First Time It Mattered

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Spike looked around the crypt with a critical eye. There was nothing much he could do about the lack of interior decoration, not before tonight, but maybe there was something he could do about the ambience.

Candles were always a good romantic touch, but, he realised, looking at the puddles and trails of wax on just about every flat surface, they made a bloody awful mess. With a resigned sigh he pulled a knife from his boot and began to scrape.

Almost two hours later, he stood back and looked again. He'd chiselled away the layers of wax, accumulated over the last few months, and he'd even swiped at the cobwebs in the corners of the dingy room. It wasn't much of a difference, but it was a start, and, Spike thought, maybe it was enough for now. If everything was suddenly spick and span, it might be kind of obvious that he'd made an extra-special effort, and the very last thing needed was more pressure.

Giving himself a mental kick up the arse to stop his worrying, Spike examined his meagre collection of candles and tapers. Most of them were partially melted and stubby, and would probably burn down and sputter out just at the wrong moment. He needed more, and, if he remembered correctly, that New Age shop on the high street was having a Midnight Madness sale every night this week, celebrating one pagan festival or another. The witches would probably know which one it was. Of course, it wasn't actually staying open till midnight, but they didn't lock up till nine, which meant he had time to get down there, stock up and get back before his guest was due to arrive.

The shop was doing an unusually brisk trade for this late in the evening, and Spike felt a little uncomfortable wandering around amongst the hippies and the kids and the pair of business-suited women who were poring over the crystals in one corner. Spike filled his hands with candles, tapers, and, after a mental argument, a pack of incense cones. The crypt got kind of musty when it rained, he reasoned silently. The smell of Egyptian musk had to be an improvement on that.

There was another mental argument, this one more intense, when he decided he had everything he needed. In a previous life he would have simply stuffed his pockets and walked out, and God help anyone who tried to stop him. But now, if someone grabbed him he stayed grabbed. The thought of that happening, the thought of having to call someone to bail him out, was enough to have him sidling over to the counter and digging out his wallet as he went. All he could do was hope was that no one he knew would see him handing over cash for something as embarrassing as this.

He'd spent longer than he thought picking over the merchandise to find the perfect tapers and the scentless candles that wouldn't make him regret his heightened senses, and he got home with barely half an hour to spare. One quick change later he was wearing a new sky-blue silk shirt, bought because it matched his eyes, or so the salesgirl had said. He wondered when he'd turned into such a sap.

And then he was racing round, arranging candles so they cast romantic light throughout the crypt but didn't show up the battered state of his ancient dump-found furnishings. His Zippo was playing silly buggers, and he'd barely got the last bunch of tapers lit when he heard a heartbeat pounding nervously outside the door.

The lighter was slipped into a tight jeans pocket, and Spike raised his hands and checked his hair one final time before relaxing into a supremely sexy slouch.

"I can hear you panicking, Xan. You'd best come in before you attract every demon in the cemetery to my door."