What Happens In Vegas

By Barb C

When I first found out that I was the Slayer, I went through an angst phase about never seeing Paris. Obviously I would die young, and while young, be stuck in California forever. (I was also angsting about Mom and Dad getting divorced, and that zit on my chin that just would not go away. Even at fifteen I had priorities.) One night, in cuddle mode, I told Spike about the youthful angsting (but not about the zit). He just looked at me and said, "Love, Paris has vampires too."

Which is—well, I'm not going to call it profound, but Spike does have a way of cutting to the chase.

OK, freeze-frame on the couple in the mile-long '59 DeSoto: the blonde in lo-rise jeans and kicky gathered-front raspberry top? That would be me. Buffy Anne Summers, twenty-three years old, resident of Sunnydale, freelance vampire slayer. The guy behind the wheel—black jeans, black tee, sun-free complexion and biceps to die for? That would be Spike, aka William the Bloody. Hundred and fifty-one last May, native of England's mountains green, slightly non-standard vampire. No, he's not the one with the soul. He's the one with a pulse. It's a long story.

Spike's also my demon lover. (Sounds cooler than live-in boyfriend, no?) I did mention the vampire part, right? Why yes, there is a certain conflict of interest involved in us being involved! Exactly how we got from Point A to Point B is boggleworthy. Heck, in the last seven years Spike and I've gone from Point A to Point Kumquat.

Anyway. We couldn't afford Paris. But Spike's demon-hunting business was booming and I wasn't doing too badly as an instructor at Ice World, and we could definitely swing a weekend in Vegas. So here's both of us, road tripping down the Strip at three AM on a Friday night. Windows rolled down, radio turned up, and me scootched up next to Spike on the king-sized leather seat, checking out the Fodor's. "...OK, first thing tomorrow I want to hit the shops at Caesar's Palace, and then the Venetian, and ooh, look, baby white tigers!"

"Didn't come to Sin City to gawk at overfed housecats," Spike objected, tapping cigarette ash out the window. "There's this quaint place called a 'casino.' Got mayhem to wreak among the wallets of the ungodly."

I can always tell when he's been reading too many of those old Simon Templar novels. I poked him in the ribs. (Spike needs regular rib-poking.) "Don't worry, I can exercise the credit cards while you lose at poker. But you are so taking me to Cirque du Soleil tomorrow night. In a suit. And afterwards there will be dancing."

"And who are you, She Who Must Be Obeyed?" And he did the fake-growly thing where he pretended to go for my neck, and I laughed and smacked him and told him to keep his eyes on the road. Which, of course, was when I saw the vampires. Because naturally, there's vampires in Vegas, too.

"Pull in! Now!" I yelled, pointing over his shoulder, and sans question, Spike did just that, spinning the steering wheel like a croupier from hell. We jumped the curb and roared into the parking lot of the Wee Little White Chapel of Cupid's Love In The Heather, right behind the shiny new Pontiac convertible at the drive-thru wedding window. The guy-vamp (in game face and a tux) in the driver's seat was trying to yank the minister out the window, while the girl vamp (cheap Vera Wang knock-off, and excuse me, if you're evil, why steal off the rack?) cheered him on.

Spike gunned the engine. Fiberglass crumple zone vs solid steel bumper? Not a contest. We bumper-car'd into the convertible and Tuxy somersaulted over the windshield and onto the hood. His fiancé flipped her veil back with a fangy glare and yelled, "Watch where you're driving, you—"

But by that time I'd done a tuck and roll out the passenger window and jumped into the back seat of the convertible. I grabbed the Bride of Dracula by her train and yanked her back against the seat. Stake go in, stake come out, and dust whirled around me as I spun. Spike crouched on the hood of the convertible, showing the bridegroom how to do an impression of that creepy little girl in The Exorcist. I guess when you try it without a special effects team, your head does tend to come off.

Streetlights turned the clouds of settling vamp dust into a billion billion flecks of fool's gold. And that was that.

Back when I first found out I wasn't the only Slayer (are you sensing a theme here?) Faith told me that slaying made her hungry and horny. Which I thought was gross, mainly because it was true. I was big into self-denial at the time. Since coming back from the dead a couple of years ago, (another long story) not so much. Turns out the inner Slayer is much happier with Haagen-Dazs and orgasms than with low-fat yoghurt and celibacy. Downside? The outer Slayer verges dangerously upon a size four. Upside? That would be the Haagen-Dazs and orgasms.

Spike hopped off the hood and grabbed me around the waist. I buried my hands in his gel-crunchy curls and my tongue in his mouth, and mmmmmmm, Buffy like. Nothing like a cool vampire on a hot night. Spike kisses with his whole body, hands and hips and shoulders moving to the beat of the city that sparkled and strobed around us.

"Are you OK?" I asked the minister when I came up for air.

Minister Guy looked at me and Spike over the rims of his glasses. The little plaque under the window said Reverend Finster 12:00 AM-6:00 AM. He nodded, rubbing his throat. "No serious damage, thanks to you, young lady." He frowned a little, like he could see a soap-ring of demon-ness in my aura. It made me itchy. Mostly I could pretend that carrying the Slayer power last winter hadn't affected me. And mostly it wasn't pretending, because I didn't feel different. Much. Nothing like Cordy and her glowy superpowers, that's for sure. "Good heavens, you're the Slayer, aren't you?"

"One of them." It's not like I go around with 'I kill vampires—ask me how!' pinned to my chest, but one of the other things I've figured out in the last couple of years is that adults aren't nearly as clueless as I used to think they were. The older I got, the smarter Mom got. I suspect a conspiracy.

Reverend Finster straightened his little collar thingy and brushed vamp dust off his coat-sleeves. He leaned over the sill, searching the ground in front of the window. "I don't suppose that fellow dropped his wallet. You, er, disposed of them before they paid me."

I did a blinky thing. "Paid you?"

"For officiating," he explained, waving at the sign which read Drive-Through Weddings 60.00$--Select One From Column A & Two From Column B. Gratuity not included.

More blinky. "You marry a lot of vampires?" Duh. Vegas. No blood test. Gorches. I should have realized.

"Against my better judgement. Vampires never tip well. Of course I don't restrict myself to vampires," Reverend Finster said with a chuckle, eyeing the two of us like a man smelling another commission. "The Clark County licence office is half a mile north," he said hintfully. "Open twenty-four hours a day on weekends. How long have you two known one another?"

"Seven years, give or take," Spike said, "but I don't think the ones we spent trying to kill each other count."

I looked up at the big neon wedding bells ding-donging back and forth on the sign overhead. Not in a wistful way. There was no wist. I was wistless. Let's face it, give me and Spike a picket fence and we'll tear it apart to whittle stakes. "We've been living together for about a year and a half, but we haven't even talked about--I mean, I'm happy just to get to next Tuesday, and..."

And there we were, staring into each other's eyes in front of a romantic backdrop of wrecked Pontiac. Spike's eyes are blue. Blue like a really, really blue thing. Just thought I'd mention.

"Wanted to do it up proper this time, love, roses and champagne and such, but maybe we're not meant for that, eh?" And that stupid vampire dropped to one knee, right in the middle of the spreading puddle of oil leaking out from beneath the convertible, and took my hand in both of his, thumbs meeting across the backs of my fingers. Hands of Spike--battered knuckles, bitten nails, long, strong, elegant fingers. Those hands had touched me everywhere, and nothing they'd ever done had ever been more intimate than this.

"'m not going to go on about not being able to live without you, 'cause we both know I can, and you without me. But when we're together, there's not one moment I don't thank whatever runs this sorry world that you're in it, and I'm at your side." Was he shaking? Or was that just me? "All my life I've wanted something more--took meeting you to make me see that more was all around me, and I'd just to reach out and take hold. You're the fire that burns me to the bone and the balm that heals me, and though I could live a thousand years without you I fucking well don't want to. I'm saying this all wrong, but what it comes to is I love you, Buffy Anne Summers, and I should be honored beyond words if you would condescend to grant me your hand in marriage."

Spike's voice sounds like a whisky shot going down; words that go straight to your head. And other parts. But this was, in fact, the second time he's proposed to me. So I was cool and calm and collected, and totally able to consider the pros and cons with an objective eye. Cons: Spike 1) Basically evil, though trying; 2) Possibly going to outlive me by centuries; 3) Constitutionally unable to pick up own towels. Pros: OMGSPIKEPROPOSEDSQUEEE!!!

Smart thing? Back out after an agonized interior monologue about points 1 and/or 2. (That would be Agonized Interior Monologue #352-D, Major Slayer/Vampire Relationship Moments, For Use At.) But since I'd already run through #352-D approximately 3,487,361 times in the past three years, I figured that just this once I could give it a miss. So I burst into tears and fell into Spike's arms instead. I don't need to go into detail, do I? 'Oh, William!', 'Oh, Buffy!', cue indecent slurping noises.

"I got you a ring," Spike panted when I finally gave him lip room to talk again. "A good one, this time. Not as big a rock as I'd like, but I'd've had to steal a bigger one."

Who says romance is dead? He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a little black velvet box, and I almost started crying again. Not that I don't have a sentimental attachment to that grotty silver skull thing he gave me the first time, but this was beautiful—three small perfect diamonds set in a kind of art deco rose trellis pattern. Spike swallowed hard as I went all wibbly. "D'you like it, pet?"

I buried my face in his chest with a gulpy kind of laugh. "Love it. Love you. Let's carpe that diem."

***

The laws of the great State of Nevada require that the parties to a marriage be one male and one female over the age of eighteen, but they say absolutely nothing about one party being a soulless and technically evil demon. With, by the way, a fake green card. Who knew?

