by Nancy Holder
“Oh, Angelus, you mustn’t kill her,” Dru pleaded.
“There’s still plenty of shade out there for now. How else do you expect her to learn her lessons?” Angelus asked.
Dru nodded, turned mournfully to Spike, and began to sob. Angelus looked to Spike, who dumped Dru’s little dog onto the floor, only increasing the intensity of her sobs.
“It seems Callie was a bit peckish and decided to have Mr. Sunshine here as her afternoon snack,” Spike explained with just a hint of malicious glee.
“She stayed out all night, Angelus,” Dru cried despondently, “but didn’t eat a thing. I don’t know what to do with her,” she finally said mournfully. “She doesn’t seem to love me at all.”
“I told you when you brought her into this house that Callie was your responsibility, Dru,” Angelus said menacingly. “I know you wanted a playmate, but if you can’t control her …”
“Were you born at night or last night?” Spike shot back. “You don’t control a child, particularly a child-vampire. You stay the hell out of their way.”
“I just wanted …” But Dru was again overcome by her anguish.
Angelus knelt beside Dru, placing a comforting arm around her shoulder. “There, there,” he said gently. “She’ll come around.”
But instead of accepting Angelus’s kindness, Dru rose quickly to her feet and said, “I can’t do this alone. Callie needs her mummy and her daddies. She doesn’t know how to hunt properly.”
“Hunting isn’t something you learn. It’s instinct,” Angelus retorted.
“She needs time,” Dru countered.
“That may be, love,” Spike interjected, “but I don’t think the furniture can take it.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Dru asked sharply, glaring at both Angelus and Spike in turn. “She’s starving. She has to eat. You should go and find her someone so she’s not tempted to snack between meals.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Angelus replied.
“Right, you’re too busy not killing the Slayer,” Spike said.
Angelus answered him with a simmering glare before adding, “If she won’t hunt for herself, send Mr. Meals-on-Wheels for take-out. I have better things to do.” And with that, he stormed from the room.
Once Angelus was out of earshot, Spike turned to Dru and said softly, “Why don’t you let me have a go, pet?” Dru nodded forlornly, and Spike wheeled himself over to the doors and let himself onto the patio where Callie knelt in a shaded corner. Keeping well out of the light, Spike made his way to her, stopping a few feet short, but giving her no room to run far.
“I see we have a problem playing well with others,” he said simply. “Lucky for you, I can relate.”
Callie looked up at him, her fight clearly spent for the moment.
“A little birdie told me you don’t think you want to eat people,” he said gently. “Do you like people?” he asked. “Are you afraid to hurt them? Is that the problem?”
Callie shrugged. “It’s just … wrong,” she said finally.
“Wrong?” Spike asked.
“Like telling a lie, or cheating on a test in school,” Callie clarified.
“I see.” Spike nodded. “And you know, I agree. Standards, codes of conduct, aren’t necessarily bad things. It’s true, most vampires don’t care who they eat, but if it’s something you feel strongly about, I think we can work with it.” He paused, watching her closely and pleased to see that she was hanging on his every word. “Let me ask you this, pet. Are all people good? Does everyone care as much as you do about telling the truth or earning their grades?”
Callie seemed to seriously consider the question.
Spike continued to lead her on. “I mean, aren’t there people you know who used to be mean to you, or upset you?”
Callie’s bright eyes met Spike’s. “Michael,” she said softly.
“Michael?” Spike asked. “And what did Michael do to you?”
“He teased me on the playground,” Callie said. “He never let me on the swings.”
“Sounds to me like Michael needs to learn a lesson or two, doesn’t it,” Spike said gently.
For the first time since they’d met, Callie actually smiled at Spike, and for reasons that he couldn’t place, it felt almost … good.
“I could definitely eat Michael,” she said. “But how do I find him? At night, he’ll be at home, and I don’t know where he lives.”
