Bad Bargain Read online

  “We’ll hurry through,” Spike said, drawing her down the stairs. “It’ll be all right.”

  “Lickety-split, then.” Dru followed obediently until they entered the cellar corridor. When she saw more cartons of rummage sale donations piled on tables, she dashed ahead, her apprehension forgotten. “It’s a bargain basement, all waiting with needles and pins. Knitting needles, pine needles—”

  Spike cursed his luck. “We don’t have time to dawdle, Dru. They’ll be coming to get these boxes.”

  Dru held up a corkscrew and made a jabbing motion. “Poke it in the eye, blind the mice. But there’s more than three, and they won’t run—” She dropped the corkscrew when something else caught her eye.

  Spike listened to the sounds of people in the halls above. There were more than three, and they were coming closer.

  Drusilla picked up a sunburst pendant on a gold chain, turned it over in her hand, and traced the red and green stones with her finger. “It whispers with an aching heart—”

  “Who unlocked this door?” a man barked.

  Spike recognized Principal Snyder’s nasally voice. During the short time he and Drusilla had been in Sunnydale, he had identified and studied everyone who was close to the Slayer—friends and enemies. The perverse pleasure Snyder derived from giving Buffy Summers a hard time was his only redeeming characteristic and one reason Spike didn’t end his miserable life. The thought of feeding on the contemptuous little man made him nauseous.

  “It wasn’t us,” a girl snapped with indignation.

  “We just got here,” a boy said.

  “It’s broken!” Snyder snarled, as though the vandalism was a personal affront.

  “Who’d want to steal any of this trash?” a second girl asked, incredulous.

  As the students started down the stairs, Drusilla shuddered and threw the gaudy necklace into a box. “The longing wiggles and burns—”

  It was too late to run without being seen or heard. Cursing the seconds he had lost coddling Dru, Spike pulled her into the shadows behind a pile of boxes under the stairs. A guttural growl rumbled in her throat as Snyder and several teenagers descended into the basement.

  “Hide and seek,” Spike whispered. The deranged Drusilla had a child’s passion for games, and he hoped her desire to win was stronger than the temptation of young prey. “We’re hiding.”

  “They’ll never find us,” Dru said softly.

  “Everyone grab a box,” Snyder ordered. “As soon as maintenance fixes that door, it’s getting locked and staying locked just like the sign says, so don’t leave anything behind.”

  The guitar player from Dingoes Ate My Baby picked up the box with the sunburst pendant. Dru had been so profoundly disturbed by the necklace that Spike suspected it had some mystical properties. The Hellmouth would significantly enhance even simple folk magick.

  “Dullards can’t even smell the rats scampering in the walls,” Dru whispered with disdain, “and the wee hearts racing all frantic and aflutter with fright. Squealing canapés for the serpent, they are.”

  Hushing her with a finger to his lips, Spike waited until Snyder and his entourage were back upstairs. When the coast was clear, he led Dru down the concrete passageway toward the basement hatch into the tunnel system. As they turned into an adjacent corridor, the flapping of wings and a high-pitched screech brought him to an abrupt halt.

  Dru clamped her hands to her ears. “The song stings, like nettles in my ears!”

  The excruciating noise came from a hoard of bats unlike any Spike had ever seen. Red, with three-inch fangs and a three-foot wingspan, they flew in haphazard disarray at the end of the corridor. They had no eyes, but they instantly detected the vampires. Whether alerted by hearing or some other sensory ability, the bats turned and swept toward them as a cohesive unit.

  Spike recalled Drusilla’s words as they raced back the way they had come.

  “. . . with velvet wings for dancing on the ceiling.”

  The obscure warning was meaningless now that they were under attack. The bats blocked the route to the tunnel hatch, and there were too many to fight off without endangering Dru. With hundreds of students streaming into the school, taking cover seemed prudent.

  Spike ducked into a storeroom, pulled Drusilla inside after him, and turned to close the door. Given Dru’s melodramatic musing about beasts and the burning necklace, he couldn’t help but wonder if the jewel and the bats were connected.

  Drusilla screamed, banishing his reflections.