"No way!" Dawn squealed into my ear. "Ohmigod, that's great! Was it romantic? Did he recite lame poetry? And hey, wait—you dogs! You ditched us!"

"We didn't ditch you!" I protested between kisses as Spike and I stumbled into the lobby of the Versailles. Even combining Slayer reflexes and vampire agility, carrying three suitcases and an overnight bag up a flight of marble stairs while groping your new husband with the thoroughness he deserves is tricky. "We're still having a reception when we get home. With cake and flowers and toasts and forcing Spike to be nice to Dad and— where is everybody?"

The Versailles was one of the elderly hotels on the Strip, but it was still gorgeous in a over-the-top kind of way. Outside, rose gardens and hedge mazes; inside, white marble, plush burgundy carpets and crystal chandeliers. The ceiling overhead was a flash mob of plaster cupids and gilt curlicues surrounding murals of decrepit gods in olive wreaths chasing extremely zaftig nymphs. It looked exactly like the palace of the Sun King, if Louis XIVth had owned a whole bunch of slot machines.

And it was completely empty. No guests, no staff, no crazy-making barrage of Nintendo bleeps, boops, and buzzes from the casino that had to be just down the hall. Even the circle of overstuffed chairs in the center of the lobby lacked the usual crew of snoring gamblers. Which, in Vegas on a weekend, even at four in the morning, is major weird.

Spike dumped the bags on the floor and scanned the lobby for a bellhop to intimidate. Nada. He strode over and banged on the desk bell. "Oi! Little service here!"

The red velvet ropes in front of the desk swayed a little on their brass poles, as if someone had just brushed them as they walked past, but no one was there. One of the few words I remember from high school French is 'frisson,' and I was definitely getting one. "Spike," I whispered, feeling for the half-dozen shuriken in my purse. "Can you hear anything? Anyone?"

When he concentrates, Spike can stand in the basement of our house and hear a heartbeat on the second floor. "Nothing," he breathed.

A gust of cold air whooshed down my spine. "May I help you?" said a plummy voice in my ear. And wham, the lobby sparked to life. An exhausted family with a mountain of luggage shoved through the front door, a migratory herd of beery, bedraggled college guys shuffled past looking for the elevators, a pair of middle-aged women strolled past sipping monster pina coladas through whirly straws and discussing their bunions. And every bell and buzzer in the casino was ringing and buzzing non-stop.

Spike and I whipped around in unison, ready to clock potential baddies with a suitcase if necessary. There was a man behind the desk: Dark suit, dark tie, dark circles under dark eyes. Good-looking in a Rat Pack kind of way, but off. Like he was a couple of days past his sell-by date. His nametag read 'Vincent Anselm, MANAGER.' He spread dead-white hands on the polished black marble of the desk, and I caught a whiff of stale tobacco smoke, stinky cigar sub-type.

OK, me? The Slayer. Also, not completely stupid. Something was afoot. Caterpillars couldn't be more fortified with feet. But I was on my honeymoon, darn it, and spending said honeymoon boinking my very own personal vampire into unconsciousness was all the contact with the supernatural I was up for. I could Scully everything: Mr. Anselm had been in the employees' bathroom sneaking a smoke, the air conditioning must have kicked on just as he came out, and it was just a slow Friday night. In the middle of the tourist season. Right.

"We have reservations," I said blithely, slapping the paperwork down on the desk so as to prominently display the girl's best friends on my left hand. "But we'll need to change the name." I looked around. "You wouldn't happen to have a register we could sign, would you? With a Mr. and Mrs.? In big curly letters?"

Anselm spooky-eyed the both of us. "I'm afraid we don't use registers any longer. It's all done by computer." His voice, on the other hand, was an ice cube dispenser. "Ah, yes, Ms. Summers. We've been expecting you. Your check-in time was supposed to be midnight. I'm afraid we've had to re-assign your room."

"Yeh, well, we were unavoidably delayed," Spike said, hooking an arm around my waist and planting a decidedly proprietary kiss on the top of my head. "Not going to be a problem, is it?"

There's a certain tone of voice Spike gets when the only thing between your neck and his fangs is the purely academic knowledge that it will mess up his vampire-in-good-standing status with the people he actually cares about. In Sunnydale he knows people and has lots of other reasons besides 'Buffy will be upset' for not killing most of them, so I don't hear it often. And he was still several shades of irritated shy of using it now. But this, in case you were wondering, is the reason for all those Agonized Internal Monologues. Long-term relationships with the soul-challenged are definitely don't-try-this-at-home-kids territory.

"Not at all." Mr Anselm said smoothly. "In fact—" He paused, obviously percolating a revolutionary idea. "Am I to understand that the two of you are newlyweds?"

Having decided that one kiss was insufficient, Spike was engaged in working his way from the top of my head downwards. He's a very exacting craftsman. "How'd you guess?"

"Part of my job," Anselm replied with a Haunted Mansion smile. "What I was about to suggest is that we've received an unexpected cancellation for our honeymoon suite. If you'd like, I can put you there. At no extra charge, of course." He produced a brochure full of pictures of smiling couples gazing adoringly at each other while enjoying the three days and two nights in the tower suite, day pass for two at the spa, manicure and pedicure for the bride, breakfast in bed, complimentary champagne gift set...

Spike looked at me and I looked at Spike, who bent over and whispered an absolutely filthy suggestion involving complimentary champagne and various body parts. I turned back to Mr. Anselm with a bright G-rated smile. "Sold."

****

When I first found out that all Slayers have a little bit of demon in them, there was panic and hyperventilating. Since last winter, I have a little bit more demon than most. It's funny—if Giles had never tried to get me a salary, he never would have discovered all that stuff Quentin Travers was hiding about Slayer heritage. If I hadn't already known that Slayers were part demon, I'd have totally freaked out when I went all grr in Pylea. If I hadn't had the Pylean first-hand skinny on inner demon-ness, I would never have thought to Kobiyashi Maru the Shadow Men. None of the steps on the road from A to Kumquat look weird when you're taking them. It's only when you look back that you realize how very, very far you are from where you started.

By the time we stumbled out of the elevator (see previous note re: incompatibility of kissage and luggage transport) and I slipped the keycard into the door of suite 1823, Spike had made it down to my shoulders and my bra was headed for parts unknown. The door swung open, and... "Oh, wow," I breathed, and meant every word.

Flatsceeen TV. Elegant furniture in dark walnut and indigo satin. A huge bouquet of white roses on the table, filling the room with dizzying sweetness. A canopied bed so large that you'd need GPS to find the other side. Ice bucket, holding a bottle of Chateau Le Unpronounceable and a silver bowl heaped with chocolate-covered strawberries. I poked a toe at the inch-thick, cream-colored carpet, afraid it would bruise if I stepped on it. Yum, squishy! I kicked off my pumps, leaped into the middle of the room, flung out my arms and twirled. "Wow!"

"It'll do," Spike said after a moment of judicious study. With a wolfish grin he lunged forward, swept me right off my feet, carried me through the bedroom door and plunked me in the middle of the Ponderosa-sized down comforter. Through the enormous picture window the lights of Las Vegas spread out below us, a web of stars spun by a very orderly spider. I made a mental note to close the drapes before we got down to serious business; dawn wasn't that far off and Spike's little run-in with the Mohra blood last winter failed to resolve his flammability issues.

Spike's expression was still satisfactorily predatory. Never taking his eyes off me, he leaned over the end of the bed, the sleeves of his t-shirt straining over his triceps as his arms took his weight, and--

"¿Qué estan haciendo aquí? ¡No deberian estar aquí -- nadie debe estar aquí! Éste lugar le pertencece a ella. Deben irse rápidamente!"

We did the whip-around-in-unison-thing again. Sadly, not as impressive when you're flat on your back. A small plumpish woman in a maid's uniform was standing in the bathroom door, arms piled high with towels. (Big, fluffy white towels for the sunken whirlpool bath!) I yipped and grabbed for the covers (when Spike looks at me that way, I feel naked, OK?) Spike turned on her with an exasperated snarl that stopped just short of showing fang. "No nos vamos a ningún parte. Yo no se quién es esta 'ella', pero le aseguro que soy más peligroso."

The maid paled, dropping the towels and clutching the little gold cross around her neck. "¡Demonio!"

"¿Muy lista, que no? Váyase, cabrona--estamos ocupados. Ah--y ¡deje toallas extra!"

"Hey! Wait! Habla English?" I scrambled off the bed, but by the time I plowed through the lush quicksand of carpet (This deep. I swear. Small African nations could be lost in there) to the door she was gone. "Did I just miss an important plot twist?"

Spike shrugged, raking fingers through his hair. "Bint didn't get the memo about the change of occupants, sounds like." He prowled over to the bathroom with a suspicious frown and poked his head inside. "Like to know who 'her' is, though."

William The Bloody Annoying had to pick right this minute to be Mr. Responsibility. I've taught him far too well. Unless Gozer the Gozarian was camping out in the shower stall, the only death I was interested in tonight was the little one. Think fast, Buffy.

A Slayer always has to reach for her weapon, but that just makes us inventive. When Spike got out of the bathroom, I was curled up in the middle of the bed wearing my wedding ring and nothing else, sucking the chocolate off a strawberry.

