Disclaimer: Joss made the characters, I’ve just made a few changes really.

Author’s note: *huggles* to BTL would once again used her betaing talents on this chapter.
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Buffy stared back at Drusilla in shock. She had never wanted to see the former vamp again. Drusilla stared right back at her.

“You!” screamed Drusilla recognition finally dawning on her. “You vile, evil seductress!”

Without warning, Drusilla flew at Buffy, claws bared. If she had been a vamp, Buffy was sure that Dru would have had her fangs out. Luckily for Buffy, she was not solid and didn’t have to worry about defending herself.

Dru fell to the floor as she passed through Buffy. The former vamp started maniacally cackling. “Paper dollies ripped to pieces. The Prince will never meet the fairy princess now. The vines are too think.”

Clearly the human thing is making her crazier, noted Buffy to herself.

“He’ll come back to me!” she wailed. “Daddy’s gone to the dogs, and my prince, not yours, he’ll turn me back to the night. His black princess. Can’t unlive without his dark princess. The pixies hate me. Don’t like what I’ve done. All the cats are scratching, scratching for the fish.”

Buffy could only stare in shock as Dru started to scratch at herself. Bits and pieces of what Drusilla said were making sense, but Buffy didn’t want more of a confrontation in trying to extract more information from her.

Wesley was at his phone dialling. “Security? Sister Mary Bridget has gotten out of her room again.”

Dru’s wail at being called her religious name sounded throughout the room.

“I think I’ll go find Fred,” Buffy said to no one in particular, eager to escape the sounds issuing from Drusilla’s mouth.

Wesley looked up from this phone call as if Buffy had pushed him off a cliff. Clearly he didn’t want to be left with the crazy former vampire. Buffy really couldn’t blame him.

Incorporeal, Buffy walked down the hallways, enjoying the way she was freaking people out by passing right through them and the various doors she wanted to go through. However much fun it was, Buffy couldn’t help feeling that she was being watched.

It wasn’t surprising, considering where she was. Wolfram and Hart were known for their all seeing, all knowing, all in your business way of doing business. Being a demon, it was hard to exist without hearing about the law firm’s way of doing things.

Buffy walked into the lunch room to find Fred eating a taco salad and reading some scientific journal.

Fred was nice and all but there were too many reasons to get the hell out of this hell hole. The crazy nun down the hall, Angelus around the corner, and her mate somewhere on another continent were just the big ones.

“Give me five more minutes and I’ll be done. I’ve got a few more ideas to make you solid,” said Fred with a pleasant smile.

Buffy nodded. She’d let Fred do her tests and give it another go, but at the end of the day she was leaving. She had to find Spike, let him know that she was alive.
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The fact that she couldn’t teleport, couldn’t get in a car to steal it, couldn’t get on a plane or bus was just annoying, Buffy concluded as she walked eastward away from the Wolfram and Hart building that night. Fred had left her to hang around the building until morning.

That idea really didn’t appeal to the slayer, turned demon, turned slayer, turned ghost. She didn’t want to walk to England either, but walking seemed like her only avenue. The sun was coming over the horizon as Buffy reached the city limits. It was curious. She wasn’t hungry or tired, but she’d been walking all night. The ghost package has some perks after all.

Buffy didn’t even turn around to bid good bye to the city she’d been brought back to as she stepped over the city limits. She didn’t want to think about being stuck there any longer. And if it meant walking all the way to the eastern seaboard to leave it behind, that’s what she was going to do.

Unfortunately for Buffy, her next step was not onto another section of cement but back on Angel’s desk.

The former vengeance demon did a double take as she reassessed her location. It seemed terribly unfair, all that effort, all that walking only to be pulled back to the brooding wonder.

“What are you doing?” asked Angel with a sneer.

“Nothing I wanna be doing,” she responded, stepping out of Angel’s desk and onto the floor. “I hate you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” he responded.

Buffy gave him a dirty look before walking through the wall and back out into the mostly deserted hallway.

It looked like she was stuck here, stuck in the same place that two people she hated more than she hated anything. Who knew how long she was going to stuck there too. It almost made her want to cry.

Except she couldn’t.

Ghosts apparently didn’t have functioning tear ducts.
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“I’ll do anything,” she whispered to Fred as soon as the scientist came in that next morning. “Please make me solid.”

Fred looked at her with sympathetic eyes.

“I don’t know how much more I can try. I’m pretty tapped out at the moment,” Fred responded truthfully.

“Please don’t say that!” Buffy whined. “I can’t stay here. Do you know how hard it is to stay in the same building with the man who killed your family and the woman who stole and killed the man you were going to marry? It’s torture. And frankly I do see the karma in this whole situation, but come on! I was evil for a hundred and twenty years, surely the evilest law firm in existence would cut me some slack! I’ll go back to answering vengeance spells, as soon as I get my pendant back, just please make me solid, and let me leave this god forsaken city.”

The lab door swung open and a blond walked in, haughtily, like she owned the place.

“Ok,” said the blond with a smile.

“Eve,” greeted Fred bitterly.

“Excuse me? What?” asked Buffy confused.