  “It’s all right, love. There’s nothing in—” The rest of Spike’s words hung unspoken in the dark. Drusilla flailed, trying to beat off a crimson bat.

  Spike’s rage instantly manifested with ridged bone and fangs. Roaring, he clamped his hand over the winged creature’s neck and pulled it off Dru. The vicious animal fought with the strength of a thousand beasts its size, erasing any doubt that it was demonic. But Spike felt no kinship with the hellish creature. He crushed its skull against the cinderblock wall, severed the head from the body, and stomped it into a bloody mass of red flesh, acid blood, and splintered bone.

  When the killer lust subsided, Spike knelt to examine Dru. “Did it hurt you?”

  “Stuck,” Dru muttered, “with poison pins.”

  Spike gently brushed ringlets of dark hair away from her face. The blood of her last meal oozed from two deep puncture wounds in her shoulder.

  * * *

  Xander unfolded the orange blanket, but the camouflaged hunting vest he had hidden inside it last night was gone. “Stolen. The question is, by whom?”

  “Someone else with a military fetish?” Willow teased.

  “Not a fetish,” Xander insisted. He was neither single-mindedly devoted to nor irrationally excited by fabrics that blended in with natural surroundings. “It’s an identity thing.”

  “Yeah, well—okay.” Willow didn’t press.

  That was the latest in hundreds of reasons why Willow Rosenberg had been his best friend forever. She never talked about it, but she understood that a few hours of being a real soldier had made him aware of his own untapped strengths and capabilities.

  “There’s Devon and that guitar guy.” Willow tracked the two boys as they entered the cafeteria with a group of football players and cheerleaders.

  “Are you afraid of them?” Xander asked, perplexed when she suddenly stepped behind him. “Are they after you?”

  Xander was only mildly acquainted with the members of Dingoes Ate My Baby, but they weren’t dangerous. They were musicians. The only threat they presented was ignoring anyone beneath them on the popularity roster, which was just about everyone.

  “No, he doesn’t even know I’m alive, not that it would make any diff—” Willow faltered. “Just go ask them to keep playing that old music today, will you?”

  “You go ask them.” Xander couldn’t believe that Willow had a crush on Cordelia’s ex, but the signs were obvious. “Devon doesn’t bite, and I know for a fact that he’s available.”

  “Devon? You think I want Cordelia’s castoff?” A frown hardened Willow’s perky, freckled face.

  Xander shrugged. “This is a rummage sale. Every-thing’s a hand-me-down.”

  Willow cuffed his arm. “Even I have more self-esteem than that. Go ask or . . . or I’ll carry the whereabouts of your hunting vest to my grave, which I hope nobody digs for another sixty or seventy years.”

  “You took it?”

  Willow clamped her mouth shut and made a zipper gesture.

  “Okay. I’ll go ask.” Shaking his head, Xander ducked under the table into the next aisle. In the Sunnydale scope of catastrophes, losing a used piece of clothing wasn’t even a blip. As omens went, however, it boded well for Buffy’s wish. Maybe they would have a weekend where all they had to worry about was not getting the secondhand merchandise they wanted and dying of boredom.

  Or getting a month’s detention for blocking an aisle, Xander thought as Principal Snyder marched toward him between tables.
The man’s face was rigid with a look of permanent displeasure, but he charged past Xander without a glance.

  “Ms. Calendar!” Snyder waved at the faculty adviser. “It’s after nine o’clock. I expect the rummage sale to open on time. The Mayor will be here at noon sharp for a photo op when the first customers come in.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Ms. Calendar assured him. Her tight smile turned into a look of pure loathing when he turned his back. A pagan with a load of smarts but no power, or so she had told Giles, Jenny Calendar could only wish boils or perpetual hiccups on Snyder.

  Xander stuck to his usual MO when dealing with the principal. He moved briskly in the opposite direction.

  Devon and Oz had stopped to help Cheryl Saunders unload an assortment of potted houseplants, and Xander arrived at the music table ahead of them. Rather than wait like a groupie wanting an autograph, he flipped through the old albums.

  “You’re in clothes, right?” Oz asked, coming up behind him a minute later.

