A Raising in the Sun

by Barb Cummings

 

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.

Summary: Post "The Gift", spoilers for everything under the sun; Pairing: None, 'cause of that inconvenient Buffy being dead thing, but it’s S/B in spirit



Chapter 4

Noon.  He was in bed, but he hadn't slept.  Tossed and turned for hours, paced up and down the stairs in the crypt, alternated between stretching himself out on the chilly marble sarcophagus in the upper room and the perfectly ordinary bed in the lower chamber, tried to watch telly and smoked till his throat was raw, which took some doing for a creature immune to the ravages of nicotine.  He could feel the sun out there, making its patient circuit of the sky.  He'd never been patient.  Oh, as a living man he'd been meek, alright, hemmed in by social obligations and family pressures and all the things that just weren't done, old chap, but never patient.  Spike sat up with a snarl, kicked off the sheets, and padded upstairs again.

In theory it didn't matter whether he had sheets on the bed or not; it wasn't as if he were any warmer or cooler with or without them.  He just liked sheets, the way he just liked junk food and loud danceable music and penny dreadfuls and a good football game with a good riot afterwards and all the other things that ought to have been completely irrelevant to vampires.  (Or, back in his human days, guilty pleasures to gentlemen of leisure; becoming a demon had given him license to indulge all the decidedly plebeian tastes he'd never dared admit to while alive.)  Spike had never wasted much time pondering the philosophical implications of his infatuation with things human; it had pleased him, annoyed Angelus and Darla, and completely bewildered other vampires, and that was justification enough.

He lit another cigarette and flung himself down in the battered armchair.  After a moment of staring at the blank screen of the television, he leaned over and grabbed his glasses off the crate that served as an end table and flipped up the top.  He groped around inside and pulled out a book at random.  Plain Tales From The Hills.  Right, Rudyard, take my mind off my troubles.

Nowadays, it was the things he’d enjoyed openly as a human which were the secret guilty pleasures.  No one would have taken seriously a Big Bad who read--least of all himself.  So, Buffy-love, did you ever read for pleasure?  Will said you lot had done Oedipus for a talent show once, so I know you've been exposed to the concept.  Bet not, though.  You always had an aversion to using the brains you were born with, and that godawful sludge Angel you used to mope over wouldn't have helped matters.  Nausea indeed.  Sartre always made me ill.  And Proust--did you know Soul Boy adored Proust, or was he wise enough to keep that his own dirty little secret?  Incredible, isn't it?  Remembrance of Things Wrist-Slashingly Dull.  Never could stomach it myself.  Give me something with guts to it.  The Greeks did it up proper. Blood and love, or blood and rhetoric--the blood is compulsory...

He shut the book and closed his eyes, tilting his head back against the sagging back of the chair.  Talking of blood, you know what's funny, Buffy?  I was this close to a bloke's throat last night.  Oh, I wanted to drink from him all right, if that's what you're wondering.  But I didn't want to kill him.  Well, all right, maybe a little. I'm not completely pussified, and he was an annoying bastard.  Frankly it would've been smarter of us to leave them all a little dead.  I'd've been more than happy to rip him open in a fight.  Just sittin' there, though, seemed... unsporting.  Is it the chip that's done this to me?  Or was I always weak inside, somehow, all along?  'Cos when I look back, love, it's a little scary how easily I gave up on the killing.  Could have had Harmony bringing me snackies all along, but I never asked her.  Could have beaten the shit out of any two-bit vamp in this town once I found out I could, and made them kill for me, but I never did.  And that's long before I started trying to make nice for you, love.  What's that say about Big Bad Spike?

And now all I have to do to get you back is let five people who aren't us die.  Wouldn't even have to kill them myself.  It would be so easy.  If I didn't know what was coming, if someone came up and told me about it next week, would I care, as long as you were walking around in the sun again?  Probably not.  Too bad, so sad, I've got Buffy!  Sorry, love.  I'm still a fairly nasty piece of work.

But I do know what's coming.

Sod it all.



  "...you're sure?  All right.  Thanks bunches, Wesley.  Say hi to Cordelia."

