

“The point is, I write about crime for a living. It helps to know when it’s happening.”

“Yeah, but you got Red in there, real computer whiz. Could just hack into the police reports,” Spike told her, pulling out the cigarette lighter.

“Don’t smoke in my car,” Susan said, eying him carefully.

Spike shot her an annoyed look and began rolling down the passenger side window.

“I said, don’t smoke in my car.”

Rolling his eyes, Spike put the window back up and began pressing the cigarette lighter against the glove compartment, leaving slightly darker circles on the tan plastic.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Susan cried, snatching the lighter out of the ADD vampire’s hand and replacing it in its holder.

Spike just shrugged. “Bored.”

The reporter’s eyes glinted. “Why don’t you tell me about Buffy, then?” When his expression darkened with suspicion, she went on, “I know she’s not a normal girl. What’s her deal?”

“Not my place to say.”

“You called her Slayer. What does that mean?”

Spike’s jaw twitched, his mouth frozen with indecision. “She’s a vampire slayer,” he said finally. “She fights evil, all the demons that haunt this soddin’ town.”

“But not you.”

His head snapped toward her, a look of surprise on his face. She smiled. “Reporter, remember? I can read between the lines.”

“I… help her out,” Spike admitted. “That’s why she doesn’t kill me.” No need to get into his complex relationship with Buffy while talking to a reporter.

“But you’re not her boyfriend,” Susan confirmed. “She was pretty clear about that in the cemetery.”

Spike paused. “No. I’m not.”

“Shame,” she said, placing one hand casually on his thigh. “Letting you go to waste.” Susan prided herself on being able to read people pretty well, and she could easily see the torch the vampire held for his supposed enemy. She could be pretty confident that, if Buffy wasn’t taking advantage of his assets, no one was. As much as he was a pain in the ass, the man sitting next to her was still very attractive.

And chock full of information. “Tell me about vampires.”

Spike raised his eyebrows and looked down at her hand, then back up at her face. “What, uh, what d’you wanna know?”

“Are all the stories true? The Dracula rumors and all that?”

“Some of ’em.” Spike glanced out the window, as though expecting Buffy or one of the Scoobies to be staring in at them.

“So, you don’t breathe? Or…” Her hand slid up to his chest. “…have a heartbeat?”

Spike swallowed hard. “No,” he said, gently but firmly removing her hand from his body. “And you’d do best to keep your hands to yourself, ’less you want ’em bitten off.”

Undeterred, Susan replied, “Thought you weren’t that kind of vampire.”

“Keep pushing,” Spike warned, “and you’ll find out exactly what kind of vampire I –”

“Shut up.” Suddenly losing interest, Susan waved a hand in Spike’s direction to silence him and listened intently to the police scanner. “Something’s happened.”