Odalisque

Author: Elen

Parts: 16 - 20

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~Part: 16~

For the third day in a row, the girl had not been found in the park. They had lingered longer than it was safe yesterday and Harry had already been up before dawn to see if the girl was walking the dog in the company of one of the vampires. It was drizzling out, and Harry’s shirt collar was damp with sweat from the exertion of staying on his feet for so long. His grip on his cane was a little white knuckled as he paced the bachelor’s parlor they shared between their respective rooms while David recorded the non-observations of the prior day in his diary.

He was frowning at the page, wondering what he should say about Harry’s early morning stroll. It was dangerous, and foolhardy, and they were peers, holding an equivalent position within the organization they served. If they were truly peers, David would not have hesitated to chafe him for taking such a risk. But they weren’t really peers. There was over fifteen years of field experience that separated them, and while David had been out of the field for several years, nothing had changed that much.

“Damn it,” Harry swore, his cane catching on a bit of fringe on the carpet runner, forcing him to grab at the back of an armchair to maintain his balance. “She’s not coming back, is she?”

There were a lot of reasons why she might not be out walking her dog, but David Giles did not speculate. He believed Harry had scared her off, and he could tell that the idea had occurred to Harry, so there was no point beating that dead horse.

“I’ll wait until after luncheon, and then try again,” Harry said, almost to himself. The healing muscles in his thigh cramped and he groaned, sitting heavily in the armchair.

“No matter,” David said, sounding unperturbed. “It has never been clear to me what might be gained from her.”

Harry shot him an incredulous sideways look, expecting the rebuke that David had withheld.

“We’ve devoted attention to making contact with a young woman,” David elaborated. “For what reason? The fact that she has survived so long in the company of the Scourge is interesting, but she’s mortal, and we can only speculate about her potential usefulness.”

“It doesn’t bother you at all that she isn’t likely to remain mortal forever?” Harry asked.

David’s pen hovered over the page for a moment. He looked up at Harry. “Ah,” he frowned, “I beg your pardon, Harry. I didn’t realize that you meant to rescue her. I thought you wanted to kidnap her off the streets and bundle her off to London to be interrogated for every shred of useful information that could be wrung from her.”

Harry prodded the rug with the end of his cane. “Very funny,” he said sourly.

David capped his pen. “Not really, because to some extent it is only natural, and yet, we both know it is too dangerous to think that way. We have no reason to believe that the girl is even unhappy with her current situation. For all we know she is deeply attached to her masters and utterly loyal to them. In fact, everything suggests that this is as likely an explanation as any for her survival thus far. That doesn’t mean that it is true. Consideration of her needs as an individual has played no part in our calculations. Why is that?”

Harry frowned. “As you said, it’s a dangerous way of thinking,”

“It has nothing to do with the educated guess that she is one of the vampire’s mistress? Probably William the Bloody, from what we know about them?”

“She’s a human being with a soul,” David reminded him. “A representative of the very reason we exist; to serve and protect the innocent. And yes, it would be beyond foolish to imagine that she has survived in their company without getting her hands dirty, but as she remains human, she deserves some shred of concern for her most basic dignity. I rather imagine that she has been treated as a useful extravagance for much of her co-existence with her paramour.”

Harry cocked his head to one side. “And how should we treat her, assuming an opportunity arises?”

David looked thoughtful. “She’s not your average civilian, is she? Probably knows as much about vampires and more about the Scourge than you or I,” he pointed out. “I think we treat her as an equal. As a potential colleague,” he said. “It’s very possible that were we to somehow separate her from the Scourge, she would simply wish to return to whatever life she left when she came into contact with them, and it is more likely that that isn’t possible. One thing that we can offer her is the assurance that she will never be alone in the world, and that she may be useful.”

“Useful?” Harry snorted. “Oh, there’s an attractive pitch!”

David allowed himself a smile. “You aren’t a Watcher because you believe that ultimately you can do some good in the world? Don’t think of her as a woman, or a girl, or a common whore, or even an uncommon whore. Think of her simply as you would any person that we would seek to recruit. Think of her as a potential Watcher,” he advised.

Harry looked skeptical, wondering what the stuffed shirts in London would think of that notion. “Why?”

“Because, we simply do not have anything better or easier to offer,” David told him. “Look at their history. Even if we manage to separate her from them, she will be in a certain degree of danger for the rest of her life and if we are right, that she knows more about them than we do, then she must know that.”

He rose from the chair he was occupying, straightening it before he closed his diary. “So, how do we proceed?” The question was rhetorical. “London is considering diverting resources from a field office to broaden our field study. We both know it will take weeks, if not months, to arrange that, though it is likely to be approved eventually despite the risks.”

Harry thought about that. A field study of four vampires and one human was extravagant, but these vampires had never been hunted with any kind of success, and had on more than one occasion turned the discovery of the hunters into a hunt of their own. He wasn’t convinced that the risk adverse upper echelons of the Watcher’s Council would act quickly.

“We need locals,” David said.

“It will take weeks to train them,” Harry pointed out. “Might as well cable London and ask for an immediate answer.”

“No it won’t,” David told him. “There are other resources, and we’ll talk about that later. Another thing; this isn’t an adventure, Harry. You have a certain impetuousness that is valuable. It allows you to think creatively, but it also means that when you get bored, you tend to try to make things happen,” he observed. “That’s a valid approach to your work,” he allowed. “As long as what you risk when you get bored is confined to yourself,” he gestured to Harry’s injured leg. “A Fiyarl demon isn’t going to find you interesting or odd. You are just a thing to be killed. It isn’t remotely personal. That isn’t true about vampires. A vampire might find you interesting enough not to kill immediately.”

Harry scowled. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered.

“Possibly,” David agreed. “We are working together, and I expect you to also take care of my wife’s husband,” he said pointedly. “I expect that you will give some thought to the fact that we are hunting vampires who have made a point of hunting their hunters, and their associates, and their families. There are acceptable risks to what we do, and there are unacceptable risks. If you want to risk your own neck, that’s your affair, but when you risk your field partner, I expect the courtesy of being consulted,” he stated. “If you can’t do that, we need to pack our bags and go home.”

Harry looked incredulous. “You can’t think that if I fell into their hands, I’d tell them about you? That would be stupid, wouldn’t it? You’d be my only chance of rescue.”

David chuckled. “Harry, if you fell into their hands, as you put it,” he was wry. “You wouldn’t have a hope in hell of being rescued. If you disappeared for more than twelve hours, I’d cable London and be a train out of Prague at the first opportunity. Sacred duty? Vows of secrecy? Bullocks. If you lasted a day under torture, I’d tip my hat to you for giving me time to get away, but I’d not plan on it, nor expect it. It isn’t about bravery or fortitude. It is about being reduced by fear, by pain, by failure, to do anything for the blessed release of death, and that’s if you are lucky. So, no more going off on your own, before dawn, if you please. When it comes to vampire versus human, vampire wins. It really is that simple. That’s why they are dangerous. That is why we make them our business.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment. As dressing downs went, this was mild, and there was a grudging part of him that knew that he deserved it and that David was demonstrating a degree of courtesy in the delivery that was meant to get his attention.

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “So, what is our next step?”

David opened a drawer and removed a clean sheet of stationary. “A late lunch, I think.”

~~~*~~~

“It’s ugly,” Darla pronounced, not at all impressed with the chaise that had been delivered.

Drusilla was leaning against the doorframe, pouting at being denied the opportunity to eat the deliverymen who had brought the chaise and taken away the settee to sell on consignment. She did not argue with Darla. What the chaise needed was a throw blanket to drape across the foot and a few pillows. It was obvious she thought as she studied her fingernails.

Angelus was examining the mechanism that allowed the position of the back of the chaise to be adjusted. There were three deep brackets at the back of the base of the chaise. It was a fairly simple operation to lift the back of the chair out of one bracket and seat it in another. The angles varied from sixty, to forty-five, to thirty degrees, and at each angle the joints locked together smoothly.

“It’s brilliant,” he concluded. Well-made things, well-executed ideas, pleased him.

“It’s a piece of furniture,” William pointed out, his surmise that virtually anyone else in the household would be more interested in the topic of furniture, confirmed. Willow was still asleep, tucked up in his bed, where he would be right now if he hadn’t been woken up by a debate over the chaise that was taking place in Willow’s bedroom.

He had dispatched Cook to the kitchen with a request for a pot of coffee and food for Willow.

Dru’s little dog trotted into the bedroom, sniffing furiously, his beady black eyes seeking. He made his way over to the bed, his front paws clawing at the counterpane as he wiggled and arched his body, trying to get on the bed. He gave a sharp, disappointed bark and went back to sniffing. Reaching Darla, he sniffed at the hem of her skirts and gave a little doggie huff to expel her scent.

Dru and William exchanged amused looks at that. Fortunately Darla was paying no attention to the dog.

Darla was having a dinner party tonight, and she wanted Willow present, reasoning that she had not been seen out with them often enough. Angelus had an appointment with the estate agent at two, and he also wanted Willow for that. William looked annoyed. “Anything else?” he asked.

“The dog needs to be walked,” Angelus added.

“Then have him walked. We have a whole, crappy garden that he can run around in,” William pointed out.

Lucius, looking worse for last night’s adventure, was in the hallway with Willow’s tray balanced in one hand, reaching for the door to William’s room with the other. William rolled his eyes. He had probably pried himself out of bed for no other reason. “Leave it on the floor,” he snapped at him before he could open the door.

Lucius checked, bending at the waist to stiffly place the tray on the floor outside the door. He paused for a moment. “Will there be anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” William told him. Darla had stepped away from the bedroom door to clear the sight line to the hallway, or to get a better look at both of them. “You can tell Cook that the next time I tell him to do something he better finish it, or I’ll make him wish that he had.”

Angelus watched with a slightly amused smile. William really wasn’t that arbitrary. Most of the demands that he made on the minions were simple and direct, goal oriented rather than process oriented. He didn’t care how his needs were fulfilled as long as they were fulfilled. Lucius was aware of this, and he knew exactly how unusual this was. It was written on his face, but it was also clear that he thought that being denied the task he had assumed was a kind of punishment, and that was interesting. Most of the minions resented doing things for the lone human in the household.

Lucius retreated down the hall. Smoothing his hand over the thickly cushioned back of the chaise, Angelus observed, “You do know that he is the only one that will do anything for her without being told to.”

“And I’m bloody sick of that, too,” William said. “It’s going to stop.”

~~~*~~~

Officially, the relationship between the Watcher’s Council and the Roman Catholic Church was non-existent. Unofficially, it was strained by the emergence of a Slayer in Rome who happened to be a Roman Catholic novice. The Watcher’s Council and the Holy See were engaged in a tug of war over who was going to control the Slayer that had strained a working relationship with the church that was already under pressure.

But that was between Rome and London, and in Prague, the tension was acknowledged, but less of an obstacle than it might have been thought. The Emmaus Monastery in Nove Mesto housed a small cell of lay brothers who belonged to the Order of St. Ubaldus. On the afternoon in question, Brother Emile was dressed in what he and his order regarded as civilian mufti, sipping beer flavored with raspberry liquor at a sidewalk table that belonged to a small tavern within sight of Emmaus’ towering spires. He watched the English arrive with interest, wondering how long it would take them to find him. It was in a manner of speaking, a test, as well as an exercise of simple curiosity and professional rivalry.

The younger Englishman was willing to play the game. His gaze was just a shade too intent, betraying a less than casual interest. The older Englishman gestured to the door, prepared to walk into the tavern to, no doubt, simply ask someone where he could find Brother Emile. It was the sensible thing to do, and Emile told the barkeeper to expect foreigners seeking him out this afternoon.

Moments later, the English emerged, the old man carrying two steins as his younger partner limped behind him using a cane. Emile folded the newspaper he had been scanning for the last quarter hour as the pair joined him at his table in the shade of a chestnut tree only now beginning to bud. As the wind blew, the table was intermittently showered with drops of rain that had fallen earlier and the detritus of spring growth, tiny, tender green buds that Emile rolled between his finger tips, savoring the fresh, earthly scent broken as the buds were worn between his ink and nicotine stained fingers.

The English began in German, with the introductions. They were a race that prided themselves on manners, mocked by Napoleon as a nation of shop keepers. Taking a longer view of history, Emile considered the manners a newly acquired veneer of civility. The children of the island kingdom were the sons and daughters of conquest, the surviving product of generations of depredation that had ended only when the English had become something a bit savage themselves. He found the Napoleonic wars particularly illustrative of this point. The British had fought a long, bloody campaign on the Iberian Peninsula with the cool calculation that dictated that they did not have to win a single battle to win the war. It was all a matter of losing well.

He repaid their courtesy by switching to English, which had the added benefit of ensuring that their conversation would remain private in so public a place. Brushing aside the honorific that he was entitled to, he invited them to address him simply as Emile.

“What brings to Watcher’s Council to Prague?” he asked, and then answered his own question, “Vampires, surely.”

