Parallel Lives
They set a mug of tea in front of him.
A mug of tea. Like that would help. What he needed was scotch, followed by vodka, followed by bloodshed, since scotch and
vodka, no longer packed its numbing punch.
Still, he sipped and listened to them bicker. Stupid sods. That was always the way with them: nattering on about who should
do what, and when, and to what end. They usually stalled in this manner until Buffy sorted it out in her head, and then, in a
shimmering epiphany, would lay it out for them.
God, he missed her.
“What do you think, Spike?” Dawn asked.
He lifted his head and, realizing he’d not heard a smidge of their conversation, felt it best to offer a noncommittal shrug.
“Behold: Exhibit A,” Harris said. “The not-readiness of Spike.”
William jerked his head up. “Hang on. Ready for what?” he asked.
Everyone seemed too stunned to speak, as if they had all just let slip that someone had run over his puppy and they’d just
blown cover. None of them expected him to respond so quickly. It was Dawn who finally broke the fragile silence.
“Ready to return to the school,” she said, tucking the tendrils of her hair behind her ears. “They could use you.”
“They?” William said. “Last I heard it was Tiny at the helm, all by herself with the normals.”
Andrew leaned forward. “Yes. It’s true that MK was there by her lonesome. It is also true that she took over for the
mundane clientele once you fell into your deep and peaceful sleep, but…”
“Andrew called in reinforcements,” Dawn said, picking up the thread of Andrew’s narrative. “Rita returned from France,
and brought with her twenty Slayers from all around Europe. They’ve been at work since, keeping the city clean, but Rita
said there’s been a lot more demon activity in the last few days.”
“How much more?” William asked, sitting up, feeling his blood stir.
“A way lot,” Andrew said.
“That would be the technical term,” Harris said.
Maya glanced at Xander, but said, “We’ve kept Willow’s wards around the house and the school… which reminds me, we
need supplies from the magic shop. We’re fresh out of Wolf’s Bane and Calendula.”
Andrew reached for his notepad on the breakfast bar, but Dawn said, “Xander, can you handle that? Andrew’s got his hands
full with Council work at the moment.”
Dawn beamed, then, and bowed her head to hide her blush. “Hands full. Get it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harris groaned. “Got it. Meanwhile I’m relegated to shopping.”
A tight moment of suspense lapsed in which it seemed that Maya, Andrew, and Dawn were trying to decide if Harris was
setting up for a joke. The moment spun between them, sliding from anticipation to awkwardness.
“Important shopping,” Maya ventured.
Harris waved it off. “Make a list,” he said. “I’ll pick it up on the way home from work. And speaking of…”
Harris went on to exhaustively recount some repair work he had been commissioned to do for the Watcher’s Council. William
felt right bored enough to slip back into a coma, but he caught a strand of his dream like a shining iridescent ribbon, and he
followed it, trying to remember what it was, exactly, he had seen that woke him in the first place. Had Buffy been there?
Had she been present, in his arms? And there was something else, a glimmering connection as intangible as the sunlight’s
reflection in a pool but just as effectual to his wounded, wandering soul, and he had awakened…
Dawn squeezed his hand. William snapped back to the present.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “We’ll find her.”
He stared into his mug, watching the orange-brown liquid coalesce from the tea bag, making a swirl of light and dark in his
cup, of murky and clear, and he had an inkling that perhaps – somehow – he already had.
Buffy awoke, propped in a plethora of pillows, her hands primly folded across her belly, like she had fallen asleep in a lounge
chair at poolside.
She sat up. She was starving. Star-ving. Her craving was multi-layered and intricate as a Shakespearean sonnet. She wanted
honeydew melon, split in half and de-seeded, with two scoops of strawberry ice cream, with a wedge of white chocolate like
a Spanish fan, the whole thing sprinkled with cinnamon. As she climbed from bed, she could feel the coolness of the ice cream
on her tongue and in her throat. She tasted the smooth texture of the melon as she imagined her teeth sinking into the
juicy flesh.
Buffy went to the bathroom, went briskly through her morning ritual, and was thinking that raspberry sherbet would be
better than strawberry ice cream, and maybe slices of kiwi would be nice, when Willow entered with a tray.
“Hungry?” the red-head asked brightly. “We figured you would be, so we made breakfast.” Willow set the lovely wooden
tray on the end of the bed and lifted off the cover to reveal a plate of eggs and sausages, two steaming biscuits and a mini-
jar of orange marmalade.
Buffy felt overwhelmed. “You remembered?” she said, moving forward to touch the little jar on the tray.
“Of course I did,” Willow said. “Joyce always had marmalade for her Buffy.”
“And red plum for Dawn,” Buffy said. Then she glanced at the other bed, unmade, unoccupied, on the other side of the room,
and a burble of panic trickled up from her stomach. “Where is she?”
Willow touched Buffy’s arm. “She’s in the garden. It’s okay. Tara’s with her.”
