It was as if John had been hit with a brick. Buffy’s sister knew him? Thought he’d been dead? He opened his mouth to speak, but Dawn cut him off. “God! I’m going to kill Buffy!” Her phone started ringing again. She angrily wiped the tears away and spoke while she grabbed the phone and checked to see who was calling. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me--and Giles! He had to know about you.” The phone continued to ring. “That’s why he didn’t want me to come to L.A. So much for me surprising my sister.” She glanced up at him, her expression changing from angry to a soft smile. “Gotta take this.”

John just stood there, watching her, trying to move all the pieces of what she’d said into an order that made some kind of sense to him. But he was distracted by her conversation.

“Vi? No, not really.” She sighed with impatience. “Where are you guys? Wait. The phone signal is breaking up.” She glanced at the open balcony door. “I’m inside, let me get outside and then tell me.” She headed for the open doors, but turned and pointed at John. “You! Don’t go anywhere.”

Then she quickly stepped outside, into the warm waning sun, her hair blowing back with the strong breeze. John threw his hands up in the air. She couldn’t just babble on like that and then leave him standing there. With purpose, he took long strides and walked out onto the balcony. Her back was to him. John caught her conversation in mid-sentence.

“…Spike. Did you know he was alive?” Dawn held the phone from her ear and a strange squealing sound came out of it. Then she put it back to her ear. “I’ll take that as a no. I’m glad, because if one of my slayers knew before I did…” She let the sentence hang menacingly. Dawn was quiet as she listened to the other person on the line and then she said, “I see. I can’t get a break, can I? Why couldn’t I have even an hour off the plane before all hell starts breaking loose? No, don’t do anything until I get there. We need it to be conscious so I can interrogate it. Just keep it contained. I will get there as soon as I can. I’m thinking it will take me maybe thirty minutes.”

Dawn shut her phone and spun on her heels, only to stop short and let out a loud gasp. And then she was flying at him again. Not to hug him this time. She charged at him like a linebacker, slamming into him and propelling him into the apartment where he fell back and hit the dining room table.

“Are you crazy?” she said in a high-pitched screech.

“I should ask you the same thing! What the hell is going on?” John rubbed his back, glaring at the woman. Buffy’s sister or not, this one was completely off her bird. “And don’t come any closer.”

“What were you trying to do, fry yourself a second time? Or have you forgotten that vampires burst into flames and turn to dust when in direct sunlight!”

“Vampires?”

Dawn just stared at him, her large eyes wide, still in shock. “I’m a watcher now. I know you don’t have much respect for the job title, but… Shit, I have to go.” She grabbed her purse off the table and then gave him another hug. “Tell Buffy I was here and that we are going to have a serious talk.” Scowling, she shook her head. “I bet Angel knew about you being alive. I bet he’s been keeping us in the dark and Buffy found out. That’s how she found you, right?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “I’m going to kill him.”

Speechless and trying to process her words about Angel knowing him, he watched as she grabbed a pencil off the breakfast bar and wrote something down on the note pad there.

“This is my cell phone number. Call me in a few hours and we can talk. Vi and Sharelle have a Zipverne demon cornered in a basement and I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep it contained.”

John clutched the piece of paper in his hand and watched, dumbfounded, as she threw the front door open and ran out. Slowly, he made his way to the bedroom and in a trance-like state, he put his socks and shoes on. He put his laptop back in its case and left Buffy’s apartment. On the way to his own apartment, he tried to suss out what just happened. Dawn. Buffy’s sister knew him. Thought he was a vampire. A vampire?

Either the girl had just escaped a mental hospital or…or he didn’t know what.

A sharp pain in his head had him closing his eyes in the elevator. He could see a younger version of Dawn sitting on a stone slab of some kind in a dark room with only a candle to light up her face. She was staring at him in awe, listening with rapt attention as he told her a tale. He had black nail polish on. The same boots that he had on when he’d been found were on his feet.

The elevator dinged and opened to his floor. He stepped into the hall and blinked slowly. Dawn was telling the truth. She did know him. She’d called him Spike. And Angel, Buffy’s ex-boyfriend, knew him somehow? A rush of adrenaline suddenly coursed through his veins. There was an answer to his past. He frowned as he entered the apartment. Buffy knew who he was all this time and she’d lied to him. Over and over again.

“Uh, oh,” Dirk said. “You two have a fight again?”

Barely acknowledging his friend, he blew by him. “Not now, Dirk.” John slammed his bedroom door shut behind him. He paced his room, running his hands through his hair and mumbling to himself. There had been answers right at his fingertips for weeks and she’d refused to give them to him! Well, he was going to get answers.

He checked to make sure his car keys were still in his pocket and then he opened the drawer in his desk. The letter from the city was still where he’d left it. He couldn’t trust Buffy to tell him the truth, but he could confront Angel and if the man refused to give him answers, at least he could beat him. He knew he wasn’t a vampire, of all the stupid things, but by the end of this night, John was determined that he would know something about who he had been before he’d lost his memories. With trembling hands, he fumbled with his laptop bag, turned the computer on and looked up the directions to the Hyperion Hotel in Los Angeles.

On the drive over, he tapped the wheel impatiently as traffic snarled to a snail’s pace. He felt bad now for brushing off Dirk the way he had. He’d refused to tell Dirk what was going on or even let him know where he was going. He’d have to buy the man a beer tomorrow afternoon to make up for it. Dirk had enrolled in surf therapy just days after he had. The expert surfer had correctly guessed that the familiar activity would help keep him off drugs after getting out of rehab. They’d quickly become friends and Dirk had been the one friend he could count on the last couple of years. It was wrong to keep him in the dark, but how did he tell his buddy that some chick thought John was a vampire and that his girlfriend had been keeping big secrets from him?

