Chapter 11
 
“You want to tell me what just happened here, slayer?”
 
Buffy stood, flung her arms around Spike and squeezed. “Glory’s dead!” She released him before he could respond and danced away, twirling with her arms spread wide. She sing-songed, “Glo-ry’s de–ead! Glo-ry’s de-ead!”
 
“Yeah, kinda picked up on that. Who’s Glory?”
 
She stopped twirling and swayed slightly, waiting for the world to stop whirling. “I have to call Giles!”
 
“What, now? I thought we were going to find something to kill?”
 
Spike was pouting. It was so cute. “Oh well, I guess it’s not that urgent. I can tell them all tomorrow.” She hooked her arm through his and urged him forward to resume their progress through the cemetery. “Let me tell you a story about a Hellgod in exile and a swirly green ball of energy…”
 
 
~*~*~*~
 
 
When the last of the group of vampires turned into a shower of dust floating on the breeze, Spike turned to check on Buffy. She was leaning against a stone angel, catching her breath and combing her fingers through her dishevelled hair. He tucked his stake into his duster pocket and shook his head, bewildered. “I still can’t believe she’s not real.” He fished a finger around under the stake until he found the scrunchy he’d pulled from her hair earlier, and tossed it to her.
 
“Oh, thanks! I wondered where that had gone.” She bent forward to gather her hair in a single bunch and then straightened up to fix the scrunchy in place to form a high ponytail. “But she is real. She’s very real. She just… hasn’t been real for very long.”
 
“So when…?”
 
“Best we can tell, she arrived about six months ago. About the same time that Dracula was in town.”
 
“Bloody hell! Did I miss him too? It’s been all go here, hasn’t it, slayer? Wish I’d been here then. Poncy bastard owes me eleven pounds.”
 
“What’s that? About twenty dollars? That’s not much.”
 
“Reckon it’d be a tidy sum when you factor in compound interest over nearly a century, love. Would have been a good foundation for the Supporting a Family Fund.”
 
Buffy straightened her clothes and brushed a patch of vampire dust from her sleeve, then gestured that they should move on. “Well, I’ve done my duty for the night. I should get back. I need to get some sleep. I have classes in the morning and I’ll need to get there early so I can get Annie settled in the crèche first. And of course I still have to have The Talk with Mom.”
 
Spike trotted to catch up then slipped his hand into hers as they turned out of the cemetery gate onto the sidewalk.
 
“Oh! I meant to ask you about the money. You told mom you have a plan…?”
 
Spike grinned. “You remember what we were researching just before you came back to Sunnyhell, love?”
 
Buffy stopped and looked up at him with an eager smile. “The gem? You found it?”
 
“As good as. Found a map.”
 
Buffy giggled. “A treasure map? Oh, Spike! Please say that X marks the spot! I’ve always wanted to say that!”
 
“More of a blot, but yeah. Shouldn’t be too hard to find, and then… you know what that scroll said…”
 
“About the gem being in a hidden tomb with a whole bunch of treasure? Oh! I get it! The treasure is the Supporting a Family Fund! Where is it? When can we go get it?” She bounced excitedly, like a child who had been promised a special treat.
 
Spike chuckled. She was so adorable when she allowed the girl within to shine through the slayer shell. “Well, that’s the neatest part. The scroll says it’s in The Valley of the Sun, and what’s another way of saying The Valley of the Sun?”
 
“Here? It’s here in Sunnydale?”
 
“Yeah. Looks like it. I’ll just need to compare the map with a current map of the area and align them to match a couple of landmarks that haven’t changed…”
 
“We have maps! We have loads of maps! I can give you one now!” Buffy broke into a run and raced down the street. Spike chased after her and arrived at the house just as she was emerging with a folded map. She thrust it into his hand. “Here you are! When are we going to look?”
 
Checking that the picture of the front of the map depicted the entire town of Sunnydale, Spike slipped it into his pocket. “Well, you may need to get some sleep now, Buffy, but for me it’s the middle of the day. If I can pinpoint the spot, I could round up a few minions to do the grunt work and start looking tonight. And if it’s a tomb, that means it’s underground so we won’t have to stop at daybreak…”
 
“It’s so exciting!” Buffy beamed up at him, wide eyes shining and full lips moist and inviting.
 