Willow hung up the phone and straggled back over to the table in the rear of the Magic Box.  It was still piled high with books, and now with sheaves of printouts of her own notes on the Raising ceremony--or some of them, anyway; there were certain of her private speculations that she didn't feel like sharing with the whole gang.  Not now, and maybe not ever.  Tara and Xander were going over the mass of paperwork for the umpteenth time while Anya sat over behind the counter making arcane notations in the shop's accounting program.

Willow sat down between Tara and Xander and rested her head against Tara's shoulder.  Tara put an arm around her shoulders and after a moment she felt her lover's fingers stroking her forehead lightly.  She'd gotten five or six hours of sleep after Spike had dropped them off at Tara's dorm in the wee hours of the morning, but she had a tension headache and wasn't feeling anywhere near her best.  She wanted nothing more than to go back to their dorm room and spend the rest of the day letting Tara hold her and rub her head.

Of all of them, Tara had known Buffy the least amount of time, and while Buffy's death had been sad for her, it wasn't the blow to the gut it had been for her and Dawn and Xander and Giles... or Spike.  Sometimes it was a comfort to have someone around who was a little apart from it all; she didn't have to feel that she should be supporting Tara in grief of her own.  She could just give it all up and let Tara be the strong one.

But now wasn't one of those times.  Time to put on the Fearless Leader hat again.  Willow opened her eyes and sat up.  "OK.  According to Wesley, from what they can tell from what happened with Darla's Raising, this is the top of the line as resurrections spells go.  When someone's brought back, they come back exactly as they were just before they died, with their real body, soul and everything.  Darla was fine.  Well, not fine, she was dying of syphilis, but that's not the spell's fault. If you're terminally ill or grotesquely old or something it's definitely of the bad, but Buffy wasn't either of those things--"

"It's always of the bad," Tara said firmly.

"Yes," Willow said, uncomfortable.  "That way lies ickiness.  But my point is, if they bring Buffy back she'll be physically all right.  The thing is, a Raised person may not remember who or where they are.  They're all confused.  What Bryce is probably counting on is that he can use that confused time to cast some sort of a control spell, or maybe just use old-fashioned drugs or brainwashing or something."

"So potentially..." Xander said slowly, "He could have a Slayer with five years of experience at his beck and call.  And anyone who'd kill five people to get her probably wouldn't employ her to play tiddlywinks."

Willow gave a defeated nod.  "Yeah.  That's about it.  Wesley says they'll try and infiltrate Bryce's place tonight and see if they can find out where the live sacrifices are being kept.  If they can spring them, it may mess up the whole plan.  He used to go out with Bryce's daughter so he's been in there once or twice before.  I've got the Van Guys' e-mail address set up to forward any mail from this Vespasian person to me, so he won't get suspicious about them not answering anything."

Xander looked dumbstruck.  "Wait, did you say Wesley went out with someone?"

"Strange, but true."  Willow sat up and brushed her hair back from her face.  "We can't count on them being able to find them in time, though.  We're not even sure that they're being kept in L.A."

"So say we do stop them this time." Xander slammed the book in front of him shut.  "What's gonna keep this Bryce guy from rounding up another bunch of victims next month, or next year, and trying this again?  He's rich, he's powerful, and he's human.  We can't kill him.  It’ll be damned hard to get him arrested.  I can't really see him groveling at our feet in abject apology for his uncivilized behavior.  What can we do about this long term?"

"Probably nothing," Anya said.   She tapped on the monitor in front of her with a pen. "That's why I want us to have lots and lots and lots of money.  Money is a much better defense than weapons."

"Oh, yay."  Xander subsided into a disgruntled perusal of the nearest batch of printouts.  "That makes me feel much better."

Anya smiled at him fondly.  "Me too."

"We won't have to worry about it again for awhile," Tara said softly.  "Raisings only work at specific times, and the times are different for each entity Raised.  By the time the stars are right again, it will probably be too late for..." She paused awkwardly.  "To bring her back."

"And isn't that just a sunshiny piece of news?" Xander muttered.  "And don't tell me about the cosmic balance, and that death is all part of the circle of life, and all that crap.  It still sucks wet gravel through a curly straw."

