“So?” Spike said. “They’re dead and rich.”
“Not the girl,” Xander corrected. “Dress is designer knock-off, strictly off-the-rack, eighty bucks max.”
“And you know this… how?”Buffy said, looking up at him with a strange expression.
“How long did I date Cordelia Chase?”
“Point taken.”
Xander picked up a postage-stamp-sized purse from beside the girl. “Not much here. Just a house key, brand new driver’s license, two dollars, a quarter, and some lip gloss. Cherie Beeheim, just turned sixteen. Definitely not from the same side of the financial tracks as Prince Jock.”
Spike crouched down by the boy’s body for a moment, retrieved something from a pocket, looked at it briefly, then slapped it down in front of Buffy. “Joshua Norton Clarke III,” he said. He glanced at Xander with reluctant approval. “Looks like Sidekick Boy got it right.”
Because she knew Spike was watching, Buffy looked through the wallet. “School ID says he’s a senior at Kent Prep.” Everything else seemed to be there, too: money, a credit card, driver’s license, and a school photo of a blond-haired girl that was dated only a few days earlier and signed, All my love, Cara. She handed it to Xander. “Take a look.”
He gave a low whistle. “So, Josh’s night out without the girlfriend, huh?”
“Hoping for an evening of secret smoochies—and then some,” Buffy confirmed.
Xander made a sound of disgust. “That explains a lot. Cheap son-of-a b—”
“But that doesn’t explain how they died,” Buffy said.
“Doesn’t have to be anything supernatural,” Xander said. “Could just be the work of an incompetent acupuncturist.”
Buffy looked at the unnaturally pale faces of the dead couple—who weren’t really a couple—then glanced at Spike. “Are you sure they’ve lost that much blood?”
Spike put a hand on the dead girl’s ankle. “She’s down a liter, maybe more.” He nodded toward the boy. “Same for Don Juan junior, I’d guess.”
Buffy shook her head. “Vampires I understand, but not this.”
“So you think this could be the work of a jealous girlfriend?” Xander asked.
“Sure,” Spike said sarcastically. “Maybe if she’s a phlebotomist and withdrew their blood into a hundred syringes. No, wait—she would have had to chloroform them first.”
“I don’t hear you making any suggestions, Bleach Brain,” Xander said. “If you think this is supernatural, how ’bout this? Maybe it was the work of a rogue stapler. Or maybe these kids fell victim to a band of roving hamster-sized demon worshippers who needed a ritual sacrifice.”
Buffy blew out a frustrated breath and stood up. She looked straight at Spike. She didn’t want to give him the idea that she was grateful to him or in any way indebted. He reminded her of a cat bringing its master a dead bird. And Buffy didn’t need any more dead birds than she already had. “Okay, I’ll ask Giles what he makes of all this. But don’t hold your breath. Yes, two people died here tonight in a mysterious and . . . and icky way. But I’m not sure this is slayer territory.”
“But the missing blood—”
“I said I’ll ask Giles. Xander and I have a patrol to finish.”
Spike stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Suit yourself then.”
Buffy squeezed back between the bushes. “Come on, Xander. Let’s go.”
As she walked away, a vague uneasy feeling built within her. Xander, who knew her too well, said, “Spidey senses tingling?”
Buffy grimaced, then nodded. “Yeah, we’d better take a look around the park.”
Xander grinned. “I’ve got your back.”
Chapter Four
Willow Rosenberg was in her element. If ever an activity had been designed with her in mind, it was gathering and sharing knowledge. The past two hours had seemed to whiz by in a blur of pizza and early colonial history.
Dawn sighed, picked up the pizza box, and took it to the trash. “In a weird way, that was actually interesting.”
Willow beamed. “Giles and Tara and I do make an impressive tutorial tag team, if I do say so myself.”
“And what about me?” Anya said from behind the counter where she was affixing a stamp to a large squarish envelope. “I participated as well.”
“Of course,” Willow said, trying to hide her smile as she remembered Anya’s contributions. “I especially liked the part where you explained what really happened to the lost Roanoke Colony. Kinda puts things in a whole new perspective.”