Harry’s gaze flicked to David, who had initiated this contact. The Order of St. Ubaldus was a Roman Catholic order dedicated to the study of demonology. They were a bit out of step with the Church’s recent preoccupation with shedding its association with the more mystical elements of Catholicism, but they had always operated in the background. While the Watcher’s Council was primarily focused on vampires, demons, and the dark arts roughly in that order, the Order of St. Ubaldus had over the last century inverted those priorities as witch hunting had been dropped as a pursuit by the more public elements of the Curia.

“That goes without saying,” David agreed. “We’ve isolated a small, nomadic sub-clan to Prague.”

Interest sparked in Emile’s eyes, followed by amusement at the precise manner of description. “Have you? They’ve been here for centuries and you’ve only now noticed them?”

Harry felt himself bristle at the gibe, but David only looked interested. “Prague has not been a locus of activity for the Watcher’s Council,” he acknowledged. “We find ourselves in uncharted territory in need of a guide.”

The older watcher had passed another test for Emile. No journey to truth or enlightenment began without this kind of blank slate. By admitting what he did not know, David Giles had invited him to begin an exchange that would be mostly one sided.

He leaned forward. “We have two clans in Prague. In Stare Mesto, there is the primary clan, led by Ekaterina Cern’nsky,” he began.

Harry recognized the name, and started to speak.

Emile paused politely, waiting for a predictable response to this announcement.

“Ekaterina Cern’nsky was dusted in the 17th century,” Harry said, knowing even as he said it that he was going to be handed his lunch, so to speak.

Emile gestured to him. “The Watcher’s Council has a legend?” he invited.

Harry glanced at David to see if he had caught the casual usage of a term that the Watcher’s Council used. David simply nodded, as if to tell him to go ahead, and Harry continued. The ‘legend’ as Emile called it was the biographical information known about the subject. Setting aside his discomfort at the idea that a Roman Catholic lay brother knew enough about the Watcher’s Council to use their terms, Harry returned to the subject at hand.

“Ekaterina Cern’nsky was a 15th century Muskovite who married into a Bohemian family. She achieved a certain amount of notoriety in life for her cruelty to her serfs and for an interest in the dark arts. There’s an apocryphal story that she bathed in virgin’s blood that is attached to her.”

Bathing in virgin’s blood was a popular medieval canard, ranking up there with bestiality, and eating babies as an attribute attached to witches to imply notoriety. Harry had been trained to be skeptical about such claims, and that skepticism bled through.

“She claimed to be the progeny of Vlad the Impaler, which is unconfirmed, but by the early 17th century she was the indisputable master of Prague. She was dispatched in or around 1627 following an internal power struggle. Her clan never recovered entirely, and became fragmented into two small groups that nearly wiped each other out.”

David recognized that as a good summary of the Watcher’s Council’s legend on Ekaterina Cern’nsky. There was more, but it would do for now.

Emile smiled at that. “That’s one version of it. The Order of St. Ubaldus’ version is that she orchestrated her demise in 1627 and was actually destroyed in 1845 during the Hungarian uprising against the Hapsburgs. This account was accepted by Dom Xavier Alegro of blessed memory, who was at the time the head of our order, and has yet to be conclusively disproved, but Ekaterina Cern’nsky has more lives than a cat, and she’s very much alive, or undead, if you will.”

“I thought only the Holy See was infallible,” David ventured with an appreciative smile. The Watcher’s Council had similar problems. Once something was established as a fact in the vast archives of the Council, it was nearly impossible to dislodge it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You simply learned, over time, to navigate the gray area.

Emile shrugged, “Ah, but we all dream,” he quipped. Returning to the matter at hand, “The Stare Mesto vampires who follow Ekaterina Cern’nsky numbers range at any given time between twenty and forty. They control Stare Mesto and consider the city their hunt. The Jewish Quarter is more or less off limits. You might want to pay a visit to the Rabbi Meir. He and his predecessors have managed to convince the vampires that hunting Josefhof is too expensive an undertaking.”

David nodded. “You mentioned two clans?” he prompted.

Emile sat back in his chair. “Another interesting story. The vampires of Zlata Ulicka, the gold alley. Very small clan, numbering ten for the last two centuries. Zlata Ulicka is the home to a community of alchemists that were brought to Prague at the turn of the 17th century. They co-exist in an arrangement that we have not been able to infiltrate. Obviously, our interest is centered more on the alchemists than their vampires. Zlata Ulicka is virtually impenetrable. Unassuming in appearance, even humble, but heavily warded.”

David frowned. “Are they a splinter of the Cern’nsky clan?”

Emile shrugged. “According to the Cern’nsky clan? Yes. Rudolph II brought the alchemists to Prague, for the usual reasons.”

“Transmutation of base material into gold, hence, Gold Alley,” David followed.

“Precisely, but without breaking the veil of confession,” Emile’s distinction referred to what was known to a priest/confessor and what was known by other means, “his interests were more specific. He died insane from syphilis,” Emile explained. “So, the alchemists were tasked to find a cure. It began innocently enough with the usual cast of charlatans, only their claim was that the blood and dust of a vampire was the key to transmutation of disease and gold.”

This was not a new or unheard of theory. The regenerative powers of vampires had invited speculation about their blood for centuries, as for transmutation to gold, the central feature of alchemy’s claims rested on difficult to obtain ingredients or objects of power, such as the Philosopher’s Stone. In the 15th and 16th centuries the Watcher’s Council had been highly diverted by exploring both areas of research in what was now regarded as a rather embarrassing chapter in the organization’s history.

“But there are real practitioners in Zlata Ulicka?” David concluded warily. Alchemists were largely charlatans, what the Order of St. Ubaldus and the Watcher’s Council considered to be witches were not. The two organizations parted company on how witches should be dealt with. David Giles had no innate magical talent, and as far as he knew Harry didn’t either, or they would not have risked a meeting. The Order of St. Ubaldus tended to take a kill them all and let God sort them out approach to practicing witches that the Watcher’s Council found overly simplistic and wasteful.

“Very much so,” Emile agreed. “Again, you may wish to interview Rabbi Meir on the subject. My order’s presence in Prague has been somewhat sporadic,” he conceded. “But, this is not what brings you to Prague.”

David nodded. This was how the game was played. It was his turn to trade. “We are tracking a sub-clan of the order of Aurelius,” he said.

Emile extracted a pack of Turkish cigarettes from his coat pocket. “The order of Aurelius,” he repeated with a small smile. “Interesting. Nomadic?” He lit a cigarette, giving the cylinder pinched between his fingers an exasperated look. “It’s a filthy habit,” he said, more to himself than them. “The Scourge of Europe is in Prague?”

David nodded, not at all surprised that Emile had worked it out.

“Very interesting,” he allowed, eyeing David narrowly. “This is not a social call, then?”

“No,” David agreed. “We need eyes and ears, preferably locals who can blend in,” he said. “They’ve established a lair in Nove Mesto. The exact location of the household has been narrowed down to the area around the park on Vladiskvy, the one—“

“I know it,” Emile interrupted. “You are certain?”

David smiled. “Vampires are our principal adversaries. Yes, we are certain.”

Emile flicked ash to the ground at his side. The purpose of the meeting had been served. The Watchers had identified their needs and established what the interest was in Prague. The Order of St. Ubaldus would take that under consideration. They had their own priorities.

“We will meet tomorrow,” his voice rose slightly, as if to allow that attending the meeting was an invitation rather than an order. “Here,” he added with a small nod to indicate the tavern.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up alone in bed. The smell of coffee reached her as she was waking, and she blinked, feeling mildly disoriented by the change in venue. It took her a moment to realize that she was in William’s room, looking up at the canopy attached to his bed. Using her pinkie, she scraped the grit out of the corners of her eyes, barely suppressing a yawn. She stretched, taking a mental inventory. Her hand went to her neck, her fingertips gingerly exploring the fresh bite mark that decorated her throat. It was starting to scab over already, and there was no bruising that she could detect. She felt a little sore. Running her tongue over her lips made her feel the ghost sensation of kissing, not the pressure and the texture of the kiss itself, but the tingly feeling that she had when they were kissing, that rolled down her chest like a wave.

It made her heart skip a little.

There was a pot of coffee on the bedside table, arranged on a tray with a tea cup, sans saucer, cream, sugar, and a plate of food. Triangular shaped wedges of thinly sliced dark bread with something white between the layers, pale green grapes, and petit fours. She sat up, holding the sheet to her chest, tucking it under her arms.

William was sitting at his writing desk. From the state of his hair, he had bathed recently, not bothering to do much more than towel his hair dry. His shirt was sticking damply to his back in places. He was writing, his left hand curved around in an unorthodox grip on the pen he was using. From her position on the bed, she could only see him waist up, but she knew that his foot would be hooked around the leg of his chair.

She reached for the coffee pot, her wrist shaking a little from the pull of the heavy pot as she tried to pour one handed while holding the sheet in place. The lid rattled against the lip of the pot and some of the coffee splashed onto the tray, soaking the white linen napkin that had been used to line the tray.

William capped his pen and rose, walking across the room in stocking feet, scooping something off the floor as he approached her side of the bed. It was the shirt he had been wearing last night. He shook it out, and then gathered it in his hands to slip over her head. When it was settled over her head, he reached under to guide her arm through the sleeve. The sheet slipped to her waist and his hand grazed her breast. He used his whole hand to shape her breast before rubbing his thumb over her nipple and squeezing it lightly against the side of his hand. For a moment she thought that he would make something more of the caress, but he pushed her arm through the other sleeve. Her hair was trapped under the shirt collar, and his hands slid between her neck and the mass of her hair to lift it. He leaned down to kiss her and she ducked her head, aware of the slightly sour taste in her mouth, more aware of how sensitive her lips felt right now.

He kissed her neck instead, below her ear, finger combing her hair.

“What time is it?” she asked as he sat on the edge of the bed beside her, his hip pressed against her thigh. He reached across her for an extra pillow to wedge behind her.

“Past noon,” he was smiling a little at her in his shirt. It was too big for her, the sleeves at least four inches too long. She looked adorable. He started on one sleeve, folding it over to form a loose cuff, and then folding it over again until her wrists were left free. She gave him her other arm, and he rolled that sleeve up as well.

“I should get up,” she said tentatively. There were things to do. The dog had to be walked. There was mail to answer. The estate agent was meeting with Angelus today, and he would want her there for that.

“Drink your coffee. There’s still time for you to get dressed,” he noted. “Do you want a bath?” He added sugar and cream to the coffee cup for her.

Her scalp felt a little itchy. Last night, or early this morning, when he finally let her go to sleep, he left the bedroom to get a basin of warm water and a washcloth and he washed her, running the warm, damp washcloth over her back and legs before he made her roll over and repeated the process, washing her arms down to her fingertips, wiping her face. Pressing an extra washcloth over her eyes, leaving it there while he washed the rest of her, leaving the insides of her thighs for the last, blotting her clean with the warm, wet washcloth, soothing her swollen labia with his cooler tongue.

When she didn’t answer immediately, he looked over at her curiously, seeing the flush in her cheeks and the sleep softened, dazed look in her eyes. He handed her the cup, admiring the picture she made. Her fingertips bracketed the thin bone china cup carefully as the china absorbed the heat of the coffee. She raised it to her lips, hesitating when she caught him watching her. Her fingertips slipped a little on the cup and she made herself pay more attention to what she was doing. The coffee wasn’t that hot, but it was still hot enough to burn.

“I must look like a mess,” she grumbled, embarrassed by her clumsiness with the cup.

“Your hair is pretty wild,” he conceded. It was all tangled and mused from last night. “You won’t have time to wash it before the estate agent arrives, but there will be plenty of time this afternoon. Darla is having a dinner party tonight,” he reminded her. “We are expected,” he made a face at that, glancing at the plate of food. “Don’t you want something to eat?”

He picked up the plate, examining the small sandwiches. “What the hell is this?” he wondered, lifting the bread.

“Cream cheese with cucumbers,” Willow determined.

“Yuch,” his lip curled.

“No, it’s good,” she insisted. “Yum! I can’t live on chocolate and biscuits alone.”

He held one corner of the sandwich to her lips, and she took a bite out of it. She adjusted her hold on the coffee cup to free her hand and reached for the sandwich. He pulled it back, frowning at her. “Mind your coffee. I’ve got the food,” he insisted. “I was talking to Cook this morning, and I was thinking that tomorrow we might take a supper cruise on the river. Would you like that? There’s dancing,” he noted.

“Dru won’t like that,” she warned him. Drusilla did not travel well over water.

He gave her an assessing look. “No, probably not,” he agreed. Why bring Dru into it? “Do you want to do something that Dru would like too?”

Confused by the question, Willow took refuge in her coffee cup, taking a sip, thinking all the while. “Don’t you?” she finally asked.

His eyes narrowed. “Of course,” he admitted. “Nothing I like better than going out with my girls,” he said blandly. “Fancy an evening out with us? With me and Dru?” He sounded skeptical. “Or, are you asking a question?”

Willow considered that for a moment. She was asking a question, but it was one that was hard to frame. She wondered if he was thinking this through very carefully. He was spending a lot of time with her, and very little with Dru. Last night she had gotten the impression that Dru was annoyed with him about that, which might have been his problem, but she was in caught in the middle if they started quarreling over her.