Tara looked hurt, and Xander looked stubborn, and Anya looked worried.  "Everyone go home," Willow said.

"What?"

"Everyone go home," she repeated, making a little shooing gesture.  "We were all up way too late last night and we're all tired, and arguing about this is just going to make us all kooky.  We'll go kooky much more efficiently if we all get some more sleep.  So go do Sunday afternoon stuff.  Tomorrow night we'll work out an ambush at the warehouse for Wednesday."  She pulled up a smile for Tara.  "I have one or two things I want to look up here, and then I'll stop by the crypt and bring Spike up to date and meet you later for dinner, OK?"

One of the few perks of being Fearless Leader was that people usually went away when you told them to, but it still took more time than Willow would have liked to clear the others out of the shop.  Anya was the last to go, admonishing her to lock up before she left.  Willow stood in the shop's front door and watched her walking briskly out to the car to join Xander.  She glanced at her wristwatch.  Four o'clock, and the Magic Box was finally deserted save for her.  Alone at last.

Tara had left reluctantly.  Tara was worried about her.  Feeling more than a little guilty, Willow cleared a space on the table for her laptop, flipped it open, and pulled up the encrypted files where she kept the notes she hadn't felt like sharing with the gang.

It was more than notes.  It was the bones of a whole new spell.  She'd never had any intentions of using it, but the original Raising was the most powerful piece of magic she’d ever gotten her hands on.  Studying it would teach her things she couldn’t possibly learn elsewhere.  Its endless repetitions had reminded her of a clunky old BASIC program, full of unnecessary loops and subroutines.  Surely she could tighten up the code a little, eliminate a line here, add a more elegant phrasing there?  It would be good practice.

It had proven far more difficult than she'd anticipated.  The repetitions, the multiple sacrifices, were all in there for good reason. Tara was right about all magic having a price, but Willow preferred to think of spells as programs, or math problems.  You put a word here and it had an effect.  Maybe too much effect, so you added a material component there, or subtracted a gesture here.  Multiply, divide, manipulate--if you worked fast enough, who knew what you might accomplish before the inexorable laws of magic demanded that the equation be made to balance again? 

She sat there for a long time, head propped up on one hand, chewing thoughtfully on the end of a pencil.  After awhile she got up and climbed up the ladder leading to the balcony, which housed the restricted section of the library.  She knelt and ran a hand over the backs of the miscellaneous volumes on the lowest shelf.  Her hand paused on a musty tome and she slipped it off the shelf, turning it over and over in her hands.  You should just burn them all, Tara'd said when Spike and Xander brought her the boxes full of old books from Doc's abandoned apartment.  Nothing good will ever come out of those... things.  Can't you feel it?

Willow ran a finger down the binding of the ancient, dog-eared volume before her.  No, she couldn't feel it.  Oh, she could tell that the book held power, of course, sense the tingle of potency when she caressed the spine or flipped through the pages.  Many of the books Spike and Xander had retrieved felt like this in greater or lesser degree.  So did a few of the books in Giles' library.  So had the curious set of three grimoires Wesley had allowed her to examine during her trip to L.A. last spring.  Power flowed through all of them--twisting, knotting, yearning to be free.  Maybe Tara was right and there was something inherently nasty about some of them.  In many ways Tara was more sensitive than she, but Willow honestly couldn't see it.  It was all magic, and it all called to her.

She climbed back down the ladder, holding the book awkwardly under one elbow, and went back to sit at the table.  She opened the book and leafed through the first few pages, then opened it to the place where she'd left off the last time.

The lights flickered.

Willow looked up from the yellowed pages of the book and pinched the bridge of her nose.  The headache had grown worse, an insistent buzz in the back of her skull like the drone of cicadas.  The wavery lights weren't helping any.  She squinted up at the light fixture overhead.  They seemed fine now.  She wondered if there were any aspirin left back in the training room.  Probably not.  The training room was fast reassuming its original character of a storeroom.

