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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part IX

She had showed up for the conference already dressed for the evening’s activities, so there was no need for her to return home to change. Cordelia began her standard evening sweep, dismissing the initial thought of checking the burned-out science building first; Angel never had any trouble finding her when he wanted, and she wasn’t about to let him dictate her movements. She started at one of Sunnydale’s many cemeteries, and left the car carrying her standard complement of concealed stakes and the sword Angel had tossed at her last night.

Her usual wariness was fuzzed, and she knew it. Straight ahead was clear, sharp, but the periphery continued to shrink. She thought of what Oz had said. Sleep deprivation, she remembered, was one of the means used by some intelligence agencies (those too sophisticated to go for simple torture, along with the ones who just liked to vary their routine or who couldn’t afford to leave marks) to break down prisoners for questioning. Even for flat-out brainwashing. If something like that was happening to her now, how long could she continue to trust her judgment?

Because she’d made such good decisions before the cycle of dreams started …

“Ready to play nice yet, princess?” The voice floated on the night breeze, soft and directionless, and Cordelia spun with the sword in her hand, looking for the source. Motion caught her attention, a hand waving briskly — yes, there, Angel, standing half-concealed by a tree — and as her eyes found him, he stepped out with that eternal self-satisfied smirk on his face. “I mean, fair is fair; I found the apocalypse, I’ve even offered to help you fight it. Can’t we all just … you know … get along?”

The sight of that face triggered the familiar murderous rage. Cordelia quelled it. “Spare me,” she said. “I’m supposed to trust you now because you threw a sword at me the last time you stopped by to chat?”

“Not at you,” he corrected. “In your general direction. And that worked out pretty well for you, didn’t it?”

She gave him the scornful pfft! that had featured in so many conversations. “So now you’re going to try and tell me it was deliberate? That you meant for it to hit where it did?”

He shrugged. “It’s not like I was taking much of a chance. It could hit you, and kill you. It could land too far away, and they’d kill you. Or it could end up right next to you, and you’d owe me.” A smile, eyes dancing. “Whichever way it came out, I’d be a winner. And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Cordelia repeated. “And the whole dusting-you-where-you-stand deal? Still looking like a good idea.”

Angel chuckled and shook his head. “No. If that’s what you were going to do, you’d be trying to do it, not talking about it. So, you’re really going to work with me against Spike.”

Cordelia’s mouth twisted into a bitter sneer. “I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s say I’ll put off killing you until we’ve killed him. Or until I’ve caught you in a lie or a double-cross, which could be any second now.” Fury was growing again inside her, and she shook it away. “We got interrupted last night. You hadn’t told me yet how Spike was going to light the fuse on the End of Days, or where I could find him. Ready to fill me in on what’s the what?”

“I can tell you that our Bloody William has gone completely off the reservation,” Angel said. “First he killed everybody who’d been at the factory when you dusted Drusilla, maybe because they let it happen or maybe because he couldn’t stand it that they survived when she didn’t. Then he came after me with half a dozen of the dumber minions: my fault his psychotic sweetheart managed to get herself dusted, even though he was all over the plan when we were mapping it out.” He made a what can you do? gesture. “His little ambush didn’t work out too well. He lost four of the six, and I’d have been only too happy to take him out, too, if I hadn’t been so busy —”

“— Running?” Cordelia finished for him. “That’s what you do, right? Concoct these big schemes, make a few bwah-ha-ha speeches, then cut and run while your undead playmates are getting chopped up?”

Angel gave her another of those smug smiles. “Well, when it comes to plans, you aren’t in much of a position to throw stones, are you now? That’s one thing we have in common. Things go wrong for us and suddenly we’re persona non grata among our own people.” He regarded her with sardonic amusement. “The difference is, I always knew mine were tools to be used. You let yourself believe yours were actually friends.”

“The difference,” Cordelia corrected, “is that you’re changing the subject, while I’m running out of patience on this so-called alliance.” She lifted the point of her sword toward him. “I’ll ask one more time: what’s Spike doing, and where is he?”

“He moves,” Angel said, clear annoyance freighting his tone. “Not dodging me, even though I’ve been thinning out his organization from the edges in. No, for the past few weeks he’s flitted from one spot to another, following any rumor that might take him closer to what he wants.”

“Which is …?” Cordelia prompted.