Again, Buffy felt absurdly whelmed-over with emotion, and tears stung her eyes. She sat down beside the tray, picked up a
biscuit and started to nibble at it. Soon her hunger overtook the need to converse, and Buffy plowed through the eggs with
her fork and ate the sausages with her bare fingers, while Willow silently watched.
Finally, Willow said, “You should probably breathe while you eat…”
Buffy choked down a bite of biscuit, then gulped down half her juice.
“I know,” she said, catching her breath. “It’s just… ’m unbelievably hungry. Like, plague of locusts hungry.”
“Just so long as you confine your decimation to the plate,” Willow said.
Buffy gave a weak laugh. “I dunno, Wil. These throw pillows’re looking mighty tasty. Don’t get me started on bath soap…”
Willow grinned. “Unorthodox cravings?”
“Mainly the regular kind. Except for the lead paint and gasoline.”
Again, with the Willow grin. She sampled a bit of Buffy’s biscuit to thinly conceal her desire to launch into a pretext.
“What is it, Wil?” Buffy asked, aware that they had slipped into the conversational rhythm expected of old friends.
Willow edged onto the bed. “Look, Buffy, I know that you probably want to return to Sunnydale all on your own and stuff,
and while I support your right personal vendettas, I-I just don’t think it’s a great idea…”
Buffy shook her head fervently. “No, Wil. You couldn’t be more wrong. I need help. Really, really need it like I haven’t
needed it before. I haven’t been on patrol in months. I’m incredibly out of shape. Except, pear is a shape. And I know I
haven’t been here on count of my being dead, but…”
“We’ll be there,” Willow said. “Buffy, whatever it takes, we want to help you.”
Buffy reached for Willow, but the tray was in the way. She moved it aside and clenched Willow in a long, welcome embrace.
“You can’t imagine how good it is to hear that.”
“Besides,” Willow said, speaking into Buffy’s hair. “Angel’s been waiting for his chance to get at the Coven and TriadCorp.
We’ll make garters of the entrails of some evil corporate conglomerate witch-types.”
Buffy had to laugh again. “Willow: Small, yet terrifying.”
“Yes. Know me, know the meaning of…” Willow began, and was interrupted by Tara’s excited entrance into the room. She
beckoned to them to follow and then darted into the hallway. "Tara?"
Buffy and Willow exchanged questioning looks. Tara came back in seconds later, waved more furiously, but with an
expression more of awe than concern, then disappeared again. And so they followed.
Dawn tracked William to the garden, where he was hiding out, smoking. She paused at the door, her sketchbook clutched
close to her body, feeling the tinge of the smoke in her nose. Before she could chicken out, Dawn pulled the door open and
stepped onto the flagstone patio.
Something strange had happened in the garden. Dawn had been vaguely aware of it, but in a peripheral way. It occurred to
her as she crossed the verdant grass that she had not ventured out of doors since she’d followed Andrew to the ATS, and
the reason for that was extreme wintry conditions, such as slippery ice and bitter sleet.
That was the front of the house. The garden in back? Now that was…
“What magic do you think accounts for the Club Rio Resort here?” Spike asked Dawn, without looking up from the grassy
patch between his booted feet.
Dawn took up the space beside him on the picnic table. “Maybe Willow’s protection spell doubles as a pocket of paradise
deal?” she ventured.
He shrugged.
She put her sketchbook on her knees and watched him, scolding herself inwardly for not coming right out with what she
wanted to show him because now she felt her nerve slipping away like water down a street drain.
After a long moment, Spike said, “S’pose you didn’t come out to chat about the unseasonal greenery.”
Dawn turned her body to face his, and he could read from her rigid posture that she had something weighing on her mind.
She took a minute to compose herself. He took a moment to stub out his cigarette – stale bugger that it was – and flick the
butt into the yard.
“I have been feeling… something…” Dawn began, haltingly, her eyes averted, “Even before Buffy disappeared, something
strange has been happening. With me.”
She paused. He said, “Go on, pet.”
Dawn breathed deep, then opened her sketch book to the first page. The first drawing he had seen before: the likeness of
Connor in profile, his forehead a little too high, the nose too long, but still recognizable as Angel’s brooding son. William
recalled with sharp clarity the morning he'd sneaked up on Dawn while she sketched – the acrid scent of burnt coffee, the
yellow light streaming like dust through the high window above the sink, Giles washing his mug over and over and over.
“It’s a good likeness,” William said, remembering how he’d spooked her, causing her to score a deep, even line across the
boy’s face.
“Now it is,” Dawn agreed, smoothing her finger over the barely visible mark which she had erased and concealed with subtle
shading so that it looked more than a scar than an artist’s error.
“So?” William said.
Dawn flipped slowly through the next few pages. Her stomach twisted as she recalled the events that brought about each
sketch. She stopped at the fifth.