Spike stopped dead on the threshold. I could hear the breath hiss in his throat as I bit into tart red flesh and licked the juice from my lips. Head lowered, nostrils flared, he took a step, then another, fluid as quicksilver, silent as shadow. Circling the bed. Circling me. T-shirt gone now, just like a magic trick. Light and shadow played tag across rippling muscle as he stalked me. Blue-hot matchflame eyes drew my nipples up, tight and aching, and his rumbly growl was a sweet-hot vibration in that spot only Spike can reach. I plucked another strawberry from the bowl and trailed it up between my breasts. "Mmmmmmmm. These are so...ripe."

"Luscious." Spike was at the edge of the bed in a finger-snap. He sounded raw. Husky. He wasn't staring at the fruit. Always nice to know you can induce drooling.

I arched my back a little and deep-throated the strawberry. When I popped it out and nipped the very tip off, Spike shuddered all the way down to the soles of his feet. I raised a leg (since I started skating again, serious muscle tone. And by the way? Sooo glad I waxed this morning!) and stretched my bare foot out, tracing a line down his torso—through the chiseled valley between his pecs, over the flat hard plain of his stomach, into the dip of his navel. Buffy Summers, putting the femme in fatale since, oh, last year some time. I stopped at the waistband of his jeans, toes hooked in his low-slung belt buckle. I pouted. Spike cannot resist The Lip. "These are in the way." I slid my foot down, kneading his crotch through the denim with my toes. "Someone's a growing boy."

And those jeans were gone. Yay blurry vampire speed! Spike pounced, the bed jounced, and strawberries bounced everywhere. I was pinned top to toes by a pythony length of vampire, not a position I was unfond of. Spike snatched up the nearest strawberry and dangled it just out of reach. "Seems to me," he purred, "I've married a bit of a tease. Gonna have to torture her till she likes me again."

I kissed the tip of his nose and reached down to stroke the extra-big, extra-bad instrument of torture nudging my belly. "You betcha."

****

The first time Kennedy accused me of having a vampire fetish, I blew her off, because, well, she was really annoying. But it wasn't anything I hadn't already obsessed over in the dead of night. How many Slayers fall for one vampire, let alone two? Still: Joe Random Vampire goes fangy? Ew. Spike goes fangy? Guh. Be still my ovaries. Spike puts on those cute wire-rims and reads poetry? Guh squared.

Possibly? I just have a Spike fetish.

****

I woke up smelling like sex and crushed strawberries, sore and sticky and champagne-headachy and oh, so very smug. Outside the sun was up, but the curtains kept the room dim and caverny. Beside me Spike was doing his usual post-sex boa constrictor impersonation—Spike does not so much sleep with you as wrestle you to the ground. Snuggled up tight against his cool firm chest I could feel the slow sure beat of his heart, one thump to every six or seven of mine. Every five minutes or so he'd snore a little.

Sleeping Spike means one thing: I get to play with his hair. He'd trimmed the last of the bleached ends off last month and was half-way between the buzz cut (which I hate) and the exuberant curls (which he hates.) He looks younger when he sleeps, all long dark lashes and a little-boy stranglehold on his pillow. Irony R Us, because mortal now. Honestly? Still not sure how I feel about that. I told Spike once that if he woke up with a pulse, we'd deal, and we did. We both made choices last winter. Spike got a dozen new ways to die, and I got...well, that's the question, isn't it?

My reflection floated in the mirror over the bed, looking down. Up there in mirrorland was only a Spike-shaped indentation in the bed. Poor Mirror-Buffy. I blew her a kiss.

My fingers did the walking in other, darker curls, and Spike made a sleepy purry noise and stirred to life, throbbing in my hand. (New, the throbbing. Goes with the pulse. Kinda fun.) Spike's a handful even when he's completely soft, and he never stays completely soft for long. A kiss, a lick, a stroke, and he was straining eagerly towards the ceiling. I straddled his hips and rocked against him, getting the juices flowing. Spike's big enough that if we don't ease into it, things can get ouchy. Sometimes I like it ouchy. Big cool hands caught my hips, steadied me, and the purr revved up, raspy, savage, demanding. Oh, yeah. That feels nice.

(Oh, and? Spike says to tell you he doesn't purr, he growls. Manly, terrifying growls. Whatever.)

One stroke, two, and way-too-much became juuuust right. Ninety-five percent of Spike is muscle and snark. (Scientific fact. Look it up.) Finding the five percent softness is a treasure hunt: lush lower lip, pale satiny skin, comfy little hint of tummy...OK, that's about it for the softer side of Spike. Quality, not quantity. Spike groaned beneath me, head flung back to expose that gorgeous muscle-y throat, and above me Mirror-Buffy let go and rode, hair flying, breasts bouncing, breath hitching. I squeezed my eyes shut. Closer, closer, closerclosercloserohgodSOclose...

The whole room went icebox city. I was one giant goosebump. Spike felt warm between my bare thighs. My eyes snapped open. In the mirror overhead, Spike had a reflection. It wasn't his. And mine wasn't me.

The man in the mirror was taller and heavier-set than Spike, with a dark thatch of chest hair. The woman was raven-haired (no, seriously. Raven-haired) and boobalicious, wearing a wedding dress—acres of beaded silk and Irish lace that frothed out across the bed, wrapping the man like a funeral shroud. Definitely not off the rack. Reflecto-Girl's eyes were empty hollows and her shriveled lips curled back over white teeth in black gums. Between her gotta-be-implants breasts was a gaping exit wound with shattered fragments of ivory bone poking out. The front of her dress was a sticky crimson mess. She raised one skeletal, mirrored hand, clutching a bouquet of withered white roses, and pointed up (or down) at us. "Give it back!" she wailed.

"Fuck me!" Spike gasped, and got, if possible, even harder. Which, on the one hand, ooh. Though on the other--

"That had better be for the blood, not the breasts," I hissed between clenched teeth.

Wisely realizing that anything he might say could be used against him, Spike flipped me over and proceeded to demonstrate that he'd been speaking literally. I guess he figured that if we had to fight a ghost, he'd rather not do it with a raging hard-on. He closed his fangs on (but not in) my shoulder in the not-quite bite that sends me over the edge every time and drove into me fast and hard. Miss Havisham swirled out of the mirror in a blizzard of lace, with a screech that should have shattered the glass. The sleetstorm of her veil lashed Spike across the shoulders. He was half-way to human in the throes of coming, and the pain sent him yellow-eyed again. He pulled out and rolled off, spitting curses, and I grabbed the empty champagne bottle and swung it at the ghost's head. It swooshed right through. Well, duh, ghost.

The Phantom of the Coverlet hovered over the bed, her fleshless fingers clawing the air. "Mine! Give it back!" she howled.

Ghosts, ghosts, what did I know about ghosts? I did a frantic brain Google. Cordy roomed with one for awhile. (Proof positive that crushing on Angel leads to massive frustration and naked loofah baths with other dead guys. He's a gateway vampire.) And there were those freaks at the high school who took me and Angel over for their undead psychodrama. Ghosts were echoes, Giles had said, trapped in a repeating cycle, until someone outside the cycle broke it. Except when they were actual people like Dennis and his mom. Failing to find the common thread here.

I took a fresh grip on my totally useless bottle and glanced across the bed at Spike, who'd dropped to a half-crouch, holding... a pillow. He gave me the look that meant that if I so much as giggled, the rest of the honeymoon would definitely suffer.

"OK, it can hit us and we can't hit it," I whispered. "Can we, like, exorcise it or something?"

"You got any exorcisms memorized?" Spike whispered back. Why were we whispering? "The maid said this was her room. Something of hers in it still, maybe? We smash it, she goes to meet her maker?"

It was a super-nice hotel room, but it was a hotel room. Not exactly personalized. I raised my voice--so the free-floating full-torso vaporous apparition could hear better, I guess. "What do you want? Did you lose something? If you can tell us—"

"MIIIIIIIIINNNNNEEEE!"

Dead And Loving It came at me like the Cannonball Special, Kitty Pryding in and out on me. Lace coiled around my arms and legs like barb-wire and cold bony fingers pawed me. Her jaws flopped wide and her breath was cold and stinking. New Year's Resolution: never complain about Spike having blood-breath again. I was turning blue, and blue? Not my color.

Spike leaped across the bed with a roar, and his fangs snapped on thin air as the ghost vanished. Both of us fell to the floor in a shivering tangle of arms and legs and yellowed, disintegrating lace. "Oh, no," I said, feeling frantically round through the plushy carpet. "Oh, no!"

"What is it, love?" Spike was checking me all over for damage, but barring possible frostbite, I was fine.

I held up my left hand, as naked as the rest of me. Ghost-Chick was gone. And so was my ring.

****

The bathroom lived up to the rest of the suite. Black marble tile, towels almost as thick as the carpet, and faucets that looked like chubby little cupids peeing. Ok, those? Mildly disturbing.

"Worst comes to worst we can get you a new ring, love," Spike said, applying the loofah to the itchy spot in the exact center of my back. When confronting the supernatural, grooming counts. As long as there was a sunken whirlpool bath available, we owed it to the world to use it. No one likes a stinky Slayer. "It was a pretty little thing for my pretty little thing, but it's only jewelry."

"I don't want another ring," I snuffled. "I want that one. It's not just jewelry. You gave it to me."

I know, two-year-old much? But Spike got it for me with actual money he worked for. Even though it would be way easier to kill the clerk, smash the display case, and walk out as Lord of the Bling. I've had people tell me it's not fair that I have to be Spike's conscience. Two things: One, Life's not fair, and two, I'm not. Standing around twenty-four seven telling Spike what to do would be simple, and life with Spike? Never simple. Spike's evil, not stupid. He knows the difference between right and wrong. It's just that sans soul, he needs a reason to care. My job? Nope, not giving him reasons. No cookie for you. It's helping him find his own. It took me awhile to figure that out.

