by Lynn K. Hollander
Chapter 6 - Maneuver and engagement.
"Good evening."
Giles, Spike and Gang Long looked up abruptly.
A man with oriental features appeared in the shop.
Gang Long looked at him, then bowed.
The man bowed back, and spoke in what Giles assumed was Chinese, ending with: "But let us speak English. What you are searching for is in there." He gestured to the trap door, now standing open in the section of the store off to the right of the main entrance.
"Bloody hell!" Spike said. "I didn't check the basement, the night Anya was hit. Barzilai was here, with the trap shut, and I didn't go down."
"Shall we now?" the man said, leading the way.
Giles, Gang Long and Spike followed.
"That cabinet," the man indicated a cupboard on the opposite wall from the stairs.
Giles opened the cabinet. There were old paint cans, empty turpentine tins, and dried brushes. He shook the cans and the third one rattled, in a sort of muffled way. He brought it out, and using a screwdriver, opened it. He removed a package, wrapped in rice paper and tied with red silk cord. He looked up.
"Open it," the man said.
As Giles unwrapped the object, Gang Long's face changed. Spike thought if the boy had had his dragon ears, they would have slowly stood up. Inside the rice paper was quilted red silk. Inside the quilted red silk was quilted gold silk. Inside the quilted gold silk was a small, glowing peach..
"This?" Giles asked
"Tell him," the man told the dragon.
"It's a peach from the orchard of Xiwangmu."
"Ah?"
"It confers immortality."
"Ah. And I assume it is stolen?"
"Yes," the unknown man said. "But don't worry about that. I'm not here to reclaim it. Xiwangmu does not pursue thieves, they amuse her more often than not. You may proceed with the auction tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Ten tonight. Let me congratulate you on your preparations. Barzilai will attempt to cheat. The silk wrapping are magic insulators. Inside them, the peach is nearly undetectable and relatively safe."
Giles nodded, and rewrapped the peach.
"Your grandmother," the man told Gang Long, "was concerned for your safety. Now, I can reassure her and tell her you are fortunate in your friends." He disappeared.
"Your grandmother's orchard?" Giles asked.
"No," Gang Long said "Xiwangmu lets us play there, though."
"Did you know him?" Giles asked.
"I know he's a zhenren, an immortal," Gang Long answered. "Probably one of the gardeners."
"You're tempted," Spike said softly.
Giles looked up from the peach: "Since coming to Sunnydale, I've become very aware of my mortality. Apocalypses, demons, freeways, children with guns; here, death is always close at hand. If you were human, now, after being immortal, would you eat it?"
"I'm glad I don't have to decide that," Spike said.
"And if I eat it," Giles said quietly, "I will almost certainly be alive to watch Dawn die, too." He smiled at the two immortals. "I am not that tempted."
***
"You humans take life and death seriously."
"Well, yeah."
"Is that why you were angry with Jingwu and me?"
"Yeah," Spike said. "You're alive, Buffy isn't, and you don't care."
"That's true, but that doesn't mean what you think."
***
"Did he even bother to tell you how many buyers are coming?" Giles said into the phone.
`No, he didn't," Anya said. She was clearly annoyed with Barzilai. "He did say, forty chairs and refreshments, so it can't be more than that. "
"No," Giles said firmly. "No refreshments. No one who knows him will eat or drink anything while he's around, certainly not any of us. Chairs only. Oh, and clear away the breakable items, please, Anya."
"Like me and Xander?"
"I'm afraid we humans must take our chances." Giles rang off.
At the Magic Box, Anya started looking up rental agencies.
***
At the Summers house on Ravello, Giles was facing another annoyed female. "No," he said.
"I want to watch," Dawn said.
"The buyers, according to Barzilai, are powerful magicians or people rich enough to hire powerful magicians. We assume at least two of them are evil: Kallis and whoever is coming from Wolfram and Hart. All of them are dangerous. If they notice you, you may be of interest to them. We don't want that."
"He saw me and he didn't notice anything. Glory didn't notice anything until after Ben told on me."
"Glory was an idiot," Spike said. "And that smarmy fop has all the acumen of a sponge."
"You're just jealous because he dresses better than you do."
"He does not dress better than I do, he just dresses in a different style."
"Dawn," Giles said: "You will go to Ann's and stay there. Xander and Anya will join you before the auction."
"You can't make me."
Frustrated, Giles looked around.