“Let’s put it this way,” Angel said. “I wasn’t the only one who thought Spike had gone ’round the bend. I ran into one of his lieutenants a few days back; used to be one of mine, except now he’s cut all ties and is talking about relocating to Cleveland. I didn’t have time to give him the kind of sendoff he deserved, and it would have been tedious to stake him without any preliminaries. When he saw I wasn’t going to kill him, he was so relieved, it made him talkative.”

“Must have rubbed off,” Cordelia said. “Could we skip ahead to something that actually matters?”

“Spike’s on a doom-hunt,” Angel explained. “You know how it is in Sunnydale, all that Hellmouth energy makes it a magnet for malcontents and mystical artifacts and secret cults. According to Conradt, Spike declared there was no point to a world that didn’t have Drusilla in it, and set out to rectify that mistake. Even here, it takes some real oomph! to pull off an apocalypse, but it looks like Spike’s planning to string together three or four somethings, see if that’ll do the job.”

Cordelia nodded. “Uh-huh. And once again, where do I find him?”

“I don’t know.” Angel shrugged, gave her a smirking grin. “We don’t move in the same circles anymore. In fact, these days he’s not much more popular with other vampires than I am. Something to do with killing them whenever he’s in a bad mood, which seems to be most of the time. Word is that he’s been recruiting other demons to fill out his crew.”

Cordelia considered that bit of information, and gave her surroundings a quick, suspicious once-over. “Like the ones that jumped me?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Angel acknowledged cheerfully. “Good thing I was there, hmm?” He chuckled at Cordelia’s expression, then went on. “I’ve been chasing rumors and chatting up the few people in this town who’ll still talk to me, and I may have a line on where to go hunting Spike. Not where he is, but where he’ll be setting up his little talent show once he has all the pieces.”

“That’ll do,” Cordelia said. She looked around again; something was making her uneasy, she wasn’t sure what. “Let’s get to it.”

Angel waggled a finger at her. “I said I may have a line. I told Conradt that if he could find that out for me, I’d make a point to NOT make a point of hunting him down and skinning him slowly, with a little holy water basting here and there to spice things up.” He sighed with satisfaction. “You know, I should consider a career as a motivational speaker. At least, Conradt seemed really motivated. I gave him till tonight to get the information to me, and I kinda think he’ll come through.” One eyebrow went up. “Something bothering you?”

There was, and Cordelia almost groaned as she suddenly realized what. “I just want to get this taken care of,” she said, shifting nervously. “If you have a snitch that has the news we need, that’s the guy we should see.” She indicated direction with a sideways nod. “After you.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Sweet Sixteen, no can do. Our boy is seriously paranoid, and with good reason, he survived because he could sniff the air and make it out the door ahead of one of Spike’s mood-swings. If he gets any hint you’re remotely nearby, he’ll split town and take his chances on staying ahead of me.” He paused, watching with interest as Cordelia fidgeted. “My, you are antsy tonight, aren’t you? What’s got you all stirred up?”

“I don’t like apocalypses,” Cordelia told him flatly. “There’s this part of me that keeps saying, ‘Hey, bad thing. We should be stopping that.’ So when do you meet this guy, and when do we learn where to go to root out Spike?”

“All a-quiver for the kill,” Angel mused. “I like that in a woman. If you weren’t quite so uptight, we really could have made a pair.”

“We did,” Cordelia said. “Except that wasn’t you. You’re what’s left after a dumb-assed spell erased all the parts that mattered.”

“You keep saying that,” Angel said, eyeing her with growing smugness. “But you can hardly hold still, can you? All that passion … You tell yourself it’s rage, that everything you feel is hate. Only, you’re standing here and you can’t try to kill me, and the passion is still there, eating you alive.” He grinned hugely. “I knew I left my mark on you, that’s just how it is with women, but this … this is wonderful.”

“I’ll tell you how it is.” Cordelia took a step toward him. “How it is, is, I’m trying to control myself, to remember there’s something I hate even more than you.” She shook her head. “No, strike that, ’cause there’s no such thing. But there is something more important. So what I keep telling myself is, Don’t kill this sick, slimy bastard till you’ve dealt with the bigger problem first.” She hefted the sword. “Every time you move your mouth, that makes it harder. You’re right, I’m on the edge, so don’t push me over. Or do, because I’d love the excuse.”

“Hate and loathing,” Angel said, smiling. “How I’ve missed that, especially when it’s sweetened with desire and helplessness.” He moved back, restoring the full distance between them. “If Spike hadn’t come up with this doomsday plan of his, I might have tossed him a few hints in that direction, just for the pleasure of watching you shake in such delicious agony.” His face hardened suddenly, freezing that demon’s smile in place. “I have big plans for you, once we’ve settled our account with Spikey.”