He offered her the sandwich again, and she took another bite. When she was little, her parents had a woman who came in and cleaned for them three times a week. She would leave treats for Willow in the refrigerator. Zucchini bread with cream cheese and pineapple, graham crackers with peanut butter and Dream Whip, cut carrots and celery packed in used glass jars filled with water to ensure that the cut veggies would stay fresh and turgid, and little tiny sandwiches made from dinner rolls. Sometimes, after she had her snack and finished her homework, they would play cards, or get the good silverware out and polish it at the kitchen table.

“We are separate and unequal,” Willow observed.

That unwittingly Dru-like observation, wrung a smile out of him. “Something like that,” he agreed.

“Because . . .” she frowned a little, “nothing has changed. Not really. We are, more or less, what we’ve always been.”

He thought about that for a moment, tapping the remaining bit of her sandwich against the plate. “There’s a bit of that, too,” he agreed, casting an almost wary glance at her, no longer smiling. “But, the world is made new, in you. I can’t undo it for you—and, I wouldn’t if it meant that I couldn’t have you. I’m selfish that way. I’m selfish, beyond the bounds of reasonable self-interest. I’ll never give you up. That’s a promise, and a threat. I won’t have you thinking otherwise.” He sought her eyes. “Do you understand me, Willow? I won’t give up anything to have you and I’ll have you whether you want it or not. That hasn’t changed.”

She looked away first, but she nodded. It was left to him to decide if it was an acknowledgement or acceptance. He was betting on the former. His fingers threaded through her hair and he kissed her forehead, and the tip of her nose before ducking his head to kiss the fresh bite mark on her throat.

“Finish your breakfast, sweet.”

~~~*~~~

The process of detangling her hair had eaten up time. She was dressed in a blue morning dress with sheer white gauze between the oval neckline and the high-necked white satin collar that buttoned in the back. A small silver and crystal hummingbird pin gave the collar a spot of color. It was too much to hope for that she would only be required to make introductions before being dismissed. Instead, Angelus gestured to the settee, and Willow was forced to take her place there.

Darla wasn’t going to like that, she thought. The rooms that would be used most during her dinner party would be the first floor dining room, salon, and possibly the library as a retreat after dinner for the gentlemen who smoked. Darla would want the salon to be thoroughly cleaned and left in pristine condition before dinner, and they were in the way of that operation. Bypassing the settee, she made herself touch Angelus’ sleeve to get his attention.

He looked down at her. “Yes?”

“I think that you might find the library more comfortable and more out of the way at this time of day,” she suggested, reverting to English in a last minute burst of inspiration.

The estate agent spoke English, but not particularly well, which meant that any business would be conducted in the common language of the house. The salon was the most central and least private of rooms on the first floor. Making everyone work around him would not have bothered Angelus in the least, but the idea of being overheard reached him. It was not a natural train of thought for Willow, and he saw that too, pinching her chin. She was trying to get them out of Darla’s way, tactfully, suggesting a reason that would appeal to him with a subtlety of mind that he found pleasing.

“Quite right,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners at how pompous he sounded. He steered Willow ahead of him, with one hand resting on the small of her back. “My cousin is a treasure,” he told the estate agent who murmured something complimentary in agreement.

~~~*~~~

William lounged on Drusilla’s bed, combing his fingers through the neglected Miss Anne’s brown ringlets, straightening her starchy petticoats. She was dressed in a jaunty red velvet dress with corded trim and tiny buttons fashioned from jet in a pinwheel design. Of all of Dru’s vast collection of dolls, Miss Anne most resembled Drusilla, though Dru was oblivious to the resemblance. Dru never, to his knowledge, missed having a reflection. If she had not been required to seek help with her hair or her dresses, she would have anyway. Nothing pleased her more than being the object of someone’s admiring attention whether they were brushing her long, dark hair or buttoning her dress.

She was sitting on the opposite side of the bed from him, sorting out a length of velvet, her needle moving smoothly in tiny stitches as she sewed a length of cloth to the back of the velvet. The seam she was forming between her fingers encompassed a bit of cording that she had made. This morning’s project was a throw blanket for Willow’s chaise. There was a sewing room on the third floor with a sewing machine. Dru liked the lock-stitched results the sewing machine produced, but she didn’t care for the machine itself. The sewing room was stocked with bolts of fabric and furnishings and discarded clothing that Dru might use to make doll clothes.

She nudged his extended leg to get his attention and he picked up the book he had been reading to her. It was a volume of poetry chosen at random. He consulted Miss Anne. “What shall we entertain the Princess with?”

Dru cocked her head to one side, looking at him curiously with a small mysterious smile. He was deaf to her dolls voices and they knew it. Sometimes they mocked him for it, with silence, or amusing non sequiters. Miss Anne was his favorite doll, and knowing this, she tended to be more polite than the others.

Interpreting Dru’s silence as the doll’s, he sighed. “No opinion? Cruel, cruel lady. What if the Princess is displeased with my choice? What then?” William murmured, casting a sideways glance at Dru.

“No tea and cakes for you,” she rejoined. No tea and cakes, the direst of consequences. It was an old joke between them, and he grinned back at her.

He liked to think that Dru’s tea parties were as much for him as her dolls. It was one of the first things he remembered genuinely missing after he had been turned. Not so much sunlight and a body temperature, but the daily ritual of high tea. His mother, even in failing health, had always insisted on tea and the family cook had worked hard to find things that would tempt her fading appetite. On most days they would take tea together in her sitting room, and he would read to her. Dru’s tea parties had been mostly playacting before Willow came into their lives. The girl had to eat, so the character of Dru’s tea parties changed to include real tea and real cakes.

He had a memory of Willow from years ago, half fainting from hunger as she gamely pretended to eat, and his smile faded a little. He hadn’t always taken very good care of her. It was hard to gauge needs that were impossible to personalize, and most of the needs that he learned to pay attention to were by trial and error. Her trial, his error. And even now, she was sitting downstairs with Angelus and some irritating wanker, probably dying for a bath and a few minutes to herself without someone demanding something from her.

Which, unfortunately for her, did absolutely nothing to mitigate his desire to be the one on the receiving end of her undivided attention. When she escaped Angelus’ attention, he would be waiting for her.

Dru knotted her thread and snapped it off with her teeth and he started reading. The volume was Tennyson. He read at random, until she poked him again, this time with the needle. “We are one and one and one and two and two and sometimes three,” Dru informed him. “Sooner than it was meant to be.”

He let the book close without marking his place. “Sooner in what way?” he asked. The directness was a little unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. Dru’s little game with Willow last night in the bathroom had mostly been for his benefit. He got that Dru had sensed him in the other bedroom, and that she had played on Willow’s fear to tease him, but at the same time, there had been a hint of real menace that he knew he could not afford to ignore.

Using the sharp tip of the needle, she opened a scratch across his shin, her fingers following it to gather the small amount of blood that wept from the scratch. She sniffed at her fingertips before licking the blood off.

“You are full of her. Blood and brains. All singing.”

Like a giddy chorus of hellish cherubs, no doubt, William thought. He really couldn’t recall being more content, more happy, living or unliving.

“Yeah?” he eyed her thoughtfully.

She gave him an almost pitying look. “You worry too much,” she said. “I saw it long ago. The stars sung it to me. Miss Edith knows. Daddy knows. Even Grandmother.”

He frowned a little at that. It was odd, but he was a tiny bit disappointed. He wasn’t sure what it was that he expected. Maybe an echo of the intense jealousy that had been his to bear when he realized that it would never be just Dru and him, but Dru and Angelus, with him somewhere on the margins. Dru was as completely bound to Angelus as William was to Dru. It was in large part simply the nature of the childe-sire bond, though in his case he thought it was a little more complicated than that.

She didn’t have anything more to say on the subject. No comfort to offer, no advise. It was all meaningless. Things happened and there was nothing to do but accept it, or twist and turn, unwittingly to the song’s rhythm. There were times when she felt ancient compared to William, though she was hardly more than a decade his senior. Drusilla cast aside her sewing. Miss Edith had nothing more to offer on the subject. She was taking a wait and see approach.

~Part: 17~

Willow was almost surprised to find her room empty when she returned to it. She started her bath before undressing. After the estate agent departed with a hand written page of instructions, she took Mr. Buttons for a quick walk around the park. It was still raining, and the park was deserted. By the time she returned, the hem of her dress was sodden and her nose was starting to run from the unseasonable cold. She only had a few hours to get herself ready for Darla’s dinner party, which meant no lingering in the bath. It would take hours for her hair to dry enough to put up.

She looked in the wardrobe for something to wear, very conscious of the bite mark on her neck that had to be concealed. There was an oyster satin gown with a high neck that would do, though it looked like something a much younger girl would wear. with large, puffy sleeves that billowed to her elbow and narrowed to little more than lace covering her arms from elbow to wrist. It looked like an old fashioned and unflattering wedding gown, at least to Willow, who had never lost the feeling that evening clothes were variations on prom and wedding attire.

She was putting on the dress when Matilde knocked on her door, and entered after Willow acknowledged the interruption. She didn’t look happy to be there. Darla had sent her to help with her dress and hair. She finished buttoning the dress up the back. Willow sat at her dressing table while Matilde impatiently brushed her hair. William wandered in during this operation.

His expression indicated that he wasn’t particularly taken with the dress, but he didn’t say anything about it. He simply smiled at her, picked up Willow’s hand to kiss it lightly, and told Matilde if he saw another wince, there was going to be hell to pay.

She finished putting Willow’s hair up with a bit more care before excusing herself.

William lifted the lid on her jewelry box, examining its contents with a thoughtful look. With years of practice, she had chosen a dress that would conceal his bite mark on her throat. The pearl choker might have worked just as well for that purpose, but it was a valuable enough piece of jewelry that he kept it in his room, and she hadn’t thought of it. He found an oval locket and lifted it by the chain with one finger. He let it fall back into the box and snapped the lid shut.

“Come across the hall, and we’ll find something for you to wear,” he invited.

She looked up at him. “I’m in character for the poor relation from a Bronte novel,” she said.

That made him smile. “I suppose you are,” he agreed. “Poor pet. You haven’t had a decent bit of alone time all day, have you?”

“I walked Mr. Buttons in the rain.”

He frowned at that. “I don’t want you walking the dog, in the rain, or otherwise.”

She started to open her mouth and then shut it, rising from her dressing table to go with him to his room. He went to the dresser and opened a drawer. Flat black boxes holding her jewelry were casually mixed in with his socks. He opened a lid, examined the contents, and rejected the choice, tossing it back in the drawer and reaching for another box until he found what he was looking for.

It was a diamond necklace on a gold chain with earrings to match. He held it up for her, an expectant expression on his face.

Willow feigned surprise. “Oh. Do I get to express an opinion on this?”

He had been expecting something like this. Tell a woman you love her, and she thinks it changes everything. He removed the necklace from its velvet bed and walked around behind her to fasten it around her neck.

He held the box out to her and after a moment of hesitation, she took the earrings, one by one, slipping the wire through the holes in her earlobes, two bright spots of color staining her cheeks. He stood back a little to admire her. The dress she was wearing was oyster satin, fitted through the bodice with a small bustle in the back. The skirt was a confection of asymmetrical ruffles of pleated organza that arrowed up from the hem to her left hipbone. It was a fussy looking dress and it didn’t suit her.

He went back to the drawer to find a ring, settling on a spray of pearls and diamonds with a matching hairpin. Matilde had piled her hair up, slightly off center, leaving a cascade of curls to fall on the opposite side of the part in her hair. The style was an echo of the ruffles. He tucked the hairpin in under a wave of her light auburn hair where it peeked out, like a flower nestled in her hair. The ring went on the third finger of her right hand, though it could have been worn on any of her fingers save her pinkie. Her ring size did not vary from left hand to right or index finger to third finger, which was fairly unusual according to a jeweler who had measured her fingers for him.

He kissed her fingertips lightly, holding her hand. “It would do you well to keep in mind that we really are sorting out what is amusing and what is not,” he warned, keeping his tone light and even. “I’m not a suitor or a customer.”