“You want to be solid. You’re solid. The Partners never wanted you to use the amulet, it was supposed to be Angel, so they could have him under their control. Guess they underestimated the Slayer. They didn’t want you. Or rather, they want you, to keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last century. So, poof you’re solid. Congratulations. Go get your pendant. Get your vengeance on.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow at the new individual that she didn’t know from a hole in the wall.

“Go ahead, try it out,” offered the blond.

The Slayer ghost, turned to the person she actually sorta knew waiting for some sort of explanation.

“This is Eve, she’s a direct representative of the Senior partners. She usually knows things before anyone else does,” answered Fred.

“I’m sure that’s really very annoying,” replied Buffy.

“Yep,” replied Fred with a smile.

“Are you going to check it out or not?” asked Eve, her hands on her hips and very clearly annoyed.

“I guess I should, shouldn’t I,” noted Buffy giving Fred a smile.

Buffy stepped up towards Eve and punched in her in the nose. As the blood streamed down Eve’s face, Buffy’s hand flew to her mouth covering a gasp.

“Oh, so you mean you don’t have super powers or handy speed healing?” asked Buffy only have half seriously, half sarcastically. “Thanks for being a test subject though. Got one last question for you. If I leave LA like I tried to last night, will the amulet pull me back?”

Eve shook her head, holding her nose. “No,” she responded, her voice muffled. “You are free. They didn’t want you.”

A huge smile lit up Buffy’s face. She had people to find and places to see.

“Well thanks for all your help then,” said the Slayer.

She ignored the whimpering minion of the Senior Partners and bent down on one knee.

“Blessèd be the name of Anyanka. I come in supplication. I bend as the reed in the flow of the rippling wave of vengeance. I come in the name of vengeance to call upon its mistress. Blessèd be the name of Anyanka, the name whispered in the name of revenge, vendetta, justice, retribution, vengeance,” Buffy chanted.

In a puff of smoke Anya appeared again, this time with a Cosmo in her hands.

“Hey you are all solid!” observed Anya, putting her magazine down on the table before her. “How’d you do it?”

“I think Wolfram and Hart want me back in the vengeance fold,” Buffy responded.

“I want you back in the vengeance fold!” gasped Anya as if it was some fortuitous coincidence.

“All I need is my pendant and I’m back in business. Are you sure you don’t know where Spike is?”

Anya shook her head. “I don’t,” Anya answered. “No one does.”

Buffy nodded her head sadly. It wasn’t any different from yesterday’s information.

“Take me to England then?” Buffy suggested to her friend and former boss.

“Sure.” Anya picked up her magazine and opened a portal, scorching the tile floor of the lab.

With a little wave at Fred, Buffy stepped into the portal and into Anya’s throne room. Around the edges of the room, demons waited for their mistress to give them orders. The noise around the room stopped once they saw Erixel step out of the portal. Clearly everyone knew about her fate and was equally surprised and worried now that she was back.

Krevlin stepped out from the shadows and towards Buffy holding out a red piece of paper.

“Wanna come to a party Erixel?” he asked shyly.

“What are you juggling this time?” she asked.

“Kittens, live kittens. Anyanka won’t come if there’s blood involved,” the demon answered. “She also won’t come if I don’t invite her mortal lover.”

Buffy turned to her friend.

“Xander Harris comes to parties here?” she asked.

“Well he hasn’t yet, but if he doesn’t get invited than how will he feel welcome?” the mistress of Arashamahar asked.

“You are a strange, strange demon,” noted Buffy.

Buffy took the red piece of paper and patted Krevlin on the back, saying that she would make it if she could.

She had to find her mate. Parties were not really on her radar at the moment. But first, she had to change.

Leaving Anya in her throne room, Buffy walked to her lair. She hadn’t done that since Christopher had been living there.

Entering into her lair, the one place in all dimensions she felt the most at home, she stalked silently to her closet, ever so glad that she wasn’t going to be stuck in the practical slaying clothes she had worn for the final battle with the First forever.

Slipping into something less practical and packing up a wide selection into a suitcase, Buffy prepared herself for something she hadn’t done since before Christopher’s birth. She was going to travel, the human way.

“So where do you want to be dropped?” asked Anya. “I’m going to drop you in London regardless of what you say. I’ve got a date tonight with Xander. He lives in London now. Giles is training him to be a watcher.”

Buffy nodded. London was as good as any place to start looking. She just hoped that he was still in England and hadn’t gone off to other places unknown. She didn’t have a network of spies that would help her this time.
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Anya left Buffy, suitcase in hand, outside the London offices of the new Watcher’s Council. The building was modern, and so unlike what Buffy had known to be the council building that it just felt wrong. Instinctually she knew that Spike wasn’t in there, though a whole bunch of slayers were.

They could probably sense her presence outside too. Another Slayer probably wasn’t hot news anymore since Willow’s spell. Buffy hoped that they wouldn’t expect her to stick around. Not that she was going to give them a chance to force her.

Buffy picked up the handle of her suitcase and walked towards the nearest tube stop. The first place she needed to check out was only a few minutes ride from here.
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tbc...