She gazed at the book.  It didn't have 'Darkest Magic' plastered all over the cover in big scary letters, that was for sure.  It just looked old and battered, and had grungy, black leather binding falling apart and the spine was all cracked.  It had no title at all.

The lights began to flicker again.  The book was difficult enough to make out even without electrical problems, written in a crabbed hand in a debased variety of church Latin.  Fifteenth century, probably, a bad translation of a tenth-century Arabic text.  Someone had scribbled notes in the margins in a low German dialect and someone else had scribbled notes on the notes in sixteenth-century English.  Within an hour she had three dictionaries spread out around her to look things up in, and she was still having trouble.

She'd been working on this since a few weeks after Buffy's death, and the sections she'd managed to translate so far were, she had to admit, a lot more disturbing than anything in good ol' 'Darkest Magic'.  The spells in 'Darkest Magic' were destructive and flashy, but there wasn’t really anything all that dark about them.  It was just, she suspected, that no one would take a spellbook titled ‘Pretty Decent Magic’ seriously.  The stuff in this one, though... nothing flashy here.  The spells were as grungy and low-key as the book itself, but something about them... well, she couldn't say 'felt wrong', could she?  Not after telling herself that there was no difference between the feel of one grimoire and another.

Twitchy.  They made her feel twitchy.

He that desireth return from the land of Osiris hath many paths to walk, and this one be...

Shadowed?  Unknown?  What declension was that adjective, and which noun did it refer to, 'he' or 'path'?  Willow flipped through the Latin dictionary, trying not to lose her place in the main text as she did so.  Tenebrarius... darkness?  Of the darkness?

...and as Horus he returneth, yea he returneth clothed in flesh...

Return clothed in flesh?  Could this have some relevance?  Osiris and Horus were Egyptian gods, and Osiris was killed by Set and...

Suddenly several previously obscure passages made sense.  The lights were flickering again, violently, and the pain in her head was growing but Willow paid neither any attention, focusing on the translation with all her being, biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.  The cicada-buzz was louder now, waxing and waning in time to the dimming of the lights.  The shadows crawled round the edge of the room--that was only the lights, only the lights and the ongoing California power shortages.

She pulled up the file of not-for-the-public notes on the Raising and began making alterations, adding a line here, deleting a reference there.  Her fingers flew over the keyboard of the laptop, transcribing text and notes and notes on the notes.  No... it wasn't transcribing any longer.  She was creating.  This, this was the heart of magic she'd been struggling towards for so long.  Her breath came harder and faster as she typed.  The buzzing grew to unbearable proportions, ringing through her head like a jackhammer, and the shadows in the corner of the shop writhed as the lights whined and failed overhead.  Terror and elation filled her in equal proportions.  Willow hit the last return and smacked 'Save'.

Almost immediately the flickering stopped.  Willow took a deep breath.  She felt drained and lightheaded.  She glanced up; the fluorescent lights were glowing steadily again, and the droning buzz in her ears was gone.  Shaking slightly, she closed the shabby black book and began straightening up the mess of papers, pens, and dictionaries.  By the time she'd returned the books to their places on the shelves and put everything else away, she was feeling more like herself again.  Before she closed the laptop, she checked to be certain the file was still in the folder, half expecting to find that there was nothing there.  For a moment, her fingers hovered over the trackball but her stomach went cold and tight and she decided against re-opening it.  She wasn't sure she could face looking at what she'd just put together.  Not yet.  She tucked the laptop into its case, made sure she'd put everything away, and started towards the front door.

On the threshold she hesitated, then turned back and walked over to one of the glass cases.  Inside were a selection of small glass and ceramic objects, statues and fetishes and idols of various types.  Among them were two or three palm-sized spheres of smoky glass.  Their surfaces were curiously crackled, as if they'd been through a fire.  Willow opened the case and reached for them.  Her hand hovered indecisively over the selection for a moment before settling on one of them.

