THE XANDER YEARS, Vol. 1

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Until this blond tart came ’round.

  Now, when Spike wanted nothing more than to put as much distance between him and Buffy as possible, he was stuck in a bloody wheelchair. He had burns over half his body, and his legs had been crushed. The damage would heal in due time, but he couldn’t travel until then.

  Worse, Angel had returned.

  If one had asked Spike months ago, he would’ve cheered at the prospect of his sire returning to the fold. Now, though . . .

  Drusilla opened the box that Spike had given her and stared in wide-eyed wonderment at the antique ruby necklace inside. The rubies were blood red, of course.

  “Fancy it, pet?” he asked.

  She sighed contentedly. “It’s beautiful.”

  Spike smiled. He lived for these moments. “Nothing but the best for my gir—”

  A wet plop sound interrupted him, as a human heart was placed on the table.

  It was Angel. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Dru.”

  “Oh!” Drusilla said with an even bigger sigh than Spike’s necklace got. “Angel, it’s still warm!”

  Spike seethed. Angel had been doing this ever since he got back—doing everything he could to upstage Spike. Angel had sired both vampires, but he’d made Drusilla insane before turning her into a demon. As a result, he tended to be possessive of her. Much more possessive than Spike would’ve liked, really.

  “I knew you’d like it,” Angel said with a feral grin. “I found it in a quaint little shop girl.” Angel noticed the necklace and picked it up. “Cute,” he said dismissively, then moved to put the necklace on Dru. “Here.”

  Spike started to wheel over. “I’ll get it,” he said through clenched fangs.

  “Done,” Angel said, having clasped the necklace around her neck and shifted her hair over it. Was it Spike’s imagination, or did Angel stroke her hair? “I know Dru gives you pity access,” Angel continued, “but you have to admit, it’s so much easier when I do things for her.”

  Resisting the urge to respond directly, Spike decided to instead—not for the first time—remind Angel of something he seemed to care much too little about. “You would do well to worry less about Dru and more about that Slayer you’ve been tramping around with.”

  Angel smiled fondly. “Dear Buffy. Hmm. I’m still trying to decide the best way to send my regards.”

  This was Angel’s problem all over, Spike thought. Indeed, the problem with most vampires, at the end of the day. All caught up in rituals and ways of doing things and trying to be fanciful when they should just act and have done with it.

  “Why don’t you rip her lungs out? Might make an impression.”

  Angel shook his head. “It lacks poetry.”

  Case in bloody point. “It doesn’t have to.” Spike looked at Dru. “What rhymes with lungs?”

  “Don’t worry, Spike,” Dru said with a distressingly fond gaze down at her blood-soaked gift. “Angel always knows what speaks to a girl’s heart.”

  That’s what I’m worried about, Spike thought.

  Buffy had lost track of the amount of junk food she had eaten. She had considered keeping a tally, but by the time they got halfway through War of the Roses—the first of their double feature, which was followed by Buffy and her mom’s favorite film, Thelma and Louise—she gave up.

  As they got to the scene in T&L when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis picked up a hitchhiking Brad Pitt, Mom said, “Pass me the Malomars.”

  Buffy didn’t move. “I can’t.”

  “Good,” Mom said.

  It worried Buffy how much the progress of Geena Davis’s character in the movie paralleled Buffy’s own life. A woman in a world she didn’t know was so limiting, changed by violence into something greater than what she was.

  A knock came from the door. Buffy handed the bowl of Thin Mints that she hadn’t even realized was still in her lap to Mom and said, “Here.” She hauled herself up off the couch and went to the front door.

  There was nobody there.

  Suddenly, all her senses went on alert. Pranksters like this were common in L.A., but in Sunnydale, the only people who went for the knock-on-the-door-and-run-away trick were demonic.

  She closed and locked the door, then went back into the living room.

  Her mother was gone. Thelma and Louise continued to play on the TV.

  “Mom?”

  She went into the kitchen, hoping that Mom just went for something to drink. She tried not to think about what Giles couldn’t bring himself to tell her about Angel’s Valentine’s Day habits.

  “Mom?”

  Mom wasn’t in the kitchen.

  Then she heard the back door close.

  She whirled around, startled.

  There was Mom. She was holding a long, black box. “Buffy, it’s me.”

  Buffy allowed herself to breathe again. “Yeah. You startled me a little.”

  “I was just checking the back door.” She handed the box to Buffy. It looked like a flower box. “Somebody left these for you.”

  Opening the box slowly, Buffy saw a dozen red roses and a card. The card simply read, Soon. It also had a small drawing of a dead rose next to it.

  Oh my God.

  Xander sat in the Bronze, fidgeting nervously. Cordelia still hadn’t shown up yet. They were originally going to come together, but Cordy had decided at the last minute to just meet here. So Xander sat next to Willow, constantly taking the gift box out of his pocket, tossing it back and forth from hand to hand, then putting it back in his pocket, then taking it out a minute later.

  Willow didn’t even notice. She was listening to the music. Oz’s band, Dingoes Ate My Baby, was playing a straight-out rock number. Xander had to admit, the band was good, and he loved their name. But just at the moment, he was way too nervous to appreciate them.

  “Oz has his cool hair today,” Willow said. Oz had been going back and forth between his natural strawberry blond hair color and jet black. No one was entirely sure why. “I think I’m a groupie,” Willow added, earnestly.

  Xander smiled at her. He had to admit that, even if he wasn’t keen on Oz, he liked seeing Willow this happy.

  If only I could say the same about me. Where is Cordy?

  Finally, Cordelia entered. She looked around, seemed disheartened with something, then sat at a table by herself.

  Weird, Xander thought as he gathered up his courage, went over the speech one last time, then went over to the table where Cordy sat.

  As he approached, she got up.

  Xander took a moment to take in her very hot minidress and how well she occupied it, then said, “Hey.”

  “Your clothes,” she said, sounding almost stunned. “You look so good.”

  Xander was wearing a light gray button-down shirt, black slacks, and a charcoal gray suit jacket. At least Buffy had said it was charcoal gray. Xander didn’t see much difference between that and black, but he accepted that as secret girl knowledge and let it go. “I let Buffy dress me,” Xander said, then at Cordy’s look added quickly: “Well, not physically . . .”

  “Perfect,” Cordy said, sounding annoyed, of all things. “You had to make this harder didn’t you?”

  I think I speak for everyone here when I say, “huh?” Xander thought, recalling one of Buffy’s lines to Giles. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Clearly the fact that I please you visually has got us off on the wrong foot here.”

  “Xander—” she started.

  “Let me finish,” Xander said. He’d been rehearsing this speech since lunch, and he wasn’t going to let her stop him now. He took a breath, then started. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us lately. The why and the wherefore. You know, once, twice, a kissy here, a kissy there. And you can chalk that all up to hormones. And maybe that’s all we have here: tawdry teen lust. But maybe not. Maybe something in you sees something special inside me. And vice versa. I mean, I think I do. See something.” You’re losing it, he thought. Cut to the chase, no pun intended. “So . . .”

 
He handed her the gift box.

  Cordelia opened it. “Xander, thank you.” She took out the necklace. “It’s beautiful.” Then she lowered the chain into the box and said, “I want to break up.”

  Xander somehow managed not to scream. “Okay, not quite the reaction I was looking for.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Cordy said, and for once in her life, she sounded sincere. “It’s just—who are we kidding? Even if parts of us do see specialness—we don’t fit.”

  A small part of Xander saw this coming. A lifetime of rejection, of guffawing from the female population, of overall abysmal luck in love had prepared him for this moment.

  But not tonight. Of all nights, not tonight.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, trying and failing to keep his temper. “You know what’s a good day to break up with somebody? Any day besides Valentine’s Day! I mean, what, were you just running low on dramatic irony?”

  “I know, I didn’t mean to do it this way,” Cordy said, and again, she sounded sincere.

  At another time, Xander would’ve been amazed at the genuineness of her emotions.

  But, again, not tonight.

  “Well, you did,” Xander said, and turned on his heel and walked out of the Bronze.

  Well, at least things can’t get any worse.

  CHAPTER 3

  Xander hadn’t slept very well the previous night. Last year, when he’d asked Buffy to the prom, he’d said, “I don’t handle rejection well. Funny, considering all the practice I’ve had.” But no rejection had hurt quite like this one, because no other relationship had been even moderately successful. Even the thing with Ampata only lasted twenty-four hours before it literally disintegrated, and the other crushes never even got that far. This one, though, actually started to be something real.

  So Xander went into class on the fifteenth of February thinking he was as low as he could possibly feel.

  He hadn’t taken into account the speed with which the high school gossip machine operated. Half the school was at the Bronze when the most popular girl on campus dumped him, and the other half had heard about it from the first half by sunrise.

  They giggled. They tittered. They guffawed. They pointed and laughed. They shook their heads in amused dismay. One jock, whom Xander didn’t even know, said, “Dude, way to get dumped!”

  Then he saw a lifeline: Buffy. Finally, someone who’ll understand.

  “Hey, Buffy, my bud, you would not believe the—”

  “I can’t talk right now,” Buffy said urgently. “Angel.”

  Some might have viewed this as a bad thing, but right now what Xander needed was a distraction, even if it was the most extreme example of the psycho ex. “Need help?”

  “It’s all right,” she said, and continued walking, probably heading to the library.

  Xander sighed.

  He moved on to see Cordy and four of her usual gaggle of bleached bimbos sitting on one of the benches outside the restrooms. Half the time Xander couldn’t tell them apart. Is that Harmony or Julianne next to her? He then placed it as Harmony—she was a victim of that invisible girl last year.

  Harmony was, in fact, the first one to speak. “Gee, Xander, maybe you should learn a second language so that even more girls can reject you.”

  They all laughed. Except Cordelia, who couldn’t even make eye contact. Somehow, that just made it worse.

  Xander walked off, then caught sight of a second lifeline.

  Amy Madison.

  In an instant, a plan began to form in Xander Harris’s head. He thanked whatever gods or fates were responsible for his catching Amy’s little illusion act on Ms. Beakman yesterday, and walked over to the young witchlet.

  He grabbed Amy by the arm and led her to a corner.

  “What are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

  “Amy, good to see you,” he said conversationally. Then, small talk taken care of, he said, “You’re a witch.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said with a forced laugh. “That was my mom, remember?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking it runs in the family. I saw you working that mojo on Ms. Beakman. Maybe I should go tell somebody about that.”

  Okay, here’s where we see if she calls my bluff. The fact of the matter was, Xander didn’t have a thing on her, not really. He had no proof, and it was unlikely that anyone, aside from Giles, would believe that a student had bewitched a teacher. But Xander was counting on the fact that Amy knew a, what Buffy could do; b, that Giles had reversed the body-switching spell Amy’s mother had cast; and c, Xander was tight with both of them.

  “Don’t even—that is so mean!”

  Paydirt! “Blackmail is such an ugly word.”

  Amy frowned. “I didn’t say blackmail.”

  “Yeah, but I’m about to blackmail you, so I thought I’d bring it up.”

  “What do you want?” Amy said, defeated.

  Xander laughed a bitter laugh. “What do I want? I want some respect around here. I want, for once, to come out ahead. I want the Hellmouth to be working for me. You and me, Amy, we’re gonna cast a little spell.”

  “What kind?”

  Several students walked in their direction, and Xander decided it was best to be discreet. He led Amy into an empty English classroom, closed the door, then said, “A love spell on Cordelia.”

  “A love spell?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, y’know, just the basic, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe anything but little old moi.”

  Amy shook her head. “That kind of thing is the hardest. I mean, to make someone love you for all eternity—”

  “Whoa, whoa, back up. Who said anything about eternity? A man can only talk self-tanning lotion for so long before his head explodes.”

  Again, Amy frowned. “Well then, I don’t get it. If you don’t want to be with her forever, then what’s the point?”

  “The point is, I want her to want me. Desperately. So I can break up with her and subject her to the same hell she’s been putting me through.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Xander,” Amy said, wincing. “Intent has to be pure with love spells.”

  “Right. I intend revenge. Pure as the driven snow. Now, are you gonna play or do we need to have another chat about invisible homework?”

  Sighing, Amy said, “I’ll need something of hers. A personal object.”

  Xander smiled. He knew just the thing.

  Buffy made a beeline for the library, where she saw Giles sitting and reading a book. Big surprise, there. She walked right up to him and plopped the card from the flower box onto the book he was reading, startling him.

  Good. He deserves to be startled. Buffy had tossed and turned all night, wondering what it was Giles hadn’t told her about Angel. He’d better damn well tell me now.

  “ ‘Soon’ what, Giles? You never held out on me until the big, bad thing in the dark became my exhoney.”

  “Where did this come from?” Giles asked.

  “He said it with flowers. This isn’t time to start becoming Mr. Protective Guy. I can’t just hang around, and I can’t prepare when I don’t know what’s coming.”

  Giles nodded. “Of course, you’re right. Sit down.”

  Buffy sat as Giles got up to go into his office, probably to dig out some old Watcher diaries.

  Cordelia was generally pretty happy with things. So far, today had been completely normal. She’d given Gwen advice on how to break up with John without jeopardizing her future on the pep squad. She’d convinced Dori not to wear that hideous butterfly pin, as only old people and last year’s Dolce wearers wore butterflies. And they’d spent a good half hour talking about what a dork the guest lecturer for health class was.

  The only exception had been the way everyone was laughing at Xander.

  First of all, Cordelia Chase didn’t need anyone to make fun of losers for her. Usually, the others followed her lead, they didn’t try to take up the slack, like they were now. And she didn’t see any need to hit Xander while he was
down. It wasn’t like with Mitch or Devon or any of the others, where they deserved ridicule after Cordelia broke it off. Unlike them, Xander had been paying sufficient attention to her.

  It just didn’t work out. One of those things that you realize and get on with your life.

  Besides which, no one had ever giggled at Mitch or tittered at Devon.

  Still, this was minor. In all other things, life was normal. She liked it.

  Then she saw Xander walking toward her.

  She started to go in the other direction, but Xander’s big doofy legs worked in his favor, and he cut in front of her.

  “Oh, c’mon, don’t flatter yourself,” Xander said coldly, “I’m not going to make a big scene. I just want the necklace back.”

  Cordelia’s mouth fell open. “What? I thought it was a gift.”

  “No, last night it was a gift. Today, it’s scrap metal. I figure I can melt it down. Sell it for fillings or something.”

  Aghast, Cordelia said, “You’re pathetic.” And she meant it. Maybe the others were right. How could he even think of taking the necklace back? Was he that petty? Just because the entire school was making fun of him, was that any reason to punish her by taking away her gift?

  “C’mon,” Xander said harshly, “I’m not going to add to the Cordelia Chase Cast-Off Collection.”

  That did it. She couldn’t believe he was being so rotten. “It’s in my locker,” she said, stalling.

  “I can wait.”

  Huffing, Cordelia went to her locker, and opened it all the way, blocking her from Xander’s view.

  As a general rule, Cordelia didn’t wear button-down shirts. If she did, she did not button them all the way up to the neck. She had always been very proud of her clavicle, and saw no reason not to share it with the world. But today, she had put on a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a white collar and buttoned all the buttons.

  It was the only way to wear the necklace without anyone seeing it.

  She reached in under the collar and removed the hidden jewelry. She stared at the shiny silver heart.

  Lots of guys had given her presents before. But, since they were from guys, they were generally ugly and/or useless. They were just to show that the guy in question was utterly devoted to her, which was all that mattered.