Dawn couldn’t even remember the name of the boy she’d…used for this drawing, but the image had long since stopped
twitching. The magic that animated its toothy mouth demon and tentacles had faded.
As William stared at the page, a myriad of expressions flickered across his face.
“This is a Pishacha,” he said at last, his brow creased with concern. “You drew this?”
Dawn nodded. She flipped the page. The next image, snarling and visceral, seemed to leer out of the book, and William felt his
flesh crawl. It was astonishingly lifelike in its horridness. He could practically smell the sulfur and brimstone.
“And this?” he asked. She felt him studying her and her own skin prickled with the heat of embarrassment and shame. This
one she’d drawn after Augie.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
“Do you?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a Subako – Japanese, I believe. They live in hives and are rarely seen by humans,” William said. “What’s this about, luv?”
Dawn skipped the next few pages, then paused, her finger and thumb on the corner of the page. “That’s nothing,” she said.
“This is what I wanted to show you.”
She turned the page to reveal a hideous seven-armed hellbitch with a skull full of quivering quills that still quivered. As William
stared into the drawing, the demon grew aware of him. She brandished a barbed halberd at him and screamed soundlessly,
her lipless mouth elongated a la Edvard Munsch.
William drew back. “It’s uh… it’s uh…”
“Live. Yeah. I know. It’s not always demons, either. Sometimes it’s places or people, but never anything I have seen before.
Her, for example.”
The hellbitch stamped and pranced, dragging a long scaled tail behind her in a way that seemed comically haughty. William
poked the demon’s chest. She stumbled back, but then erupted in a blur of gracefully frenzied movements that held him
mesmerized.
“How?” he asked.
“Magic,” she said, feeling that the word by itself was inadequate.
“Not like any I’ve seen,” he said.
“There’s more, Spike,” Dawn said. She turned the page again, which seemed to greatly offend the hellbitch’s sense of self-
importance.
“The night we argued,” Dawn said, and now William was the one to lower his gaze. “I went out, and…”
“Dawn,” he said. “Did some beastie get you?”
She laughed, bitterly. “More like the opposite,” she said.
William grew still, and Dawn rushed to answer the question in his eyes. “It was just a game we played. But things went
wrong, and I went too far. Someone got hurt.” She swallowed hard, pressing her palms flat over the page in her sketchbook.
“I hurt someone,” she forced herself to say. “I hurt Brody. I drew on him, and got carried away with it, like I do. When I
draw, I get lost, sorta, gone with it, and I saw something – something so real and so frightening - and when I came out of the
spell or whatever, I…”
Dawn trailed off, hoping desperately that William would fill in the blank for her. She felt her body tense and her shoulders
tremble in the anticipation of his reproach, but he said nothing. She finally managed to glance at his eyes, and was shocked
to see not disapproval or disappointment, but understanding.
“You lost control,” he whispered.
She sighed, and with a final shove of her resolve, pushed the burden of the truth from her shoulders.
“That’s not all I lost,” she muttered.
Tears filled her throat, hot and stifling, but she choked them down and continued. “Anyway, it’s done. I quit. After that
night, I stopped drawing.”
William bowed his head toward her until their foreheads touched. “Ah, Bit…”
She felt herself crumbling inward, all of the pain and loathing she had dammed up behind her time spent with Andrew began to
erode.
“It’s not true,” she said miserable. “Even that’s not true. I also sketched Andrew, and when I did, I walked right into his
thoughts. I was in his mind, actually witnessing his memories.”
William snorted. “Must have been an odd little jaunt into disjointed thought,” he said.
An unexpected giggle rose up in her chest.
Encouraged, William went on. “Was it Lieutenant Uhuru-meets-Captain Janeway in Jabba’s Palace? Or Casino Royale?”
Dawn chuckled at the image, feeling the last of her inner masonry tumbled in. She hunched over her sketchbook, shoulders
quaking, and for a long moment, she couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. Soon everything blurred to hysteria – the
fiercely green garden, her vivid sketches, Andrew, Spike, the Flat, Buffy, Xander, Maya – everything. She felt ridiculously
miniscule and childish.
“Hey now,” William said, caressing her shoulder. “Dawn?”
She raised her face to meet his. With her hair in her eyes and her cheeks bathed in tears, she looked exactly as she had so
many years ago, after Joyce had died. It wasn’t grief he had seen then, but a kind of reckless determination. Yet it was
only a glimpse before the young woman - calm, self-possessed, bordering on austere - took over.
Dawn said, “Fine now.”
William fumbled the pack of pilfered Pall Malls out his pocket and knocked one between his fingers. With a snick of his Zippo,
he’d lit it and then sucked the hot smoke into his lungs.
“So,” he said as he exhaled. “The spell that did the waking, and the spontaneous regeneration of Andrew’s long lost limb.
Also your work?”