He respected what she’d said about not cheating, he really did, but he simply couldn’t resist. He gripped her upper arms and drew her to him, lowered his mouth to her upturned lips and captured them in a kiss.
 
Within seconds, he had her pressed up against the porch pillar.
 
As the kiss continued and quickly became deeply passionate, he ground his erection into her hip and his hands roamed her body, becoming acquainted with her new contours. Motherhood had blessed her with fuller breasts than those he remembered, but the rest of her body was still painfully thin. He looked forward to watching her fill out and regain her sleek, toned figure.
 
After a few minutes, Buffy pulled her mouth from his. As she gasped for breath, he began to nibble down her throat, growling in frustration when he encountered the collar of her turtle-neck sweater. Her winter clothing wasn’t nearly as accessible as the flimsy summer garments he had been accustomed to during their time together in L.A. He sent one hand questing up under her sweater to stroke the soft warm skin of her waist and edged it slowly higher until his thumb brushed the underside of her lace-clad breast.
 
Buffy threw her head back with a quiet moan and pressed his head against her throat, her other hand busily tugging his t-shirt out of his waistband at the back.
 
When Joyce’s anxious voice floated down the stairs, they both froze.
 
“Buffy? Is that you, honey?”
 
Buffy looked up at Spike, her eyes wide with alarm. She gave an embarrassed little cough and blushing furiously, called back, “Yeah, it’s me mom!” She immediately stepped away from Spike and hurriedly adjusted her clothing.
 
“Oh, that’s good, honey. I’m having trouble sleeping, so I thought we could have that talk now, while the girls are asleep?”
 
Buffy crinkled her nose in dismay but she didn’t let her reluctance colour her voice when she replied, “Uh, that’s great mom. I’ll just grab a snack and I’ll be right there.” To Spike she whispered. “I can’t believe we almost… I mean right out here on the porch! Anybody could have…” She shook her head and sighed. “This can’t happen again, at least not out in the open and not until I’ve spoken with Riley.”
 
Spike’s ardour was effectively doused by her mention of her boyfriend.
 
She went on tip toe and kissed him quickly on the lips. Grinning widely, she said, “This has been just the best day!”
 
Spike had to agree. “Best day since… well, since that bloody spell.”
 
Buffy stepped back in through the door and slowly began to close it. “Look, I’m busy all day tomorrow. First with classes and then my shift at the store. Why don’t you come meet me there at sundown? I’ll get everyone together to tell them about Glory and you can join the celebrations. Oh! And you can tell me how the treasure hunt is going.”
 
“Uh… store, love? What store?”
 
“Sorry, of course you don’t know. It’s the Magic Box on Maple. Giles owns it and Anya works there too. It’s kinda Slayer Central.” She stepped back outside and pointed down the street. “If you go…”
 
“Don’t worry, slayer. I’ll find it.” Spike took the opportunity to pull her into another clinch. He bent to kiss her again but she effortlessly wriggled out of his arms.
 
“Evil, Spike! Evil! I gotta go!” She skipped back indoors and blew him a kiss around the door. “Goodnight, honey. See you tomorrow. Love ya!”
 
He placed one hand flat on the door, preventing her from closing it all the way. “The last couple of years… I knew there was something missing from my life, something I was searching for, but I never once imagined…” He paused to take a deep shaky breath. “That empty hole inside me? It was where you fit. I love you too, Buffy. So much…”
 
Buffy tilted her head to one side and smiled softly. “I know, Spike. You fill my hole too.” Her eyes widened comically. She squeaked, “No! You don’t! I mean… well, you do, or rather you did and I hope you will again, but that’s not what I meant. I meant…”
 
Spike burst out laughing.
 
“Oh, stop it!” She covered her eyes with her hand, shaking her head in despair. “I’m just going to stop talking now. Go. Go find the treasure.” She flapped her other hand in a shooing motion.
 
“’Night slayer.” Still chuckling, Spike hopped down the porch steps and giving her a backwards wave, headed off in the direction of Crawford Street.
 