She pulled it out and examined it, her heart pounding.  The Orb of Thessula lay quiescent in her hand, empty, useless--a New Age paperweight, no more.  She tucked it into her purse, conscientiously counted out the purchase price and left it on the register.  She locked the front door of the shop behind her and started down the street.  It was getting dark, and though the buzz in her ears was gone, the buzz of her thoughts wouldn't die down.  She had to talk to someone... not Tara.  She knew what Tara would say about this, and she didn't want to hear that, not right now.

She was frightened enough already.



The western sky was still glowing by the time she got to the cemetery, but the last burning edge of the sun had slipped below the horizon.  She was going to be late for dinner, but that couldn't be helped; Spike hadn't (so far, anyway) figured out a way to steal telephone service.  She knocked on the gate of the crypt, but there was no answer.  After a moment she pushed the gate open and stuck her head inside.  "Spike?"

The vampire was asleep in the armchair, barefoot and shirtless, a motionless, inhumanly beautiful ivory statue in the grey evening light.  His chin had dropped to his bare chest and one pale hand was spread across the open pages of a book lying across his lap.  A pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses was perched precariously on the end of his nose, a hair’s-breadth from falling off.  Willow cleared her throat.  "Spike, wake up!"

Spike started, blinked, and automatically shoved the glasses back into place, regarding her over the top of the lenses in a manner so reminiscent of Giles that Willow, keyed up as she was, almost burst out in hysterical giggles.  It must be some sort of English thing.  A second later he came completely awake and snatched the glasses off before realizing that it was a bit late for that. He settled for swinging them nonchalantly in one hand.  "Will!  Ah, hullo, I was just... reading."

"Well, shoot.  That ruins my theory about your wretched Artful Dodger childhood and tragic struggle against illiteracy."

Spike looked embarrassed, though since he couldn't blush it was rather hard to tell for certain.  "Keep it.  Sounds a lot more exciting than swotting at Eton."  He set book and glasses down on the crate beside the chair, got up, stretched very decoratively, and went over to the mini-fridge against the wall.  He waved her to the chair, and she sat down gingerly.  It felt weird, and after a moment she realized that it was because there was no warm spot where he'd been sitting.  He pulled out a plastic baggie of blood, bit the corner off, and poured it into a glass.  A horrid thought seemed to strike him.  "For God's sake don't tell Harris, I'll never hear the end of it." 

She smiled wanly.  Spike seemed to sense that her heart wasn’t in the banter, and went over to the nearest wall niche to light a few candles.  As the little cluster of flames strengthened and filled the crypt with mellow golden light he used the tail end of the match to puff a cigarette to life.  "So... news?"

He sounded strained.  Willow felt a surge of guilt.  She'd never been entirely certain how much of the whole Spike-loves-Buffy mess had been her fault.  Two years ago, right after Spike had been caught and chipped by the Initiative scientists, she'd accidentally caught the two of them up in a love spell... sort of.  Though both of them had appeared to snap out of it when the spell broke, Willow often wondered if it had had anything to do with subsequent developments.  Spike had been suicidally depressed and at loose ends at the time, and then suddenly he'd been happy.  If he’d associated that happiness with loving Buffy--who knew what weird little connections might have been made down in his subconscious?  If vampires even had a subconscious...

On the other hand, he'd been obsessed with Buffy from the first time he'd blown into Sunnydale, and sometimes Willow suspected that something--not love, but something--had been brewing in Buffy's subconscious almost as long.  Spike and Buffy had always talked big about killing each other, but instead they kept fighting and letting one another get away, breaking apart and coming back together like Silly Putty.  So maybe she'd had nothing to do with it.

"We're going to meet up at the shop tomorrow night around nine and work out how to stop the ceremony on Wednesday," she said.  The vampire nodded.  "Are you... do you want to come?  I mean, I know this must be...hard..."

"Will," he said, looking almost his age, "If I wanted to stop you, all it would take is a single phone call to Bryce.  For all you know I've already done it."

She caught those ancient, pain-filled eyes with her own and held them.  "If you had, you’d either be gloating or not telling me at all."

He grimaced as if the words stung him.  "True.  I'm a pathetic, whipped excuse for a monster, aren’t I?”  He chuckled bitterly.  "So count me in for Wednesday."

