Chapter 10 - Prisoners and Payment

Ann arranged the five prisoners on the two couches in the living room, their gear, except for their weapons, in neat, separate piles, on the low table in front of them. "You five, do only and exactly what Buffy tells you to do. My phone's ringing." She hurried to the library, still as Harmony.

"Don't talk," Buffy said. "Don't move."

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Shortly, Ann returned to the living room. "I must go."

"Ann?" Tara asked.

"It seems to me that you all can handle this now. Wesley says Cordelia demands that I come talk to her, something about a vision. Gang Long, if you can help Spike and Buffy, you are free to do so if you wish."

Harmony appeared in the living room. Ann shifted back to herself, including her clothes: "Harmony, do only and exactly what Spike tells you to do. Tara, you stay in this house until I get back." Ann handed Giles the keys for the restraints and blinked out.

"Cordelia has a vision for Ann?" Buffy asked.

"Usually they're for Angel, or maybe everybody else in the office down there. I don't know why Cordelia would be getting one for Ann," Willow said.

"According to Wesley, they come from the powers that be," Giles said. "Presumably, the powers are aware that Cordelia knows Ann."

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"Let's adjourn to the library," Giles said. "So we can examine all this."

"OK," Xander said, picking up a pile.

"Wait," Willow said. "Let's label these: the man and the junk, so we can keep track of who has what."

"Harmony," Spike said. "Come with us, but be quiet."

"Why?" Buffy asked.

"She has a unique and direct method of dealing with mortal enemies," Spike said. "And we went to some trouble to capture them alive."

"Very true," Giles said.

"So what's this?" Buffy asked, picking up a head set from the first pile.

"Camera," Willow said. "There should be more of it--power pack, and disk or tape. Yes, here."

"They were going to tape staking Harmony?" Buffy said.

"Proving you've killed a vampire," Spike pointed out, "is difficult. You can't really cut an ear off the corpse."

"Ugh," Tara said.

"So a tape may be your only way of proving that you have murdered one of us."

"Has anyone ever done an analysis of the dust you leave?" Willow asked.

"Ask Claire, she knows all sorts of really tasteless facts."

"Willow, let me see that, would you?" Tara asked.

"Here."

"This is interesting. I want to get back to this," Tara said.

"Later," Buffy said.

"A credit card. Pre-paid," Willow said, examining a wallet from the first pile.

"How can you tell?"

"Like travelers' checks," the Witch said. "Only a signature. No embossed names, just numbers. My parents gave me one for my birthday. Not this big, of course."

Giles opened one of the money belts. "My," he said softly, removing seven $10,000 bills.

"Who's that?" Xander asked, looking at a bill.

"Chase," Spike read.

"Who?"

There was a total of 21 $10,000 bills, evenly divided among the money belts in piles two, three and five.

"It was the fourth man, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Willow said, spreading out the contents of Four's pockets and the jumble around his neck. She ran her hand over the line. "This one," she said. "This one is real. Interesting."

"Oh, yes. Strong."

"But not perfect, since Ann fooled him. I wonder where he got it." Willow put the medallion back in Four's pile and picked up his wallet. Four had a credit card..

"Shall we assume the money men are together and the credit men are a second group?" Giles said.

"It's a start," Spike agreed.

"So what did the dead guy have?" Xander asked. "A credit card or a money belt?"

"Neither, by the time Ann and I got there," Spike said.

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"No, money is designed to go from person to person," Willow said. "That's what it's supposed to do, and there's no way to trace it, even if it's stolen. The credit card may be individual enough that it can adsorb some of the intent or personality of the purchaser."

"Try it," Buffy agreed.

Tara produced a circular dry-erase board. She took the list Alice had made of Harmony's victims' real names and started writing them around the outer circumference. Willow waited until she was done, then placed the credit card from the first pile in the center of the board. Tara traced a circle in the air around the board, and spoke one word. The credit card moved out along a radius to the name James Sternwood.

"Excellent," Giles said. "Actually, Willow, there is a simple non-magical way of tracing bills this large."

"Oh? How?"

"The serial numbers," Giles pointed out.

"Oh. Them," Willow said.

"So what do we do next?" Tara asked. "Ask Alice to find out about the numbers, on the money and the credit cards? Or ask the men with the credit cards if they know James Sternwood?"

"If you two check the other credit card, while someone talks to Alice," Giles said, "Buffy and I can ask the first credit card holder if he knows Sternwood. We all can talk again after those tasks are done."