He held her hand for a moment longer until he was certain that she grasped the point that he was making and then he let her fingers slide from his grasp and turned his attention to getting himself dressed for Darla’s dinner party.

~~~*~~~

It was always interesting to meet the descendents of people he had killed, Angelus reflected. Wolfaert Adorne was the grandson of one such victim, Jan Adorne. Outwardly pious, a pillar of the community, Jan Adorne had a secret life. He belonged to one of the Illuminati cells that littered Europe in the mid 19th century. The character of these secret societies varied. There were those that were committed to real economic, social, and political change, but more often it was bored, thrill seeking bourgeoisie indulging their more exotic tastes. Jan Adorne fell into the later category. He had been very useful in the short time Angelus had known him, advising him on investments, providing him with entertainments and a fresh supply of victims.

Wolfaert knew nothing about that. His grandfather had died of a heart attack on a business trip as far as he knew, and this had happened decades before he was born when his own father was a child. The two men were chatting amiably when Willow and Drusilla entered the salon to be introduced to the guests who had already arrived. Willow felt the usual attack of nerves that preceded evenings like this one. Darla commandeered her, keeping her at her side as she made introductions.

When William finally graced the salon, nearly everyone expected was already there and it was nearly time to retire to the dining room. Willow found herself seated near the foot of the table between a brother and sister pairing, an English girl named Claire Hamilton and her brother, George. William was seated between Drusilla and Isabella Neri.

Dinner started with cold strawberry soup served in small, chilled bowls with a spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream and a mint leaf garnish. Paulus and Andreas served. Claire Hamilton was busy trying to get her brother to talk to Willow, which frequently meant that she was craning over Willow’s head, or making unsubtle non-verbal gestures to engage her brother. Willow briefly met William’s eyes across the table as she was trying to pretend that she was oblivious to the exchange between the Hamilton siblings. He was listening to something Isabella Neri was saying with a show of polite interest, but his eyes were bright with humor.

She looked down at her strawberry soup to keep from laughing.

Darla had planned a five-course meal. Willow had learned from experience that this was far less food than it sounded like. The strawberry soup covered the bottom of the bowl with less than an inch of depth to it. Each course was a relatively spare offering, sometimes decoratively arranged on the plate with a splash of sauce or a colorful garnish, requiring no more than a polite bite or two between removes. Wine was consumed in much more copious amounts, glasses refilled as soon as they reached a magical half full mark when Paulus or Andreas would smoothly top off the glass.

After dinner, two groups formed. Coffee, wine, sherry, and the petit fours that had appeared with her breakfast, were served in the salon. The library was the destination of choice for smoking. Brandy and whiskey would be served in the library. At a pointed glance from Darla, Willow went to the piano and started to play, sight reading the sheet music that was left there. The socially awkward George Hamilton came over to turn the pages for her, offering her a wry smile.

His sister was engaged by Drusilla, pinning Darla down since she was determined to remain within hearing of Dru, who could drift off on a tangent. Dru had Mr. Buttons in her lap, and was clearly showing off all of the dog’s tricks. Dru was showing Claire how to extend her hand, and Mr. Buttons took the cue to daintily lift his paw and place it gently in the cup of Claire’s hand like he was doing her an immense honor. Willow almost lost her place with the music, but George quickly directed her attention to the correct bar.

When Claire was able to escape Drusilla and Mr. Buttons, she joined them and George offered to get them something to drink. They traded places at the piano, with Claire playing Schubert from memory. It took longer than it should have considering how well Claire played, before Willow correctly identified the piece as Sonata in A.

Compared to her teen years in Sunnydale, she felt pretentious and slightly ridiculous playing name that tune with classical music. There was no radio, no television, and no movies. The Hamilton’s were in their early twenties, more her contemporaries than anyone else invited to this party. Music, books, a handful of journals and magazines in circulation, plays, and the opera were to the Hamilton’s what MTV and obscure, late night cable to Willow and her friends. When it was her turn to return to the piano, she chose from a folio of sheet music that William had brought with him from Vienna. Claire joined her on the bench seat. Not for the first time since she had been introduced to the piano and violin in this century, Willow thought about taking a musical leap forward to the 1990s to play something she missed.

Unfortunately, her memories of music were never that complete. She remembered maddening little bits and pieces of songs, like the plinking notes that proceeded the lyric of a Lisa Loeb song—but she couldn’t recall the words. Trying to work it out on the keyboard or the violin threatened the fragile memory, sometimes making the song unrecognizable to herself. It had taken her months to work out the piano overture from Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight.

The Neri’s were the first to leave, but their departure was a kind of signal, and gradually the other guests filtered out into the night. William and Drusilla left soon after the house had emptied followed by Angelus and Darla. Willow started picking up abandoned glasses and cups in the living room and almost ran into Lucius in the hall.

“You’ll soil your dress,” he pointed out, taking the cups from her.

She looked down at the dress. “It’s all ruffle-y,” she pointed out, thinking that a hideous accident with coffee wouldn’t be a bad thing. “I look like a powder puff.”

They were having a kind of conversation, Lucius realized. They were alone in the house, having a kind of conversation. He wasn’t sure how to prolong it. “Is there anything I can bring you?” he asked.

She looked startled by the question. “N-no,” she shook her head. “I was just going to pick things up and then go up to my room. To read,” she added, though she couldn’t imagine that he cared. “But, thank you, for asking.”

“I’ll get a tray, then,” he offered. If she wanted to pick things up, he could carry them to the kitchen for her.

She smiled. “Good idea,” she agreed.

She returned to the salon and finished straightening furniture and cleaning up while she waited for Lucius to bring a tray to collect the glasses and cups that had accumulated. When he arrived, she thanked him for the tray and asked if he would open the windows in the library to air it out.

While he was in the library, she filled the tray, straightened the pile of sheet music that had ended up resting on the piano, and covered the keys. She was reaching for the knob that controlled one of the gaslight jets when she felt the crawling pins and needles sensation of her barrier ward warning her that someone or thing was coming very close to the house. Reminding herself that no one could get in, she went to the front door, opening it cautiously to look out.

It had stopped raining, but the air was damp and cold. She felt rather than saw Lucius come up behind her. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

“What?” Willow cocked her head to one side, looking up at him curiously.

He was listening to something she couldn’t hear. “Singing,” he said.

Willow’s eyebrows lifted. “Like real singing, and not water running or star’s spinning, or—“

“Real singing,” he confirmed. “Miror quaenam sis tam bella,” he repeated, haltingly, sounding it out without understanding the words.

“Okay,” Willow nodded. “Singing aside, there is something out there,” she announced. “Any sharp wooden objects at hand?” she asked him.

He looked at her, frowning.

“A stake,” she said helpfully. “I need a stake.”

A noise reached her. Someone was on the sidewalk using a stick to make a clattering noise against the wrought iron fences that sepearted the sidewalk from the houses on the street.

“Get away from the door,” he said instead. He had been almost relieved when she asked him to open the library windows. When they were alone in the salon the need to touch her made his palms itch. If he didn’t know it was impossible, he would have sworn sweat was forming, making him want to wipe his hands off. His instincts ran to two goals: feeding and continuing his existence. He knew that if he touched her, he would fulfill at least one of those goals and violate the other. He would feed, amongst other things, and William would obliterate him.

Even now, distracted by the high, clear voice that was growing stronger, and aware of the possibility that there was an undetermined threat outside, he was even more aware of how close he was to her. Close enough to sink his fangs into her throat and watch the glowing oyster satin resting against her skin bloom crimson with blood.

Unbeknownst to him, his face had started to change.

Willow saw it out of the corner of her eye. Her now dry umbrella was resting inside of an umbrella stand in the foyer. She grabbed the handle and jerked it out of the stand. The pointy end of the umbrella was wood.

“That better be because someone is prowling around outside,” she warned him. “If it’s for me, there’s no one around to surprise with the creative use of certain spells.”

She took a step over the threshold onto the porch, holding the umbrella at her side. Lucius swore softly under his breath. It went without saying that if anything at all happened to her on his watch that his un-life would not be worth un-living.

“Come back inside, now,” he insisted.

“Shush!” Willow waived at him.

She heard a high, clear voice, singing. “Mica, mica, parva stella,” and turned, eyes widening at the familiar nursery ryhym. On the sidewalk a small girl in a black dress with a green shawl trimmed in white fur was skipping towards them. She was wearing an odd hat that looked to Willow like a fez held on her head by a band of black velvet that attached to the flat crown of the hat, fitting snuggly under her chin. A tear drop shaped loop of black velvet rested against her forehead, where her hairline should have been. There was no hint of hair, just smooth white skin disappearing under the brimless hat.

“Miror quaenam sis tam bella,” she sang, a mysterious little smile playing on her lips. Almond shaped eyes regarded them with a certain gravity that was full of curiosity and courteous reserve.

Willow considered the child. Unaccompanied at this hour, wearing what looked like a fifteenth century costume. Right. Nothing unnatural there, she thought with an inward snort.

“Super terra in caelo,” she teased.

It was a common enough tune. She placed it at once. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Willow knew this version of it, and joined her, singing, “Alba gemma splendido.”

She inclined her head gravely. There was a hack coming down the street, in no great hurry, drawn by a light draft horse that looked to Willow like an oversized Shetland pony.

“Mica, mica, parva stella,” they finished the song together, “Miror quaenam sis tam bella.”

Lucius’ attention was on the little girl, who was no little girl. She opened the gate, but paused there, looking at them curiously. Looking at Willow. She was ignoring him. It went well with the whole little girl angle she was working. A child approaching a strange couple would look to the woman first.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Willow stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Someone was coming around from the back. She spared a breif glance in that direction and saw a young man, casually strolling around the corner of the house.

“You can try,” she answered.

The child pouted. “Don’t want to,” she said, caressing the gate with gloved fingers. “Someone’s done something to make it whisper ‘go away’,” she mused. “I wonder what you know about that?”

Lucius slid past her, meeting the charge of a vampire on her right who had jumped from the ground to the low wall surrounding the small porch. Lucius swept his legs out from under him effortlessly and was pulled off the porch to roll across the ground with his advisary.

At a glance she could tell that Lucius was overmatched. The other vampire was countering him rather effortlessly, tying him up by prolonging the fight rather than ending it quickly.

“You really should invite us in,” the second vampire advised, stepping into the light that was spilling out of the open door behind her. He was what William would have described as a relict, dressed for an age that had come and gone two centuries ago right down to the knee breaches and the fancy buckle shoes. Long, curling black hair fell over his shoulders.

To Willow, he looked like a pirate. Actually, there was some merit to his idea, she decided, watching three more vampires pile out of the hack. Counting the driver that made a total of seven. She counted it out in her head, exactly how long it would take her to shut the door, bolt it, reach the cellar under the butler’s pantry, unlock the door, find two loaded crossbows in the dark.

When it came to storing weapons, Angelus was a vampire without pegboard and masking tape, but willing to improvise to impose order on his armory.

Chances were she was going to die horribly, and for some reason, that made her feel almost like her old self again. She brandished the umbrella of pointy death. “Yeah,” she scoffed, “like I’m stupid enough to invite all of you, or some of you, like you, and you, and you, but not him,” she dismissed the vampire Lucius was fighting, “in,” she finished, and then she feigned dismayed realization and scrambled back into the house to slam the door shut and throw the bolt.

It wouldn’t hold them long, she guessed, running down the hall, tripping over her skirt as she pushed through the swinging door into the butler’s pantry, mumbling the words to the spell to unlock the celler door since she didn’t have time to go rummaging around for the keys.

Fortunately, when it came to weapons, Angelus was nothing if not organized. She found the crossbows hanging from their arched bows, loaded, with a quarrel of bolts below them on a peg. The later she slung over her shoulder, while she took a crossbow in each hand. Her left handed grip was not so good, but it would give her a chance to get two shots off before she had to drop one of the cross bows to reload, so it was worth taking.

She heard the front door give as she crept towards the swinging door. She made herself wait until the door was pushed open before she brought the cross bow in her right hand up to fire. To her horror, nothing happened, and she realised too late that she had forgotten to release the safety.

“Crap, “she muttered, mostly to herself, but the piratical vampire heard her and laughed, sounding geniuinely amused. “It’s really been forever since I’ve encountered a human who even had an idea about how to fight back,” he told her.

Stupid safety on the crossbow, stupid plan on the letting the vampires in, and stupid skirt on her dress making it impossible to kick the vampire moving towards her in the narrow confines of the butler’s pantry. She backed up, hurling the crossbow in her left hand at him.

He batted it aside, reaching for her at the same time that she found the safety release on the crossbow. With no time to aim, she fired.

At close range, the bolt didn’t just hit him, it went right through him, on the fleshy part of his side. He paused long enough to feel the entry and exit wound, pushing his index finger through the hole while Willow fumbled with the quarrel for another bolt to reload. She slipped on her skirt and fell on her butt. The fall changed her perspective on the room with the looming vampire. Butler’s pantry. There was a block of knives on the countertop that in her rush to get into the weapons locker, she hadn’t noticed, and on the end of the counter that extended beyond the cabinets with a rounded lip was something even more welcome. A gun, holstered to the underside of the countertop.

It was, she knew, something Angelus would have thought of.

She didn’t bother to dig for a word or a spell, she just went to power. The crystals buried outside the house in the shape of a pentacle sprang into her mind, all connected and intersecting in lines, and then reshaping and forming around her in a three dimensional construct where everything slowed to match the touch of stillness in the center.

For the vampire who was, to his own mind, toying with her since he had very strict instructions not to kill her, but to bring her back to Zlata Ulicka, there was something wonderful and terrible about the way her eyes bled black. He hardly heard her speak.

The knives left the block of wood, pivoting at a right angle in midair, hardly hanging there a second, quivering slightly, before they hurled themselves at the broad back in front of them.

She rolled to the side, grabbed the pistol out of the holster, keeping the crossbow, as she forced herself to scramble over the injured but not dusty vampire, and run out to the hall. There were two vampires in the hall. A dark haired female vampire and a nearly bald vampire who looked like he had been turned in middle age. Raising the gun, she shot the female vampire in the head and took more time to aim the crossbow at her companion. The bolt hit him center mass, and he hardly had time to register surprise before he collapsed in a shower of dust.

“About time,” Willow muttered to herself as she reloaded the crossbow and stalked past him and out the badly damaged front door. The odd little girl was still out there, humming to herself as she watched Lucius getting pummeled.

She raised the crossbow and shot the vampire stradling Lucius’ chest between the shoulder blades. Lucius had seen the coachman finished off by Angelus, so it wasn’t the shock that it had been to realize that a mortal wound was so final. Still, he found himself looking up at a deus ex machina, glowing in blood spattered white, with eyes as black as onyx who hardly spared him a glance.

“Get up,” she ordered, taking aim with the gun at the little girl.

“That won’t kill me,” she sounded serenely unimpressed. “The Bohemian Reii welcomes you to Prague,” she said, without a flourish or a bow, just very matter of fact.

Lucius stumbled to his feet, swaying a little. He swiped at the blood running from his nose. Willow handed the crossbow to Lucius. With hands that were not quite steady, he managed to get a bolt from the quarrel slung over her shoulder and ram it into place, covering her back.

The male vampire with the long, curling dark hair appeared in the door supporting a female vampire whose face was . . . mostly gone. She was leaning into him, one arm flailing uselessly.

The Bohemian Reii? Wonderful. Vamps with a little club, and a name, and probably a secret handshake. Willow frowned at the sarcastic train of thought, and shook it off.

“I counted seven. There are two down, two dusted,” Willow said, her voice low enough that Lucius recognized that she was talking to him. She had not responded to the odd greeting, and he realized that she had no intention of responding.

“Two unaccounted for,” he told her.