Willow gripped the handle of the laptop case to keep from twisting her hands.  "We all thought about it.  Maybe for just a teeny weensy moment, but we all did."

"Yeh, but..."

"And I," Willow continued almost inaudibly, "did something about it."

Outside in the graveyard a late cricket began chirping with moronic cheer.  Spike's hand froze in mid-movement, then continued on its way to the ashtray.  He ground his barely-started cigarette out very precisely in the center.  "Did you, then?"  His dark brows knit slightly.  "What kind of something?"

He didn’t sound shocked or accusing or worried.  Just curious.  She could have hugged him.  Willow pulled the laptop case up onto her knees and flipped open the catch.  "I've been working on this for a long time.  Ever since Buffy died, almost.  And yes, I know: evil naughty magic, bad Willow!"

"You're talking to the wrong bloke if you expect a lecture on morals," Spike interjected.  Willow laughed nervously.

"It's funny, Xander was asking this afternoon what we could do in the long term to prevent Bryce from trying to Raise Buffy again.  And the one sure way is to Raise her ourselves."  She was talking too fast, words tumbling over themselves in an effort to get out.  "I know magic isn't free.  I know every spell has a price, and the stronger the spell is, the greater the price.  Like there are all kinds of spells for raising people from the dead, but the trouble with most of them is that the price isn't high enough, so you just get gross decaying zombie type raisings of the dead--"

"Uh, yeah.  Run into that once or twice."

"--and if you don't have anything to sacrifice, you pay the price yourself.  Like when I cast those spells against Glory, and had nosebleeds and migraines for weeks afterwards."  She checked the level of the battery and turned the laptop on.  "I know all this stuff, and I know that to really bring back someone from the dead... that's a huge price.  What's worth a life?"  She met Spike's eyes steadily.  "Tara thinks resurrection spells are bad because they upset the balance of nature, which is just... stupid.  Heck, polio vaccines upset the balance of nature.  The way I see it, the real problem is most wizards don't want to pay the price.  So they make someone else pay."

She pulled up the file and opened it.  Her hands were trembling on the keyboard.  "I'm willing to pay.  I just need you to help me do it.” Now her voice was shaking, too. 

“What kind of price are we talking about, Will?” the vampire asked softly.  “There’s damned little I wouldn’t do to get her back.  You know that.  You have no idea how close I came to making that call.  The only thing that stopped me was..."  He trailed off, picking at his nails.  “Two things, really.  Didn’t want to end up fighting you lot.  But the main thing...”

"Buffy would have hated you?"

His eyes narrowed lazily.  "I could live with that, pet.  I could die with that.  If bringing her back meant she'd 'ate my guts, stake me the moment she got her bearings, I'd do it in a heartbeat.  If I had a heartbeat.  But I couldn't live with her hating 'erself.  And she would, knowin' the price of her life was... that."  He shook out a fresh cigarette.  “So whatever you’ve got in mind, Will, if it’s something Buffy couldn’t live with... let’s make damned sure she never, but never, finds out about it.”

Willow squeezed her eyes shut, shivering.  She’d come here for just this sort of encouragement, hadn’t she?  Because Spike wasn’t good, no matter how much he cared for Buffy and Dawn, or even, maybe, for the rest of them.  She forced her eyes open.  "I’ve... I've made a few changes.  It doesn't need to kill five people anymore.  Or even five vampires.  It doesn't need to kill anyone at all."

Spike walked slowly over to stand beside the chair.  He retrieved his glasses from the top of the crate, put them back on and leaned forward, staring at the screen over her shoulder.  "There's a catch, isn't there?  There's always a catch."

Willow didn’t look up from the screen.  "It's... there's a lot bigger chance of something going wrong.” 

“And that would be...?”

She waved one hand feebly.  “Oh, our heads exploding... that kind of thing.”

He made a dismissive noise.  “Pfft.  That.”

“And it's still nasty magic, Spike.  It still requires a sacrifice.  Something worth a life."

It wasn't entirely accurate that vampires didn't breathe; they had to inhale to talk, or smoke cigarettes, or sigh melodramatically.  She could feel Spike's cool breath tickling her ear whenever he spoke.  Now he sighed.  "And?"