When he bought that ring, Spike cared. It mattered. It mattered a lot.

I sank back into the sea of bubbles and wriggled my toes. It was two in the afternoon, my wedding ring was incommunicado, and zero shopping had been accomplished. Bubble therapy administered by an accomodating vampire was a necessity, dammit. "Could it be her ring?" I asked. "Originally, I mean. Because mine now."

"Anything's possible." Spike ducked underwater and surfaced crowned with bubbles. "Got it at one of those estate jewelry places. But likely? Bit of a coincidence, innit, me buying a ring in California and us checking into the one hotel room in all the Strip frequented by the former owner?"

"If it weren't for coincidences, nothing would ever happen to us."

"Point," Spike admitted. He lifted me bodily across the tub and settled me on his lap, his thumbs digging into my tense shoulders. "The maid tried to warn us off. And that bloke last night said there'd been a cancellation. Odds are our lady in white's made other visits."

"And if she's appeared before, there should be records of sightings and...mmm. Little to the left..." I relaxed against Spike's chest and breathed warm steamy air while he nuzzled my neck, nippy little kisses all the way from collarbone to ear. His left hand abandoned my shoulder to slide around and fondle my soap-slippery breast, as his right hand urged my knees apart, spreading my thighs so that the water jets hit in a happy place. I almost oozed out of his grip and dissolved into the hot water. Bubbles good. Bubbles very good.

I should clear this up. Spike and I are not obsessed with sex. We've gone entire days, weeks even, without touching, kissing, snuggles, or thinking impure thoughts. We were in different cities at the time, and I'm lying about the impure thoughts, but the point is no sex was had. Our cell phone bill went through the roof, but that? I invoke the Clinton defense.

Willow claims that there's tantric energy involved, because of Spike being a vampire and me being a Slayer and this whole opposites-attract magical symbolism thing. Giles says he has no opinion on the matter since even acknowledging to himself that Spike and I have a sex life brings on hysterical blindness. Me? I don't know. We did manage to fuck a Hellmouth closed once. But it's not something we control or even think about much. Magical symbolism certainly wasn't the first thing on my mind when Spike hooked his feet around my ankles, wrapping me up in slick muscular vampire.

"Newspaper articles, books on local hauntings," Spike agreed, shifting for a better angle. "'Spect we should investigate all avenues." His fingers were deliciously toasty from the hot water. His hands made the Grand Tour of my body, lazing over my breasts and belly and hips, lingering on my nipples and then sliding away to tease some other neglected spot...but never the spot where I really wanted them. Just like a guy, refuses to ask for directions. I started to reach down and he grabbed my wrist. "Naughty girl," he rasped in my ear. "Mustn't touch yourself yet. Not allowed."

He had me pinned. The water jet foamed between my thighs, tickling, teasing and unrelenting. Oh, God, bubbles. My hips set up a helpless little jerky dance-step. Spike was breathing fast, way faster than he needed to, hardening against me as I quivered in his arms. "Nnngh," I panted, clenching my fists. (Translation: "Spike, I agree completely with your assessment of the situation. Perhaps, when we have finished engaging in sexual intercourse, we should attire ourselves decently and venture forth to do precisely this thing. Though perhaps I should inform you that if you don't let me come soon, I will be forced to dislocate your spine.")

Waiting for that one touch doubled every other sensation. Steam curled around my arms like silk scarves. I was weightless, insubstantial as a ghost. Spike lifted me up and brought me down, inch by inch by inch by—trust me, it's a lot of inches—and when I was positive I couldn't bear it another second, he began to move, thrusting in time with the pulsing of the jets. I could feel each stroke along the whole length of my body, his belly to my back, one long rocking curl of muscle.

He unhooked his feet from my ankles and tipped us forward in the water. On my knees now, hands braced against the side of the tub, legs splayed so the bubble jet hit me from the front while Spike took me from behind. And at last, at last, warm slick fingers, exactly where I wanted them. White steam, white tile, white noise, whiteout. My arms collapsed, my eyes rolled back and I sobbed and shook against the tiles while Spike crooned, "Come for me Buffy, come you sweet magnificent cunt, that's it, once more, oh, there's juice in you yet, Slayer, let it all out—"

...and the world blinked and fuzzed like a TV on the fritz and I found myself staring straight into Casperetta's spectacular if slightly damaged cleavage. Talk about a moodkiller. I lunged backwards, knocking Spike over with a splash. Spike doubled up with a howl as certain of his parts bent at angles not included in the design specifications.

The ghost-bride flickered in and out, maggoty tears crawling down her withered cheeks. "I thought you'd changed, Charlie," she said, "I really thought you'd changed. I thought we could make a go of it." She covered her face with her skeletal hands and sobbed. Soggy snowflakes of lace drifted to the wet tiles as her shoulders shook.

"Please," I gasped, with an apologetic look at Spike, who'd curled up clutching his valuables and sunk underwater so no one could hear him scream. My head was still spinning. I felt drunk. "Who are you? What are you looking for? If there's a light, going towards it? Great career move, believe me. And since you can't take it with you? You can just leave my ring on the sink."

She raised her head from her hands, empty sockets staring straight at me. "It's no use," she said. "You'll find out. Men never change. They just change you." And she winked out, just like a soap bubble.

****

So Spike and I decided to do what any two self-respecting tourists would do. We complained to the manager.

Anselm's office did not continue the Sun King theme. Pity, since I was in a guillotine mood. It looked like any other office, a desk and a computer and filing cabinets. One wall was devoted to framed photographs of managers past in one degree of separation with third-rate celebrities. A couple of the frames had fallen off the wall as a result of Spike slamming the door after us, and lay face-down on the carpet, which was industrial blue and a measley quarter-inch thick. Peon. I didn't see any ashtrays, but the place reeked of cigars.

"You're certain it hasn't just been misplaced?" Anselm asked. "The hotel is fully insured for losses, and—" He cast a moderately disparaging glance in Spike's direction. "—I'm assuming it wasn't a terribly expensive piece?"

I really, really didn't like him. "Of course it's been misplaced," I snapped, examining my nails. Chipped. I knew it. Now I was really peeved. I could be getting that free manicure right now. "Your ghost misplaced it. And I don't want an insurance settlement, I want my ring. Is that clear, or do I need to use pointy objects and fewer syllables?"

"The maid knew the place was haunted," Spike growled, a couple of shades closer to 'I'd eat you but picking my teeth would be too much trouble.' He advanced menacingly on Anselm, who backed nervously around the desk. "You sodding well had to know!"

I picked up one of the fallen frames, which showcased a newspaper story headlined DIAMONDS AREN'T FOREVER—VERSAILLES GHOST STRIKES AGAIN! It was dated August 1977. "I'd say that's a big yes on the malice aforethought."

Anselm wilted. "All right, yes, there have been incidents!" He pulled a red silk handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face, which looked waxy enough for an escapee from Madame Tussaud's. "But she's never attacked anyone before. At least, not recently. Look, if this gets out it's the end of this hotel. She almost ruined us in the seventies, taking the guests' jewelry. No one believed it was a ghost. They thought it was the staff. Tourists like to be scared. Mysterious lights, moving furniture—that's the stuff publicity campaigns are made of. Look at the Flamingo and Bugsy Siegel. But no one likes to get beaten up and robbed."

He began pacing, hands clasped behind his back. "She quieted down when we started...the flowers, the champagne, the...trappings. They keep her happy. Most of the time. But every year, when the anniversary of the... event... rolls around, she gets... restive." He shook his head. "And some of the newer staff don't realize how dangerous she can be when she's upset. I hoped—I thought that you two having some experience in this line, maybe you could do something about her."

Normally I let Spike play bad cop, because he likes the hitting so much, but taking a number for the punching and threatening was more and more appealing. "Excuse me? You set us up?"

"Well, it's not like you're inexperienced. You've got a business, right?" Anselm said nervously. "I recognized the name when you made the reservations and looked it up in the California BBB database. Very good record, by the way."

Spike squinched his eyes, and the muscle in his jaw did that sexy little twitchy thing. He held up a hand, ticking off points on his fingers. "One, Bloody Vengeance Inc. hunts demons, not ghosts. Two, the operative word in 'business' is 'business,' not 'I think I'll help every clot-brained git who tries to rook me out of a fee for the fun of it,' and three, we're bloody well on vacation!"

The finger left standing was not family friendly. I was kind of with Spike on the clot-brained git part, but I don't get to play the look-Ma-no-empathy card. "Look," I said to Anslem, "I called it quits with the Council over a year ago. Now? There is a magic word that makes Buffy slay. That word is 'please.' You," I shook a finger at his nose, "didn't use the magic word. If you want an official Slayer, with an official Watcher who eats his Ghost Toasties, call 1-800-TRAVERS-SUCKS and get one. I want my ring back. Maybe your ghost will get busted in the process and maybe it won't. Take it or leave it."

Anselm's shoulders slumped, wafting stale cigar smoke our way. "Whatever you say."

"As long as that's settled," I said briskly. "The thing with ghosts? They always want something. Vengeance, justice, murder will out, whatever. Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with a lead pipe. I'll take a wild guess and say this one didn't die peacefully in her sleep. And does she have a name other than she? Because I can see pronoun trouble looming."

Anselm sighed and sat back in his chair, staring at his disaster area of a desk. Even the nameplate was tipped over. "Her name was Vera. Vera Bustamonte."

"Figures," I muttered.

"She was a dancer at Caesar's," Anselm went on. "A little spitfire. This was about thirty years ago. She fell for a guy. Up-and-coming businessman, but he had some connections that weren't entirely on the up-and-up, if you know what I mean. He fell for her, too. They were all over each other, either fighting or making up. She wanted him to go legit, you know?"