~~~*~~~

God, he was hungry. The last hour of being confined in a house full of humans had whetted his apetite. Four blocks away from the house he found what he was looking for in a dozing coachman waiting for his fare. Enough to sate his appetite and leave something for Dru who looked a bit put out at the expediency of his feeding.

She made a shushing motion with her hand to her lip and pointed to the house. William looked at the house seeing a modest two story townhouse, mostly dark, with lights on in a second floor room. “Yeah? So?” he said.

“It’s late for callers,” she pointed out. “Very late.”

His eyebrow lifted. That was true enough. Someone would be leaving soon, only to discover the now dead driver. Drusilla gestured to him to join her. She walked up the short sidewalk to the door, grasping the knocker. She turned to give him a sly smile and then knocked in a few short, hard raps.

Flanking the door he looked at her, smiling a little. “You are so odd,” he said fondly while they waited for the door to be answered.

A hastily dressed man appeared at the door, looking flushed and annoyed. His expression softened only slightly when he saw the well dressed woman standing in the doorway. Annoyed, but puzzled, he looked out to his coach, seeing the box empty.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked, setting aside his curiousity about the missing coachman.

“Fornication,” Dru hissed at him, sniffing loudly. “The stench of fornication is on you!” she proclaimed dramatically, her voice rising. “Adultry! This is a house of fornication and adultry, and you will pay for your sins.”

William snorted back a laugh at that.

The man at the door heaved a long suffering sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake. Who put you up to this? Was it Tiriac? Very funny, now go away!” he said, trying to shoo her away from the door. “The joke is over, go on now,” he added. His hand crossed the threshold and Dru struck, pulling him out to her and into William’s grasp. He wrapped one arm around his chest and held on to him as Dru pushed his head to one side and sank her fangs into him. While she fed, William’s lips stroked her ridged brow until she was sighing in contentment and dantily lapping at the last of the blood.

Never one to simply drop her victim and run, Dru took his dead weight, positioned it and herself against the intact barrier at the door and let go of him. He sort of slid and fell back on the floor with a solid thump when his head connected.

The sound roused the other occupant of the house, who called out from upstairs and Dru looked at him with a question in her eyes. William gave it a pass, extending his hand to her. “I’m full,” he pointed out. “Rather have a nice walk with you, my ripe, wicked plum,” he crooned.

She preened under his gaze, licking the corner of her mouth as they glided away, hand in hand. They had spent many a night roaming around with no particular object in mind. Dru was much better company than anyone gave her credit for being. She could be counted on to deliver observations that were always unique and sometimes extraordinary. She took a great deal of pleasure in the night, turning her face up to bask in the starlight, her dark eyes soaking in her surroundings with a preditorial avidity that he found mesmerizing. She was as graceful as a dancer, her body occasionally, deliberately, brushing his.

After the build up, the kill was faster than he expected. Getting into houses was one of Dru’s special talents. She could talk anyone into letting her in, and if that failed, her prodigious gift for thrall, turned her victims to putty. After the killing, she could spend hours picking through other people’s things. He was a little surprised that she hadn’t taken anything. She had a habit of picking up things for Willow in particular that sometimes was less than pleasant on the receiving end.

“No presents for Willow or Mr. Buttons?” he asked when their path had them circling around to the park.

She gave him a secretive sideways look. “Presents for your golden boy,” she said with a sly smile. “Left all alone in the house with her. Such lovely thoughts in his head. He wants blood and flesh, and soft sounds, and salt tears as warm as rain to drown in.”

William looked at her, trying to work out a meaning. “Her? You don’t mean Willow?” he said, disbelieving.

“He doesn’t call her that. He doesn’t call her anything at all,” Drusilla explained. “She’s just ‘her’. It’s lovely, isn’t it? The stars through the damp sky?”

Lucius and Willow? Oh, no. Hell no. “We are going home,” he said.

~~~*~~~

Angelus’ plans for the evening were to follow the delectable Miss Hamilton home for a tryst in the garden. They had been seeing each other for weeks, ever since they had been introduced at a party in the week after they had arrived in Prague. He knew Darla was following him, which only made it more fun for him. Claire was waiting for him in the arbor, nearly blue with cold, but no matter. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and she breathed his name like it was a prayer.

“Beautiful, Claire,” he answered her, taking her gloved hands in his own. “I wanted to kiss you all night, so badly,” he said, pressing his lips to her hands.

“Oh . . . yes,” she said, her blue eyes taking in everything about him with evident pleasure. “Please,” she raised his face with her fingers.

Their lips met and clung, hers trembling a little.

“This is madness,” he whispered, impressed at how guilt riden he managed to sound. “I’m married—“

She winced a little. “I know,” her forehead came to rest against his. “I keep thinking about that. You, your poor sister,” she sighed.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “I can’t bear to think that I’ve made you sad thinking about me. Tell me a good thing about today,” he urged. “Anything, darling. Just one good thing.”

She smiled a little. “I like your cousin,” she admitted.

“Willow?” Angelus gave her an encouraging smile. “I’m so glad,” he said. “I hope that you can be friends.”

“Actually,” Claire ran her fingers over his lapel, “I was thinking that she might suit George very well,” she said with a wry smile. “Is it crazy? I’m trying to coax my brother into paying suit to your cousin so we can have some excuse to see each other more often? I’m a terrible person.”

For a second Angelus actually considered it. The Hamiltons were very comfortably settled financially, and he savored the idea of seeing Willow married, and then slowly killing the groom, the groom’s sister, and all of the annoying guests. It sounded like fun. He had a feeling that William would be a spoil sport about it and exercise his veto.

“No,” he soothed. “You aren’t terrible, Claire. Far from it,” he assured her. “A bit frozen, though?” he noted. “You should go inside,” he encouraged.

“When will I see you again?” she asked.

He tilted his head to one side. “Sooner than you think,” he teased.

~~~*~~~

Andreas was in the stables the whole time, feeding the horses, cleaning their stalls and adding fresh straw. Matilde had left with Paulus and Cook and he was on his own. He thought that after he was done in the stables, he might return to the house and see what Lucius was doing. The horses were a little restless tonight. He put it down to a lack of exercise and being shut in the stable while it rained.

The sound of the gunshot from inside the house got his attention. For a moment he froze, one hand on the lead shank of the disfigured mare. She tossed her head, snapping him out of his moment of startlement.

There were holstered pistols in both carriages. He made his way into the carriage house to get both of them, tucking one into the waistband of his pants. He made his way from the carriage house to the kitchen door. Once inside the kitchen he moved quietly up the hall. Like Willow, Andreas knew that there was a large cache of weapons in the under the butler’s pantry. He cautiously pushed the swinging door open, taking in the evidence of a fight. Blood on the floor and walls, the discarded and damaged crossbow, and the open cellar door. For a moment he very seriously considered leaving, quietly. Instead, he found a stake in a step shaped basket at the top of the cellar stairs and went out into the hallway. The front door looked broken, like someone had kicked it in, and there were two figures outside the door that reeked of blood.

~~~*~~~

Nothing had gone right, Nicholas reflected as he held Madwyn to him. He was relatively certain that she would heal, but the head wound that had been inflicted on her was severe. It looked like the point of impact had been the bridge of her nose. Her left eye was oozing clear fluid and he could see grayish tissue where the bullet had exited the back of her head. She was unable to speak, and a mewling sound of distress wept from her throat as her hands moved in an uncoordinated way.

This was Sian’s raid. She was the least imposing of all of them, easily mistaken for a child. The idea had been to lure the girl out or trick her into inviting them in. In the event of plan A, they were to grab her and go, and plan B, wait until the vampires returned and pick them off one by one. This was partly his fault. Once the girl was outside of the house, he had thought that they could finish this by intimidating her into inviting them inside.

He had not expected her to not only put up a fight, but to fight so well. The little bit of magic she had used had gained her time, but most of the fight had been an almost admirable demonstration of ingenuity. Madwyn was too badly injured to be useful, and she had dusted two of their party. He couldn’t recall the last time anyone had done so well against them.

“We appear to be at a stalemate,” Sian observed.

Nicholas wanted to correct her. This was no stalemate. As long as they were prohibited from killing her outright, the girl had an edge on them. Not that she knew that, but still, a bluff was a bluff, and if she refused to be bluffed, their position was tenuous.

He didn’t have the opportunity to discover how she would respond. Andreas had gone to one knee, using the door and the stair for cover. He fired a crossbow bolt into the back of the female vampire. Nicholas barely had time to feel her body jerk with the impact, before Madwyn exploded in a spray of dust that sparkled in the gaslight.

Moving forward, Andreas reloaded and found a new target, coming at Lucius and Willow from their left. He took his second shot. The bolt struck, but the shot was not fatal. Lucius had chosen to take out the vampire shadowing them on the right, which just left the injured male vampire and the tiny vampire at the gate. The male vampire was almost on them when Willow tore her attention from the small vampire at the gate and gestured to him, and he appeared to stop, as if some invisible force immobilized him.

Lucius didn’t bother with the crossbow. Feeling a grim kind of recognition as the dark haired vampire realized that he couldn’t move, he nodded his head once, slowly. Holding a bolt like a stake, he finished off the injured vampire.

The tiny vampire at the gate simply disappeared. Willow looked around for her in vain. The coach was still on the street, the horses pulling it, moving restlessly in their harness, setting their tack to jingling softly.

“Get in the house, now,” Lucius urged.

Willow didn’t debate with him. She picked up the hem of her skirt, climbing the stairs, stepping around Andreas with a whisper of satin ruffles as she crossed the threshold. She sat on the stairs, holding the gun in her lap, leaving a smear of gunpowder residue on the oyster satin. Lucius followed her in and shut the door as well as he could. The door knob was on the floor and the wood around the bolt was splintered.

She stared at the door, almost as if she expected someone to come through it.

“What the hell was that?” Andreas asked the question that had nagged at him as soon as he heard the gunshot.

Lucius was just as baffled. He shrugged, shaking his head.

Willow regarded them wearily, feeling herself cast in the awkward position of explaining one of the facts of un-life to the un-living. “Vampires don’t get along with demons and they don’t get along with other vampires,” she said, unselfconsciously quoting Ruppert Giles. She gestured to the door. “That was the resident big bad inviting Angelus to come out and play, which really isn’t smart.”

The two vampires were looking at her, waiting for her to elaborate.

She could only shake her head. “Trust me on this. Making an enemy of Angelus, or Darla, or William, is almost always the last mistake that you ever make.”

~~~*~~~

For William, who almost expected to be walking in on a domestic drama, the actual drama enacted on the front stairs was taken in at a glance. His girl, his lovely, sweet natured Willow, was sitting on the stairs with a gun in her lap. When he came through the door, Andreas and Lucius pivoted to face him, both armed, and by all appearances, both putting themselves between anything coming through the door and his girl.

Drusilla’s gaze swept the foyer, lingering on a smear of blood and brains that decorated the wall, scarred by a bullet hole. William brushed past Andreas. Willow met his gaze. “Seven vamps, calling themselves the Bohemian Reii. One of them got away.”

“One?” he started to question that, and then shrugged it off. Hell. One out of seven? He looked around. “How did they get in?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. “Lucius was outnumbered outside, and it split them up.”

William looked at Lucius. “I want to hear about this,” he told him, taking the gun from Willow and handing it to Lucius. “And I want to know who thought to do anything but lock her inside and keep anything from getting at her.”

“That would be me,” Willow admitted.

Lucius nodded. “That’s true. She injured two of them and dusted another,” he said, having missed the vampire she dusted in the hall. Recalling her count, he frowned. “Or was it two? It all happened so fast.”