"You won't like this."

"Try me."

"Dawn's blood is part of it."

"You're right, I don't like it."

"Not enough to kill her," Willow assured him.  This was one part she was sure about.  "Part of what makes this work is that Buffy died in Dawn's place to begin with.  They're metaphysically equivalent.  In a way, there's already been a blood sacrifice--"

Spike's eyebrows went up.  "Isn't that cheating a bit, Will, bringing back the sacrifice?"

"It's within the letter of the law," Willow protested.

“No worries.  I love a good cheat.”

"Nothing actually forbids it.”  Even to herself, Willow sounded as if she were trying to convince herself it would work.  “In so many words, anyway.  But that's not all."  She scrolled down the file and pointed to a section near the end.  "How up are you on Latin?"

"Rusty," he admitted.  "Not much call for it these days."  His eyes flicked back and forth over the lines on the screen for a moment.  "’Animam meam dono pro beneficio amicae carae.’--I hope I'm getting that bit wrong."

"Then you're probably getting it right.  What's worth a life, besides another life?"

Spike straightened and ran a hand through his hair, looking down at her with a curious expression, as if he'd never seen her before.  "Not a lot," he said slowly.  "But as I remember, there's something you 'eld dearer that night I offered to turn you."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'threatened to turn me'," Willow grumbled.  The brief flash of humor vanished quickly.  She looked up, her mouth firming, and there was nothing joking in her face or her voice.  "So.  Is the offer still open?"

She didn't get the chance to see a vampire completely floored that often.  Spike opened his mouth, closed it, and flung himself into a furious half-circle of pacing.  Willow didn't give him a chance to say anything further.  "I still have Jenny's re-souling spell on disk at home, and I've already got an Orb of Thessula.  I’ve been afraid to mess with the spell till now because it was so powerful, but under the circumstances that’s a little silly, isn’t it?  I figure we set up the first part of the spell ahead of time, you turn me, we call my soul back and catch it in the Orb, and..." her voice dissolved into a shaky squeak.  "Voila, we have a sacrifice."

"We bloody well do not!" Spike burst out, coming to a halt.  He grabbed one of her hands and pressed it to his forehead.  "Am I feverish?  I must be feverish, because I'm bloody agreeing with Tara!  You're insane, Will!  Don't get me wrong, pet, you'd make a smashing vampire, and I'm no end flattered you'd want me to sire you, but here’s some Latin for you."  He began ticking points off on his fingers.  "Primus, there's no guarantee I can bite you without keeling over, and I'm buggered if I'll make a test run now.  Secundus, if I did turn you, you'd be just a tiny bit DEAD for two or three days, and all bloodlusty and disoriented for another few days after that.  By the time you were fit to finish the spell, Buffy would be alive and well and kicking ass for Bryce in L.A.  And Tertius, once you were a vampire, there's no telling if your demon self would be as keen on getting Buffy back as I happen to be, as the first thing she'd undoubtedly do is stake the both of us.  We’re unreasonable that way."  His eyes softened a trifle.  “Will, you just don’t understand how big a change it is, being turned.  You can’t.”

Willow's face crumpled and her shoulders slumped in defeat.  "Oh."  It was half a sob.  “I do, Spike.  I met my vampire self once.  I didn’t just need you to turn me for this.  I wanted you to make me do the spell and then kill me after.”

“Ah."  Was that shock in his eyes, at last?  "Well, bugger that.  I think Buffy would bleedin’ notice me killing her ex-best friend the soulless demon.  And besides,” he added gruffly, "I rather fancy you soul included."

He’s not going to help.  He’s not going to... I don’t have to...  She covered her eyes with one hand, shaking in reaction as the adrenaline deserted her and relief and disappointment flooded through her in equal portions.  "Whatever happened to 'It would be wrong'?"

"Sorry, not my idiom." 

Willow couldn’t think of anything else to say.  Spike returned to his frenetic pacing, as if standing still put him in danger of exploding.  The silence grew between them as the last traces of sunset disappeared from the sky outside.  Tara would be waiting at the dorm, worrying... she should get up, go back... continue doing the right thing.  And she had classes tomorrow.  She couldn’t muster up the energy to get out of the chair.  "So... I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then."

