"Alright, now I'm serious.  You've got to get out of here!" Tyler gave his friend a shove in the center of his chest, forcing him step by step to back up closer to the door.

  "Come on, man." Conner wedged himself in the doorway.  "Just let me stay for a bit...I swear, I won't make trouble. 

  "Dude, this is a bar.  You're not twenty-one yet.  My manager's gonna harass the hell out of me just for lettin’ you visit.  You haven't been drinkin' any, have you?"

  "No!"

  Tyler raised a sharp eyebrow.

  "...maybe a little."

  He gave Connor a firmer shove, nearly dislodging him from the doorframe.

  "Tyler, look, I don't want to be alone tonight...”

  "Neither do I.  But you see, that hot blonde back at the bar won't give me the time of day, so I can't help being alone tonight anymore then you can."

  "Please..." Connor lowered his voice and his gaze.  He swallowed hard against the irrational fear and rage boiling up inside.  "Tyler...I've been having these weird dreams..."

  His friend raised his hand, blocking eye contact between the two of them.  "You've already been to sex-ed, Mr. college-bound, so I don't need to hear no weird dreams.  Just go home to mommy and daddy, and don't go trollin' for more booze. "

  It was the harshness of his friend's words that loosened his group on the doorway, and a second later he found himself stumbling in the alley as the door to the kitchen slammed shut.

  "Prick..." Connor sighed and kicked dejectedly at an empty beer bottle.  He leaned against the wall when even that seemed too tedious, and pressed his forehead against the cool brick.

  "Poor boy...all fierce and full of hatred, all curled up inside, where it's dark...never ever to see the light again."

  Connor frowned and turned his head to take in the woman he hadn't noticed before, who stood at the mouth of the alley.  Pale skin was the first thing he noticed, followed by the delicate features and wide eyes framed by long, dark curly hair.  Her red and black dress and finely kept appearance were completely out of place among the rank and dingy discards in the alley.

  Her every step looked like gliding.  "So lost.  Daddy set him astray...his most precious boy."

  The stranger's voice was musical, and something in the way she was looking at him made him want her to keep talking.  But her muddled words were starting to put him on edge.

  "You ok?"  Connor wanted to step closer to her, but his feet held firm.  There was something that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.  "Do you...need any help?"

  She swayed closer, a smile on her face and her gaze filled with mischief.  Connor felt caught, snared by something, even though he didn't know what.  She was soon very close, bringing with her the scent of rosemary and copper.

  'Blood...' The knowledge was sudden, but not as shocking as he was sure it should have been.  The woman raised her hand and the palm hovered over his face, never quite touching him.  Each finger was tipped with a ruby red nail, but Connor could have sworn there were traces of a deeper red under each.

  The dark-haired loon moved her hand away quickly, before snapping her small jaws close to his face, her blunt teeth almost catching his nose as she growled playfully.  The young man felt the need to flinch back, but found himself unable to.

  She was up against him then, her body curving intimately against his as her tongue found his ear.  She traced the tip along the edge before whispering to him.  "Dreams bring empty promises and shadows of secrets they'll never tell.  Only I can bring you truth."

  Something in him froze even more than his immobile body.  The jagged pieces he had been trying to ignore since the dreams began were starting to form a disturbing picture.  Connor knew he should be afraid, but he only felt confined, and ready.

  Suddenly, the hold was gone.  As soon as he knew he was able to move again he grabbed the deceptively frail looking woman by her thin arms and shoved her hard against the brick wall, using the extra force he had only recently discovered after the dreams began.

  It startled him when she gasped and laughed gleefully at his show of aggression.  "Will you hurt me nicely?"

  "What are you?  Are you like me?"

  Drusilla purred and pushed her body closer to his, but he shoved her back against the wall.  With a maniacal giggle, she nodded.  "So much alike, you and I.  And we're going to play..."
 
…

 
  "I mean it, Fred!" Angel's voice was barely below a bellow.

  "I know you mean it, Angel."  Winifred kept to the slides she was studying, barely looking up to acknowledge her irate boss.  "The whole floor knows you mean it.  But I made a promise to help Spike -"

  "Spike is dead!  He's a useless spook, and he knows it!  He's a miserable menace, and I want him gone!  I want him where ever the hell he's meant to be right now instead of-!"