“Two,” she acknowledged. “Butler’s pantry, knives, slowed one. Crossbow, hallway, big pile of dust. Gunshot to the head,” she made a vague gesture at the blood decorating the wall without looking at it, her expression registering distaste. “Crossbow, front walk,” she looked at Andreas. “We held them off until Andreas flanked them from the inside of the house, and then Lucius and Andreas took down two each.”

On the heels of this extraordinarily succinct explanation, Drusilla came to sit beside her on the stairs. “Was it fun?” she asked.

Willow gave a snort of surprised laughter. “Uh . . . yes,” she admitted. “They were doing the whole spooky, menacing, the Bohemian Reii welcomes you to Prague thing, and thanks for the welcome, and here’s a nice ass kicking to send you on your way,” she summarized. She mimed a cheery wave, “Have a really crappy night!”

A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of William’s lips as he watched Dru draw Willow back into her arms. “You saved Mr. Buttons and Miss Edith?”

Clearly this thought had not occurred to Willow and she turned her head to look at Dru. “Exactly in that order,” she said without cracking a smile.

William shook his head. “If one of them got in, then let’s assume there is more. Sweep the house, top to bottom,” he ordered, “and then, let’s get this mess cleaned up,” he took charge. “Dru, my love? Stay with Willow until I let you know that the house is secure.”

Dru pouted. “Give her back the gun and let her shoot them. That sounds like more fun.”

“Bullets won’t dust a vampire,” Willow told her.

Dru smiled. “But it is painful,” she said with a sly, oddly respectful grin, echoing Willow’s thoughts on the matter. If she ever got back home, they were going to start using guns if she had her way about it.

~~~*~~~

Watching Angelus’ performance in the garden, Darla concluded that she was supposed to be angry or jealous. Old habits die hard. From what she had gleaned of the matter when he was first turned, her childe’s most significant relationship had been with a disapproving father. To a certain extent, Darla had taken the place of Angelus’ father as the person whose disapproval he courted. She was judicious about lading out her punishments.

The Hamiltons interested her. There was an adventurousness to the sister that she could appreciate, otherwise, she couldn’t see anything particularly interesting about her other than the fact that she had Angelus’ fleeting attention and lacked the potential to become another Drusilla. She didn’t seem to have any particular gifts that might make her more valuable in Angelus’ eyes.

She let Angelus catch up with her. She really wasn’t hungry, and Darla suspected he wasn’t either. The dinner party had kept them in, and though she was centuries past the restless feeling that came when night hours were curtailed, she could still appreciate being away from the house. Prague had not been her choice, it had been Angelus’, but she loved the house, and she had grown to like the city. She could almost see them, if not settling in Prague, maintaining the house and using the city as a stopping off point between travels, much as London had once been for them.

“It went well, don’t you think?” Angelus said after his longer stride had put him a half step in front of her before he adjusted to her slower gait.

She smiled at him. She ran to keep up with no man, and he knew it.

“I met our estate agent today,” he told her. “His name is Mueller. He’s Austrian.”

Darla didn’t look at him. This was her favorite part. The slightly nervous chatter that brought out the rolling cadence of his brogue as he waited and wondered what she knew and how angry she was about it and how she would retaliate. He was never boring.

The afternoon was spent reviewing the arrangements that Willow had made, largely on Angelus’ instructions, regarding banking, the ownership of the house, and accounts that had been set up to maintain the house’s needs. None of which particularly interested Darla, though she gave Angelus credit for managing the means that provided them with a lifestyle that suited her perfectly. While other vampires lived below ground, on the margins, in the shadows, they lived extremely well, enjoying all that humankind had to offer.

Who would have guessed that inside the drunken, discontent boy she had found in Galloway, who had gotten by too long on looks and charm, there was this amazing creature who was filling the silence between them with his hurried discourse on their finances? He had made a fortune for them, made it possible for them to travel and live virtually anywhere in the world without discomfort. He had shaped a family around them, and as annoying as Darla found each of them, she understood that they were, on the balance, rather remarkable. Drusilla, William, and very soon, Willow.

It might have been very different. The life they had suited her, and so did he, even when he was making an effort not to suit. Maybe even more so. She’d never been in love, not living, nor dead. She didn’t love him, not really. He was just hers, and she had chosen well.

~~~*~~~

Even before they reached the damaged front door, it was aparent that something had happened while they were gone. Cook was standing just inside the foyer, evidently on guard. The salon was empty, but the dining room was not. The tableware and serving pieces had all been cleared away. There was an unfurled street map of Prague on the table as well as what looked like magical components. Willow was sitting in one of the armchairs that belonged at the head and the foot of the table with a thick black leather bound book in her lap. She was still dressed in the gown she had worn to dinner, but it was sprayed with dried blood.

William was standing with his hands apart, braced on the edge of the table, watching Willow until he heard them come in, and then he stood up, spinning around to face them.

Angelus was direct. “What happened?”

“After we left, Willow felt something setting off her barrier wards and went out to take a look. Seven vampires,” William nodded to the out of doors. “Lucius got drawn away from her trying to keep one of them off her, so Willow thought it would be a good idea to invite a few of them in to split them up. Andreas was in the stable and he helped out.”

Angelus started to turn to her, but William slid in between them. “Only one of them got away, and she’s reversed the invitation and strenghtened the wards,” he told Angelus.

Angelus looked down at the shorter vampire, who stood his ground. He mentally reviewed what William had told him. “Reversed an invitation? Didn’t know that could be done,” he admitted.

“Now you do. Clever girl is my witch,” William told him, retreating as far as the edge of the table, leaning against it. “She’s going to try a locator spell, see if we can’t find what we are up against.”

Willow tilted her head to one side, feeling like she was at a bizarro-world Scooby meeting—with Darla and Angelus, and William. Dru wandered in next, doing a twirl. “Did you hear the lovely news? Our Miss Willow saved Mr. Buttons and Miss Edith from bad people.” No one could look as bloodthirsty and childishly gleeful at once as Dru.

William shook his head when Angelus’ attention returned to Willow. “Ask Lucius. He tells it better,” he gave Willlow a sideways look, “the way she tells it, she stumbled, fell a lot, and managed to wound two of them and dust another two. The way Lucius tells it she was less inept.”

Willow looked up at him. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that, and it seems off,” she said. “I don’t know what they wanted, other than to announce their presence, but it seems to me, we were outnumbered, and caught flat footed. If it was supposed to be an ambush, what was slowing them down?” She shook her head and shrugged in answer to her own question. “Maybe killing wasn’t on the agenda for the evening.”

Angelus had her go over it again, coaxing details out of her, with Darla adding questions as they went along. Eventually Lucius and Andreas were invited into the dining room to give their account of the evening.

“Bohemian Reii?” Darla repeated when Willow came to that part. She looked at Angelus, who shook his head. “Lucius?”

Moderately surprised at being included in the discussion, the younger vampire shook his head. “It didn’t mean anything to me.”

Angelus gestured to the book Willow was holding. “William said something about a locator spell,” he prompted.

She smoothed her hand over the page she had been reading. “There are a couple of promissing spells, including a general locate demons spell that looks pretty neat. I’ve got the spell components for that one, but, I was thinking . . . if the spell could be altered to pick up vampires only, that would be more useful. I’m not really sure how to do that,” she admitted.

“Just do what you can,” Angelus told her, gesturing to her as if he expected her to get to it now.

“I thought it might be better to do it closer to dawn,” Willow volunteered. “At dawn, where is a vampire going to be?”

~Part: 18~

Willow performed the locator spell on the dining room floor. Preparing the spell components had consumed several hours, and to her surprise, Angelus assisted in the time consuming process of grinding spell ingredients with mortar and pestle, getting the precise weights and measures worked out, and then following the spell book instructions for her while she combined the ingredients.

They had odd little moments like this when she almost recognized him, or recognized Angel in him. He wasn’t moody or brooding the way Angel was. In part it was the nervousness that she felt around him, all the time. Even when she had known him in Sunnydale, with the soul, he made her feel nervous without ever meaning to. The only difference was that her nervousness made Angel uncomfortable while Angelus seemed to savor it. He was giving her plenty of space to work, and she thought it was deliberate, that he was making an effort to keep from distracting her.

Once everything was ready, they returned to the dining room. Darla and William had gone into the salon, but when they appeared in the hallway, carrying the spell components, they left the salon to join them in the dining room.

Willow made the decision to work on the floor. It just seemed easier to her to achieve and maintain her focus there. The map was spread out in front of her. She took her time once she got settled on the floor. She felt a little light headed, partly from exhaustion, partly from the magic she had used earlier. She re-read the spell until she was satisfied that she had it memorized, and then she set aside the book and cast her circle. Raising the cup containing her spell ingredients, she invoked the Goddess and began the casting, sprinkling the ingredients over the map.

For a minute, nothing happened, and she frowned, wondering if she had missed something, and then the map started to sparkle. Glittery bits coalesced. A pleased grin broke, and she thoughtlessly murmurred, “Oooh, pretty!”

William snorted back a laugh. She had started out the evening looking elegant, if demure, in the oyster satin, and now she looked like a bit of a ragamuffin, dirty and dishelved, with her skirt rucked up around her to accommodate a pose that no one would have considered for such attire.

Willow studied the map intently, not sure how long the effect would hold. Before she had started she had carefully marked the map with their approximate location so she wouldn’t have to puzzle it out later, and sure enough there was a concentration of the glitter there. The next significant concentration of glitter was to the west, distractingly dense. So much so that she almost missed the sparkle moving together across the river, in the castle district, arrowing in towards—

Power punched back, like a fist, slamming into her forehead, snapping her head back, making her grit her teeth and physically scramble backwards to get away from it, breaking her circle and terminating the spell. Her hands went to her face, half expecting to find blood. For a moment she just held her forehead, and then she gave vent to the feeling. “Ow!”

William reacted first, reaching her and kneeling down beside her. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“I think so,” she confirmed, rubbing her head. “It was going great and then, pow! I could feel power punching back at me,” she said woozily. “I’m going to have such a headache,” she predicted. “There’s a magical signature that’s a doozy,” she mumbled.

“Zlata Ulicka,” Lucius volunteered. “Alchemists have lived there for centuries.”

“Well, thanks for mentioning that,” Willow sniped, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Something demony there too, I got that much before I got pushed out.”

William eyed her warily. “You’re looking a bit green, pet,” he observed. He shook his head, looking up at Angelus. “According to Lucius, she shot one of them in the head—massive head wound, eye hanging out of the socket, and doesn’t bat an eye,” he relayed, inviting contrast to her present queasiness.

“Oh . . . I really am going to be sick,” Willow realized as the memory of the injured vampire intruded.

Lucius and Angelus looked around for something, anything, a basin, a towel. William just scooped her up, carrying her through the narrow hallway to the kitchen. Andreas was dozing in a chair, and as soon as he heard them coming he jumped up.

“Get the door,” William ordered, carrying her out into the garden. The sun was coming up, but this side of the house was still in the shade in the early morning. There was a low bench on the walk between the back of the house and the coal bin. He set Willow down on it before he turned back to Andreas. “Get her a glass of water from the pump.”

Somewhere between the dinning room and the garden, her skin had grown clammy. It was an almost pleasant distraction from her heaving stomach. Too much magic. She put her hand on the back of her head gingerly, wondering if she could feel the pulse that was sending throbbing waves of pain through her head.

He squatted down in front of her, gathering her until her head was resting on his shoulder. “Just breathe,” he suggested, rubbing her back.

“If I throw up, I’m throwing up on you,” she told him.

“It would serve me right,” he agreed, kissing her head. “Give it a minute, and then, you need to go to bed.”

Andreas handed him the glass of water and withdrew to the doorway where Angelus and Darla were standing.

The fresh air helped her regain her equilibrium, and Willow managed to make it up the stairs on her own. She considered undressing and settled for removing the most easily removed elements of her attire, the hairpins, jewelry, stockings, and her slippers, then she got in bed, curling up in a ball under the covers.

Dru came in and sat on the bed inside the curve of Willow’s body. She made her roll over on her back and smoothed her hand over Willow’s cheek. Accompanied by a wave of nausea, Willow felt the mattress move as Dru swayed. She was like a cobra, preparing to strike.