“You let me worry about that, little one,” Spike said, reaching out a hand to help Callie up. After a moment, she took it and clambered up onto his lap.
“Is there anyone else you can think of?” Spike asked.
“Tony!” Callie smiled, clapping her little hands.
Spike wheeled the two of them back into the living room as Callie whispered to him her stories of Tony, and Adam, and a number of other boys and girls who in very short order were going to seriously regret not having been nicer to Callie when she was alive.
Dru stood near the fireplace, watching them anxiously as they entered. With a slight wink to Dru, which was rewarded by one of her most vicious smiles, Spike encouraged Callie to tell him more about the children she disliked. Twenty minutes later, a much happier Callie had fallen into a deep slumber, curled up on his lap.
“My Spikey has a way with children,” Dru cooed lovingly.
Spike accepted the compliment, along with the subtle satisfaction of having succeeded in doing that which pleased Dru and alienated Angelus. If he could drive Callie between them, it would be well worth the effort. Besides, against all laws of nature, he found he was truly beginning to like the child. Maybe it was the fierceness of her passions. Or maybe it was the way she had looked at him earlier when she’d first glimpsed the ease with which pain could be transformed into evil. Either way, this was turning out to be a much better day than he’d reckoned when he’d first found Callie feeding on Sunshine not an hour earlier. After so many months of neglect and frustration, Spike had found someone who might come to love him almost as much as Drusilla did, but who, more than that, could offer him something Drusilla hadn’t in months.
Callie might just need him.
Buffy’s day had taken a definite upturn following lunch. She’d actually joined in on a class discussion on Keats, receiving a series of surprised compliments from her English teacher, Mrs. Massey, and felt she’d done extremely well on a world history pop quiz. Though she wasn’t going to be winning an academic decathlon anytime soon, Buffy had to admit that the extra study time with Todd was already paying off. By the time she got home, she was actually looking forward to seeing him, and found that he was already waiting for her in her bedroom.
To her surprise, Todd seemed startled by her. He rose abruptly from the seat by her dresser, quickly slamming shut one of the drawers and smiling as if he were trying to hide something. “Oh, hi, Buffy,” he said quickly.
“You’re early,” she replied warily. A small knot formed in her stomach as she realized that the drawer he had just been snooping in was one of her emergency drawers, containing a few crucifixes and some holy water. Not hard to explain if you were contemplating entering a convent, but a little out of the ordinary for your average high school junior.
Buffy considered trying to come up with an excuse for the drawer’s contents, but opted against it. He had no business going through her personal things, and if it weren’t for her mother, the school board, and the fact that she was actually learning something, she might have physically thrown him from her house right then and there.
Todd seemed to sense the tension in her silence and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty thirsty. How about I get us a couple of sodas before we start?”
“Sure,” Buffy answered, still on guard.
A few minutes later he was back, two tall glasses in hand, and Buffy did her best to shake the ick factor. It was probably nothing. Just curiosity. And if Todd wanted to know more about her, maybe that was a good thing. At least it hadn’t been he
r underwear drawer.
Still, as they tackled her chemistry chapters, her mind refused to stay on topic.
“It’s official,” she declared a few hours later. “Organic molecules suck.”
“Oh, go easy on the poor molecules,” Todd teased. “They don’t mean to be so complicated.”
“There is no way any future version of me is going to use chemistry,” Buffy replied, refusing to give in to Todd’s charms.
“You don’t know that,” he replied.
“Oh, but I do.”
“Things change all the time, Buffy. None of us can see the future. You know how it is. One minute you think you have it all figured out, and the next, out of the blue, something totally unexpected happens.”
Todd’s eyes caught Buffy’s. There was something almost hopeful in them. But it was quickly clouded over by doubt.
“I mean, who knows?” Todd continued. “Give chemistry a chance and you might just see more than math and particles. There’s mystery in chemistry too.”
“I usually like a good mystery,” Buffy found herself saying before she could help herself.