“Indeed,” Giles agreed, turning out the lights in the back room. “Who knew that vengeance demons got about quite that much?”
Dawn returned to the table and started putting her schoolbooks into her backpack. “You were all great,” she said. “Really.”
Tara helped Dawn put on her backpack. “We could talk some more while Willow and I walk you home,” she offered.
“Sounds good,” Dawn said. Willow opened the shop door, jingling the bell.
“Good night,” Giles said.
“I trust you had an adequate educational experience,” Anya said, and Dawn, Tara, and Willow trooped out into the night.
Before either of the wiccans could bring up a subject, Dawn said, “So what was school like for you guys? I mean, were you always like the perfect students?”
“Oh no, of course not. Not perfect,” Willow said. “I mean there was that time I got a C on my trig exam. Of course, I’d had the flu for a week, and there was this ucky sinus thing, but—oh, not helping, huh?”
Tara self-consciously tucked her hair back behind her ear. “I was a good student,” she admitted, “but my family was a mess and I didn’t have very many friends. I mostly kept to myself. I wasn’t very happy.” Willow gave her a comforting hug, and Tara added, “But that was before I came here. I’m happy now.”
Dawn groaned. “So I have to wait until college before life gets any easier?”
At the end of the block they turned the corner and headed into a residential district. Willow sighed. “When I was your age I was like this total geek. There wasn’t that much to my life other than schoolwork. And Xander was my friend, but I wasn’t exactly a member of the popular crowd, if you know what I mean. So that’s not so perfect. It wasn’t until my sophomore year when Buffy transferred to Sunnydale High that I sort of found my niche and learned to enjoy it. I decided that keeping the world safe from evily stuff was way more important than being popular. Plus, I had Buffy and Xander and Giles, and sometimes even Cordelia and Angel….”
“School is important,” Tara said quietly, “but friends are even more important. They can get you through anything.”
“Right,” Willow said. “And everybody messes up now and then. But a real friend won’t just let you, you know, go down the drain.”
“Which is why you’re helping me with history,” Dawn said.
“Right. Because we’re your friends,” Willow said.
“Smart friends,” Dawn said. “Plus, I like that you’re all cool and magickal and stuff.”
They walked along in companionable silence for a few minutes, past lampposts, cozy homes, palm trees, and picket fences, until Dawn suddenly stopped in her tracks, staring with her mouth partly open. Willow and Tara stopped too.
“Did you see it?” Dawn whispered.
Willow looked in the direction the younger girl was staring. A glow appeared in midair above a rose bush near the darkened two-story house they were passing. The light disappeared, then reappeared closer to them, bobbing gently like a leaf floating on the surface of a rippling pond.
“Is that a—” Tara began.
“A fairy,” Dawn said.
“Ookay, now I’ve officially seen everything.”
The hovering light stopped right in front of them, then flitted back and forth before the three girls as if it was just as curious about them as they were about it. Dawn held her index finger parallel to the ground and moved it slowly toward the fairy, as if sh
e were trying to coax a bird. An apricot glow surrounded the creature in its sheer teal dress.
“It’s a girl, just like Tinkerbell,” Willow said. The beautiful creature darted out of reach.
“Shhh,” Dawn said. “Don’t scare it.”
The fairy flew in agitated circles over their heads for a few seconds, then gradually made a slow spiral toward Dawn’s finger. The younger girl’s eyes reflected the glow of the fairy light with a look of absolute amazement.
“I can’t believe it,” Willow said. “Usually when something new and, you know, mythological, comes to Sunnydale, it’s something really uch, like a demon or a ghost even. It’s nice to know that there’s something beautiful in the world, like fairies.”
Just then, the fairy reached Dawn’s finger, but it did not perch on it as they had all expected. Instead, it bit down hard. The transformation had been so quick that none of them had had the chance to react. “Ouch,” Dawn said, shaking the fairy away as if it were a bee that had just stung her. The fairy flitted up and out of sight. “It went all fang-facey.”
“Are you all right?” Tara asked, pulling a tissue from her pocket and wrapping it around Dawn’s finger.
“Figures,” Willow said. “We couldn’t just get some normal fairies in Sunnydale?”