“Look into my eyes, dearie,” Dru cooed to her. “Princess will take it all away.”

~~~*~~~

Drusilla had retired for the evening while they were still working out the details for the locator spell. After Willow had gone to bed, William, Angelus, and Darla conferred. William seemed to be the only one who found Willow’s resourcefulness to be a little disturbing. According to Lucius’ version of the events, the confrontation might have been avoided entirely had she simply stayed in the house, though Lucius didn’t actually attach any blame to her for that.

In fact, both Lucius and Andreas seemed to feel that without her, things would have gone much worse. He wondered if Angelus and Darla were picking up on the subtle shift in attitude that had taken place.

He really wasn’t surprised when he went up to Willow’s room to find it empty. He went to Drusilla’s room in search of them, and found his sire and his lover in bed. Willow was on her stomach, her head turned away from the door and Dru was sitting up beside her, with a paint brush, pretending to paint her back with one hand while the other was buried between Willow’s spread legs.

He undressed and joined them in bed, kneeling on the opposite side of Willow’s body, his hands roving over the cool flesh of his dark goddess, gleaming in the dark, sliding his fingers over her smooth, hairless cunt. Her eyes shone, dark and fathomless, seeking his. She raised the hand holding the paint brush, using the silky horsehair bristles to trace his eyebrow and cheekbone down to his jaw. It tickled more than anything else, and his gaze dropped to Willow, who was intensely ticklish, and lying oddly still despite that.

“She was too squirmy,” Dru explained.

He knew before he rolled her over what he would find. She was blank eyed from thrall. More or less. There was a flicker of awareness in her eyes that hinted that she was at least on some level aware of what was going on, but trapped inside of it.

Dru leaned back against the pillows that were propped up against the padded headboard of her bed. She slid one arm under Willow’s neck, bending her head to whisper into her ear. “William’s here, lovey,” she said, nuzzling Willow’s cheek, kissing the corner of her mouth.

He sat back on his heals, biting his lower lip, a frown gathering, his erection deflating a bit. He didn’t want her like this. He wished that he had been here tonight to see her take on no less than seven vampires with nothing but her wits and two inexperienced minions to rely on. It irritated him that Dru had done this to her. Robbed of her choices. She didn’t deserve to be treated like this, and for that matter, neither did he. If it was Angelus, he would have suspected that it was deliberate, since it was Dru, he decided that it was just her warped judgement at work.

Her hands moved over Willow’s ribs, arrowing in to cup her breasts. Moving like a sleepwalker, Willow moved her leg, sliding it over his hip as her body rose in invitation. Catching his eye, Drusilla ran a wickedly sharp fingernail over his breast bone, leaving a trail of blood welling in her wake.

“You aren’t afraid of anything,” Dru whispered, bringing her blood wet fingers to Willow’s lips. “You are our fierce, beautiful girl, and someday the world will tremble before you,” she said, drawing her fingers across her lips. “I’ve seen it, in a vision.”

She gathered more blood from the seeping wound, that even now was starting to close and applied it like it was perfume, to Willow’s throat, the space between her breasts, slipping between her thighs. He watched two of Dru’s long, elegant fingers penetrate her, her thumb moving over her clitoris. Her head fell back against Dru’s upper arm as her back arched into the caress and Dru turned her head to her, kissing her.

With an almost imperceptible sigh, he moved closer, giving Willow the support of his thigh under the leg she had moved to draw him in. The slow, undulating motion of her body lifted her breasts. “So fierce,” Dru purred between kisses, her long, dark hair falling to lay on Willow’s shoulder, a long lock curling over her breast. He bent his head to the other, letting her nipple brush his lips as she pushed herself into Dru’s hand.

“Show him what you really are,” Dru said.

He didn’t have time to ponder the meaning of that. One seond he was hovering over her, feeling annoyed with Dru, and wondering how to get out of this, and the next, he was on his back. It was impossible. She couldn’t move that fast, and she didn’t have the strength to overwhelm him even by accident, but she had. Her legs were tangled with his and she was bending him back awkwardly at the hips, rubbing herself against the hardening length of his cock as she licked the last of the blood that Dru had drawn off his chest in rough, cat-like swipes of her warm tongue, looking up at him through the tangle of her hair.

Her sharp little fingernails dug into his upper arms. She was whispering something in Latin, licking his throat, her blunt teeth scraping his skin, her warm, wet cunt sliding over his cock. He heard Dru’s hand come down sharply on her ass, the sound loud. She slanted her mouth over his, thrusting her tongue into his mouth, refusing to let him take control of the kiss, even when he would have broken it off for no other reason than to let her breath. It was Dru who pulled her off of him, leaving him panting as she pushed Willow up until she was stradling him, her hands tangling in Willow’s hair as she nuzzled her throat and bent her head down to take one of her nipples into her mouth. It wasn’t exactly that he couldn’t move, it was just that he felt like he was moving through tar. Now that his legs were free, and he didn’t necessarily have to worry about hurting Willow, he managed to straighten out the awkward angle of his body, but the effort and concentration that required was enough to make him feel a bit worried.

Dru was kissing her way down Willow’s stomach, one arm behind her to support the arch of her back, the other hand on his chest. Willow was pushing her head down, leaning back so far that her hair fell over his thighs. He knew exactly when Dru reached her clitoris by the way her body quivered, her hips canting forward. He could imagine Dru using the cool tip of her tongue to tease her, though he couldn’t see anything but the back of her head.

The hand on his chest moved down, fingernails scoring his chest, the scent of blood and sex thick between the three of them. Dru’s arm left Willow’s back and she collapsed against his legs, lifting her own until her feet were flat on the mattress, bracketing his rib cage. She was keening softly, her ass rocking against his cock as she neared orgasm. He could move just enough to grasp Willow’s ankle, and it was driving him wild, the sounds they were making, the contrasting hot and cold sensation of their smooth skin on his.

They came apart, Dru lifting her head, pushing Willow off of him, stradling his head. He found that as soon as she lowered herself to his mouth, he could move his arms enough to lock them around her hips. He wanted to flip them over and fuck one of them while he feasted on the other, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to get his shoulders and hips to cooperate. A frustrated growl left his throat and he heard Dru laughing, even as she bent at the waist, one hand braced on the mattress near his hip, the other on his cock.

He groaned at the sensation of Willow’s warm mouth surrounding him. He wasn’t sure who was doing what to whom anymore. It didn’t matter if it was thrall or magic, or both. He spent so much time trying to control both of them, in one way or another. His tongue lashed Dru’s clit. Willow alternated between his cock and kissing Dru while her hand moved up and down on his cock, never letting him come.

The lessening of the magical restraint that Willow placed on him was a gradual thing, like the thrall that was wearing off, the spell that held him faded until he was able to turn the tables on them. Instinctively, he reached for Dru first, rolling her on her stomach and thrusting into her cunt. She drove him crazy sometimes, with her games, and her insatiable craving for pain. She couldn’t get off without someone hurting her, and he hated it. As soon as he was satisfied that his cock was sufficiently lubricated he withdrew from her and forced himself into her ass. She was grabbing at Willow, leaving little half moon marks in her skin that welled with blood.

When she tried to pull Willow to her to taste the blood she had drawn, he grabbed a handful of her hair and visciously yanked her head back. “Mine,” he reminded her, shaking her.

Dru shuddered, moaning, grinding herself against him. He pushed her head to one side and sank his fangs into her throat in a deep, hard bite, the kind a preditor used to hold its prey through its death throes. She came, collapsing under him in a show of submission that he would have found touching if he wasn’t so furious with her. He relaxed his hold on her throat, feeling her blood dripping over his lips as his eyes picked Willow out.

Thrall bound or not, she seemed to recognize that he was in a dangerous mood, but Dru held her still, stroking her stomach, smearing blood with the sweep of her fingers. “I’ve seen it,” Dru whispered. “Falling, always and ever, slow as a leaf tumbling on a breeze, but it could be like floating, or flying,” she moved her head, shifting and squirming out from under William. She sat up, shivering at the pain the movement caused, dark eyes shining. “Come to me?” she entreated.

Willow slowly placed her hands in Dru’s, allowing her to pull her upright as Dru leaned against William, lifting their joined hands over his head to include him as Dru’s arm settled behind his neck. She laid her head against his shoulder, her forehead resting on his throat. The deep bite mark he had inflicted was still bleeding freely.

“This is Willow,” she told him, as if they were being introduced for the first time. “She’s never anything that we expect her to be,” she went on, tugging Willow in, closer. “My beautiful, terrible, wicked boy, looking for his Goddess in the night sky,” her lips touched his ear as she lowered her voice to the barest of whispers. “Look closer to the ground.”

He had a memory of coaxing her into a position that was awkward for her in the big sleigh bed that dominated his old bedroom in the Charlotte Street house. He had been leaning against the footboard, sitting on his heels, holding Willow by the waist as she stood on the mattress, wobbling a little, looking skeptical. He had wanted her to stradle him until she was resting on his thighs. There had really been no question that she was going to do it, and his wheedling tone was more to molify her than anything else.

She had choices. From her point of view, they were usually lousy choices, but she had choices. Of course, when she actually reached him, he hadn’t been able to resist pushing his face into her smooth thighs, bumping his nose against her warmest, wettest flesh, tasting her while she clutched at the arms holding her, too worried about falling to fully appreciate the caress, which just made him linger over it.

She had always tasted good to him. Once he settled on keeping her, he spent a lot of time showing her how to please him, managing along the way to discover that it wasn’t necessarily skill that he craved. It was this, the blush that warmed her skin, and the slightly uncoordinated way that she moved when she was a little overwhelmed. It was the way her heartbeat took off when he talked to her.

“My girl has the most delicious cunt. I want to wake you up with my head between your thighs, my tongue lapping up your sweetness. You’re so wet for me. Feel that, baby? Feel how your cunt flows for me? Like that?” His lips, tugging on her clitoris, making her legs tremble. He had guided her down to him, whispering to her to use her hand to spread the lips of her cunt apart as his cock butted against her, feeling her fall heavily, awkwardly against his shoulder as she did what he instructed. He tried to control her descent even as his instincts were screaming at him to thrust into the hot, wet channel that was ever so slightly resisting his penetration.

When she was settled on him, his cock embedded in her to the root, he had to stop to get her organized, because she really didn’t understand how to do this, how to plant her feet on the mattress and push with her legs so she could move up and down on him at her own pace. Her halting attempts were full of concentration and uncertainty. She just sort of bounced on his thighs, using the footboard to balance herself.

He had tried to explain to her how to move, an exercise that decended into the ridiculous. “It’s like riding a horse,” he told her. “Just lean into it and use your legs to—“

“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” she pointed out, since he seemed to have forgotten that.

He had spent a fair bit of time after that teaching her, but never really getting beyond just staying in the saddle and handling the reins. The little grey mare in the stables, the one that had been ruined by the coachman, had been meant for her to ride.

So he had tumbled her back on the bed, laughing, because she was so clumsy, and so delicious, and when he hit the right angle inside of her, the expression on her face was everything he wanted.

This was just wrong. It was her body, her welcome warmth surrounding him, her scent, her soft sounds, but she felt off to him. The movement of her body as she stradled him, exactly as he meant her to then, was unexpectedly fluid, like she had channelled Dru’s grace. Her gaze was direct. There was no fear or uncertainty, no shyness or shame, no hint of thoughts flying through her head. Sometimes she looked so lost that he couldn’t look away and leave her even more alone.

He couldn’t bear looking at her like this. Threading his fingers through her hair, he pushed her face into his throat and made himself concentrate on what did feel right, his hand moving over her back. I’ll make this up to you, baby, he promised himself as her body rose and fell on his with mechanical efficiency. Dru was pressing up against his back, her arms moving against him as her hands guided Willow’s hips.

He barely registered the sting of her fingernail opening up a cut on his throat, grimly concentrating on finding his release and ending this hideous parody of Willow fucking him. If it wasn’t the worst fuck in memory, worse even than his first time with Dru and Angelus, he might have come when he felt Willow’s tongue pressed into the scratch Dru had opened on his throat, or from Dru biting his shoulder while one of her slim fingers worked its way into his ass. It was the pressure on his prostate that finally accomplished it, and he held Willow, his arm clamped down on her hips as he jerked against her.

~~~*~~~

He was determined to get her cleaned up and back in her own bed, and then he and Dru were going to have a little talk. Dru followed him into Willow’s room, turning down the covers for her, but when she started to get in bed with her, he stopped her with a seldom used word.

She looked so startled that it might have been funny, except that he was angry, and not seeing the humor in it.

“No?”

“No,” he repeated.

She wrung her hands, her eyes liquid with distress. Normally, she had him at the fussy hand movements. He waited. Next came a cringe, a whining moan, the rolling eyes, the tearing at the hair. He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting. The interesting thing was that he actually saw it register, when she realized that he wasn’t going to relent.

There was no little girl pout or a pretty peekaboo stare through her absurdly long eyelashes. She reached out and threaded her fingers through the brace that he had not pulled up over his shoulders when he pulled his trousers on. “There was such pain and confusion,” she said.

He cocked his head to one side, wondering if she would say more. “Bad dreams, and,” she frowned, and then she hit her head with the heel of her hand, hard enough for him to want to catch her hand to keep her from repeating the gesture.

“I made it go away!” she sounded agrieved.

“You made her go away,” he corrected. “Next time, just come get me.”

From her expression, he guessed that she didn’t think much of this plan. “Mine, Dru,” he reminded her. “And I don’t want you crawling around in her head.”

She let go of the brace she was fingering. “I made her not afraid.”

“Oh, right,” he drawled. “That’s what she needs—to be less afraid. God damn it, Dru! She walked out of the house because she was curious about what was in the yard. If that was you or me inside the gate, what would have happened? She isn’t afraid enough. She never has been.”

She flicked her fingernails at him. “They weren’t very clever vampires,” she said dismissively.

William gave a short laugh. “They were idiots,” he agreed.

