Chapter 31
The house is pretty quiet when I wake up this morning. Giles is at his bed sit as he calls it, a furnished studio apartment that he found. Willow is off at class again early this morning, which means topping up Amy’s food bowl is on me. We’ve been keeping her cage on a table in the upstairs hallway because it’s a bit weird having a human in rat form in your room while things are going on.
She’s not there.
I search around the house and am still looking when Dawn surfaces and begins to help me. She’s found under a table downstairs, and I put her back in the cage.
“Don’t scare us like that,” I tell her. I do feel bad that she’s still in rat form and admit that I’ve not been doing any active research to fix the problem like Willow has. I look around the cage and can’t find any visible signs of how she might have gotten out, but I can imagine she would be bored if she has any semblance of human consciousness left. A cage with a wheel isn’t much. A different cage with more activities is still a cage; but having her loose around the house isn’t a viable option either.
Buffy comes out of her room just as I’m closing Amy’s cage after topping up the food.
“You look perturbed.” She says.
“Amy got out.” I tell her.
“Or Will let her out this morning and forgot to put her back before she went to class?” Buffy suggests.
“Good point.” I answer, “I’ll check with her later.”
Dawn is mixing several different cereals into a bowl in the kitchen, singing a little song as she does about tasty treats and misty meats. She looks over when I come in and I know I have to be giving her a weird look.
“I couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with tasty treats.” She says.
Buffy is opening and closing cabinets and looking at the cereals that Dawn has out on the counter, “Nothing looks good.” She remarks when Dawn questions her.
“Been there.” Dawn says.
I take a deep breath, “I have a question.”
“Okay.” I get told.
“I don’t want to dredge anything up, but I was just wondering if you wanted to do a dumb supper for your Mom—”
“A dumb supper?” Dawn queries.
I put a hand on my forehead, “I should have phrased that better. It’s when you set out an extra place at dinner to honor family members who have passed. They call it a dumb supper because they’re not physically there to talk to you.”
“Oh.” Buffy says.
“It was silly—” I say, feeling embarrassed.
“No.” Buffy says, “It’s sweet. I—I like the idea.”
Dawn comes around and gives me a hug which seems like she means she likes the idea too, “How does it work?”
“You set an extra plate at the dinner table, and everyone gives a portion of their meal to it, and you talk about your favorite memories with them and thank them for contributing to your life. My Mom and I used to do a dumb lunch when Dad and everyone were out of the house, sometimes she would do a tarot reading afterwards to ask the relatives for advice for the coming year.”
“Neat!” Dawn says.
Buffy nods, “Thank you for thinking of us.”
“Of course.” I say.
“When can we do it?” Dawn asks.
“Traditionally it’s the Full Moon closest to Halloween, so it would be the 13th.” Technically the one in November is closer to the day, but we would always do the October one in our house.”
Buffy looks at the calendar, “That’s a Friday the 13th is that a bad idea?”
“The full moon is the day either side too, so if you’re more comfortable we could do it on the 12th or the 14th, or the one in November? I think that’s the 11th.”
“I like the 12th.” Dawn says, “It’s closer to now.”
Buffy nods and finds a pen to write it on the calendar. Dawn gives her a hug and she leaves to meet Janice to go to school together. Buffy and I look at each other.
“I…was going to make myself some eggs.” I tell her, “You want me to make you some too?”
She shrugs, “Okay. Thanks.” She sits down at the counter and watches me. I leave her alone. I don’t want to bug her asking how she’s doing. She seems to be doing relatively okay, considering, which may well be the way of it for a while, “You think there’s any chance Quentin will agree to pay me?” she asks, “I know I’ll need some kind of money eventually—to make my own, I mean.”
“The stocks seem to be doing well.” I point out, “and there’s the stable CDs that Willow arranged.”
She nods, “There’s also the fact I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. I don’t know about auditing the classes though. It just feels—I just don’t know.”
The eggs are at a point I can leave them for a little bit so I sit down next to her, “You can take all the time you need to recuperate.” I point out, “It’s hard, I know, but try not to worry about the work situation until you know for sure that Quentin’s not going to pay you for the legitimate and dangerous job you do.”
She sighs, “That’s easier said than done.”
I go check on the eggs, and flip them, “I understand that. Willow does call me out here and there for my worrying about extra things.”
Buffy nods, as she gathers cutlery for our meal, “We do need to track down the summoners though.”
“True.” I nod, “I think we can do the map thing again.” I tell her, “We have the jar of Mm’Fashnik dust still.” I serve Buffy her eggs, and she thanks me before digging in.
Willow, Buffy and I sit around the table with the map in front of us, ready to do the tracking spell again. However, it doesn’t work. It’s not that they’re not showing up on the map. It’s that the spell starts and then fizzles the dust spreading out all over the map in no defined pattern. Something is blocking us.
“That doesn’t seem like it went well.” Buffy remarks.
“Unless somebody’s disintegrated them and they’re spread all over town I agree.” Willow says, “It did feel like something was screwing with the energy.”
I nod, “Maybe they realized we used magic to find them last time and did a spell to stop us from tracking them?”
Willow makes a grimace, “That’s annoying…” she purses her lips, “The way it’s done I don’t think it’s a simple spell. Maybe there’s some sort of artifact they have.”
“Why do you say that?” Buffy says.
“I don’t think there’s a spell that could stop the two of us from tracking them.” She replies.
“They could have set something to scramble and be out of town.” I say.
“True.” Willow answers.
“I guess we’ll have to wait until they do something else.” Buffy says, disappointed, “Speaking of which I’ll get on patrol, see if I can find out anything that’s going on.”
“Do you have to?” Dawn asks. I wonder how long she’s been watching us.
“That’s the thing about the forces of evil they don’t take a night off.” Buffy points out.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t?” Dawn asks.
Buffy looks at me. I’m not 100% sure what she wants but I have a good idea.
“Maybe we can finish that movie you fell asleep in the middle of?” I offer Dawn, hoping it comes off as a joke and not an insult.
Dawn just frowns. I know I’m offering a lame back-up compared to the idea of doing something with her big sister that she’s barely seen since she came back.
“Fine.” She says, “Whatever.”
“There we are then.” Buffy says. She gives Dawn a quick hug, grabs a couple of stakes from the small chest she’s stashed underneath one of the end tables and heads out the door.
“You don’t have to watch the movie with me if you don’t want to.” I tell Dawn.
“It’s okay.” Dawn answers, “I do want to see how it ends.” Her tone, however, speaks the truth of how she actually feels about it, “I like spending time with you guys.” She adds, “I just—”
“It’s okay.” I echo, “Maybe, Will, you can talk to Buffy about it?”
Willow nods, vaguely.