Todd smiled.
Buffy returned the smile, and for a moment, that tiny withering garden in Buffy’s secret heart saw a few fresh sprigs of green pushing themselves up through the earth. She found herself turning away, trying to push the hope that had started to rise back into its box before someone got hurt.
Because, in her experience, someone always got hurt—and it was usually Buffy.
Her gaze fell on her open bedroom window. Across the street, her neighbor Mr. Hall was watering his front yard.
“It’s getting a little chilly, isn’t it?” Todd said, more to break the silence than anything.
“Oh, my bad,” Buffy replied quickly. Crossing to the window she placed her hands firmly on the frame to shut it when the sight of Principal Snyder walking casually past Mr. Hall caught her attention. He walked in the same measured gait that was both odd and troubling, and he was still wearing his white wingtips.
Her Slayer senses tingling, Buffy searched for a reasonable excuse to end her tutoring session a little early. She was surprised to find that, for once, the truth would make a compelling case.
“You know,” she said, smiling apologetically, “I think organic molecules have turned my brain to mush. On top of that, I feel like I didn’t sleep at all last night. Would you mind if we waited until Saturday to get back to history?”
Todd nodded, his disappointment obvious, but he covered nicely, saying, “No problem. I’m actually a little tired myself. We’ll do the quizzes on chapters twenty through twenty-two first thing Saturday afternoon, deal?”
“Absolutely,” Buffy agreed.
Buffy watched Todd make his way down her front walkway and was pleased to see that his road home led in the opposite direction from Snyder. As her mother would be working late tonight on inventory, Buffy quickly scrawled a note to her indicating that she was headed for the library, before exiting through the back door and cutting through a few neighbors’ yards to catch up with the principal, not far from where she’d found him that morning.
Her hunch had been accurate. She found the principal crossing the first main intersection east of Ravello Drive, and with practiced ease had no difficulty keeping him in sight for the next six blocks as he walked slowly toward the southeast section of Sunnydale. Doing some quick mental geography, Buffy decided he was heading for Arborville, a development built in the early 1940s that had been a lovely neighborhood in its day. Unfortunately, its day had come and gone, and now most of the houses in that area withered under the neglect of the retirees who no longer had the resources or the inclination to keep them properly maintained.
Snyder walked slowly, as if he were out for an afternoon stroll through the park. When he came to a four-way intersection at Oak Street, he turned south. Unfortunately, a driver turning left into Snyder’s path probably didn’t even see him in the early evening gloom.
Within seconds, Buffy threw herself into the car’s path, knocking Snyder out of the way as the car screeched, then swerved to avoid the pedestrians, and ended up plowing into one of dozens of stately oak trees that lined the thoroughfare, giving it its name.
Buffy’s first thought was for the principal. He picked himself up off the ground, without bothering to wipe the gravel from his hands or knees, and continued on his walk as if nothing had happened.
Definitely a ten on the weird-o-meter, Buffy decided. But before she could continue after him, she realized that the horn of the car that had hit the tree was blaring incessantly and traffic had slowed as other commuters tried to make their way around the accident.
Buffy’s concern momentarily got the better of her curiosity. She approached the car and saw that the driver was crumpled over the steering wheel, his head resting on the horn. Buffy quickly opened the driver’s door and asked, “Hey, are you all right?”
The driver didn’t respond. Given that the car’s collision with the tree had been fairly low impact, and there was no blood or even a scratch on the driver’s face, Buffy wondered how the driver could have been knocked unconscious by the accident. She gently lifted the driver’s head from the horn and set him upright in his seat. To her amazement, she heard a series of soft snores. The man wasn’t injured. He had simply fallen asleep at the wheel.
“Hey, miss!” A voice interrupted Buffy’s thoughts. Turning, she saw that another driver had pulled to the side of the road. “Everything okay?”
“Can you call 911?” Buffy asked—or maybe the sandman, she thought—and with a nod, the Good Samaritan was on his cell phone, alerting the police.