I looked at Spike. Spike looked at me. Um. Yeah. We knew.

"So for her, he tries. And they get married. The manager here at the time was, um, a friend of theirs, so he gives them a deal on the honeymoon suite. On their wedding night, she finds out he's still doing jobs for his old associates, and they have a fight, see? He goes storming off to the casino, where she hears that he loses a bundle, and this doesn't make her any happier with him. When she wakes up the next morning, her wedding ring's gone, and so is her husband. She figures her louse of a husband's gone and pawned it to pay off his losses—which are not to people he can afford to piss off, if you know what I mean.

"So she calls the guy's best friend, who was the best man at their wedding, and who's always been a bit soft on her. She tells him her husband's gone missing and she's worried. So he comes up and she cries on his shoulder, and that leads to tea and a hell of a lot more than sympathy. And right in the middle of it, the husband walks in on 'em... and broken-hearted, he guns his wife down right then and there."

"Love for the ages, that is," Spike said admiringly. The vampire ideal of romance involves as many dead bodies as possible. He hitched a hip up on the desk and began poking through Anselm's papers, found a fountain pen he liked the looks of and stuck it in his pocket. "So she's brassed off at the bloke who blew a hole in her corsage. Easy enough. We find him and bring him here so she can give him a good postmortem bitchslapping."

Anselm slumped in the chair, grey and defeated-looking. "It's not that easy. The best man wrestled the gun away and killed the husband. Ever since then, Vera's ghost has haunted the suite, looking for her missing ring. If a newlywed couple takes the room, especially around the anniversary of her death, she'll appear. Sometimes it's just wailing and throwing things. But if the couple reminds her of her and her husband..."

"I think I'm insulted," I muttered. "Scratch that, I know I'm insulted. OK. Find the real wedding ring, and Vera rests in peace."

"Sixty-four dollar question is, where?" Spike sucked in his cheeks and frowned at Anselm. "You've searched the room, right?"

"I've had it searched. It's not there," Anselm said grimly.

Of course it wasn't. "Sooooo...if it didn't just get lost, maybe her husband did take it and pawn it." Without any personal items to anchor it even a location spell might not work—the ring could be anywhere by now. I bit my lip in frustration. I really prefer problems I can solve by hitting them. "This best man guy...what happened to him?"

Anselm shook his head. "Paguso. His name is Tony Paguso. He went to trial and was acquitted. Self-defense. He's still alive."

It was a long shot. But have clue will travel. "Come on, Spike. Let's fire up the Mystery Machine."

****

According to that compendium of mystic knowledge, Dex Online, Tony Paguso lived in Boulder City, half an hour out of Vegas in the mountains north of the Hoover Dam. Beyond Spike's blacked-out windows (Spike says necro-tempered glass is for sissies. I'm working on it) the flat, sunbaked desert stretched away to the barest, stoniest mountains in existence. Majestic, if scenery is your thing, but otherwise? World's biggest litterbox.

"...can't believe you ditched us!" Willow was spazzing. Why had I not realized Willow would spaz? She gets jittery if a new stop sign goes up.

"There was no ditching!" I shouted into my cell. Coverage out here was le suck. "It was a seize the day thing! I called Dawn last night and told her!"

"You told Dawn before you told me?"

Only Willow can re-create puppy eyes in stereophonic sound. "She's kind of my sister, Will, she gets dibs! Look, I'll tell you all about it when we get home. What can you tell me about exorcising ghosts?"

"It's not like exorcising a demon." She sounded doubtful, though that might have been the static. "Ghosts can be malignant, but they're not usually evil. You need to find the object or event that's tying them to this plane, and destroy it or resolve it somehow—do you need me to fly out there to help? Because—"

"Spike and I have both have our merit badges in mojo," I interrupted. Maybe it would be useful to have her here, but not on honeymoon time; Willow has sire issues. "Just fax whatever you've got to the hotel, OK? You're the best, Willow."

"I'll see what I can put together—does Xander know about—?"

"Not yet. Go ahead and tell everyone el—oh, God, I broke the relatives-first rule! I have to tell Dad! Later, bye!"

I snapped the phone shut and scrunched back against the seat. Spike and my father go together like peanut butter and trout. "On the bright side, maybe Dad will have an urgent conference in Uzbekistan and won't get the message till August."

Spike cocked an eyebrow. "Second thoughts, pet?"

That got him a punch in the arm. "You don't get rid of me that easily, buster." I pressed my nose to the cloudy window glass and watched the desert scroll by. I didn't have any second thoughts. Maybe that should scare me. "Spike...you think we're like them?"

He didn't answer right away, just shook out a cigarette, lit it, and rolled down the window a crack to let the smoke out. "What if we are? Cared about each other, didn't they? Buggered it up, but they cared. Rather that than measure out my life in coffee spoons." He looked at me sidelong. "'Specially now it is a life."

When it comes to life, I don't want a choice between short and glorious or long and boring. I want long and just glorious enough to make the boring parts relaxing. "Did it make you feel better, going after that fungus demon Drusilla was schtupping?"

Spike sucked in smoke and blew it out the window. "For a bit. Did dusting those pathetic bints making an hors d'oeuvres of Finn warm your cockles?"

For a bit. But they hadn't been the real problem, had they? Moral of the story: If you're going to go ballistic, aim at the right person. "If you expect me to try and cut your head off if we break up, you're in for a big disappointment."

He chuckled. "Ah, well, serves me right for putting down that shotgun. I'll try to live with the pain. Or lack thereof."

We pulled up outside the sundrenched steps Paguso's condo, and there was a brief altercation over whether I should go up and knock or whether Spike should come with me and burst into flames. He pointed out that he burst into flames a lot more slowly now, which? Not terribly reassuring. We compromised on the blanket trick. Mr. Paguso, when he shot the deadbolt and peered suspiciously through the door, didn't look like the face that sank a thousand ships. He was stocky and sixtyish, with thinning grey hair and a leathery desert tan, wearing shorts and a University of Nevada tee.

"Hi!" I said, as smoke started to curl from Spike's scalp. "I'm Buffy, and this is Spike. We're here about the murder. Can we come in?"

The creepy thing? He didn't look the least bit surprised. "Sure," he said. "You want a beer?"

We followed Mr. Paguso inside and played eyebrow tag while he shuffled off to the kitchen. He returned a minute or so later bearing foamy goodness, and handed off a pair of sweating cans of Bud Lite to the two of us. Spike, after sufficient ankle-kicking, heroically forbore to make the usual comments about watered-down horse piss in a can.

"I haven't thought about Vera and Charlie for twenty years," Paguso said. "Even the Enquirer got bored after awhile." He waved us at the couch, which wasn't covered in plastic, but looked like it should have been, and lowered himself into a well-worn La-Z-Boy positioned for premium TV viewage. "Well, no, that's a lie. Fifteen years. You shilling for Unsolved Mysteries or something?"

"Not exactly," I said. "We just found out about all this the hard way last night. Mr. Anselm at the hotel told us that you were a witness, and—"

Paguso gave me a strange look. "Anselm? You're bullshitting me."

I nodded. "Mr. Anselm thinks that...well, that the room where Vera was shot is a teensy bit haunted, and—" I exchanged looks with Spike. "We saw some strange things there ourselves. We're looking for the missing wedding ring. We were hoping you might remember if this Charlie guy said anything about it—where he pawned it, or anything? We think if we can find it, it could help us deghostify the place."

"Haunted, huh?" Paguso balanced his beer on one knee and stared into space, or maybe at the 1970s abstract starburst wall clock. "Vera never did know when to give up." He rubbed his stubbly chin. "I'm gonna tell you something I never told anyone in thirty years." He set his beer down on the coffee table and braced both hands against his boney knees. "Charlie never pawned that ring."

Spike sipped his beer with that narrow-eyed tilt of the head that meant he was listening to Paguso's heartbeat, checking for fibs. Paguso looked like he expected gasps of shock and horror. I managed a "Really?"

"Couldn't have," Paguso said. "It was a fake. Gold plate and paste. Couldn't get twenty bucks for it. I was with Charlie when he bought it—he was skint. Couldn't afford the real thing, but Vera, she had champagne tastes. So he bought her a phony ring, and planned to switch it out for the real thing when he had the dough."

"That's why he started doing jobs for the mob again," I whispered. "So he could afford—" I covered my mouth with my hand and looked at Spike. That was so exactly what he would do.

Spike was having his own comes-the-dawn moment. "He didn't take it to pawn at all, did he? He was going to switch it out that night. Get back in good with his girl." He snorted. "Stupid berk. Should've known any bird worth having's not bought so cheap."

Or maybe it wasn't. Spike tipped an eyebrow at me, as if to say I make bloody stupid mistakes, love, but grant I only make the same bloody stupid mistake once.

Sometimes I think my heart will explode with how proud I am of him. Love? Frosting. That pride is the cake.

"You must have known," I said. "When she called you. You knew he hadn't stolen her ring."

Paguso nodded, slow, like his neck hurt. "I never knew when to let go, either." A little smile curved his lips. "It was almost worth it."

I rubbed my left hand. The ring finger felt lonely and bare. Funny what you could get used to in a few hours. "Mr. Anselm needs her gone. If you have any idea—"

"I'll bet he does," Paguso muttered. "I got no love for that sonofabitch. Let her haunt him, for all I care."