“Miss Willow is clever,” she pointed out, swaying a little, her eyes fixed on him watchfully

“Hideously,” he nodded. “And she has more lives than a damned cat, but—“

Dru tilted her head to one side and made a shushing noise. “I’ve seen her with us, my William,” she said, her tone soothing. “Having grand adventures, our beautiful, terrible, fierce girl,” her gaze shifted to Willow, with something like fondness softening her features.

He studied her for a moment. “You’re positive?” he asked.

“Positively positive,” Dru nodded once. “Always and ever. It cannot be altered.”

“Then, we are agreed. You’ll never do anything like this again, because I won’t stand for it,” he told her.

~Part: 19~

While William’s fighting preference ran to fist and fang, he understood the value of versatility. Angelus had dragged him from bed to spar. While they were sleeping, Willow had gotten all tangled up in him. There was a red place on her shoulder from where he had been mouthing her skin while he slept and his hands still carried the warmth and scent of her body. She clutched at him when she felt him pulled from her, inadvertently leaving a long scratch on his hip.

Angelus had one arm around his waist, pulling him back against his body. Instinctively, William stiffened. Still annoyed with Dru, he was in no mood for Angelus’ games. His grandsire’s fingers stroked his bare thigh, raising his fingers to his lips. The scent of Willow’s arousal reached him. She had been pressed up against his thigh, her cunt warm and wet against him. His morning erection had deflated a bit when Angelus had started rubbing himself against his ass. It jerked back to life at the familiar scent.

Angelus chuckled in his ear. “God, you are so easy,” he said with fond contempt.

“Sod off,” William retorted. It sounded weak to his own ears. He twisted out of Angelus’ grasp and pulled the sheet and blanket up over Willow, who was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. He adjusted the pillow under her head. When Angelus reached for him again, he eluded his grasp, leaving the bed.

Angelus sat on the unoccupied side, near the door, watching as William looked around for his clothes, most of which had been discarded in Dru’s room. He found his trousers and pulled them on, one leg at a time, buttoning the fly over his erection. His eyes narrowed a bit when Angelus picked up a long, curling lock of Willow’s hair.

“What do you want?” he asked, distracting himself by examining the scratch that was visible above the waistband of his trousers. It was already starting to fade.

Angelus rubbed the lock of hair between his fingers. “It’s a long list,” he said with a grin. “I wanted to spar, but I’d settle for chaining you up and fucking you until your pet wakes up.”

That was supposed to be insulting. Angelus had a finely developed sense of protocol when it came to his audience. Bending him over and buggering him in front of a minion was nothing less than a punishment, and Willow was less than a minion. William found himself scrutinizing Angelus. Or maybe not.

“It’s probably not wise to suggest that the route to getting a little respect around here is staking vampires,” William told him. “Seeing as how we are vampires. Though, when it comes to method, you might be on to something because she might just think that it’s more about you being a scary, sadistic bastard. She doesn’t think the way we do.”

Angelus smiled at that. He kissed the lock of hair he was playing with, and rose from the bed. “Thinks I’m a scary, sadistic bastard, does she?” he looked pleased.

They came up the back stairs with Dru between them, one arm around Angelus neck, one hand tangled in William’s hair. Their hands clasped under her thighs, forming a seat for her. Dru hopped out of the cradle of their arms, sinuously winding herself around Angelus. She blew William a coy kiss. He almost rolled his eyes, but managed to refrain, catching the kiss instead. “My William still loves Princess best,” she cooed.

“That is never in doubt,” William told her.

Angelus did roll his eyes. He gave Dru a sharp slap on her ass that made her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare delicately as she absorbed his scent. “Make yourself useful, Drusilla, or go back to your room.”

There was never any doubt since Dru was there, but that they would work with weapons. They were using the long, narrow third floor attic space. The small windows were shuttered outside, letting in slivers of light. The attic was the largest unbroken space in the house. Angelus had arranged trunks, packing crates, and unused furniture to create obstacles.

Angelus tossed him a staff, a slim, balanced length of wood polished smooth. William caught it one handed and twirled it, testing the balance. Angelus picked up its mate. He was starting slow today. Sometimes he sparred weaponless, which made it more of a challenge for William to fend him off and hold onto the weapon. Sometimes he chose a different weapon, so it was staff versus sword or knives.

Dressed in no more than his trousers, William sized up the advantages that he had already conceded. He was bare footed and Angelus was not. Being barefooted on the wood floor would improve his traction, he would be more agile. The splashes of sunlight on the floor were going to burn like hell if he didn’t manage to avoid them. He deliberately placed his foot in one now as Angelus circled him just to make sure that Angelus knew that he knew and wasn’t going to be distracted by that.

At a greater distance, Drusilla was circling them. She could enter the fight at any moment, on any side, just to liven things up a bit. The minions were about, set to mastering basic fighting skills, an aspect of their training that had been given indifferent attention.

He was ready. When Angelus came at him, he countered. The sharp sound of wood cracking together in staccato bursts over the sound of shod and bare feet moving over creaking floors punctuated the fight. It was impossible to ignore. The speed, precision of movement, the viciousness of the fight, was riveting. Drusilla’s capricious role in it was perfect. She make no effort to balance the fight. William was smaller and faster. Angelus was bigger, and stronger. She was as likely to go after whoever appeared to be loosing as not, and female shaped and beloved, she was simply another combatant. There was no pulling of punches.

For Lucius, the battle was also instructive. Ever since William chained him up, he had thought about killing him. Actually, he’d thought about killing Willow and then killing William before he could retaliate. Now he realized that it wouldn't be as easy as that.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up at midday without a headache or any lingering ill effects from her use of magic. Partially, this was because she was more careful, but mostly it was because of what Dru did to her. She remembered all of it, from the sheer relaxation, the wonderful, heavy feeling of sinking into the feather mattress to the taste of blood in her mouth. She remembered what Drusilla showed her, and thinking about it made her want to fall back into the deep, dreamless sleep she had emerged from. That, or seek another kind of oblivion.

She was alone in her bed and her room, a circumstance that had become less and less common of late. The privilege of having her own room and a semblance of privacy was relatively new. She scooted back against the pillows behind her head, scrunching them up behind her neck and shoulders. Her nose wrinkled at the smells coming from the disturbed bedding. She needed a bath, and longed for a shower. A nice hot shower under the pressurized jet of a showerhead. Closing her eyes, she got a quick mental picture of herself, naked, in a driving rain, which was probably as close to a real shower as she was likely to get anytime soon.

Shaking the image off, she opened her eyes again, taking in the changes that had been made to her room. There was the new chaise in the corner, unused as yet. The dress from last night, the one that was too bloodstained to be worn again, was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground near her dressing table. She had been too tired to take it off when she came to bed. She remembered Dru helping her take it off later.

She bent her knees, her feet flat on the mattress and lifted the sheet, making a kind of tent over her body as she looked down at herself. There were reddened marks on her stomach from Dru’s fingernails. She ran her hand over them, feeling the slight sting and an itchy sensation. Her hand moved on, over the curls that concealed her, feeling the crunchy residue of mingled bodily fluids as well as the dampness that was new.

She was certain that she had fallen asleep in Drusilla’s room, which meant that William had brought her back to her bed. She turned her head, studying the arrangement of pillows to her right and the disordered linens before searching her own mind for impressions. He had brought her back to her bed and stayed with her.

If William were here now, she would have wanted to . . . she closed her eyes again, wincing a little. It would be comforting to think that it was all Drusilla, using her, manipulating her into using her magic to hold him down, to make him still for her, to make him at her mercy. The thought of it made her press her fingers against her own flesh, made her open her legs wider as she slid two fingers inside herself. Drusilla had shown her what she might become, what she was becoming, and the only thing that frightened her now was the idea that it wasn’t as horrifying as she knew it should be.

She had seen herself, felt herself to be, a soulless and unprincipled thing, with the will to take what she wanted, and it felt like she was free.

~~~*~~~

When William returned to her room he found it empty and ordered. Just standing inside the door he was able to process several things. She had bathed, changed the sheets on the bed, and dressed, but she had not lingered long in the room. His gaze drifted downward as he stretched his perceptions beyond the room, seeking the sounds and scents associated with her. Failing to find them, his jaw clenched. If she had defied him by taking that stupid dog out to walk, they were going to re-visit certain lessons that she should have heeded.

He discovered that she had gone no further than the garden. With the sun slanting down on that side of the house, he couldn’t see her without exposing himself to direct sunlight, but he knew she was out there and he waited for her in the kitchen. She came in, following the dog. In the moment before she shut the door behind her, she was framed in sunlight, pink cheeked, a sheen of sweat turning her skin dewy, the light dazzling the red and gold tones of her hair. It was the view that he had been cheated of due to the closed shutters.

It was the view he was cheated of due to the differences that would always define them.

He had dreams of her in the sunlight, just beyond reach, refusing to acknowledge his presence in that way that she had, with just the slightest hint of unease and stubbornness to suggest that she knew what he expected. He started to smile when he saw her doing it now as she pushed the bolt in and fumbled with the floor bolt that was a little trickier to manage. There was just enough tension in her shoulders to tell him that she knew he was there in the shadowy depths of the kitchen, but that she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge him.

She turned, shading her eyes, not from the light, but from the darkness in the shuttered kitchen. He hadn’t bothered to turn up the gaslights that hung in copper hooded globes in two rows from the ceiling. The change from sunlight to darkness left her night blind, but she knew he was there, waiting and watching. He could tell it from her heartbeat.

The dog was scampering about, whining, his tongue hanging out, wanting water or food, providing a distraction. Blinking, she cautiously made her way to the sink. When she opened the cabinet to find a dish for water, she looked at him directly, over her raised upper arm. It was a brief look, and then she was fumbling for a bowl, setting it on the counter. She started priming the pump. He watched, his gaze lingering on her breasts as they moved with the up and down motion of her arm. The dress she was wearing was something new. It was a lightweight mint green silk embossed with tiny flowers. The low neckline and puff sleeves left her arms, neck and chest to the swell of her small breasts bare. Her skin was pink with sunburn. She had left her hair down, falling to her waist, held off her face by a ribbon that gathered the length at the nape of her neck, that was now hanging slightly askew.

She filled the bowl and stooped to set it on the floor at her feet. Mr. Buttons rushed forward, noisily lapping up the water. “It warmed up today,” she observed. “It finally feels like spring.”

That observation reminded him of his midnight picnic, aborted several nights ago. He made a mental note to himself to work it in if the weather held. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

She retrieved a glass and filled it with water from the pump. “I’m fine,” she said.

He studied her face in profile as she sipped her water, wondering if she was that thirsty or if it was simply a way to put off talking to him. He thought that it was probably a bit of both. He picked up one of the knives in a block on the work bench, setting the point in a groove in the wood and spinning the knife by the grip. “You are fine,” he repeated, injecting skepticism. “Can’t hardly look at me, but other than that . . .”

She finished drinking her water and set the glass on the counter. “I can’t really see much more than spots,” she said in her extra reasonable voice.

“Dru had no right to do that to you,” he told her.

Puzzled by his tone, Willow frowned. Did he think that she was angry? Unnerved, yes. Angry? She was careful about what she let herself get angry about. Anger was not an emotion that she could easily afford, and it was Drusilla. In her own weird way, she meant to be helpful.

“What do mean?” she asked. “What did Dru do to me that . . .” she smiled wryly, “is anything worse than anything else?”

He paused in his knife twirling operation. “Thrall,” he said flatly. “She was mucking around with your mind.”

Willow nodded. “Right. And that’s . . . cheating? Or taking advantage? Or forcing me to do something I don’t want to do, which would be such a huge change of pace that I can see why you are disturbed on my behalf.”

He frowned at her. “Don’t know if I care for the new penchant for sarcasm, pet,” he drawled.

Mr. Buttons butted his head up against her ankle with a sharp little bark. She retrieved the now empty bowl and refilled it for him, sitting on her heels to scratch behind his ears as he lapped the water more slowly now that the immediacy of his thirst had been sated. She had found a small wooden ball to throw for him, a game that he took to with great enthusiasm while they lingered in the barren garden. The spur of the moment request for a dog had mostly been meant to placate Dru, but Willow had never had a pet, save for some goldfish and Amy, and she refused to think of Amy as a pet. She had grown fond of Mr. Buttons, despite some of his more annoying behaviors.

She had no idea how to answer, so for once, she kept her mouth shut, resisting the impulse to fill the uncomfortable silence. What could she say? I didn’t mind it so much, myself? In fact, when I woke up this morning, I lay in bed and masturbated while I fantasized about riding your cock while you lay motionless under me, vamping out, and that the idea of fucking you, of making you feel a tenth of the frustration and helplessness and lust that is my lot, was so powerful that it made me come?

Those thoughts were hers alone. She had no intention of sharing them, and not just because they made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but because . . . there were things that she would never tell him. No matter what he claimed he felt about her, he hadn’t earned her trust, or her loyalty.

He had them, whether he knew it or not, but he had never earned it.

No matter what she suspected she felt for him, there was just enough resentment, just enough awareness of how wrong it was, to keep her from ever making it more than a curious aspect of t