“I’m all for the showdown,” Cordelia replied. “We’d have had it already, except for your big, spectacular running-away trick.” She lowered the sword. “I’ll go along with the part about killing Spike first, as long as you hold up your end.”

“I’ll find Conradt,” Angel agreed. “And once we run Spike to ground, there should be enough killing to satisfy us both for awhile.” His eyes assessed Cordelia with naked greed. “A really short while.”

“Big talk, poor performance,” Cordelia said. “As usual. Go do something useful.”

He gave her a jaunty little wave, seemingly untouched by either her disdain or her warnings, but she noted with a glint of satisfaction that he kept his eyes on her as he faded back behind the tree from which he had made his entrance. Cordelia stood, watching and listening and monitoring her subtlest senses, until she was sure he had gone. Then she let out a vexed sigh and observed tartly, “Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to keep his attention on me, so that he didn’t hear you or smell you?”

There was a moment’s continued silence, then Marcie’s voice, pitched to a murmur as she always did: “I was careful to stay downwind of him.”

“I know,” Cordelia said. “That’s how I spotted you. Hugging up against the weeping willow, that was a good move, it meant he wasn’t going to try and walk through any ‘empty’ space that had you in it. Except, your breath moved the little leaves against the wind. He didn’t have the angle to see it, but he might have heard.”

“Well, he didn’t,” Marcie said. “So now what?”

“You mean, now that you know?” Cordelia answered. “And I know you know?”

“That thing, yeah.”

“I have no earthly idea,” Cordelia said. She sat down on a nearby headstone, massaging her temples with one hand. “I’ve been trying to juggle, God, everything at once, and any time I feel like I’m getting a handle on it, the powers that be decide to toss in a few more tiki torches.” She looked to where Marcie (presumably still) stood. “So, okay, I’m meeting secretly with Angel because he says Spike may be close to destroying the world, which is a total buzz-kill if I ever heard of one. And you know about it, which, hey, no more secret. I guess that means I should be asking you what happens next, because right now you’re the one with the power.”

“Yeah,” Marcie agreed. “I go tell the others, they’ll completely freak. And probably they should. You making plans, keeping us in the dark, running your own agenda …” Long pause. “They might not just freak. They might try to kill you.”

“I know,” Cordelia said. “I know.” She propped her forearms on her thighs, let her chin drop to her chest. “I’m so … so tired.”

Another long silence. The trailing branches of the weeping willow continued to stir in the evening breeze. “I can’t stand you,” Marcie said at last. “Never could. You know that, right?”

“I got the bulletin,” Cordelia acknowledged. “And?”

A huff of disgust. “And I don’t know, either. Damn it!” Grass rustled as Marcie apparently began to pace. “You screwed us before, and what you’re doing now is the same damn thing all over again. The problem …” A sigh. “The problem is, I can’t know for sure you’re wrong here. Damn it!”

“Yeah,” Cordelia said. “Welcome to my world.” She shook her head, stood up again. “How’d you get onto this? Or have you just been following me around at random?”

“Right, ’cause you’re so interesting and everything.” The barb in Marcie’s tone was automatic, but there was less acid in the follow-up. “I was doing my own private visit with Buffy when you stopped by this afternoon. I heard the things you said to her.”

“Oh,” Cordelia said; and then, as the implications set in, “Oh.”

“Uh-huh. And you’re all What do I do now?, and the reasons you give for keeping some of this to yourself just seem to make sense, and I don’t want to be on your side but I can see that you really are trying and you really do care, and it was so much easier when I could just write you off as the self-centered Queen Bitch!”

“You were asking questions,” Cordelia said, remembering. “Back at Giles’ apartment, you weren’t sniping at me as usual, you were actually trying to find out what was going on with me. Find out more, I guess, once eavesdropping gave you a tip-off.” She frowned. “Did you ask Oz to check up on me? Because he’s an okay guy, but we haven’t exactly been chummy, and he really seemed concerned.”

“Oh, did he?” Now her voice held amusement and speculation. “Well, if he was, it was all him, I just asked him to slow you down so I could get to your car ahead of you. Thanks for leaving the top down, by the way, shadowing you would have been a total pain without that.”

“That’s me,” Cordelia said. “Thoughtful. So, you got Oz to help you. Did you tell him why?”

“No,” Marcie answered. “Didn’t have time. And I only asked him, the others don’t know unless he told them. Which he probably didn’t, Oz isn’t a blabber. That still leaves it with us.”