"You know what?" I hopped off the couch, fed up. "The three of you together weren't as bright as a dead flashlight! Charlie loved her and shot her, and you loved her and got her shot. You owe her an easy grave, and wouldn't she be interested to hear your tale of woe? In fact—" I started for the door. "Let's go tell her. Maybe she'd be happier haunting you for a change. "

"You can't scare me that way," Paguso sneered, but he paled under his George Hamilton tan. "Ah, fuck," he said after a minute. "It's been thirty years. The bastard's suffered enough."

He levered himself out of the armchair and disappeared into the bedroom. After a minute he returned with a little black box. "Here it is," he said. "The fake, and the real one Charlie got to replace it. I was going to pawn it myself, but..." He shrugged helplessly, looking as defeated as Anselm had. "It was Vera's."

It didn't look much like my ring. Bigger diamonds. Spike looked worried as I studied it. "Flashy," I said, closing the box with a snap, and he relaxed. "One thing," I said to Paguso. "Why would you think we were lying about talking to Anselm?"

Paguso's lips twisted in a wry smile. "Nothing much," he said. "Except the fact that I shot Charles Vincent Anselm dead thirty years ago."

****

I marched into the manager's office and slapped Willow's faxed exorcism down on Anselm's desk. Behind me Spike cracked his knuckles and went into Menace-the-Phantom mode. Not that he could inflict serious bodily on the bodiless, but it's the thought that counts. "What's that?" Anselm asked, eyeing the fax the way a streptococcus eyes a patch of fresh bread mold. Did I say he looked waxy? More like translucent. And how had I missed the fact that those lapels made Leisure Suit Larry look stylish? Obviously there was serious ghostly fashion juju in play.

"That," I said, tapping my woefully unmanicured fingernail on the instrument of Anselm's doom, "Is the spell that's going to kick your ectoplasmic booty back to Saturn if you don't tell me exactly what's going on here in five, four, three, two..."

My ultimatum produced a distinct lack of cowering. No wonder. The exorcism read more like a strongly worded suggestion for a time out than a banishment to the nether realms. Willow's notes insisted it was way more important to break the spirit's connection to this plane than to go ecclesiastical on their ass, but I'd expected a few more 'I abjure you's and 'begone!'s.

"Go ahead," Anselm said with a bitter laugh. "Try it." He slumped into his chair—and I do mean into his chair. "You think I haven't? I'm stuck here. Just like she is. Because she is."

Spike frowned. "You've tried this exorcism bollocks before, then?"

"A dozen times." Anselm looked, pardon the expression, haunted. "Her, me, the both of us together... It never works. The priest or shaman or whoever gets the bells and smells going, and for a minute it feels like I'm being torn apart." He waved at the polished faux-teak before him. "And then I'm stuck back here behind the desk like always."

I leaned across the desk and took hold of Anselm's tie. Ghost silk oozed through my fingers. It felt like grabbing a handful of Jell-O. "Any particular reason you failed to mention that your mortal coil's been shuffled?" I asked.

"If I'd told you who I was straight up, would you have lifted a pinkie to help? The high and mighty Slayer's not the type to give a murderer a hand," Anselm snapped, his jaw jutting. "Besides, hotel employees' mortality status are confidential under HIPAA regulations."

Spike folded his arms across his chest with a snort. "Wouldn't she? You want to compare rap sheets, you damp little wanker? Any other vital pieces of information you haven't seen fit to pony up?"

"No! Nothing!" Anselm pulled away and started pacing, one hand smoothing his dark shiny hair. Now that I was really watching, I could see that his equally dark and shiny patent-leathers didn't leave a mark on the carpet. "Did Paguso know where the ring was? That's what she wants. Give her the ring, and she'll be free to go. And when she's free..." He stopped, looking hopeless. "It's got to be the ring." His shoulders slumped—Marley had chains, Anselm had mile-wide lapels. "Thirty years I've been here," he whispered, "haunting this damned office, scraped thinner and thinner every year. Anger? Peeled off twenty years ago. Sorrow? Ten." His voice cracked. "I'm begging you, Slayer. Lay her ghost before I stop loving her, too."

Spike's hand went to his chest, fingers half-curled across his breastbone, over the place where Doctor Gregson had cut out his heart. (It's another long story. He got better.) Something flickered deep in his eyes. Not compassion. Spike doesn't do compassion. But...understanding, maybe. That champagne fizz of pride bubbled up inside me again. Spike jerked his head at me. "You heard the man, Slayer. Time's wasting."

****

The sunset did dayglo battle with hotel neon as Spike and I pulled into the Versailles parking garage, laden with rare herbs and exotic spices from the baking aisle at Albertson's. Gotta love that covered parking. Neither Spike nor I are what you would call masters of the mystic arts (not counting Spike's ability to make extra aces appear in his sleeve) but both of us have done spells. They even worked. We carted our loot up to the honeymoon suite, where last night's mess had been replaced by steam-cleaned carpet, crisply-pressed linens and a crystal vase of fresh roses. If only that would happen every time a demon trashes our house.

I plunked my grocery bag down on the kitchenette counter and checked Willow's instructions again, biting my thumbnail. Willow had put together a general exorcism template, customizable for residual hauntings, revenants, poltergeists, and generalized psychic disturbances. We'd followed directions to the letter. Mostly. It still felt like we were missing something vital. It wasn't Slayer sense pinging, just Buffy-sense. "Hey, Spike, would you say Vera qualifies as a free-roaming ectoplasmic manifestation, or a quasi-recurring crisis-related apparition?"

"Will include an option for general pain in the arse?" Spike began pulling things out of the bags and piling them on the counter. "What's our plan here, love? Even if this rigmarole works and we send Vera off to the Great Beyond, you know you may not get your ring back."

Scarlett O'Hara that one. "Really more worried about the not working option." I shredded a handful of roses from the bouquet on the table while Spike laid out the ritual components: a plastic cereal bowl of distilled water, sprinkled with sage, fennel, oats, and pine—the maintenance guys objected when I tried to whack pieces off the landscaping, so we used Pinesol. At least it was a hygienic spell.

Rose petals sprinkled in a five-pointed star on the floor, white candles at each point of the star, check. I set the box with Vera's rings, both of them, in the middle of the pentagram, and Spike lit the candles with his Zippo. He stepped back and picked up the bowl of soupy pine-fresh oatmeal with a grimace. "This is why I steer clear of magic," he grumbled. "In the end it always comes down to prancing around looking like a complete berk."

"Less complainy, more anointy," I ordered. With a martyred sigh Spike began his widdershins circuit of the room, smearing the mixture on the lintel of every door and the sill of every window with a basting brush. I held up Willow's fax and recited:

"Wherein light dwells, all darkness flee, and restless spirit follow, For thou art dead to mine and me, these halls no longer hallow. Go with blessings, go with speed, your path earthbound no longer, By light and darkness, word and deed, I bid you—"

A chilly breeze eddied through the suite, knocking over one of the candles. The flame snuffed out and wax dribbled onto the carpet. We waited. And waited. And waited. But that was it. No wailing, no moaning, and definitely no clanking of chains.

"This is a bit of a damp squib, innit?" Spike dumped the bowl of goo into the sink and collapsed into a patented Spike-sprawl in the nearest armchair.  He propped his chin on one fist and scowled at the now-lopsided rose-petal pentagram through the cross-hairs of his splayed knees. "We're missing something."

I so thought of that first. I bent down and set the fallen candle upright again. Not to slip into something more Freudian, because sometimes an ivory pillar candle is just an ivory pillar candle, but... "Wait a minute. Didn't Anselm say she was attracted to...um...newlyweds in particular? Ooh! And remember that poltergeist thing when I was in college?"

Spike's lower lip went pouty and biteable. Remembering his moment of amoral ambiguity when Xander wanted to storm Lowell House always makes him grumpy—then because he had it at all, now because he blew it off. "What I mean is," I said, "the not-nearly-departed-enough crave the PDAs. So maybe we ought to..." I resorted to candle mime.

Spike's free hand strayed protectively to his crotch. "Dunno as I want a repeat of our last go. Excruciating pain excites me only under very specific conditions."

"Don't be such a big baby. We won't go past first base." I crooked a finger. "Get over here and kiss me."

Spike got up, picked his way across the pentagram, and placed both hands on my shoulders. He cocked his head and looked down at me, a pair of frown-lines hitching his brows together as if he couldn't quite figure out how this whole lip/tongue interface was supposed to work. "We just...start, then?" he asked, with an uneasy glance at the ceiling.

I did my own ceiling survey. Nothing but spackle-tastic hotel plaster and the mirrored tiles over the bed. It might be the fastest way to get her to appear, but the idea that Vera was getting her ghostly groove on watching us? Offputting. "Only minimal smoochies," I assured Spike. "Just to rev her up."

In retrospect? Not one of my best ideas.

My sex-on-legs demon lover screwed up his face and planted what was possibly the most unromantic kiss in history on my upturned lips. Seriously. Five-year-old boys kiss their Great-Aunt Euphronia's mole hair with more enthusiasm. I wasn't exactly steaming up anyone's glasses myself. "This isn't going to work," Spike said.

"Oh, yes, it is." Eyes narrowed, chin firm, the noble Slayer is selflessly dedicated to her cause. I tugged Spike down for another kiss, one totally unsuitable for exchange between biological relatives. Don't think about Vera. Think about cool supple lips and clever tongue, think about broad shoulders and narrow hips and sinewy arms. My hands made a stealth raid under Spike's t-shirt, kneading the long muscles of his back as he wrapped the arms in question around my waist, and can I just say yum? If you want to get technical I'm stronger than he is, but there's really something to be said for the Y-chromosome packaging.