"I'll talk to Alice," Spike said. "What are the numbers we want her to look into for us?"

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"Alice says she'll work on the numbers. She's optimistic about tracing the money, something about that denomination of currency being recorded any time one of them passes in or out of a bank, and she'll get back to us when she has news. She says Denis was last seen three days ago. Charles may be at his parents, and she left a message for him to call her. Ian's and Zac's whereabouts continue to be unknown," Spike said.

"The second credit card," reported Willow, "also responds to James Sternwood's name."

"The first man," Buffy offered, "does not know James Sternwood or any parent or sibling of his."

"That's weird," Tara said.

"He was supposed to stake a vampire called Harmony," Giles said. "But he has no idea why."

"I'll ask him about Denis and Zac," Buffy said. "What are their last names?"

"Ah, Denis Milson and Zac Gardner," Tara read.

"We left the first man in the dining room," Giles said.

"We can still leave him there, and put number four in the little north room," Buffy said. "So they're not comparing notes between questions."

"Gang Long," Spike said, "were you serious about cells?"

"Yes," the boy said. "You can't get there, only Wu Jing and I can port ourselves or prisoners in and out, but we have access to lots of storage space."

"So when Buffy and Giles finish with One and Four, can you stash them away for us?"

"Certainly."

"We are getting a little cluttered," Giles said.

"Harmony," Spike asked, looking at the dates on the dry-erase board and obviously following a train of thought, "did Denis know James?"

"Well, yes, I mean I introduced them. Denny was there when I changed Jake."

"You were doing a three-way?"

"Well, yes. How else?"

"Gross," Tara said.

"Excellent question, Spike," Giles said. "I should have thought to ask that."

"You've turned all respectable, Rupert. It wouldn't have occurred to you, these days."

Buffy, who had been eyeing Harmony with acute distaste, glanced up at Giles, then over at Spike. She turned away from them both and left the library, saying over her shoulder: "I'll move the fourth man into the little north room." She refrained from slamming the library door.

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"Who are we questioning now?" Willow asked.

"Giles is in the living room with Two. Buffy and Xander are in the dining room with Three. Spike and Tara are in the little north room with Five," Anya said. "The numbers don't seem to reflect their personalities at all. We should have arranged them more carefully."

"Like how?" Willow asked.

"Well, Five is more a Two, it seems to me, sort of calm and even. One is OK; but Four should be odd, since he isn't square in the least; and I think we should have called Three, Six."

"We'll work on it," Willow assured the ex-demon.

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"I'm getting better at this `Twenty Questions' style of interrogation," Giles said, returning to the library.

"It's not that easy to maintain," Spike agreed

"You're better at it than I am, Spike," Tara said.

"I'm older," he reminded her. "And we didn't have TV when I was growing up."

"Two, the one in the living room, admitted that a mature woman, in the company of boy named James, gave them the $210,000 and told them to stake, and they were specific about the staking part, a vampire named Harmony and one named Denis. He says they got Denis three days ago."

"Five agrees with all that," Tara said.

"Except the mature part about the woman," Spike said.

"So does Three," Xander said.

"Yes," Buffy said. "Giles, you and Spike write a list of the questions that will get us the most damaging answers. Willow, Tara, where's the video camera Ann had when the demon was here? Failing that, has anyone else got one? I want to tape these confessions."

"Good idea," Xander said.

"I don't think the evidence lends itself to a court case," Giles said.

"No, that's awkward in the extreme, for a lot of people. So let's try blackmail," Buffy said.

"Blackmail's good," Willow agreed. "We can't let hired guns shoot up the Bronze, even if they are after Harmony, which is almost excusable, at least sometimes."

"But not while we're there," Anya said.

"That was wrong of them," Tara said.

"It's socially embarrassing to have a vampire in the family," Spike said.

"Not for everybody," Willow said. "I mean, some families buy the blood and like that."

Buffy was looking at Spike, but shifted her gaze to Giles as he said: "Spike has a point. Even if the family supports them, they may not want everyone else to know their son is a vampire."

"Something I was looking at on the net," Willow said. "The National Mirror."

"You read that?" Spike demanded "That's trash. Did you catch the story about the seven year old grandmother?"

"What?" Buffy asked.

"What about such a disreputable rag?" Giles asked.

"We'll send them a copy of the tape," Willow said, "or threaten to, if Mrs. Sternwood won't stop sending killers to Sunnydale."

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(Chapter 11)

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