Chapter 15
“Okay,” Buffy says, softly, “Are you telling me I’m broke? Is that why there’s a problem?”
“No.” Willow says, scrambling for some of the envelopes that are on the skewer on the side table, “No. Not yet—and hopefully never.”
“I haven’t spent any more. I was all…dead and frugal.” Buffy says.
“Your mother prepared everything really well.” I put in, “She had insurance, and life insurance.”
“Which should have left you covered.” Xander says.
“Well, there were her medical bills.” Willow adds, “and we’ve had to repair things several times. We’ve invested some of it, and there’s the savings account—but this is going to take a chunk, so we need to make sure we’re going to be okay.”
“Yes.” Anya says, looking through the paperwork, “You’re hemorrhaging.”
“How?” Buffy says, “How’s that happening?”
“No.” Anya says, “The house. It’s just sitting here doing nothing and that costs money. There’s a home improvement loan, and the second mortgage.”
“Okay.” Buffy says, “We burn the house to the ground and collect the insurance. Plus, fire? Fire pretty.”
I know we must all be staring at her and not just me because of the way she looks around.
“You guys. I’m kidding. It’s bills. It’s money. It’s pieces of paper sent by bureaucrats that we’ve never even met. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” Then she shakes her head, “Which is too bad because that I’m really good at.”
Anya takes a deep breath and says, “I know how we can fix it.” Now it’s her turn to get a group look, “I-if you wanna pay every bill here and every bill coming you could even have enough for a nice college fund for Dawn.” She grins, “Start charging.”
“For what?” Buffy asks sounding irritated.
“Slaying!” Anya says.
Xander is looking like he wants to crawl across the floor and out the door.
“You’re providing a valuable service to the whole community. If you can’t cash in get The Council to start paying you.”
“That’s slightly better—” Willow puts in, “You can’t charge innocent people for saving their lives.”
“Spiderman does.” Anya puts in.
“No, he doesn’t.” I tell her, though I’m suddenly unsure.
“He does too.”
“Xander?” Willow asks.
Anya looks over at Xander who is still looking uncomfortable. He finally says, “Action is Spiderman’s reward.”
Anya stands up and declares, “Why don’t you ever take my side?” and storms out of the front door.
“What are you talking about?” Xander follows her, “Anya! I am your side! You were just wro—”
There’s something else going on between the two of them but that’s for them to sort out.
“What other options are there to help if this is going to take such a huge chunk?” Buffy asks, “I don’t see how I can get a job with everything else I have to do?”
“We’re putting our housing credit into the account.” I explain, “but that’ll probably cover about half of it. Will and I had been talking about things before everything happened—”
“Me actually coming back from the de—from Hell?” Buffy says.
“Yes. I help out at The Magic Box sometimes and do tarot readings there, but that covers about one--one and a half weeks of groceries. The investments haven’t had time to really pay dividends yet. Will’s got a ton of classes this semester so it’s hard for her to do anything other than monitor the investments and look for other things to do with the savings…and I’ve got a few extra make up classes still from when Glory…”
“What we’ll have left in savings anyway.” Buffy muses, looking at the numbers on the bank statements.
“We would make a claim against the homeowner’s insurance.” Willow puts in, “but they might put the premium up even more. The only other thing we’d thought of but Buffy Bot wasn’t really able to pull that sort of thing off was seeing if the mortgage and loan could be rolled together for a lower payment, and hopefully lower interest.”
“There’s the lack of a job factor though.” I put in, “I don’t know if they’ll do anything if you don’t have a job.”
“The gallery?” Buffy asks.
“With everything going on we had to stop paying on it.” Willow explains, “We didn’t have time to take care of it and couldn’t afford to hire anyone too, and stopping paying the rent on the place helped out financially at the time.”
“We-we have all the items though. I’d had a passing thought about sell—selling them on eBay but I didn’t want to put that on Dawn. Especially when we were, at that point, working on the way to get you out of Hell.”
Buffy nods, pensively, “It doesn’t hurt to try though, right?”
“Or…” She pulls out the one remaining credit card statement of Joyce’s we have, “We could put it on credit?”
“There’s interest on those.” Willow reminds her, “And all of your Mom’s are closed when she died. That’s just the last one we didn’t pay off all the way because we paid off the others and could only risk paying off half of that at the time.”
She’d been more focused on the search for a Hell release spell than my suggestions about money at the time, but there’s no point dwelling on what happened we have to focus on what’s happening now.
“I suppose I could get a part time job.” Buffy says, “Something for during the day like I was doing school, until I can get back into college. I mean, some people work and do school.”
“That would be two jobs and school.” I say, softly, “Maybe we really could get The Council to pay you. It’s outdated that they don’t.”
“True.” Buffy says, “I did get them to re-hire Giles. I just don’t know what leverage I’d have this time.”
“You’re the Slayer not in jail for murder, kidnapping and torture.” Willow remarks.
“Wasn’t it manslaughter?” I ask.
Willow gives me a look like it doesn’t matter, but there’s a huge distinction there. From what I heard she didn’t go out of her way to kill the man. She thought he was a vampire sneaking up on them and staked him. It's awful what happened to the man, though I'm also told he worked for the Mayor, who was actually a giant snake demon. They tell me Faith defected and went to work for the Mayor afterwards, and then Buffy put her in a coma. I'm sure there's a whole lot I don't know about it, though. It would take hours upon hours to tell all of the story of Faith and Buffy, and I'm not going to press Buffy for it right now, and Willow is not entirely unbiased.
We got word that she was arrested, after turning herself in, after torturing the man who had been her Watcher. So, that is where those extra charges came in? Angel had been on speaker phone and the ex-Watcher had mentioned it in the background.
“I think it was…manslaughter.” Buffy says, “and covering things up, of course.” She sighs, “Though I didn’t really help with that, or did, or…” she shakes her head.
“It’s beside the point, Buff.” Willow remarks, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah.” Buffy takes Willow’s hand, and they lean their foreheads together, “Okay. Well, can I just go to the bank and ask them to combine the loans, or do I have to make an appointment? And don’t you guys have class?”
I check the time, “I have a bit of time.”
Willow chews on her lip, “By this point I’ve missed my first class…but this is more important, and I can make up the work.”
“I don’t want to—” Buffy starts.
“It’s okay.” Willow says, “We’ll get it sorted. Tara-love don’t be late for your class. Buffy and I will sort this out.”
I give Willow a kiss and head off. I’ll be about ten minutes early, but that’s okay, it’ll just give me time to find a good seat in the lecture hall.