Cordelia nodded. “Right. Look, I know you’re here, but it still feels like I’m talking to myself in the middle of a graveyard, which is just creepy. Can we go back to my car?”

“Fine by me,” Marcie said. “I’m not much of an outdoors person anyhow.”

“You said it’s back with us,” Cordelia observed as they started out of the cemetery. “Does that mean it’s on us to tell the others, or to decide not to tell them?”

At her ear was a soft snarl of frustration. “I don’t like what you did. I hate what you did. It was wrong, and every bad thing that happened came straight out of that.”

“And now you’re about to help me do it all over again,” Cordelia said back. They had come into sight of her car, and she paused and turned toward Marcie’s voice. “That, or gamble that the world won’t end if you’re wrong.”

“The same thing could happen if I do let you keep your secret,” Marcie pointed out.

Cordelia nodded. “Yep. That’s one thing that never changes: whichever way we choose, it could still all go to hell. And if it does, it will be our fault.”

A scornful laugh. “So you’re still trying to claim you weren’t wrong, before?”

“Not even.” Cordelia started for her car again. “I know I was wrong. I know that better than anything else on this earth. I just don’t see how I can play it any differently, this time through.”

“It shouldn’t be this way,” Marcie insisted. “We’re supposed to be a team, damn it. You blew that all to hell: Nancy dead, Giles crippled, Buffy in a coma, Tucker and Owen just plain gone. You did that, playing your ego games, and now we’re back in the same kind of situation and it’s like nothing’s different.”

“One thing is,” Cordelia said. She took out her car keys, reached for the door handle. “You’re in the decision loop now. You’ve got responsibility. Either one of us can tell … but it takes both of us to keep it a secret, if that’s what you decide to do.”

“You’re acting like you don’t care what I decide,” Marcie said peevishly.

“Honestly?” Cordelia answered. “It’s kind of a relief. I don’t have to carry the whole damn thing by myself, not anymore.” She got into her car, settled herself into the driver’s seat, waited as she felt Marcie’s weight join her in the front. “You all set?” she inquired.

Marcie’s reply was clipped and sullen. “Just drive, okay?” Cordelia started the engine and pulled onto the street … and, after a ten-second pause, the invisible girl added, “You still suck.”

“You know,” Cordelia observed, “that’s almost the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

The reply was a snort. Cordelia disregarded it, already casting her mind ahead. Whether or not Marcie spilled the beans to the others, it would still be necessary to deal with the Spike situation. Angel might be lying — almost certainly was twisting the truth about something, that was just what he did — but the weight of her dreams did seem to be warning of yet another apocalypse. Getting ready for that, locating it and thwarting it, remained her overriding priority. Plenty of other things she’d have to face, sooner or later, but all of that would have to be shelved until a more opportune time. Essentials, she told herself as she guided her convertible down the darkened street. Have to focus on the essentials —

A bright latticework sprang up in front of them, glowing chem-light green, and the car plowed into it before Cordelia could brake or swerve. She and Marcie were thrown forward, but not with the abrupt, lethal shock of collision; the green web stretched and gave before them like the net it resembled, which was good for Marcie because the invisible girl hadn’t belted in, one of the many things she automatically avoided lest they reveal her presence. The convertible was wrenched to a shuddering stop, and Cordelia rolled over the door frame even as the glowing lattice soaked up the last erg of momentum. She’d snatched the sword from the back seat, and she kept her head low to avoid the fluttering tendrils of light, every ambush had its follow-up, she was out and ready, sword up, before the last echoes of the sudden halt had faded.

A rush of feet, she whipped around to meet the charge but the luminous net detached itself from the car and flowed around her. Cordelia dodged, swearing, the mystic lattice folded in on her and there was nowhere to go. She thrust between the ‘strands’ of the net closing around her, knowing with instant intuition that trying to cut through them would be useless. One of the charging demons spitted itself on the extended blade (same kind as last night’s attack, even the scream was familiar), and then the net had shrunk too tightly, hard-nailed hands seized her and flung her to the asphalt surface of the street, and no amount of heaving and cursing could free her from their grip.

“Gently, gently.” The reproving voice was calm and mildly amused, and Cordelia twisted within the ensnaring net and the hands of her captors, trying to get a look. She still had hold of the sword, and as one of her attackers attempted to pull it away from her, she retaliated with a forceful yank that severed fingers; that elicited a fresh shriek of pain and fury, and the remaining demons clutched her even tighter, drawing blood as the thick nails pierced her clothes and gouged into her skin. “Gently,” the newcomer repeated, not so softly this time. “She must be alive, if you will recall.” He squatted next to Cordelia. “Not necessarily unharmed, of course, but there’s no need to be more crude than the task requires.”