Out of nowhere, a flash of a memory pierced John’s brain again. He lost his grip on the wheel, but recovered quickly, swerving back into his lane before he crashed. It wasn’t much. Just a snippet of time. He was standing before a long-haired version of Angel who wore a shirt similar to the ones the Renaissance Fair people wore. They both had their arm stretched straight out and pointing towards a window. White smoke was rising from their hands as Angel smirked at him.

He slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of him. Once his heart stopped racing, he tried to focus, to bring back the memory. It was no use; the moment was gone.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

He drove the off-ramp and took his lefts and rights until he found himself in a dark and rather deserted part of the city. Something told him that he wasn’t far from where he’d been found passed out all those years ago. He couldn’t be too sure as he’d only been to the location with his therapist, Dr. Bell, once.

Pulling up to the front of the hotel, John let his Jetta crawl to a stop just past the building. He got out and leaned against the trunk with his hands in his pockets. He reached deep inside of himself, hoping that the building would have a familiar air to it, but he felt nothing. It wasn’t doing him any good to just stand there.

He cautiously approached the shiny glass doors and peered inside. One small light illuminated the front desk and a window to an office with the blinds drawn was yellow with light as well. There didn’t seem to be anyone around and he was expecting the doors to be locked. Instead, they opened smoothly and he slipped inside.

Not knowing what to do next, John stood in the middle of the lobby and waited, listening for any sounds to indicate that people might be about. The only sound in the big space was the ticking of a cheap wall clock behind the service counter. He approached it and searched for a bell to ring. It was eerie to be standing in such a big building with no one else around. Sort of like being in the Twilight Zone.

The sound of a chair scraping against tile reached his ears. He turned towards the noise in time to see Angel walk out of the office. Angel started.

“Spike—I mean, John? What are you doing here?”

He suddenly found his voice. “Exactly!” John pointed a finger at him. “You called me Spike just now. Was that my name?”

“Wha—I don’t know what you mean.”

Angel backed into his office, but John followed him, shutting the door behind him as the bigger man picked up his phone.

“We should call Buffy and let her know you’re here.”

Getting more angry by the second, John stomped over to the desk and slammed his hand down on the base of the phone, severing the connection.

“No. I don’t want to talk to Buffy. I want you to tell me who I am.”

With a sigh of resignation, Angel let the phone rest on the desk. John quickly picked it up and placed it back in its cradle.

“Your name is William,” Angel softly said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

John sat down, leaning forward in the chair and scowled. “Last name?”

“Pratt.”

“William Pratt,” John said, trying it out. It didn’t feel like his name. “Why did you call me Spike out there and why did Buffy’s little sister call me Spike?”

“Dawn is here already?”

John narrowed his eyes. “Just answer my question.”

“Spike was your nickname.”

“I used to wear a long leather coat,” John said, more to himself.

“Yes, you did. You were really attached to that old thing.”

“It’s hanging up in my closest at home right now. I was wearing it when they found me.” When Angel just leaned back and twiddled his thumbs nervously, John said, “Tell me about Spike. Who was I?”

“You were a pain in the ass, you were family and on rare occasions that last year, you were my friend.”

~ * ~ * ~

Buffy juggled the five plastic grocery bags as best she could and put her key in the door.

“John!”

She paused inside and glanced around the dark room, knowing right away that something was wrong. The curtain to the sliding glass door to the balcony waved in the wind as a cool off-shore breeze blew in. She set the bags down and reached for the light switch on the wall.

“John?” She called out, even though it was clear that he wasn’t there.

Quickly, she picked up the bags and set them on a counter in the kitchen, headed for the bedroom and turned the light on there. Her bedcover was rumpled slightly at the foot of the bed and one of John’s ties hung off the edge. She picked it up, running it through her fingers. Nothing else seemed out of place.

Back in the kitchen, she noticed the red light on her phone blinking. Buffy dialed voicemail and put it on speakerphone as she nervously put her purchases away.

“Yeah, Buffy? This is Dirk. Is John with you? He was acting kinda weird and I don’t know where he went. You guys have a fight or something? His cell phone goes right to voicemail. Call me when you get this message.”

“End of messages,” the cheerful automated voice said.

More worried now than ever, Buffy frantically searched the apartment for a note. Too impatient to make a phone call, she pulled the balcony door shut, grabbed her keys off the table by the door and with her heart pounding she headed for John’s apartment. She hoped he was there now, but if not, Dirk was the last one to see him.

Misty answered the door and let her in, the redhead’s smug grin not improving Buffy’s mood one bit. She saw Dirk in the kitchen, washing dishes.

“Is John here?”

Dirk shook his head while he dried his hands on a towel. “He hasn’t come back since he stormed out of here about forty-five minutes ago.”

“And he didn’t tell you where he was going?” Buffy asked, wishing that Misty wasn’t standing right behind her.

“No. I asked him if you two had a fight, but he pretty much ignored me.”

“We didn’t have a fight. I was running errands and when I got home, the place was dark. I know he stopped by though. He left his tie on my bed.”

Dirk leaned a hand on the dining room table, pausing to think. “God, I hope they didn’t cancel his contract or something. The second book is printed already and set for release.”

“It’s obvious,” Misty said. “It’s like I was saying, he gets bored with a girl. He just wants out of the relationship and he’s taken off until you get the picture.”

Buffy didn’t want to believe that. John loved her. She looked to Dirk who was shaking his head. “No way. He’s totally into Buffy. There’s definitely something wrong though. When he left, he looked like he’d trashed his last surfboard. He was totally bummed.”