Dawn dropped her head slightly and nodded. “Andrew’s discovery. We… performed… the rite. Together. The hand thing was
unexpected, but…”
“Hang on,” William said. “You? And Andrew?”
Dawn forced herself to meet William’s gaze. His brow was furrowed; his look, guarded. She hurried to explain herself.
“I don’t know what I would have done without him. I mean, literally. Everybody else was gone, but he’s been at keeping
things sane around here. Without him, I would have been… well, I was a mess. Total. Complete. But we got through,” she
rambled.
William leaned away, studying her with measured caution. At length, he said, “Be careful of the boy. He can’t help how he
feels.”
Dawn blinked. It took her a moment to read together the words and his expression. She remembered that look on Spike’s
face when she’d confronted him about his one-night slam with Anya. The lovesick look. And she got it.
“No,” she said, quietly at first, then, “No. It’s not like that. I… he’s...” She smiled, bit her lip. “I cherish him.”
“Cherish?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
She felt self-conscious suddenly. She said, “This is all terribly unexpected.”
“Um. No?”
Dawn said, “Look, I haven’t had much time to think about it, but I know what it is, about Andrew and me.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”
“You recall when I was the Key?”
“In vivid Technicolor, luv.”
“Of course,” she said, feeling stupid for stating something so obvious. She went on nonetheless. “The monks made me and
inserted me into your lives. You didn’t have a choice. Everyone who knew me had to love me. All part of the plan.”
“Wouldn’t say ‘had to’,” William interrupted.
“You so did. I was the Dawn Summers love injection.”
He arched a brow.
“You know what I mean. But Andrew: He’s the first person who ever chose me for me. He likes post-key Dawn. And we were
friends first, then more than friends, and then way more…”
He held up his hands. “Not requesting a playback, luv.”
Dawn colored deeply. “Sorry.” She tucked her hair behind her ears again. “You’re so sweet, being concerned for him…”
“Bite your tongue,” William said. “I was just checking for the sake of morale.”
“Sure. Okay. But I would never hurt him. Never,” Dawn said, still smiling. “It… feels good to talk. About everything. You’re
not at all freaked or upset.”
William let out a relieved sigh. "No, pet. Not a bit." He ran his cigarette-free hand over her hair. “Harris and Flower Child
know nothing?”
“Nothing” Dawn said. “We’re not in a sharing place. Not that we’ve talked about that part yet. Plus, it’s nice, having
something all our own.”
“Got it. Agreed,” William said, getting to his feet. He took a drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the table. “And
I am ready, for the record. I’ll start back at the school tomorrow. Buffy would want it…”
Dawn shifted back on the table, stretching her slender arms behind her. When she did, William saw something on the page
that sent a shiver over his skin. He came around the side of the table to look at the sketch from Dawn’s perspective.
“Lemme see that,” he said, swiping the pad from her lap.
“Hey!” she said.
He gripped both edges of the pad between his hands and stared down into an image of such exquisitely fine detail it looked
like more a black and white photograph than a drawing. His breath returned to him in a ragged gasp as he struggled and
failed to say, I know this place. I’ve been here.
Dawn leaned in close to better see what he was seeing. For her, it was just the drawing from the night before. For him, it
was the key to unlocking all that he had dreamed, with the succubus, with Dru, with Andrew and Dawn, and with Buffy.
“Buffy,” he muttered.
“It’s okay,” Dawn said. “We’ll find her.”
“No. No, you don’t understand,” William said. “I was here, in this place. With her. With Buffy.”
Dawn gave him an incredulous look. “I don’t understand,” she said.
William responded with a knowing half-smile. “Yes you do, Nibblet,” he said. “I think you do.”
Tara led Buffy and Willow to the garden, where Dawn had cleared a section of the English ivy from the stucco outer wall of
the Hyperion’s atrium. When they arrived, Dawn was still at work, her nimble fingers a blur as she scraped over the surface
with a shard of gray pottery.
Buffy could only make out the extremities of a large mural: the outer border of a building with peaked roofs, a series of
faceted domes, and the intimation of stars in a cross-hatched sky. She stepped closer, trying to see around her sister, but
Dawn seemed able to cover more space than was possible with her busy arms and voluminous white gown. Buffy glimpsed a
scruff of hedges abutting a low rock wall that blended into the ivy that remained as a boundary to the mural’s edge.
“I didn’t know she could do this,” Buffy marveled, stepping closer.
“Me neither,” Willow said. “It’s really beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Buffy sighed, as her heart began to pound. She took another step, just as Dawn backed out of the scene to reveal
her completed masterpiece.
“The chapel…” Buffy gasped.
“You know it?” Willow asked.
Buffy was shaking her head, but Dawn had clasped her hands together like an excited child about to receive a present.
“Dawn, how did you…?” Buffy said.
“I’m the key. Always the key,” Dawn sang. “I know what to do. I know what I have to do.”