Dawn unwrapped the tissue and peered down at her finger. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“Uh-oh. Incoming,” Willow said, pointing to a spot just above the wooden gate that led to the backyard of the house. Several of the fairies were working together to grasp and lift a small wriggling bundle of curly black fur.
“But what is it?” Tara asked. “It’s more of the fairies, but—”
Against her better judgment, Willow found herself walking across the lawn to get a closer look.
“They’re dangerous,” Dawn said, staying back by a palm tree that grew between the sidewalk and the street, more cautious after having been bitten.
“Maybe,” Willow said in a soft voice. Staring as if spellbound she approached the gate that led to the backyard. “Oh, but they’re so pretty, and—ooh, they’re carrying something.”
“A puppy.” Tara walked toward the handful of glowing creatures now. “A toy poodle.”
“Don’t let them bite it,” Dawn said.
They all watched for a moment while the handful of fairies struggled under the heavy load, working to pull it higher and higher. The poodle puppy whined and yelped.
“I think they’re trying to put it on the roof,” Tara said in a serene, not quite wide-awake voice.
“Oh no, we can’t let them do that,” Willow protested, swaying slightly as she stared at the glowing creatures. “It . . . it could fall and break a bone, or . . . or—”
The suggestion of an innocent animal in peril broke Dawn free from her paralysis. She raced across the lawn, passed Tara, jumped, and caught hold of the wriggling puppy’s paw. The five fairies, unable to fight against the added weight, were forced to let go.
Dawn pulled the shivering, whimpering puppy clear of the fairies, who instantly disappeared. Tara and Willow suddenly felt more alert. Tara caught the little poodle in her arms before it could fall to the ground, but it quickly wriggled free and dashed under some bushes.
“It’s okay,” Willow said, trying to soothe the panicked poodle. “They’re gone now.” Tara knelt down and held out a hand to the puppy, but it stayed under the bushes.
“Uh, Will… ?”Dawn said.
The two witches turned to see that dozens of swirling fairy lights had appeared in the air above Dawn’s head. Several of them pounced on her hair and yanked at it viciously. A few of them flew toward her neck and face. Dawn shrieked.
Tara and Willow ran to help her.
* * *
After finding no new signs of supernatural activity in Weatherly Park, Buffy and Xander had started to head home. They both heard the scream.
Xander cocked his head. “What was—”
“That was Dawn.” Without another word, Buffy took off at a run, Xander hot on her heels. Spike must have been somewhere nearby—still spying on them, perhaps—since he appeared from the darkness and ran along with them.
“Don’t need your help,” Buffy said.
“I’m not doing this for you. I’m doin’ it for the Little Bit.”
Buffy’s heart contracted as she ran, not from the exertion, but out of fear for her sister. She clenched her teeth, then stumbled at the instant jolt of pain. With lightning reflexes, Spike grabbed her arm before she could hit the pavement.
“Hey,” Xander panted, catching up with them. “Watch the hands, fang-face.”
“Chill, Xander. I tripped,” Buffy said.
The lamplight showed her expression of determination as she set off again. As they got closer, Dawn’s screams grew louder, mixed with cries for help from Tara and Willow. Now less than a block away, Buffy tried to assess the situation while running full tilt ahead. The scene was bizarre, almost surrealistic. Tara and Willow flanked Dawn protectively. Willow seemed to be trying to cast some sort of spell while Tara and Buffy’s sister flailed frantically at what appeared to be a multitude of floating Christmas lights.
“Bleeding,” Spike said from beside Buffy. She didn’t know if the vampire was starting to swear or simply confirming that there were injuries, but the Slayer didn’t bother to ask which. She put on a burst of additional speed she didn’t know she had and reached the scene seconds later. Buffy could see immediately that all the combatants were bleeding, but only in tiny trickles.
Her lightning-fast slayer reflexes switched into high gear, and Buffy began punching the twinkling lights that were in reach of her arms and kicking those that hovered lower down.
“Fairies!” Dawn gasped, prompting Buffy to wonder if her sister’s injuries were worse than they seemed.
“Vampires,” Tara added.