  “Right.” Xander held his hands up. “Not naked.”

  The boy smiled. “No, I meant you and Willow.”

  When the self-conscious girl caught both boys looking her way, she dropped the roll of price stickers. Xander could almost hear her gasp as she stooped to pick it up.

  “She sent me over to ask—”

  Oz perked up.

  “—if you and Devon would keep playing the golden oldies,” Xander finished. “Willow and Buffy think doo-wop and psychedelic rock will make people spend more money.”

  “That could work.” Oz held out the cardboard box. “This is clothes and some other stuff. Your department, not ours.”

  “Don’t think so.” Harmony peered over Oz’s shoulder into the box. “I see things that belong in the expensive department. I’ll take it.”

  Xander didn’t object when Oz handed her the box. He asked a more important question. “Have either one of you seen a camouflage hunting vest?”

  “Can’t say that I have.” Oz turned on the old stereo and reached for a small vinyl record. “But I found a pair of sheepskin seat covers that will look great in my van.”

  “The van with zebra stripes?” Xander hadn’t male-bonded since he had staked Jesse, his best friend turned vampire, but Oz seemed sincere and likeable.

  “Yeah, but I’m thinking of painting it blue.” Oz pressed a yellow plastic disk into the large hole in the middle of the forty-five, then fit the small hole in the yellow plastic onto the turntable spindle.

  “Have you seen the jewelry someone took out of the display case?” Harmony asked.

  “Someone stole jewelry? Something specific?” Xander wondered if Michael had come back in the middle of the night to look for his medallion.

  “Some chain necklaces, a couple of bracelets, and a pair of rhinestone earrings. Why?” Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”

  “Not a thing,” Xander answered quickly. He wasn’t about to sic the insipid, painfully blunt Harmony on the verbally unarmed Michael Czajak. If Michael had stolen his charm back, it was a victory for the little people. “Gotta go.”

  Xander snapped his fingers and bounced to the rock-and-roll beat of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” on his way back to men’s shirts.

  Willow was folding and pricing clothes from another box someone had dumped. She didn’t ask about the music or his conversation with Oz. She announced, “The glow-green shorts are missing.”

  “Now that’s odd.” Xander could see why someone might want the hunting vest, but not the can’t-miss-me-in-the-dark underwear. Unless Michael is hiding some bizarre fashion preferences under his bland public image.

  When Michael crept into the cafeteria, trying not to draw attention, Xander dropped him as a suspect. The boy wouldn’t have come back if he had found his amulet.

  * * *

  “Nothing happened?” Giles eyed Buffy over the top of his glasses. It was a classic look of adult disbelief designed to rattle teenagers who were hedging the truth.

  “Nope.” Buffy wasn’t rattled, but she wasn’t trying to hide anything, either. Perched on the edge of the library study table, she met his skeptical stare with a look of unflinching conviction. “No new vamps rising from cemetery cradles, no aspiring Frankensteins or demons that want to be real boys looking for body parts, no monsters itching to put a Slayer notch on . . . whatever they notch—”

  Giles cut her off. “Yes, I get the picture. It’s a trifle alarming, actually.”

  Buffy frowned. “Right. I can’t sleep unless I’ve had to fend off a few fiends before going to bed.”

  “Hmmm?” The Watcher looked up.

  “Why is no evil deed for one night a problem?” Buffy asked, puzzled. “Even vampires and demons must need some down time now and then.”

  “Not really,” Giles said. “Not unless they’re plotting or saving their strength for a particularly horrendous event.”

  “Is there a Watcher rule against humoring a Slayer’s desperate desire to forget about killing or being killed for a couple of days?”

  Buffy knew the answer, but the question had to be asked anyway. If she didn’t remind Giles that she was a girl with friends and non-Slayer activities, he would assume she had finally decided to accept the restrictions of being the Chosen One. Sooner or later he’d have to accept that she wouldn’t give up control of her dreams or her destiny.

  “Forgetting could be deadly, don’t you think?” Noting her look of consternation, Giles changed tactics. “And what would you rather be doing than keeping evil at bay this weekend?”