They set a mug of tea in front of him.
A mug of tea. Like that would help. What he needed was scotch, followed by vodka, followed by bloodshed, since scotch and
vodka, no longer packed its numbing punch.
Still, he sipped and listened to them bicker. Stupid sods. That was always the way with them: nattering on about who should
do what, and when, and to what end. They usually stalled in this manner until Buffy sorted it out in her head, and then, in a
shimmering epiphany, would lay it out for them.
God, he missed her.
“What do you think, Spike?” Dawn asked.
He lifted his head and, realizing he’d not heard a smidge of their conversation, felt it best to offer a noncommittal shrug.
“Behold: Exhibit A,” Harris said. “The not-readiness of Spike.”
William jerked his head up. “Hang on. Ready for what?” he asked.
Everyone seemed too stunned to speak, as if they had all just let slip that someone had run over his puppy and they’d just
blown cover. None of them expected him to respond so quickly. It was Dawn who finally broke the fragile silence.
“Ready to return to the school,” she said, tucking the tendrils of her hair behind her ears. “They could use you.”
“They?” William said. “Last I heard it was Tiny at the helm, all by herself with the normals.”
Andrew leaned forward. “Yes. It’s true that MK was there by her lonesome. It is also true that she took over for the
mundane clientele once you fell into your deep and peaceful sleep, but…”
“Andrew called in reinforcements,” Dawn said, picking up the thread of Andrew’s narrative. “Rita returned from France,
and brought with her twenty Slayers from all around Europe. They’ve been at work since, keeping the city clean, but Rita
said there’s been a lot more demon activity in the last few days.”
“How much more?” William asked, sitting up, feeling his blood stir.
“A way lot,” Andrew said.
“That would be the technical term,” Harris said.
Maya glanced at Xander, but said, “We’ve kept Willow’s wards around the house and the school… which reminds me, we
need supplies from the magic shop. We’re fresh out of Wolf’s Bane and Calendula.”
Andrew reached for his notepad on the breakfast bar, but Dawn said, “Xander, can you handle that? Andrew’s got his hands
full with Council work at the moment.”
Dawn beamed, then, and bowed her head to hide her blush. “Hands full. Get it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harris groaned. “Got it. Meanwhile I’m relegated to shopping.”
A tight moment of suspense lapsed in which it seemed that Maya, Andrew, and Dawn were trying to decide if Harris was
setting up for a joke. The moment spun between them, sliding from anticipation to awkwardness.
“Important shopping,” Maya ventured.
Harris waved it off. “Make a list,” he said. “I’ll pick it up on the way home from work. And speaking of…”
Harris went on to exhaustively recount some repair work he had been commissioned to do for the Watcher’s Council. William
felt right bored enough to slip back into a coma, but he caught a strand of his dream like a shining iridescent ribbon, and he
followed it, trying to remember what it was, exactly, he had seen that woke him in the first place. Had Buffy been there?
Had she been present, in his arms? And there was something else, a glimmering connection as intangible as the sunlight’s
reflection in a pool but just as effectual to his wounded, wandering soul, and he had awakened…
Dawn squeezed his hand. William snapped back to the present.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “We’ll find her.”
He stared into his mug, watching the orange-brown liquid coalesce from the tea bag, making a swirl of light and dark in his
cup, of murky and clear, and he had an inkling that perhaps – somehow – he already had.
Buffy awoke, propped in a plethora of pillows, her hands primly folded across her belly, like she had fallen asleep in a lounge
chair at poolside.
She sat up. She was starving. Star-ving. Her craving was multi-layered and intricate as a Shakespearean sonnet. She wanted
honeydew melon, split in half and de-seeded, with two scoops of strawberry ice cream, with a wedge of white chocolate like
a Spanish fan, the whole thing sprinkled with cinnamon. As she climbed from bed, she could feel the coolness of the ice cream
on her tongue and in her throat. She tasted the smooth texture of the melon as she imagined her teeth sinking into the
juicy flesh.
Buffy went to the bathroom, went briskly through her morning ritual, and was thinking that raspberry sherbet would be
better than strawberry ice cream, and maybe slices of kiwi would be nice, when Willow entered with a tray.
“Hungry?” the red-head asked brightly. “We figured you would be, so we made breakfast.” Willow set the lovely wooden
tray on the end of the bed and lifted off the cover to reveal a plate of eggs and sausages, two steaming biscuits and a mini-
jar of orange marmalade.
Buffy felt overwhelmed. “You remembered?” she said, moving forward to touch the little jar on the tray.
“Of course I did,” Willow said. “Joyce always had marmalade for her Buffy.”
“And red plum for Dawn,” Buffy said. Then she glanced at the other bed, unmade, unoccupied, on the other side of the room,
and a burble of panic trickled up from her stomach. “Where is she?”
Willow touched Buffy’s arm. “She’s in the garden. It’s okay. Tara’s with her.”