“Like fairy vamps,” Willow clarified.
Spike was there in full vamp-face now. Xander arrived moments later and began flat-handing every glowing light he could see. Buffy didn’t bother to count how many of the tiny assailants there were, but she knew there must be dozens of them. Without missing a beat, she kicked a glowing ball while slipping off her leather jacket, then cleared the vamps from around her sister’s head and threw the jacket over it to protect her. Buffy dealt out a seemingly endless succession of precise kicks, slaps, punches, finger flicks, and full-arm swipes. Xander picked up a palm frond from the curb, where it had fallen in the recent windstorm. He swung it with broad strokes, sending several blinking lights twirling end over end with each sweep.
Tara stationed herself directly in front of Dawn and fought the fairies one-handed, clasping Willow’s hand with the other to add her powers to her friend’s.
“No more onesy-twosy,” Spike growled, removing his leather jacket. He twirled it in the air like a net, caught a handful of blinking lights, then hurled the coat and let go of one end in the direction of the house. The fairies shot out and struck the wall with an audible ping, ping, ping, then winked out. Buffy’s flurry of kicks found fewer and fewer targets. She turned to check on her sister and saw a swarm of glimmering evil swirling over her head like angry hornets.
Willow made a throwing motion with one hand and said, “Compelle escendia.” Several of the fairies flitted upward by several feet. She repeated the spell, and a few more fairies withdrew slightly.
Xander ran for the garden hose attached to a faucet at the front of the house. He turned the water on full blast and adjusted the nozzle to send out a strong spray, which he directed against any fairy that ventured close to Dawn, Tara, or Willow. Water rained down on the besieged trio. The fairies made angry buzzing sounds and scattered.
“Willow brushed water droplets from her face. We did it,” she said, beaming with triumph and relief.
“I’m sensing a group hug here,” Xander said, turning off the hose and wiping a hand through his damp hair.
The friends exchanged embraces and high-fives, though onl
y a somewhat drenched Dawn hugged Spike.
Buffy at least had the good grace to apologize. “Sorry I blew you off, Spike. You were right, and . . . thanks.”
Xander turned in a slow circle, looking around the recent battlefield. “So am I the only one in the dark here? What just happened?”
“We saw some little lights,” Dawn explained.
“Fair folk,” Tara added, shivering in her wet clothes.
“More like unfair folk from what I saw,” Xander said. “Looked like microvamps.”
“They were all glowy and kinda hypnotic. And then some tried to carry away a poodle puppy, so we had to stop them,” Tara explained.
Xander stared at his childhood friend in disbelief. “So all this was to save a poodle?”
“I like poodles,” Willow said in a small voice.
“But they turned into, you know, vampires,” Tara said. “The fairies, I mean.”
Spike, wearing a normal face again, said, “Revolting.”
“I know,” Willow said wistfully. “They started out so cute…”
“Look, I need to get Dawn home, but we all need to talk. We can do an official Scoobies run-down tomorrow morning at eight at the Magic Box. I’ll call Giles and let him know,” Buffy said, wondering what her Watcher would make of this development. “Fairies.”
“And vampires,” Dawn said.
“So, fairy vamps,” Buffy concluded. “Great. Now we’re in Tinkerhell.”
Chapter Five
Xander had expected to spend half the night awake worrying about microvamps. But Anya had indeed treated him to dessert when he got home, and Xander had slept soundly. Sometimes it still amazed him that Anya Emerson loved him. Especially given the fact that she had spent more than a millennium as a vengeance demon—dedicated to punishing men for their misdeeds (real or perceived) to women.
After a quick shower in the morning, he dressed in his weekend Xander “uniform” of jeans and a plain, solid-colored tee, topped by a long-sleeved shirt. At the breakfast table, a freshly brewed cup of coffee awaited him. Anya could be obsessive compulsive in some really helpful ways. She was never late for work, she kept the apartment in excruciating order, and she took her role of supportive girlfriend as earnestly as she had taken her vengeance-demon duties. Xander sat and took a quick gulp of the steaming brown liquid. “Thanks,” he said, looking across the table to where Anya sat, immersed in the morning paper.
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