So close, and vaguely lit by the glow of the streetlights that began at the next block, he appeared to be a thin, elderly man, with gray-white hair and a prim little suit. All the same, Slayer instinct set Cordelia’s flesh crawling as he reached into the net to take hold of her arm. “Ah, ah,” he remonstrated mildly, smiling. “You can’t change the outcome here, you can only make things harder for yourself. You two —” He addressed the demons to either side of himself. “— hold her very still, we don’t want any mistakes here.” He produced a hypodermic syringe, and Cordelia bucked and fought desperately. She wouldn’t be taken doped and helpless, that just opened up so many worlds of probable badness …!

No use. They had her solid. The needle slid into her arm, a barely noticeable sting against the various indignities being committed against her elsewhere; rather than depress the plunger, however, the man carefully pulled it out, and Cordelia realized that he was filling the barrel of the hypodermic with her blood. What? What?

“There we are,” the man said happily, withdrawing the needle. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? That should do nicely, I think.”

“C’mon, Doc,” a high, nervous voice broke in. Cordelia couldn’t see him, beyond a vague sense of motion at the edge of her vision, but a subtle distortion of the words told her they were being spoken through vamp-face. “We got her cold here. I know we can’t kill her, but can’t we … well, like, hamstring her or something? It can’t be good to turn this bitch loose with a full mad-on worked up.”

“I agreed to help your endeavor, with conditions I made very clear,” the one who had been called ‘Doc’ replied with some asperity. “I don’t believe you want to change the terms of the agreement now. That would be … extremely uncomfortable for you, and would prove unprofitable for your master as well.” He leaned over Cordelia again. “There you are, my dear. We’ll be gone in a moment, and just to show that some of us can behave with decent restraint —” To Cordelia’s astonishment and mortification, he peeled the paper cover from a small Band-Aid, and applied the latter to the small puncture he had made at the crook of her arm. “See? All better now.” He smiled benignly down at her. “Perhaps we’ll meet again, if this turn of events should indeed facilitate the advent of the Glorious One. If not, I assure you that it has been a pleasure to deal with one of your stature.”

He spoke a few words in some thick, liquid language; the demons holding Cordelia released her and withdrew, and by the time she had struggled upright, fighting against the entangling net, they were gone from her view. Even as her eyes searched the darkness next to the street, the glowing cords faded and slithered away from her, and in moments they had vanished, leaving her bewildered and unencumbered.

Marcie’s characteristic murmur came from the front seat of the QUEEN C: “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Cordelia said. “In fact, I was just about to ask you the same thing.” She opened the door and settled in behind the steering wheel. The engine had died, but started up again easily when she turned the key. She sat for a minute, running her mind over the events of her attack and captivity. “That was very weird,” she said at last.

“No joke.” There was (of course) no expression to be seen on Marcie’s face, but her voice was puzzled. “The D.O.M. and the vamp both said you had to be kept alive —”

“D.O.M.?” Cordelia queried.

“Dirty Old Man,” Marcie clarified. “But neither one of them said why. And what was it he did to you? He was between us, I couldn’t really see.”

“He took some of my blood,” Cordelia said. “With a syringe. And he was actually kind of polite about it. Not like he was too nice to hurt me — I don’t think he was nice at all, any more than I think he was human — but more like he felt it would be … unrefined, to not show the basic courtesies.” She shook her head. “Not the strangest character I’ve run into the last couple of years, but strange enough to notice.”

“Blood,” Marcie repeated. “What would they want with your blood?”

“I am SO much of the not knowing.” Cordelia pressed down the accelerator, moving them away from the scene of the attack. “I guess you weren’t in a position to follow them, see if you might overhear something?”

“I didn’t try,” Marcie returned. “Wasn’t gonna chance it with a vamp in the bunch, not after you warned me about how Angel could’ve heard me.” A moment of silence, then: “You think the blood would be for … I don’t know, some kind of voodoo curse? I mean, if you can do it with hair or fingernails, think how powerful it would be with blood.”

“Big time,” Cordelia agreed. “I don’t see it, though. They had me. What could they do to me with voodoo that they couldn’t do worse with me trussed up in front of them?”

Marcie made no answer to that. After an even longer pause, however, she said abruptly, “I would’ve helped.”

