A/N: Oh, my God, I'm finally finishing this story - and it's only about a week late for it to be considered topical. *faints* To the three people who are still paying attention, sorry for the (again) long delay in updating. Fortunately, I feel like I'm over the hump, so to speak, so there will definitely be at least one more fic in this series to wrap up all those pesky dangling plot threads you'll notice hanging off the bottom of this chapter. And it's a Christmas story! (Of course, given the rate I've been posting lately, it'll probably be more like Easter when I'm done.) After that, we'll see how it feels, whether it ends there or continues on.

Much thanks to Slaymesoftly for betaing this chapter!

*****

Chapter 17: Thanksgiving

“Hey, Giles?” Willow said hesitantly from her place at the research table, as she read over her translation with a furrowed brow. “I think I found something.”

“What is it?” Donning his spectacles, Giles came around from behind the Magic Box counter and peered over her shoulder.

“Some sorta ritual. Here.” She handed the notebook to Giles.

“Hmmm, yes,” the Watcher mused. “Purification ritual. I believe I saw that referenced…” He paged through some of his own notes. “…here as well.”

“What does it mean?” Buffy asked, turning her attention to the two scholars. Xander, Anya, and Dawn, who had previously been scattered around the shop occupied with their own activities, also looked up to hear the latest development.

“Well, I’m not sure,” Giles replied. “I think it may be part of a larger plan. Robert’s materials seem to indicate a series of rituals, leading up to… something. It’ll take time to go through and piece everything together, but perhaps if we can prevent this purification ritual from taking place…”

“We could throw a wrench in the plan,” Xander finished for him. “Even if we don’t know what it is.”

“So, when’s this ritual supposed to happen?” Buffy tugged on a lock of her hair in frustration. It felt as though lately she couldn’t even catch her breath from the last disaster before the next one overwhelmed her.

“That we don’t know.” Giles reached for another book and took a seat at the table next to Willow. “I’ll have to work on the calculations.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said with a sigh. “It probably has something to do with the phase of the moon or who won the World Series or something.”

Giles shot her a disapproving look, but before he could remark on her flippancy, the basement door opened, and everyone’s attention was captured by the vampire who emerged.

“Am I interrupting something?” Spike asked, glancing from Buffy to the others, and then back to Buffy again.

“What part of ‘not welcome’ didn’t you understand?” Xander snapped.

Buffy put out her hand, as though to hold him back should he decide to rush Spike and physically attack him. “Xander, it’s okay. Spike and I – we’re okay.”

There was a brief silence as the others took in her words, but Dawn quickly jumped in before any of them had a chance to argue. “Hi, Spike!”

Spike smiled, grateful for the effort. “’lo, Niblet.”

“If you’re here to purchase something, we’re closed,” Anya informed him, in a kinder tone than her fiancé’s. “It’s a holiday.” She shot a sideways glance at Giles to express her displeasure at losing business. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“No, I, uh…” Spike rubbed the back of his neck. “I just… I was looking for Buffy.” At Spike’s urging she followed him to the far corner of the shop, away from the others gathered at the table. “You didn’t say anything to them?” he asked in a low voice. “About me? What we talked about?”

Buffy winced. “I couldn’t really find the right time.”

“Woulda been mighty awkward at dinner tonight, wouldn’t it? If I just showed up.”

“I’m sorry. I should’ve…” She shrugged sheepishly. “Well, they know now, all right? It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.” Spike shook his head, heading back toward the group. “Anyway, just stopped by to see what time you wanted me there.”

Buffy glanced at her watch. “Oh, um, dinner’s at three, so maybe in an hour?”

Spike nodded. “See you then,” he replied, heading back down to the sewer entrance in the basement.

Buffy turned back to her friends to find them all staring at her with expectant looks. “He’s… coming to dinner,” she explained. Four pairs of eyebrows rose simultaneously. “Don’t start,” she said, sinking into a chair at the table, preparing herself for the inquisition that would inevitably follow.

*****

Buffy came up from the basement carrying the good china for Thanksgiving dinner. After the argument over Spike in the Magic Box earlier that day, no one was exactly in a holiday mood, but Buffy was determined to create as cheery an atmosphere as possible. It was what her mother would have done. In fact, she could remember plenty of tense holiday dinners, right before the divorce, that her mother had forged through bravely, always with a smile on her face.

As she set the box down on the breakfast bar, Buffy was suddenly struck by the memory of coming home after that summer in L.A. Joyce had invited her friends over for dinner to celebrate her daughter’s return, and Buffy had balked at using the china. “Willow and everybody aren’t company-plate people. They’re normal-plate people,” she’d insisted to her mother.

She started to smile at the silliness of that conversation – how important it had seemed to her at the time, that everything be normal – when, just as quickly, she felt an ache like a gaping hole in her chest, and her eyes filled with tears. The plate she was holding slipped out of her hands and shattered on the floor.

Alerted by the noise, Spike stuck his head in the doorway from the other room. “Slayer?”

He couldn’t see her, so he went around the breakfast bar where he found her crouched, picking up the broken china. “You all right? I heard a noise –”

“I broke a plate.”

She seemed, inexplicably, on the verge of tears. Spike bent down and reached out a comforting hand, hesitating a moment before resting it on her shoulder.

“Hey, it’s all right. Just a plate, yeah?”

Buffy’s forehead wrinkled and her lower lip began to quiver. “I miss Mom,” she whispered.

She let the pieces of china fall out of her hands as she turned into Spike’s shoulder and started to cry. Startled, his arms came around her in a tentative embrace, conscious that he hadn’t touched her like this since the night of the Glarghk guhl kashma’nik. He pulled her up off the floor and let her collapse against him as she buried her face in his chest.