Again, Buffy felt absurdly whelmed-over with emotion, and tears stung her eyes. She sat down beside the tray, picked up a
biscuit and started to nibble at it. Soon her hunger overtook the need to converse, and Buffy plowed through the eggs with
her fork and ate the sausages with her bare fingers, while Willow silently watched.
Finally, Willow said, “You should probably breathe while you eat…”
Buffy choked down a bite of biscuit, then gulped down half her juice.
“I know,” she said, catching her breath. “It’s just… ’m unbelievably hungry. Like, plague of locusts hungry.”
“Just so long as you confine your decimation to the plate,” Willow said.
Buffy gave a weak laugh. “I dunno, Wil. These throw pillows’re looking mighty tasty. Don’t get me started on bath soap…”
Willow grinned. “Unorthodox cravings?”
“Mainly the regular kind. Except for the lead paint and gasoline.”
Again, with the Willow grin. She sampled a bit of Buffy’s biscuit to thinly conceal her desire to launch into a pretext.
“What is it, Wil?” Buffy asked, aware that they had slipped into the conversational rhythm expected of old friends.
Willow edged onto the bed. “Look, Buffy, I know that you probably want to return to Sunnydale all on your own and stuff,
and while I support your right personal vendettas, I-I just don’t think it’s a great idea…”
Buffy shook her head fervently. “No, Wil. You couldn’t be more wrong. I need help. Really, really need it like I haven’t
needed it before. I haven’t been on patrol in months. I’m incredibly out of shape. Except, pear is a shape. And I know I
haven’t been here on count of my being dead, but…”
“We’ll be there,” Willow said. “Buffy, whatever it takes, we want to help you.”
Buffy reached for Willow, but the tray was in the way. She moved it aside and clenched Willow in a long, welcome embrace.
“You can’t imagine how good it is to hear that.”
“Besides,” Willow said, speaking into Buffy’s hair. “Angel’s been waiting for his chance to get at the Coven and TriadCorp.
We’ll make garters of the entrails of some evil corporate conglomerate witch-types.”
Buffy had to laugh again. “Willow: Small, yet terrifying.”
“Yes. Know me, know the meaning of…” Willow began, and was interrupted by Tara’s excited entrance into the room. She
beckoned to them to follow and then darted into the hallway. "Tara?"
Buffy and Willow exchanged questioning looks. Tara came back in seconds later, waved more furiously, but with an
expression more of awe than concern, then disappeared again. And so they followed.
Dawn tracked William to the garden, where he was hiding out, smoking. She paused at the door, her sketchbook clutched
close to her body, feeling the tinge of the smoke in her nose. Before she could chicken out, Dawn pulled the door open and
stepped onto the flagstone patio.
Something strange had happened in the garden. Dawn had been vaguely aware of it, but in a peripheral way. It occurred to
her as she crossed the verdant grass that she had not ventured out of doors since she’d followed Andrew to the ATS, and
the reason for that was extreme wintry conditions, such as slippery ice and bitter sleet.
That was the front of the house. The garden in back? Now that was…
“What magic do you think accounts for the Club Rio Resort here?” Spike asked Dawn, without looking up from the grassy
patch between his booted feet.
Dawn took up the space beside him on the picnic table. “Maybe Willow’s protection spell doubles as a pocket of paradise
deal?” she ventured.
He shrugged.
She put her sketchbook on her knees and watched him, scolding herself inwardly for not coming right out with what she
wanted to show him because now she felt her nerve slipping away like water down a street drain.
After a long moment, Spike said, “S’pose you didn’t come out to chat about the unseasonal greenery.”
Dawn turned her body to face his, and he could read from her rigid posture that she had something weighing on her mind.
She took a minute to compose herself. He took a moment to stub out his cigarette – stale bugger that it was – and flick the
butt into the yard.
“I have been feeling… something…” Dawn began, haltingly, her eyes averted, “Even before Buffy disappeared, something
strange has been happening. With me.”
She paused. He said, “Go on, pet.”
Dawn breathed deep, then opened her sketch book to the first page. The first drawing he had seen before: the likeness of
Connor in profile, his forehead a little too high, the nose too long, but still recognizable as Angel’s brooding son. William
recalled with sharp clarity the morning he'd sneaked up on Dawn while she sketched – the acrid scent of burnt coffee, the
yellow light streaming like dust through the high window above the sink, Giles washing his mug over and over and over.
“It’s a good likeness,” William said, remembering how he’d spooked her, causing her to score a deep, even line across the
boy’s face.
“Now it is,” Dawn agreed, smoothing her finger over the barely visible mark which she had erased and concealed with subtle
shading so that it looked more than a scar than an artist’s error.
“So?” William said.
Dawn flipped slowly through the next few pages. Her stomach twisted as she recalled the events that brought about each
sketch. She stopped at the fifth.