 
~*~*~*~
 
Spike growled in frustration, swept up the maps and scrunched them up into a lopsided ball. He then threw them across the room with all his strength. He lit a cigarette and stared out of the window for a few minutes, waiting for the nicotine to do its work and calm his shredded nerves.
 
Then he tossed the cigarette butt into the sink, heaved a resigned sigh, crossed to where the map ball lay and picked it up. Thankful that the treasure map had been drawn on well cured vellum and then stored in an air-tight tube to preserve its suppleness, he carefully smoothed out the creases and laid the maps side by side on the big scrubbed pine refectory table in the mansion’s kitchen.
 
He rolled his neck until the bones cracked and then leant over the maps again, peering through the magnifying glass he’d lifted from the watcher’s place.
 
So much for his comment to Buffy that the treasure ‘shouldn’t be too hard to find’.
 
The first problem had been that apart from a faint similarity in the shape of the coastline and the presence of a small creek and lake, at first glance there seemed to be no correlations between the two maps at all. It had made him begin to doubt his own certainty that the ‘Valley of the Sun’ mentioned in the scroll did in fact mean Sunnydale.
 
He had begun to wonder whether all the features marked on the ancient map had been obliterated by the construction of the sprawling town and its associated infrastructure such as the hydro-electric dam and reservoir, the dockyard and the railway.
 
Not to mention the changes wrought by the frequent earthquakes that plagued the region.
 
And he had the growing suspicion that they had been drawn to two very different scales.
 
As soon as he’d realised that it was going to be a difficult search, he’d given up the idea of going to Willy’s to recruit minions for the menial labour part of the search. Instead, he had spent a couple of long hours laboriously studying the old map, trying to interpret the faded hand-drawn symbols and match them to possible locations on the modern map. If he could accurately identify just one of them, he would have a place to start.
 
Up to now, he hadn’t had much luck. It seemed that the longer and closer he looked, the less sense the sepia spiders’ tracks made.
 
The clearest symbol, the one to which his attention kept being drawn, was the tiny outline of a pyramid. In an archaic script, it was labelled ‘Fanum’. Spike’s vague memories of schoolboy Latin furnished him with the translation of ‘temple’ or ‘shrine’.
 
He knew of numerous modern churches in the town, but he couldn’t recall ever seeing any pyramid-shaped temples. There was certainly none marked on the modern map.
 
Finally, Spike decided that he’d had quite enough of boring research for one night and resolved to spend the rest of the night searching for his elusive pyramid.
 
He also needed to locate a butcher willing to sell him some blood. His trip to Sunnydale had only been supposed to be for a couple of days and his coolbox was nearly empty. As an afterthought, he flipped the switch to turn the huge fridge/freezer on, then checked that the little light came on when he opened the fridge door. Perfect. He’d be able to buy in bulk and save money, now that he had something to save up for.
 
He carefully rolled up the treasure map, slipped it into its case and tucked it safely into the back of a kitchen drawer full of cooking utensils. He then grabbed the modern map, folded it untidily and stuffed it into his duster pocket.
 
Out on the street, he turned in the direction of Maple Court to locate the magic shop before beginning his search. He would then find the nearest manhole and investigate to see whether the place was accessible from the tunnels. If the shop was Slayer Central, it was likely that he’d need to get there quickly at any time of the day. Sewer access would make his unlife a lot less hazardous.
 
“Now then, let me see,” he murmured to himself. “Pyramid temple. Won’t be in an obvious place or it would be marked on the map as a place of worship, or at least an archaeological site of interest.” He sucked his teeth. “Now, if I was a lost little pyramid temple, where would I be?”
 
After a few moments thought, he gave a decisive nod. “If I haven’t been buried by a bloody earthquake, I’d be hidden in the woods or an overgrown corner of a park or disused cemetery.” He paused under a street light, dug the map out of his pocket and looked for the closest cemetery. There were so many to choose from, he decided he’d try to be methodical and cover each one in turn. If he had no luck, he’d do the parks, and then start looking further afield and explore the wooded areas surrounding the town.
 
Cemeteries, parks, wooded areas. He sighed. It was beginning to look as though he might need some help.