“Hey,” Spike soothed. “It’s all right, pet.”

“I saw my parents,” Buffy said. When Spike made a confused sound at her non sequitur, she went on, “Remember? You – you asked me what I saw when I was hallucinating. There were… other parts to it, but… I saw my parents.”

She began to talk, hesitant at first, then faster, with growing anxiety, until the words were tumbling out of her – all about their money problems, and Dawn trying to contact their dad, and possibly losing the house.

“I can’t do this, Spike. I can’t – I can’t be a mom for Dawn. She needs something better than this. I don’t know how to – to cook, and I can’t pay the bills on time, and I know she needs more attention from me. Her grades have gone way down – I should help her with her homework, or – or, I don’t know, I just –”

“Buffy… shhh…” She’d backed away from him in the course of her rant, and he tried to pull her back into his arms, but she skittered out of reach.

“I don’t want to give up this house, Spike. I can’t. It’s all we have left of Mom. And I just – I didn’t want Dawn to see it… I can’t believe he –” She punched him hard, just below his collarbone. “He wouldn’t even help us!” She cocked back to punch again, but Spike caught her wrist and held her steady.

“Your father?” he asked softly, letting go of her once she’d calmed down.

Buffy nodded. “He won’t even pay child support, and then he sends a birthday card, like that makes it okay!”

Suppressing his own rage against a man he’d never even met, Spike preoccupied himself with sweeping up the broken china on the floor. “You’ll get through this, Buffy. We’ll come up with something. Can’t be harder than fighting demons and saving the world, right?” He stood up and looked at her again. “I’m not gonna let you lose the house.”

Buffy smiled, appreciative of the sentiment, but skeptical that Spike actually had the means to help her. “How?”

“I’ll think of something,” he replied with determination, the beginnings of a plan already forming in his mind. “We better get a move on – the others’ll be here soon, and I’d wager you haven’t the foggiest notion how to cook a turkey.”

*****

“Somebody explain to me how Thanksgiving dinner turned into another research party,” Xander said, sitting on the sofa with Anya while Giles and Willow continued to go over the calculations for the purification ritual. “What happened to leaving your work at the office? Or, in this case, the magic shop?”

“It’s a holiday,” Willow explained. “That means instead of just research, there’s research with pie. Besides, we’ve got plenty of time.”

“Hey!” Buffy said defensively, catching Willow’s comment as she emerged from the kitchen. “Who knew it took, like, five hours to cook a turkey?”

“I told you, you should’ve put the bird in earlier, Slayer,” Spike admonished her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “You were right. The guy who lives on blood is a better cook than me.”

“That’s why I’m here, innit? Wanted my cooking expertise.”

Buffy shot him a look before turning her attention to her Watcher. “Giles? Anything on that ritual yet?”

“Maybe.” He glanced up at her. “Your sarcasm earlier actually gave me an idea – well, not the baseball.” Giles rolled his eyes slightly. “I’m not entirely certain, but if my rough calculations are correct – judging by the mystical Hitszu calendar and taking into account the lunar position – it’s meant to take place on the full moon closest to the feast of Zayithain.”

Buffy gave him a blank look. “And that would be when?”

“Oh, erm…” Giles glanced down, shuffling through his notes. “Last week.”

“So… we missed it,” Dawn said.

Giles nodded. “It would appear so.”

“Wait a minute.” Buffy held up one hand, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So, there’s some mystical demon feast day, when Big Mysterious Bad does some purification ritual for who-knows-what, and it just happens to fall on the same week when I’m tied up with a demon that makes me go crazy with hallucinations?”

“It was a distraction,” Spike concluded, his expression darkening as his gaze met Buffy’s. “Our guy’s a demon summoner, right? Summoned up a nice distraction so the Slayer wouldn’t get in the way of his ritual.”

“What if they were all distractions, Giles?” Buffy asked, a note of rising panic in her voice. “What if something’s been happening, and we had no idea? All this time, we had no idea…”

“Yeah, who knows what else he coulda done, while we’ve been busy running after dragons and – and all kinds of demons,” Xander pointed out.

“I suppose the only thing to do is keep researching,” said Giles. “Clearly, these papers hold the key to whatever is happening here.”

Willow looked grim. “We’re gonna need more pie.”

*****

Once the dinner dishes had been cleaned up and most of the guests had gone home, Buffy collapsed on the sofa, giving Spike a grateful look. “Thanks for helping,” she said.

He responded with a half-smile. “Think I’ll head out, do a quick patrol. You take the night off.”

Buffy tipped her head back and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I lov-” Catching herself, she quickly clamped her mouth shut. Given the tentative nature of their relationship, that particular hyperbole was probably inadvisable. “That’s – that’s nice of you. Thanks.”

Shoving down his desire to hear her finish that sentence, Spike shook his head, a patient expression on his face.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. He started to shrug it off and head for the door, but she jumped up off the sofa. “Spike.”

When he turned around, she was there to meet him with a hug. “Thank you,” she said with sincerity. “For everything.”

This time, Spike gave her a real smile. “Anytime, Slayer. ’Night, Bit!” he called up the stairs before heading out.

Instead of making his way toward the graveyards like usual, Spike cut through downtown and headed straight for the seedy section of Sunnydale. Unlike the rest of town, the demon bar was bustling; none of them paid any mind to human holidays. As soon as he walked in, Spike found his target – a demon that appeared almost human, save for its waxy yellow skin.

“That offer you gave me the other day,” Spike said, taking a seat at the bar next to the demon. “It still good?”

The demon nodded.

“How much does it pay?”

“Five hundred.”

Spike worked his jaw for a moment, making his decision. Then, he stuck out his hand to shake on it. “Deal.”