"I can," Willow said. "And I will."
"Spike won't let you."
"Wrong," Spike said. "I'll help her. Until you can defend yourself, you do what we think you need to do to be safe. When you're as good a Witch as Willow is, you can do what Willow does. Until then, you go to Ann's for safe keeping."
"And don't try to play one of us off against the others, Dawn," Giles said. "You know we all love you and now you know that won't work, so don't give Xander and Anya a hard time."
"Oh, all right." Dawn stomped upstairs.
"So she'll think of something else," Spike said.
"She's a normal teenager," Willow said. "Limits must be established by us and pushed at by her. That's the human way; and it's really a pain, at least on this side of the process. Actually," she said after a moment's consideration, "it wasn't that much fun when I was the teenager, either."
"I never realized how very brave parents were," Giles said.
"At least the ones who do it twice," Spike said. "The first time is usually just hormones."
Dawn came back downstairs, carrying her pack and an overnight bag. "Let's go." She, Willow and Spike, who picked up his blanket on the way, went out.
***
Spike walked in the front door of the shop. Xander and Anya were there, arranging rows of chairs in the lower level.
Glass cabinets had been moved back, the old wooden table and chairs removed, and Giles was experimenting with the lighting.
Spike needlessly checked the trap to the basement, making sure it was operable. "Looks good," he said.
"We have exactly forty chairs," Anya said. "I hope the visiting nasties realize we didn't have anything to do with the invitations."
Giles came over. "Time for you two to go."
"Yeah," Xander said.
Spike pulled out the keys to the Viper. Giving them a lingering look, he handed them to Xander.
"Hey," Xander said.
"Be careful, OK, Harris? And not just of the car."
"You too," Xander said and he and Anya left.
"The other cars?" Giles asked.
"Already out of the way at Ann's. If Barzilai tries to run with the peach, the cars won't confuse any pursuers. Tara, Filis and Thierry are using the rental Honda, which is just a car. They'll be here soon. They're swinging up and around and picking up Willow."
"Why didn't she come with you?"
"Beroule and Willow are making up these," Spike lifted an amulet, resembling a black lace mitten flattened on top of a pressed green frog, on a silk cord, from under his shirt, "which should protect us from the death curse Kallis used on the Garza, but probably not from some other form of curse. It's the best they could do."
***
Willow arrived with Tara, Filis and Thierry.
"Are we ready?" she asked, handing Giles his amulet.
"Like we have a choice?" Spike said.
"The only one I like--running away, screaming or silent, I don't care--isn't an option, so, no." Willow was nervously playing with a ping pong ball.
"Is there anything we can do right now that we have left undone?" he asked, more seriously.
"No."
"Then stop worrying."
"Oh, sure," Willow said, but she managed a smile.
Right after that, the buyers started arriving.
***
Spike was swamped by the expensive tailoring. He lost track of the Armani, the Pal Zileri, the Dolce and Gabbana. He realized he didn't know the names of the ones he liked best, and he stopped paying attention just as Giles was handling a scene:
"Your auction number," Giles said firmly, "is the cardinal of your arrival order. The fifth to arrive is number 5. The seventeenth is 17. That is all it means."
"I should outrank Riza."
"This is not the office of Unicorn Pursuivant at the Court of St. James or even the protocol section of the American State Department. We are not concerned with precedence. For this auction, you are number 23. Use it or get out."
"You're holding up the line, Cireen. You heard the man, use it or get out," number 24, a short copper skinned woman, with masses of straight black hair in an elaborate chignon, said.
"Good lord," Giles said softly to Spike. "They make Dawn appear mature."
"And if you back down at all, they'll walk all over you," Spike said.
Many of the buyers seemed to know each other and Spike caught fragments of many conversations:
"No, they're still together--conjoined at the hip, remember?"
"I thought they fixed that."
Kallis arrived. He proved to be a tall fleshy man with a high color and receding white hair. His full round face was cheerful, with a dimple in his chin; his hands and feet were small for his height. He wore a fine wool suit, pin stripped, and a checked tie. He announced his name, accepted his number and sat down, all with a quiet smile. He was number 34.
"...she apparently forgot the third term and the demon walked right out of the circle and ate her."
Number 35 and 36 kept the line waiting while they exchanged elaborate and extended verbal courtesies complete with ballet-like flourishes. At least Spike assumed they were exchanging courtesies, but since the conversation was not in English, Latin, French or German, he didn't understand a word.
