ok, so I have to admit that the final scene of this chapter was influenced rather strongly by a scene in the fantastic Japanese film Tampopo. if you've seen the movie you'll know what I'm talking about, and if not, you should watch it because it's great! anyways, onto the story...

x. wrapped around your finger

Spike and Faye grabbed two more flashlights from the cockpit and followed Louisa onto a dirt path between the trees, which were unlike any Faye had ever seen before. Come to think of it, she hadn't known that Mars had much vegetation at all, let alone a jungle like this. The plants were alien to her eyes; unfurling in complicated patterns and adorned with luridly colored blossoms. Shining her flashlight up at the thick canopy, she saw that the the overhanging branches were covered with vivid turquoise flowers in full bloom. Spike noticed her surprise and chuckled.

"You've never seen Martian orchids before? Expensive little fuckers. The syndicate guys would pay a fortune for these anytime their daughters got married or someone died or whatever. They only bloom once a year. So lots of florists would take regular orchids and dye them blue, but the real things have that weird smell, you notice that?" Spike sniffed the air like a dog, eyes closed.

Faye turned her nose towards the treetops as they walked and tried to place the puzzling scent.

"What is that?"

Louisa doubled back to walk with them, flashlight bobbing in the darkness.

"It's like a lit match," she called back. "Bizarre, huh? Here we go."

They stopped in front of a wood cabin covered in vines. It was quite small, and Faye could see the outline of two grand pianos through the front window. Her pulse increased as they approached the front door. Was this where Rosario had taken his victims?

"Hold on," Louisa was saying, fumbling through a ring of keys and trying different ones in the rusty lock. "I think..ah, here we go," she said in satisfaction, wrenching the heavy wooden door open with a creak. The baby started to whimper, and Faye saw Spike's eyes narrow.

"You sure about this?" Spike whispered again. Louisa had already clambered inside, and Faye shrugged.

"I've got my Glock. You?"

"Of course."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Faye said, winking back at Spike as she followed Louisa. She sounded much braver than she felt. She stepped through the doorway and walked straight into Louisa, who had stopped short about two feet into the entryway.

"What?" Faye said irritably, dusting herself off. "Can't we turn some lights on?"

Louisa cast her an alarmed look and cupped a hand around her ear.

"The power's out. You hear that?"

Faye frowned and cupped her own ear. When she concentrated, she realized she could hear the tinny strains of tinkling piano from somewhere within the house. She swallowed hard and turned to Spike.

"Stay out there with the baby," she said, holding up a hand. Spike began to protest.

"It's Clair De Lune," she hissed back, and Spike shut his mouth abruptly. She turned to Louisa and caught her eye, and the other woman gave her a frightened look.

"Come on," Faye whispered, grabbing Louisa by the wrist and treading across the wood-plank floor. "Remember, don't touch anything with your bare hands. We don't want to mess up any prints. Or leave our own."

The pianos by the window hulked in the shadows like sleeping beasts, and as they walked deeper into the house the Debussy grew louder. Beside her, Faye could hear Louisa's shallow breathing. Faye tried to give her a reassuring nod. The beams of their flashlights cut through the darkness, illuminating narrow swaths of floor and furniture, but so far nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"Over here," Faye said breathlessly. "This room."

She walked towards a closed door, heart hammering violently. Drawing her Glock, she pushed the door open with her shoulder as Louisa followed behind.

The smell of rotting flesh permeated the room. Gagging and clapping a hand to her mouth, Faye kept her gun drawn while Louisa shone the flashlight around the cramped space. Every surface was covered with sticky bloodstains, and flies buzzed lazily back and forth. Faye spotted the source of the Clair De Lune: a tiny cassette player in the corner, drenched in blood.

"Oh my god. Fuck. Oh my god, Faye," Louisa whispered. "What the fuck?"

Faye noticed a huddled mass near the twin bed in the corner and edged forward.

"Shine it over there," she directed Louisa, and when the beam reached the corner Faye let out a nervous laugh.

"A deer," she said in disbelief. "Dead deer. I didn't even know they had deer on Mars..."

"Maybe it got hit by a car?" Louisa offered weakly, holding a hand over her mouth. The smell was nauseating. "How did it get in here, though...?"

It was a young creature, its tawny coat still spotted with white, and Faye knelt down she saw that its throat had been slit savagely. Her gut flipped over.

"This was no accident," she murmured. "Someone killed it."

"There's a note," Louisa said, grabbing a piece of paper off of the nightstand.

"Take it and let's get out of here," Faye said, feeling sick and terrified. She cast a final look at the slain deer before they hurried out of the foul-smelling cabin and stumbled back onto the lawn. Spike turned towards them, holding the baby in one arm.

"What took so long?"

His irritable expression faded when he saw their faces and the bloodstained note that Louisa clutched in her hand. Faye shook her head and pointed at the note. Bending their heads, the three adults clustered around the bloodied paper. The words were scrawled in a hurried, childlike hand.

Poke your nose where it doesn't belong and see what happens!

Sheila and Lucy were easy

Next time it'll be someone who puts up more of a fight

Who should it be next? Cecilia? Tonya? Sarah? Louisa?