“An ambulance is on its way,” the driver called back. In the confusion, it finally dawned on Buffy that she had lost sight of the principal. Hurrying back to the last corner where she’d seen him, she searched the increasing darkness for any sign of him but was quickly disappointed.
He probably couldn’t have gone far. Once she heard the sounds of the approaching ambulance, satisfied that the driver was in good hands, Buffy took off down the street. Within a few minutes she had doubled back to the nearest main intersection and followed the opposite direction, until she was nearing Sunnydale’s quaint main street, a series of storefronts and coffee shops flanked on one end by the old movie theater.
Her gut told her that now she would probably never find the principal, and she had almost decided to simply cut her losses and sweep back through a few parks in search of Callie when she saw a familiar figure talking animatedly into a pay phone that bordered the town’s central square.
It was Todd. Though his voice was low, his body language told her loud and clear that he was arguing with someone on the other end of the line.
Buffy considered just approaching him, but almost as quickly decided that she didn’t have a good excuse to be out walking the streets at night when she had ended their session so early. She closed the distance between them, finally pausing behind a nearby tree. Her stealth was rewarded, though her conscience pained her a bit. Just a few hours ago she had been frustrated with Todd for snooping around in her things, and here she was actually spying on him.
“No!” Todd said vehemently into the phone. After a pause: “I know what we agreed, but I’m saying I can’t do it. I won’t do it!” he finished forcefully.
Buffy had to admit, it was intriguing; maybe not crosses and holy water intriguing, but definitely oddly interesting. This was not the gentle, sweet, and concerned boy she’d spent so much time with over the last few days. This Todd struggled to keep his voice down, clearly conscious that he was in a public place from the furtive glances he threw all around him as he talked. Furthermore, he was obviously angry. He seemed almost like a cornered animal, lashing out. A quick pang in her stomach told Buffy that suddenly Todd was more than a cute boy—now he was a cute boy with a secret, and though most of the secrets Buffy had unearthed in recent months hadn’t been cuddly kittens, they had been worth knowing.
�
��There’s more to him than meets the eye, wouldn’t you say, sweetheart?” a familiar voice said behind Buffy.
Instantly her hand was searching her coat pockets for a stake, and the blood pumping through her veins had turned to ice.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Buffy said stiffly as she turned to face Angelus.
He stood a few yards away, his arms crossed as he leaned against another tree, his expression one of smug pleasure that Buffy had only recently come to know and hate.
Her senses divided between keeping an eye on Angelus and protecting the unaware Todd, Buffy forced herself to keep one ear on the conversation going on behind her as she stepped gingerly toward Angelus’s striking range and was rewarded seconds later by the sound of “Just tell him what I said,” followed by the receiver slamming into the phone hook and Todd’s steps hurrying obliviously up the street.
“Sure you do, Buffy,” Angelus answered. “I get the distinct impression that Todd”—he drew out the vowel sound in a jeer that made Buffy want to pummel him—“has the hots for his new student.”
“How do you—,” Buffy started to ask, but stopped herself quickly, unwilling to allow him to see any surprise that he was keeping on top of every new development in her life. Of course he knew who Todd was. That was his style, even before he’d turned evil. Instead, she forced herself to smile, as if she were delighted by Todd’s potential attraction, and replied, “Well, he wouldn’t be the first, would he?”
Angelus’s pose lost some of its nonchalance. Buffy wouldn’t permit herself to imagine that Angelus was threatened by her interest in Todd. That would have been flattering. But sick and twisted as it was, that’s exactly what seemed to emanate from Angelus as he stepped toward her.
“Careful, Buffy,” Angelus warned.
“Oh, now I’m scared,” Buffy taunted right back. “If I remember right, you used to kill first, ask questions … never. You want me dead. What’s the holdup?”
“Sometimes I like to play with my food,” Angelus replied charmlessly.