Spike made a vague affirmative grunt, lost in thought.  He came to rest by the doorway and stood there staring out into the night, his face hidden by shadow.  Willow flipped the laptop shut and began the arduous task of dragging herself to her feet.  She felt weak and jittery at the same time, but walking would probably take care of that.  If she didn’t throw up first.

"Half a mo', Will..." 

Momentum interrupted, she sat down again.  Spike had turned back to face her, obviously stricken with an idea.  "This spell of yours... any law says it has to be your soul to make it work?"

Willow frowned, running over the restrictions and clauses of the spell in her mind.  "Um... no... I don't think so.  But mine's the only one I've got dibs on."

Spike was in front of the chair in two long strides.  He dropped to one knee in front of her and grabbed her shoulders, eyes alight.  "Use mine."

"You don't have..."

"Not now!  Not in my hip pocket, pet!"  He jumped to his feet again, alive with excitement.  "But I did once, and it's out there somewhere, innit?"  He waved a hand at the ceiling.  "Angel's was.  Stands to reason mine is too, dunnit?  Not as if I'm using the bloody thing, so call it up and chuck it in wherever sacrifices get chucked!"

"Spike!"  It was Willow's turn to be stunned.  "I can't--that would be murder!"

"What, you think old William's poncing around in the clouds with a harp and a halo?"

"Well... maybe.  I don't know!”  Her voice was an anguished wail.  “I’m not even sure what a soul is!”

The vampire was on his feet again, prowling round the room like a caged tiger; if he’d had a tail it would have been switching madly.  "I know what it isn't.  Fine, I'm not William.  There's a big piece of him missing, and there's a demon in its place.  But what's missing's not his mind, nor his heart--my mind, and my heart, damn it, beating or not.  I've got those.  They're part of me--they are me.  Bloody hell, Will, I know him.  I know every day of his life.  I know what he'd give up for... for love... as well as I know what I would.  Dru didn't take me--him--by force.  I may have been uninformed, but I was willing.  If I can give up my soul for her I can damned well give it up for Buffy."

“But if you--him--William--Arrgh!”   Willow grabbed fistfuls of her hair with both hands and yanked.  “I’m all confused!”  She worried at her lower lip, still sore from her having bitten it earlier, and in her mind’s eye pulled up the image of the cursor blinking amidst the lines of the spell.  "It... could work.  The thing is..."  She tried to catch his eyes again, but he was moving too quickly, caught up in an exhilaration every bit as frightening as her own had been.  "You know, don't you, that getting your soul back is about the only way Buffy might ever..."

He wheeled impatiently about, cutting her off with a gesture.  "I know.  But it wouldn't do me any good having a soul if she's dead, would it?"

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have it back yourself?"

"Oh, right, and end up like Angel, pissing and moaning over my sins for the next century?  I think not.  Besides, pet, the only spell you've got to stick it back in me is that dodgy piece of gypsy work with the world's stupidest curse built in."  He cocked a sardonic eyebrow at her.  "And how long do you think that would last, hmmm?  Let's face it, I'm a bloody sight easier to please in the true happiness department than Grand-sire ever was.  I'd lose the sodding thing the next time Manchester United makes the Cup finals.  Hardly worth it, is it?”

He came to a stop beside the chair again, bent down and purred into her ear, “Besides, pet, you know you’re dying to use that spell.  It's all coiled up inside you, waiting.  When’re you ever going to get another chance?”

Damn.  He knew exactly how to get to her.  But she’d known that all along.  Wasn’t that why she’d come?  “We have to tell Dawn,” she whispered, feeling the last of her resistance crumbling.

He laughed, a deep-down rumble that shook the chair.  “‘Course we do.  Leave that to me, and run home to Kitten.  If the Nibblet says no, then it’s all off.   But honestly, Will, do you think there’s a chance in hell she’ll say no?”

"No," Willow admitted.  "I don't." 

Continue to Part 5

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