  "Angel!" Fred's no-nonsense tone and steely glare was enough to kill the rest of the rant before it could leave his lips.  "I am not sending Spike to hell just because he appeared naked on your couch!"

  She'd heard the story.  In fact, she had heard it from the horses own mouth, instead of the buzzing gossip going around the office that was helping to fuel Angel's irrational reaction.  And Spike had had more life in him while telling the story than she had seen for a long time.

  Angel deflated, shoulders slumped as he bowed under the weight of Fred's judgment.  "I know he saved your life..."

  "At the cost of his chance to be corporeal again," Fred reminded him.  "Self-sacrifice seems to be a pattern for him...and it's something worthy of acknowledgement, at least in my opinion.  I know you hate him, but he's earned better treatment than just being wiped away and forgotten because you have a mood-swing.”

  The glower on his face remained the same throughout Fred's speech.  "I wish I could forget about him..."

  "He does make that a little difficult." Fred grinned.

  "You have no idea."
 
 
…
 
 
“Great…” Harmony Kendall crept through the hallways of Wolfram and Hart, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible.  Her soft pink skirt was covered in the blood that had been her breakfast before Brad from accounting had knocked the thermus from her desk, making her look like a recent guest at a massacre.  She thought it could look like a murder, or…

  “Ew!  What if someone thinks I’m alive?  Oh, god!  Ew!”

  Luckily, after an incident with an irate client, Harmony had begun keeping a change of clothes at her desk.  Unfortunately, the skirt was white and didn’t match her cute pink top at all.

  The bathroom was blessedly unoccupied.  The blonde vampire thought herself lucky to have remembered where it was, since she never needed to use it.

  She hid herself in a stall to make sure that no one coming in could see the mortifying stain on her outfit.  As she shimmied out of her skirt and pulled the other from her purse, she debated changing her underwear.  She had gotten some of the pig’s blood on it, and she didn’t want to be walking around smelling it on herself all day, and she certainly didn’t want one of her less-than-human co-workers to smell it, but she didn’t have another pair to change into.

  With a put-upon sigh and a glance out of the crack of the door, she slipped them down her legs.  “The skirt’s not skanky short, so it’s not like anyone’ll notice…”

  Harmony stepped daintily out of them and shook her foot after they caught on her heel.  She pulled the new skirt up over her generous hips.  But when she reached down to pick up the pair of panties off the floor, they slid away. 

  “Huh?”

  The vampire opened the stall door and peered around for her runaway underwear.  They were resting innocently on the tile floor between the stalls and the sinks.  On full alert, Harmony approached them slowly, then nudged them with the toe of her pump. 

  With a shrug, she reached down to retrieve them, only for them to slide away again, like a carrot on a string. 

  “Hey!”  She hopped and chased awkwardly after them, trying to stomp the moving underwear onto the floor with her heel. 

  After the third attempt, the panties lifted into the air, hovering out of reach.  Just then, the air began to shift in front of her, and a figure took form… one with a long black trench coat and white hair.

  “Spike!”

  “…balls.”  Spike took off out of the open door of the ladies room, with Harmony right behind.

  “Come back here with those!  Come on, Spike!  This is so immature!”

  The ghost waved the blood-speckled treasure in the air as he ran
from his ex.  He ran straight down the hall and into and through the wall.  The panties hit the wall and slid down to the floor as Spike stared at his empty hand on the other side. 

  “Pervert ghost!”  Harmony huffed as she picked up her embarrassing dirty laundry.

  Spike couldn’t stop staring at his hand.  He flexed it before looking back at the wall.  “Huh…odd thing to forget.  That what’s solid doesn’t follow a ghosty through a wall…” He looked at cement walls and pipes criss-crossing under the ceiling and down dark corridors.  “Hm.  Must be a boiler –“

  There were whispers from down the corridor.  Scratching.  He looked, on alert for movement, but seeing none.

  But there were still whispers.  Familiar.  Tickling his mind.  He had the urge to scratch at his chest.

  “Looks like that damned basement in SunnyHell.  Don’t think I aught to stick around here.”

  He willed himself to be anywhere else, and disappeared.