Dawn couldn’t even remember the name of the boy she’d…used for this drawing, but the image had long since stopped
twitching. The magic that animated its toothy mouth demon and tentacles had faded.
As William stared at the page, a myriad of expressions flickered across his face.
“This is a Pishacha,” he said at last, his brow creased with concern. “You drew this?”
Dawn nodded. She flipped the page. The next image, snarling and visceral, seemed to leer out of the book, and William felt his
flesh crawl. It was astonishingly lifelike in its horridness. He could practically smell the sulfur and brimstone.
“And this?” he asked. She felt him studying her and her own skin prickled with the heat of embarrassment and shame. This
one she’d drawn after Augie.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
“Do you?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a Subako – Japanese, I believe. They live in hives and are rarely seen by humans,” William said. “What’s this about, luv?”
Dawn skipped the next few pages, then paused, her finger and thumb on the corner of the page. “That’s nothing,” she said.
“This is what I wanted to show you.”
She turned the page to reveal a hideous seven-armed hellbitch with a skull full of quivering quills that still quivered. As William
stared into the drawing, the demon grew aware of him. She brandished a barbed halberd at him and screamed soundlessly,
her lipless mouth elongated a la Edvard Munsch.
William drew back. “It’s uh… it’s uh…”
“Live. Yeah. I know. It’s not always demons, either. Sometimes it’s places or people, but never anything I have seen before.
Her, for example.”
The hellbitch stamped and pranced, dragging a long scaled tail behind her in a way that seemed comically haughty. William
poked the demon’s chest. She stumbled back, but then erupted in a blur of gracefully frenzied movements that held him
mesmerized.
“How?” he asked.
“Magic,” she said, feeling that the word by itself was inadequate.
“Not like any I’ve seen,” he said.
“There’s more, Spike,” Dawn said. She turned the page again, which seemed to greatly offend the hellbitch’s sense of self-
importance.
“The night we argued,” Dawn said, and now William was the one to lower his gaze. “I went out, and…”
“Dawn,” he said. “Did some beastie get you?”
She laughed, bitterly. “More like the opposite,” she said.
William grew still, and Dawn rushed to answer the question in his eyes. “It was just a game we played. But things went
wrong, and I went too far. Someone got hurt.” She swallowed hard, pressing her palms flat over the page in her sketchbook.
“I hurt someone,” she forced herself to say. “I hurt Brody. I drew on him, and got carried away with it, like I do. When I
draw, I get lost, sorta, gone with it, and I saw something – something so real and so frightening - and when I came out of the
spell or whatever, I…”
Dawn trailed off, hoping desperately that William would fill in the blank for her. She felt her body tense and her shoulders
tremble in the anticipation of his reproach, but he said nothing. She finally managed to glance at his eyes, and was shocked
to see not disapproval or disappointment, but understanding.
“You lost control,” he whispered.
She sighed, and with a final shove of her resolve, pushed the burden of the truth from her shoulders.
“That’s not all I lost,” she muttered.
Tears filled her throat, hot and stifling, but she choked them down and continued. “Anyway, it’s done. I quit. After that
night, I stopped drawing.”
William bowed his head toward her until their foreheads touched. “Ah, Bit…”
She felt herself crumbling inward, all of the pain and loathing she had dammed up behind her time spent with Andrew began to
erode.
“It’s not true,” she said miserable. “Even that’s not true. I also sketched Andrew, and when I did, I walked right into his
thoughts. I was in his mind, actually witnessing his memories.”
William snorted. “Must have been an odd little jaunt into disjointed thought,” he said.
An unexpected giggle rose up in her chest.
Encouraged, William went on. “Was it Lieutenant Uhuru-meets-Captain Janeway in Jabba’s Palace? Or Casino Royale?”
Dawn chuckled at the image, feeling the last of her inner masonry tumbled in. She hunched over her sketchbook, shoulders
quaking, and for a long moment, she couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. Soon everything blurred to hysteria – the
fiercely green garden, her vivid sketches, Andrew, Spike, the Flat, Buffy, Xander, Maya – everything. She felt ridiculously
miniscule and childish.
“Hey now,” William said, caressing her shoulder. “Dawn?”
She raised her face to meet his. With her hair in her eyes and her cheeks bathed in tears, she looked exactly as she had so
many years ago, after Joyce had died. It wasn’t grief he had seen then, but a kind of reckless determination. Yet it was
only a glimpse before the young woman - calm, self-possessed, bordering on austere - took over.
Dawn said, “Fine now.”
William fumbled the pack of pilfered Pall Malls out his pocket and knocked one between his fingers. With a snick of his Zippo,
he’d lit it and then sucked the hot smoke into his lungs.
“So,” he said as he exhaled. “The spell that did the waking, and the spontaneous regeneration of Andrew’s long lost limb.
Also your work?”