  “The school rummage sale? We’re raising money to send the marching band to the state competition in Sacramento.”

  “Of course.” Giles smiled tightly. “Tooting horns and clanging cymbals while hiking in lockstep is so much more necessary than the preservation of life on the planet.”

  Buffy stiffened. “Is something threatening the planet?”

  “No, I was just—” Giles pulled up a chair. “I just don’t want you to get so involved in other, inconsequential things that you let down your guard.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got this weird Slayer sixth sense that warns me when . . .” Buffy frowned.

  “When what?” Giles asked expectantly.

  “Last night I had a feeling that something was . . . off,” Buffy explained. “Angel felt it too, but . . . nothing happened.”

  “And now?”

  Buffy shrugged. “I can’t tell if I’m sensing something weird or if talking about it makes me think I am.”

  “And you’re absolutely certain that nothing happened right before this feeling started?”

  “Michael Czajak lost a protection charm.” Buffy matched the Watcher’s worried frown. “Actually his mom gave it to the rummage sale.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Probably not,” Buffy said, “but he claims this gold medallion protects him from Sunnydale’s goblins and ghouls. So . . . do charms work?”

  “Some,” Giles admitted, “but there’s no all-purpose protection spell or talisman. Generally speaking, they have to be conjured for a specific threat, and even then their effectiveness is usually limited.”

  “So we couldn’t have made a thingy to protect me from the Master,” Buffy stated flatly.

  “No.” Giles averted his eyes. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for her almost-permanent death at the Master’s hands. “If that had been possible, I would have done it.”

  “I know.” Buffy smiled, but now she was on edge. “So what are the chances that Michael’s missing amulet has me feeling like mystical centipedes are drag racing in my veins?”

  “An amateur spell?” Giles stood up and adjusted his glasses. “I rather doubt it, but we are on the Hellmouth. You might want to keep an eye on this Michael fellow, as a precaution.”

  “Okay.” Buffy slid off the table and glanced back as she headed toward the swinging doors. “Should I tell Ms. Calendar you think the rummage sale is inconsequential, or would you rather
owe me one?”

  “What? You—” Giles looked stricken. “I’d rather not have cause for harsh words with anyone, thank you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Buffy grinned as she pushed through the doors into the hall. For all his stiff and pompous ways, Giles could be reduced to sputtering incoherence when it came to Jenny Calendar. It was sweet, and despite her teasing, she wouldn’t do anything to ruin things for him.

  As she headed toward the cafeteria, Buffy wondered if the crate of Joel Shavin paintings had arrived at the gallery yet. Her mom had to take delivery before she could leave to bring the art donations to the school. Buffy wasn’t worried about her own reputation in the community, but Ms. Calendar had mentioned the unique pieces on flyers and in a newspaper article about the school sale, hoping to attract customers from Sunnydale’s upper crust.

  * * *

  Michael Czajak stayed in the shadows along the wall. The cafeteria had been transformed into a bustling retail enterprise overnight. Students and teachers were still busy unpacking and pricing sale items, rushing to finish before the noon deadline in two hours. Sorting everything into categories would make the sale more convenient for shoppers, but it didn’t make his search easier. It kept him rooted in hiding near the objet d’art and jewelry tables where Cordelia Chase was clearly in charge.

  “What did you find?” Cordelia asked when Harmony set a box on the end of the table. “You look like you uncovered Blackbeard’s treasure or something.

  Harmony bubbled with enthusiasm. “I just happened to be looking over Oz’s shoulder when he almost gave this box to that zero-charisma Zanzibar—”

  “You mean Xander Harris?” Cordelia asked, looking into the box.

  “I guess. Does it matter?” Harmony scoffed. “Anyway, I thought we should have that old-timey metal compact and that silver picture frame and that . . .”

  Tuning out Harmony’s annoying voice, Michael stared at the glass display cases. Gold and silver gleamed under the overhead lights, and he could discern splashes of color—blue and purple, as well as red and green. He had only begun to dabble in magick and didn’t know much beyond the fundamentals. However, it seemed likely that his amulet would make itself known to him somehow—if the spell had worked.