Minutes passed, and we were still in a Vera-free zone. Spike's long dark criminally-wasted-on-a-guy lashes drooped lower and lower as he started to get into the kissage. When Spike gets into it, it's really, really hard not to follow along. I drew a leg up and massaged his thigh with my knee—that's sort of in the vicinity of first base, right?--and was rewarded with that low rumbly not-a-purr growl that drives straight for second. He grabbed my backside and hitched me up, fitting hip to hip. I locked my legs around his waist and got cozy as we segued into some serious tongue sex.

Cold wind whipped around our ankles, stirring up the rose petals and turning the hotel room into a five-hundred-dollar-a-night snow globe. Me? Failing to care. There was probably some good reason why we were wearing all these distracting clothes, but I couldn't remember what it was. Oh, well. There was a pale, muscular throat that desperately needed nibbling while I reached down one-handed to deal with Spike's belt buckle. Mmm, vampire treats, always low-cal.

The room hummed, little blue sparks arcing from VCR to microwave to flat-screen TV. Ooh, fingers in good places. Spike was supporting my weight with one hand (love that vampire strength) and getting inventive under my skirt with the other—thank God for the invention of the thong; it saves me a fortune in vamp-chewed underwear. I wriggled and whimpered, at the mercy of his relentlessly circling thumb. Spike panted in my ear, "Christ, so wet, gonna fuck you, Slayer, gonna shag you cross-eyed and bow-legged," which, you know, not inventive, but heartfelt.

I popped the buttons of his fly and shoved his jeans just far enough down on his hips to free him, and hello Little Spike, hard and eager and quivering. Put me in, Coach!

Spike stole home plate while his slicked-up fingers slid into third and gave a whole new meaning to 'back-bencher.' (Fine, I suck at baseball, accept it and move on.) There was an unearthly moan—no, wait, that was me. Tensing my thighs and other things, I arched my hips. Pull up, slide back. Tense. Relax. Tense. Relax. Spike's eyes glazed over and his sex-talk devolved into mindless little grunts and growls and "Fuck!"s as he tried to match my rhythm with his own thrusts.

There were, as Anya would say, several excellent orgasms. In the middle of number three, more or less, the wind from nowhere whipped up to a hurricane howl and the candles all blew out at once. Spike and I froze mid-oh baby, blinking stupidly through the whirlwind of rose-petals. There in the center of our slightly mangled spell-circle was Vera, in all her corpse-lit glory. Oh. Right. Exorcism.

"We brought your ring," I said, a little breathless. I untangled one hand from Spike's hair and pointed to the black velvet box. "Haunting all better! You can go home now."

Vera stared at us, tears gleaming in her worm-eaten eyesockets. Or maybe that was just the worms. She bent and picked up the box, cradling it in her boney fingers--and threw back her head with a banshee wail that dropped the temperature, like, fifty degrees. The vase shattered as the water in it iced up, spilling roses across the carpet. Frost-ferns curled across the windows and even Spike's breath was smoking. "Charlie, you bastard!" Vera wailed. "What kind of girl do you take me for?"

Spike's eyebrow ticked up. "Should've gone for chocolates."

"You think?" I yelled.

The reason all this made the Top Five Bad Buffy Ideas of all time? Think about it. Riley and I once boinked up enough sex-ghost-mojo to turn a frat house into the Amityville Horror. We were like, the D Battery of Love. Me and Spike? More like the Monster Truck Battery of Love. And we'd just juiced up Vera something fierce.

Hundreds of flash-frozen rose petals spun through the air, slicing stinging red lines across our exposed skin—and we had way too much skin exposed. We tumbled apart—not graceful. Spike yanked his jeans up and whipped his motorcycle jacket off and around to shield our faces. I struck blindly at the place Vera ought to be right now, but the Force took a powder and Vera whip-stitched my wrists and ankles with ghost-lace in a heinous misuse of Gina Fratini. Spike vamped out, shearing through the rotting fabric with his fangs. A whirlwind of roses ripped him off his feet and body-slammed him into the ceiling mirror, which shattered in a rain of glass and plaster and sparkly metal. Twisting in mid-air, Spike snatched a sparkly in one of those impossibly vampy-fast moves (Vampires? World's best Quidditch players) and crashed to the bed.

Vera rushed at him, snow-white, blood-red, her skeletal hands clamping around his throat. "You promised me you'd change, Charlie," she hissed. "You promised! And it was all lies!"

Spike thrashed and struggled on the bed as Vera seesawed between solid enough to get in quality strangling time and wispy enough that Spike couldn't fight her off. Now, strangling vampires? Normally the ultimate in counterproductive. Once upon a time, I could have sat there, buffed my nails, ordered a mocha, and waited for Vera to get bored. But almost six months after the Mohra Incident, it's still hitting me.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Spike can die now.

I tore my way free of the strangling lace. The scattered roses on the carpet were sprouting, spreading, surrounding the bed with a ring-around-the-rosewood. Thorny canes decked in dark green leaves sprang up around me, tearing at my face and arms. Corpse-white roses budded and blossomed in seconds. The room smelled like a bad day at the BPAL factory.

I yanked the nearest rosebush up by the roots, tearing up a patch of carpet (wah!) and half the skin off my palms in the process. There's such a thing as carrying exfoliation too far. As fast as I broke the branches off, new ones sprouted. If Spike were a little closer... "Throw her off and I can pull you through, but you've got to—"

"Keep Marion Kirby here occupied, 'nless you fancy her redecorating the rest of the hotel," Spike snarled, ramming a knee into Vera's bouquet.

Ghostiness does tend to spread. Kind of like mildew. The supercharging we'd given Vera couldn't last forever. Maybe I could make her waste power and hope she couldn't choke Spike to death in the meantime. What a great plan! Not. I needed an axe, or a blowtorch, or—in the corner of one eye I spotted Willow's crumpled fax impaled on a thorn and snatched it free. I scanned the instructions again—disrupt the object or event binding the apparition to the material plane, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'd done all that—

Except—

Except it wasn't an object or event binding Anselm, was it? It was a person. So what if—?

"Spike!" I yelled. "I have an idea!"

"Grrrnffgh!" Spike replied, which I translated as "Go to it, Buffy!"

"Don't die or I'll kill you!" I shouted over my shoulder, and opened the suite door. (OK, I kicked it into the hallway, but let's not get hung up on details.) Faster to wait for the elevator, or take the stairs? Eighteen floors, oh, God, and how long could a no-longer-undead vampire hold his breath if he really, really had to? A long time, I knew, but how long? Twenty minutes? Thirty? I smashed through the fire door and vaulted over the stair rail, leaving bloody palm-prints on the rungs. I backflipped out into the stairwell and grabbed the rail on the seventeenth floor, kicked off and dropped another two stories. Swing, drop, swing, drop, Buffy the Jungle Girl rides again! I hit the ground floor running and burst out into the inconveniently not deserted casino and... oh crappity do dah.

A maze of slot machines stretched off to the horizon, mocking me with cartoon fruit. I took a deep breath of cigarette smoke and way too many sweaty people and plunged into the mouth of the neon canyon, pinballing past clumps of oblivious gamblers. Blue-haired old ladies from Minnesota with a hawk-eye for the lucky seat. "Pardon me—" Zombified businessmen from L.A. attached symbiotically to their machines. "Gotta get through here—" Jaded twenty-somethings with pierced eyebrows and a system. "Move it!" Left, right, left again, drop to hands and knees and ow? I can name seventeen funner ways to get carpet burn. The forest of ankles parted and I wriggled towards freedom, scrambled out into the clear...

Twenty feet away from where I'd started.

With a scream of frustration I leaped to the top of the nearest row of slots. None of the gamblers so much as bothered to look up my skirt. Shading my eyes with both hands, I scoped the casino: There in the smoky distance was the Holy Grail of the front desk and Anselm's office. I leaped across the aisle, soaring over the heads of the crowd, landed on the next bank of slot machines and took off running. Complementary scotch-and-waters toppled to the floor and behind me—whoop-whoop-whoop! Double Diamond, Sizzling Sevens, Sea Quest, and Aladdin's Treasure all went off at once in the mother of all jackpots.

Leftover Vera-mojo or coincidence, you decide, but multiple payoffs? Way more riveting than a wild-eyed chick in blood-streaked Anna Paul. Anselm was so getting my dry-cleaning bill. Dozens of sharp-eared gamblers followed siren song of jingling quarters, and thundered to claim newly lucky machines, thwopping each other with purses and jabbing elbows into eyes. I leaped off the last of the no-armed bandits as casino security waded in to deal with two hairy-backed guys in Bermuda shorts mugging a woman in gold lame pedalpushers for her place at the Hot Peppers.

Anselm, of course, was in. He gave me a stunned-ox look as I crashed through the door. (The Slayer was not, I admit, looking her best). Irregardless of ooziness, I lunged across the desk and made a less-than successful attempt to grab him by his ectoplasmic lapels. "Come with me! You have to talk to Vera! Now!"

Anselm turned the same shade as low-fat yoghurt does when all the fruit sinks to the bottom. Sue me, between the vampire and the ghost I'm running short on synonyms for 'pale.' "I can't do that," Anselm gasped.

Oh, right, like he needed air. "What do you mean can't?" Imagine teeth-grindy, Eastwood-going-for-an-Oscar-level intensity, here. "Is this a ghost thing?" I rammed a fist through the wall and grabbed the nearest support stud, ready to rip. "Because if it takes dismantling this office to its component atoms to unstick you, I'll do it."