Dawn dropped her head slightly and nodded. “Andrew’s discovery. We… performed… the rite. Together. The hand thing was
unexpected, but…”
“Hang on,” William said. “You? And Andrew?”
Dawn forced herself to meet William’s gaze. His brow was furrowed; his look, guarded. She hurried to explain herself.
“I don’t know what I would have done without him. I mean, literally. Everybody else was gone, but he’s been at keeping
things sane around here. Without him, I would have been… well, I was a mess. Total. Complete. But we got through,” she
rambled.
William leaned away, studying her with measured caution. At length, he said, “Be careful of the boy. He can’t help how he
feels.”
Dawn blinked. It took her a moment to read together the words and his expression. She remembered that look on Spike’s
face when she’d confronted him about his one-night slam with Anya. The lovesick look. And she got it.
“No,” she said, quietly at first, then, “No. It’s not like that. I… he’s...” She smiled, bit her lip. “I cherish him.”
“Cherish?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
She felt self-conscious suddenly. She said, “This is all terribly unexpected.”
“Um. No?”
Dawn said, “Look, I haven’t had much time to think about it, but I know what it is, about Andrew and me.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”
“You recall when I was the Key?”
“In vivid Technicolor, luv.”
“Of course,” she said, feeling stupid for stating something so obvious. She went on nonetheless. “The monks made me and
inserted me into your lives. You didn’t have a choice. Everyone who knew me had to love me. All part of the plan.”
“Wouldn’t say ‘had to’,” William interrupted.
“You so did. I was the Dawn Summers love injection.”
He arched a brow.
“You know what I mean. But Andrew: He’s the first person who ever chose me for me. He likes post-key Dawn. And we were
friends first, then more than friends, and then way more…”
He held up his hands. “Not requesting a playback, luv.”
Dawn colored deeply. “Sorry.” She tucked her hair behind her ears again. “You’re so sweet, being concerned for him…”
“Bite your tongue,” William said. “I was just checking for the sake of morale.”
“Sure. Okay. But I would never hurt him. Never,” Dawn said, still smiling. “It… feels good to talk. About everything. You’re
not at all freaked or upset.”
William let out a relieved sigh. "No, pet. Not a bit." He ran his cigarette-free hand over her hair. “Harris and Flower Child
know nothing?”
“Nothing” Dawn said. “We’re not in a sharing place. Not that we’ve talked about that part yet. Plus, it’s nice, having
something all our own.”
“Got it. Agreed,” William said, getting to his feet. He took a drag from his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the table. “And
I am ready, for the record. I’ll start back at the school tomorrow. Buffy would want it…”
Dawn shifted back on the table, stretching her slender arms behind her. When she did, William saw something on the page
that sent a shiver over his skin. He came around the side of the table to look at the sketch from Dawn’s perspective.
“Lemme see that,” he said, swiping the pad from her lap.
“Hey!” she said.
He gripped both edges of the pad between his hands and stared down into an image of such exquisitely fine detail it looked
like more a black and white photograph than a drawing. His breath returned to him in a ragged gasp as he struggled and
failed to say, I know this place. I’ve been here.
Dawn leaned in close to better see what he was seeing. For her, it was just the drawing from the night before. For him, it
was the key to unlocking all that he had dreamed, with the succubus, with Dru, with Andrew and Dawn, and with Buffy.
“Buffy,” he muttered.
“It’s okay,” Dawn said. “We’ll find her.”
“No. No, you don’t understand,” William said. “I was here, in this place. With her. With Buffy.”
Dawn gave him an incredulous look. “I don’t understand,” she said.
William responded with a knowing half-smile. “Yes you do, Nibblet,” he said. “I think you do.”
Tara led Buffy and Willow to the garden, where Dawn had cleared a section of the English ivy from the stucco outer wall of
the Hyperion’s atrium. When they arrived, Dawn was still at work, her nimble fingers a blur as she scraped over the surface
with a shard of gray pottery.
Buffy could only make out the extremities of a large mural: the outer border of a building with peaked roofs, a series of
faceted domes, and the intimation of stars in a cross-hatched sky. She stepped closer, trying to see around her sister, but
Dawn seemed able to cover more space than was possible with her busy arms and voluminous white gown. Buffy glimpsed a
scruff of hedges abutting a low rock wall that blended into the ivy that remained as a boundary to the mural’s edge.
“I didn’t know she could do this,” Buffy marveled, stepping closer.
“Me neither,” Willow said. “It’s really beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Buffy sighed, as her heart began to pound. She took another step, just as Dawn backed out of the scene to reveal
her completed masterpiece.
“The chapel…” Buffy gasped.
“You know it?” Willow asked.
Buffy was shaking her head, but Dawn had clasped her hands together like an excited child about to receive a present.
“Dawn, how did you…?” Buffy said.
“I’m the key. Always the key,” Dawn sang. “I know what to do. I know what I have to do.”
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends