Business as Usual Chp 29

[lilachigh.livejournal.com]

Title: Business as Usual
Author: lilachigh
Rating: PG at the moment
Disclaimer: Characters belong to ME except Agnes Pringle who is all mine.
Story so far: In Season 5, The Replacement, Spike mentions the charming lady who runs a tea stall in the local garbage dump. So meet Miss Agnes Pringle, English spinster and very reluctant vampire. Agnes and Spike are friends which makes her life difficult. We have reached the time between Seasons 5 and 6. Agnes has opened a proper tea-room in Sunnydale, close to The Magic Box with money left her by her admirer, Richard Wilkins III.
Dawn - who knows Agnes is a vampire - is working there as a part-time waitress, Andrew is learning to cook and Clem is 'helping'. But life is just about to get very difficult for our favourite cake baker and sides are beginning to be chosen.


Chapter 29 Changing Sides


“So, will you baby-sit for us tonight? Please?”

Agnes looked up from her mixing-bowl and sighed. It was hard to say no to Shona, especially when she was wearing her pleading expression. But she was so busy at the moment and it really wasn’t convenient.

“You know how fond the kids are of you and Mike and me never get a chance to go out together without them. It’s too dangerous to leave them on their own all night.”

Agnes added more butter to her pastry and rubbed the mixture through her cold fingers. The Pattersons were one of a very few whole vampire families living in Sunnydale. They’d arrived, as so many others had done, to watch the last apocalypse: then, sadly for them, because they had promised the kids such a good time, the Slayer had defeated Glory. The majority of the apocalypse tourists had left but the Patterson were among those who had found a nice cave, moved in and stayed.

“I suppose I can ask Clem to look after the Willow Tree for the first couple of hours,” Agnes said, cross with herself for giving in so easily. “But you must be home by three a.m. It gets so busy in here around then and Clem, sweet as he is, is a soft touch for a hard luck story and I find most of my cakes have been given away.”

Shona smiled with relief. “Oh yes, we’ll be home by three, I promise! We just want to have a little time together. You know!”

Agnes busied herself with rolling out her pastry and pretended she hadn’t heard. But she was well aware that four vampires living in one cave didn’t leave a lot of room for privacy, especially when two of them were aged ten and eight.

It was obviously extremely rare that a whole family was turned, rose and stayed together. Couples, yes, but not the children. When they were killed – and Agnes could find no good reason for any vampire to do that; after all there were always people around whose death wouldn’t be mourned! – they were rarely turned. In the case of the Pattersons, whatever vampire had been responsible had obviously gone through their house, feeding and turning each of them, one after the other. Their families had buried them in the same grave and so they’d had no problem finding each other – afterwards.
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