"No!" Anselm leaped up from his desk. "I can go anywhere in the hotel! I just—I can't face her! Don't you get it? I killed her! I loved her more than anything and I put a fucking bullet in her heart! How am I supposed to—"

Thirty years and he hadn't even talked to her? What a colossal guy! "Look, you big scaredy-cat," I snapped. "My husband tried to kill me for months, until I dropped a church on him! And yet somehow we manage to make small talk! Whatever you've done, I guarantee you Spike's done a million times worse. So get your transparent butt in gear and follow me!"

Logic said the elevator was probably faster than running up eighteen flights of stairs, even for a Slayer. I hate logic. It was the longest eighteen floors of my life. "Listen," I informed Anselm as the colored lights migrated slowly from button to button. "Vera doesn't want the ring. She never wanted the ring."

"You're crazy," Anselm said. He looked sick to his stomach, if ghosts had stomachs. Of course, if I'd been hiding in that office for three decades, I'd probably look queasy too. "The ring's all she's been asking for for thirty years!"

"The ring doesn't matter!" I interrupted. "Or well, yes, it matters, but not the way you think. It's what the ring stands for, and what it stood for was you. You going straight. You making a new life with her. That's what she wants. That's what she's always wanted. So get over yourself and go talk to her! NOW!"

The elevator dinged and I shoved him out through the doors before they opened—darned convenient, this ghost thing. I had to wait three whole seconds before I could squeeze through behind him. I really have to lay off those chocolate-covered strawberries. Oh, looky! A handy-dandy axe, thoughtfully provided by the management. BREAK IN CASE OF FIRE. And darn, no fire. Oh, well, I never was much for following instructions.

In the suite the carpet was crunchy with frost and the bed was completely hidden by a forest of rose-trees, huge gnarled trunks bristling with hoary grey thorns as long as my thumb. But who cared? Buffy Summers had an axe, to give the ghost-babe forty whacks. My blade bit into the wall of thorns, sending showers of wood chips and shredded blossoms flying. Long whippy rose-canes lashed at me and I lashed right back, hacking furiously at the big main trunk till pale heartwood showed.

I stumbled through into the cold heart of the rose-thicket. No leaves here, just white frost on bare black branches. Rose-vines bound Spike to the bed, their thorns piercing his flesh—he was in human shape now, his eyes slitted in his swollen face and his lips twisted in a defiant snarl. One hand lay clenched on his chest, like he was holding something precious. Vera straddled his hips, Princess Not-So-Charming bending to deliver a deadly kiss. All around them were shards of broken mirror, reflecting no one at all, and...

Rings. Dozens of them. Men's and women's, gold and platinum and silver, diamonds and pearls and emeralds and sapphires and rubies.

"Vera!" I shouted. "Brought you a wedding present!"

For a second I thought the ghost had gone Mr. Chicken on me, but then Anselm appeared. Poof. Big as life and twice as unnatural. "Vera, baby," he choked out. "Stop it! It's me."

The howling wind cut off and the room was filled with a deep winter silence. Slowly, Vera straightened, letting Spike fall. "Charlie?" she whispered, staring at Anselm. At least, as far as I could tell what with the mostly missing eyeballs. "Is that really you? Where you been, Charlie?"

Anselm fell to his knees. "Oh, God, baby, I'm sorry! I'm so fucking sorry!"

I made for the bed, keeping one hand on the axe just in case, and crouched down beside Spike. He was lying there bruised and motionless, his left hand clenched so fiercely over his heart I couldn't pry it open. The muscles in his arm were locked up like granite. "Spike?" I was shaking. Because it was cold. There was ice on my cheeks. Sweat. Totally. Slayers don't cry.

Rose petals fluttered to earth around us, settling on Spike's shoulders and clinging to my hair. I dropped a kiss on his lips, pressed an ear to his chest, and waited, and waited, and waited...and then his chest heaved and I heard the thump-thump of that stupid scare-the-crap-out-of-me-slow heartbeat. Spike's hand fumbled for mine, and Spike's cold hard fingers pressed something colder and harder into my own. "Got it," he husked.

"Did you kill me, Charlie? I can't hardly remember it." Vera stood in a pool of lace, Anselm kneeling at her feet. A single white rose masked the red wound in her chest. "Course I forgive you, honey. But you left me all alone, Charlie. That's hard. That's real hard."

"I had business to take care of, baby. They promoted me to manager, you know."

"Manager? You really made manager? No funny stuff?" Tattered flesh knit itself together across Vera's cheeks, but her voice was still fifty below. "You told me stuff like that before, Charlie. If I could believe—"

"It's all there, baby," Charlie Anselm said, low and passionate. "In the hotel's computer system—check the employee database if you don't believe me. I been working steady for thirty years, now. Honest work, like I promised you. I even got Employee of the Month. Forty-two times." He ducked his head, scuffed an immaculate and immaterial toe on the carpet. "I been putting away my paycheck regular, you know. So's we can have a nest egg. Not much I could spend it on, anyway."

Vera bent down, taking his face in her hands. "Don't you leave me again, Charlie. Don't you leave me!"

"Never, baby!" And Anselm surged to his feet and swept her off hers, and for the next few minutes they didn't need any help from me or Spike in the tantric energy department.

So anyway, two lovers reunited beyond the grave, totally romantic except for the gunshot wounds, and...uh...

"Hey!" I said, "Not to interrupt, but I've seen this part of the movie before, and isn't the stairway to Heaven supposed to show up about now?" All things considered I figured that there was a fifty-fifty that the Afterlife Express would be traveling in the opposite direction, but it didn't seem polite to mention it.

"Well...yeah, we could pass beyond the veil," Anselm said. "Nothing keeping us now." He and Vera exchanged uncomfy looks. Maybe I wasn't the only one calculating the odds. "But the thing is, I have a pretty sweet deal going on here at the Versailles. You don't find jobs with insurance packages this good so easy these days. Plus I got three years worth of personal time saved up, and I owe Vera a honeymoon."

"Niagara Falls, honey," said Vera, fluttering her eyelashes and fiddling with Anselm's tie. "It's traditional."

And Spike and I were alone in a sea of crumpled rose petals. I opened my hand, and there in my palm was my wedding ring. And a man's ring, too. Not quite the match of mine, but like it had been designed by the same jeweler, maybe. Diamonds cut and set a little differently. Rose-trellis design a little more abstract and masculine. I swallowed, and slipped it onto Spike's finger.

It fit perfectly.

****

Turns out there were still tickets available for Cirque du Soleil after all, and our account with the Versailles had acquired a mysterious week of comp time in a plushy and certified non-haunted suite, including enough casino credit to keep Spike in poker chips indefinitely and enough spa time to repair both my manicure and my temper. Color me shocked, shocked I tell you! When everything's done by computer, Anselm playing ghost in the machine was a real bonus.

The rings? We turned them over to the police, of course. Correction: I turned them over to the police, while Spike grumbled about the spoils of war. Except for the one Spike was wearing. None of the descriptions of lost rings the Versailles had totted up over the years matched that one, and where it came from was a mystery. Oh, yeah, sure, if I really tried I could probably find a rational explanation, but where's the fun in that?

"How'd you figure it, pet?" Spike asked. He was wrestling with his tie in front of the bathroom mirror. (I have no idea why a guy with no reflection insists on using a mirror to shave and wrestle with ties, but it's kind of cute.) I was sitting at the dressing table, dithering between the classy cream silk cocktail number and the slinky red low-cut wrap with black leather slacks. On the one hand, black leather. On the other, I could show off my new strappy stilleto-heel sandals with the cream silk, and Spike has a serious ankle fetish.

"Figure what?" I snuck a look in at what he was wearing. Mmmm, charcoal pinstripe with burgundy button-down. Definitely the cream.

Spike strolled out of the bathroom, sandy-brown curls gelled to waves of razor precision, suit jacket flung with studied casualness over one shoulder. My vampire cleans up nice. "What that Vera bint really wanted." He spun me around and zipped me up, burying his nose in the crook of my neck with a little ruff!

"It was what you said to Paguso that gave me the clue. If Vera couldn't be bought off by jewels when she was alive, she probably couldn't be bought off with jewels when she was dead, either." I slapped his hands away from my decolletage (the other word I remember from high school French) and stood on tiptoe to kiss his nose. "Besides, let's just say I have some experience with guys who change."

Spike looked down at me, a half-smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Do you, now? And who would these 'guys' be, seeing as yours truly's the same soulless bastard I ever was?"

Says the guy who hates to be reminded he skipped out on us at Lowell House. "Trust me. On this subject, I'm pretty much all-knowing." I took Spike's elbow and he laid his left hand over mine. I admired the twin flashes of gold against the elegant background of Georgio Valentini. They didn't match, our wedding rings. But they went together just fine. "And speaking of changes, I'm not loving the idea of living under an alias, 'William Williams.' What are we going to do about last names?" Not that I hadn't already, you know, doodled most of the acceptable alternatives all over the pad of hotel stationery.

"Hadn't thought about it." Head-tilt on stun, Captain. "I haven't used Pratt in so long it hardly feels like my name any longer. Guess I'd always featured you keeping your own."

There was that. Thoroughly modern Buffy. "Hey...maybe we could hyphenate."

He chuckled. "Pratt-Summers? Does have a bit of a ring to it."

The first time I met Spike, he wanted to kill me. Some ways? Spike hasn't changed. Some ways, Spike can't change. Some days, that bites us in the butt. Or butts.  It's usually a mutual butt-biting thing.  But there's a zillion ways of changing, and a zillion minus 'some' is still a pretty big number. Call me a high-roller, but I'll take those odds.

"Summers-Pratt," I said firmly. "Way ringier."

END