"...inverted himself instead and of course he starved to death before he..."
The representative from Wolfram and Hart was Lilah Morgan. She was a very nice package, Spike thought, tall, young, with very beautiful hands, a lovely long neck, a full bust, and cold eyes. She wanted to bring her bodyguards in and was glaring at Giles as he insisted that they wait for her outside. No one supported her, and eventually she gave way.
"...so while he was looking for the proper dagger, the sacrifice stole the ritual candlesticks and escaped."
What did surprise Spike, good mid-Victorian male that he had been, was the number of women who attended by themselves. While he had been wrapped up in being a vampire, a substantial fraction of the world's wealth had shifted into female hands. Interesting, but not appealing, he thought, dodging a speculative and assessing gaze from a human female who looked as if she were older than Darla.
"...since they couldn't decide who got custody of the children, they're still together."
"Better him than them, I suppose."
Barzilai was the last to arrive. He wore his caramel colored ensemble again and looked more out of place than he had at the Cottonwood Creek Casino. He shut the front door and walked up to the lectern Giles had located somewhere.
"Thank you for coming. The official wire transfer destination is: 108854-38196073 @ www.banqueprivédeseyschelles.com. We will start in just a moment." Barzilai pulled up the trap door and descended into the basement. Giles, Spike, Tara and Willow, Filis and Thierry followed him. He looked up, but was reassured when the others formed a horseshoe around him and waited expectantly.
He smiled and opened the paint cabinet. Taking the third can from the right, he opened it and removed the neatly retied rice paper package. Slowly, teasingly, watching their faces, he unwrapped it, discarding the paper, the red silk and then the yellow silk, revealing the crystal phone Ann had given Spike. The watching horseshoe smiled. Barzilai frowned at them, then looked down. His face fell. "What?" he asked. He dropped the phone and started to bring his hands up.
Upstairs, the buyers sensed the sudden appearance of a magical artifact. A few soft murmurs were all the response they gave.
In the basement, Giles and the others surged over Barzilai.
Thierry wrapped his arms around Barzilai from the back, preventing any wide movements the man might have tried to make. As Spike squeezed Barzilai's right hand, Barzilai's left hand eluded Giles and scrabbled at his chest. Giles made a second grab and was successful in immobilizing Barzilai's remaining free hand. Willow stepped forward and stuck the ping pong ball in Barzilai's mouth, and Filis wrapped the adhesive tape she carried around his head, holding the ball in place.
Tara came up beside Willow and they chanted, sending Barzilai into a deep sleep.
Everyone took a breath, except Spike.
"What was he after? Around his neck?" Spike asked.
Willow felt under the turtleneck sweater. She pulled a cord over the unconscious man's head and removed a rectangular piece of silver colored metal. "Hmm." She looked at the characters engraved on both sides of it and frowned.
"What is it?"
"I think it's a charm to do sort of what I did to Glory those times, only more so. The molasses spell? I don't think anyone here could move after he activated this little thing."
"He should have a counter agent," Tara said.
"His rings," Filis said, holding one hand over her eye.
"This one," Willow said, indicating a yellow gold ring set with a ruby. "Sort of a freedom enhancer, a passport." She removed it, then all Barzilai's other rings.
Giles offered the quilted red silk, and Willow wrapped up the rings in it. The necklace and the passport ring, she wrapped in the yellow silk.
"Check his pockets, Spike," Willow said.
Spike emptied all the pockets into a wooden box that Tara opened for him.
"So he was going to sell the peach, let the money go to his account, severely slow the buyers, retake the peach, and leave? Was that his plan?" Giles asked.
"He has a very powerful supplier, or at any rate a supplier of very powerful artifacts. If he's used this one, I think he could have gotten away. Not us, of course, just him," Willow said, looking over the contents of the box before placing the red silk in it. "What a weird mix. Some are gawds, some are powerful."
Filis looked at the box. "I think they're all from different makers."
Willow closed the box, and murmured to it, sealing it.
"Good," Filis said.
"What about the money?" Giles asked.
"I don't know and I don't care," Willow said, putting the yellow silk in her pocket. "Let's get this over with, and get him out of our lives. He's relatively harmless at the moment, as long as I have all his charms."
"Chains," Tara said. "Just in case."
"Here," Thierry said, offering her the restraints.
Giles took the crystal phone and called Gang Long.