“I know,” Cordelia said.

“I heard the old guy say they couldn’t kill you,” Marcie went on. “So I waited and I watched. If they’d tried anything, though —”

“I know,” Cordelia told her again. “You’re no Miss Congeniality, but nobody’s ever accused you of running from a fight.” If anything, the invisible girl had always wanted a more active role, and chafed against keeping herself unseen and unknown, acquiescing only because that was her greatest value to the group. No coward, she seemed always to bristle at the possibility that her perpetual concealment might make her appear to be one. “You had my back and I didn’t forget it,” Cordelia concluded. “I only wish I had any idea just what the hell that was all about.”

“Maybe the others can come up with something,” Marcie offered. “You gotta figure, if anybody’s gonna know what Slayer’s blood could be used for, it’ll be Giles. And Willow still has the links to all of Miss Calendar’s web sites, she could maybe come up with something nobody else ever heard of.”

“Even Amy might have some ideas,” Cordelia agreed. “Her mom seriously knew her way around a curse. You’re right, we need to take this to the others.”

A long sigh. “Uh-huh. So, exactly how much do we tell them?”

Cordelia automatically darted a glance toward the ‘empty’ passenger seat. “If you’re asking what I think, I still think we should leave out anything that has to do with Angel.”

“Yeah.” Angry, annoyed. “Secrets and lies. Just what got us here in the first place. How long do we keep doing the same stupid damn thing before we get a clue?”

Not lies, Cordelia wanted to correct her. The first catastrophe had involved secrets, yes (and a hellish dose of bad luck), but she hadn’t actually lied to anyone.

Not then.

“At any rate, we’ve got a new player on the scene,” she observed. “With him, the dreams, and what we know about Spike and his plans, we should be able to pull everybody else up to speed without having to bring Angel into the story.” Another pointless glance toward where Marcie sat unseen. “If you’re willing to play it that way, that is.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marcie replied sourly. “Go ahead, drop it all on me.” She was silent for perhaps twenty seconds, then added, “I never liked you, and I don’t see that changing. I’ll give you this, though: you’ve always hung in there, no matter what lumps you took. If I’m cutting you any slack at all, it’s because of that.”

Cordelia shrugged. “Lumps come with the job, and I always made sure to hit back twice as hard.”

“Not what I meant.” Her tone was terse, almost angry, as if she resented what she was saying. “We all unloaded on you after that balls-up at the library and the mansion and the factory … and we damn well should have, seeing as how it damn well was your fault. But you took all of it, didn’t hit back or even try to defend yourself.” A mulling pause. “No, not even that. You argued some stuff: scramming from the mansion so you could get to the factory faster instead of killing Angelus when you had the chance, hauling Buffy to the emergency room instead of trying to do CPR onsite. You defended those things, but not the other stuff … which says to me, you were admitting you were wrong on the other. Taking the blame where you’d earned it.” Cordelia could almost hear the invisible girl shaking her head. “You’ve got an attitude that should get you bitch-slapped twice a day, and your tactical decisions suck like a Hoover. You don’t wimp out, though, and you don’t try to dodge the blame when you’ve got it coming. I’ll respect that.”

Wow. “Okay, that officially IS the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Cordelia concentrated on keeping any hint of snarkiness from her voice; Marcie’s statement was more than she had ever dreamed might be possible. “You’re right, I always knew I’d earned everything that’s been aimed at me, except the things I wouldn’t take because I hadn’t been wrong there. I just … never expected to get credit for it, not from you.” From Willow, probably, given time. Giles, maybe on his death-bed, and Xander shortly after hell froze over … or make that long afterward, because Hell cut up all kinds of hijinx in Sunnydale. Grudging credit from Marcie, though, hadn’t even occurred to her.

“Don’t go thinking I’ll make it a habit,” Marcie told her. Then, a minute later, she groused, “I don’t know what to do, damn it. No way do I want to pull what you did, but I’m scared of screwing everything up by trying not to be you. It just … it makes me crazy!”

Cordelia nodded. “Sucks to be us, doesn’t it?”

Marcie didn’t reply. It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot of Giles’ apartment complex that she spoke again. “I’ll go along with you for now,” she told Cordelia. “Not because I think you’re right, I’m nowhere near convinced on that. I’ll do it because I can change my mind about keeping quiet, but I can’t take it back if I tell. So just remember, I’m holding my options open.”

Cordelia got out of the convertible, closed the door. “Good enough for now.”
 

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