Faye finished reading first and looked up to see Louisa's face turn white. Spike met her eyes uneasily.

"This might be a hoax," Spike told Louisa. "A copycat trying to scare you. Don't worry."

Louisa merely gave him a withering look and started to walk back to the zipcraft. Spike and Faye walked about twenty feet behind her.

"What was in there? Not a body?" Spike asked, glancing furtively back at the cabin.

Faye shook her head. "Not a person. A dead baby deer. Someone slit its throat and dragged it into the bedroom."

Spike blanched. "And that's where you found the note?"

"Yeah. Someone knew we were coming, obviously. I don't know about this, Spike..."

They reached the zipcraft and crammed themselves back inside. Louisa said nothing during the flight home, looking sick and upset. When they landed back at the hotel, she peeled herself out of the cockpit and darted into the lobby with a muttered farewell. Faye hung back awkwardly and waited for Spike to park the zipcraft in the nearby lot. He returned after a few minutes, the baby yawning and rubbing her eyes.

"She's really tired," Spike said. "You know, she can't sleep when we fly. Do you think we could, um, come up for a bit?"

He looked exhausted in a way that Faye had never seen before. Without giving herself time to overthink anything, she nodded, and they walked into the gleaming hotel lobby and took the elevator back up to her floor.

Faye's skin felt clammy and she was trembling slightly, no doubt because of the adrenaline coursing through her veins. It was hard to stop picturing the blood-spattered room and the dead deer. The horrible smell still clung to the inside of her nose. Regardless, there was something else in the way her stomach felt rubbery and weightless as they walked down the hallway towards her room. Spike walked behind her, glancing around appreciatively at the fancy artwork on the walls. The baby had finally fallen asleep in the crook of his arm.

"Right here," Faye said, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the echoing hallway. "Um..."

She swiped her keycard and opened the door. During her absence, the housekeeping staff had finally been able to clean up, and everything looked freshly fluffed and polished. A large bouquet of pink roses on the nightstand caught her eye, and she hurried forward to check the note dangling from the vase.

Babe I'm really sorry if I made u mad last week, its ok if u don't want to talk but I miss you! I can't believe ur in this piano thing, break a leg!

Xoxoxoxox Benjy

Faye gulped and shoved the card into the nightstand drawer. Spike sidled in behind her and deposited the baby into the plush cream-colored armchair. As Faye jittered around kicking off her boots and taking off her Glock and its holster to place it by the bed, Spike sat at the piano and played a few chords.

"Steinway. Nice," he commented, picking out a melody. Faye stood at the bathroom mirror taking off her earrings. She his eyes in the the reflection as he talked. "So, what do you have to play? You ready?"

"I will be. Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Haydn," Faye called back, combing out her hair.

"You better not screw up the first round, Romani."

"As if," she scoffed, washing her face. She couldn't get the smell of dead animal out of her nose, so she spritzed some perfume around her temples and sneezed violently. "Bleh."

"Pretty flowers," Spike said with an edge in his voice. "Those from lover boy?"

"Oh, those are from the contest sponsors," Faye said breezily, aware of how transparent of a lie it was. Undeterred, she turned to look at Spike as he noodled at the piano. "So anyways. Jet doesn't need anything tonight?"

Spike smiled. "Lucky called earlier and said he's still stable. Nothing we can do right now, I guess."

He stood from the piano and stretched. Taking off his jacket, he tucked it over the baby as she snored quietly on the armchair. He straightened up and met Faye's eyes as she walked back into the bedroom.

"You need to practice?"

Faye shook her head. "I practiced a lot today. I'm burnt out. Tomorrow."

"All right. Kick me out if you need to. As your manager, I don't want you fucking up," he said, but his eyes were gentle. He kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed, extending his long legs and cracking his knuckles.

The wind was picking up outside, and even from the twentieth floor they could hear the waves colliding with the rocks far below. A distant lighthouse blinked on across the turbulent water. Faye thought about Louisa's terrified face, the bloodied deer and the note, and felt a sense of dangerous vertigo.

"They say a hurricane's coming," Faye said, perching on the edge of the bed as far away from Spike as possible. "You want something to eat? Wine? I get room service," she said quickly, grabbing the menu and thrusting it towards him. "Pick whatever!"

She couldn't explain to herself why she was so nervous. Spike had already made it clear that their drunken night together was a one-time thing, and it made sense that he would want to rest after their expedition earlier, after all. So why was her heart jumping in her chest?

Spike took the menu and perused it with interest. "It's free?"

Faye laughed, a slightly manic sound. "Better be! I'm not paying."

"Hmmmm."

Spike took his time reading every word of the menu, and Faye grew impatient and leapt to her feet again. She checked on the sleeping baby and paced back and forth in front of the windows. Another peal of thunder rumbled, and she could see heat lightning flickering between clouds out on the horizon.

"You're making me nervous," Spike grumbled.

"You're taking too long," Faye told him, and snatched up the phone to order. "Hi, let me get, uh...two dozen oysters and a bottle of the Armand de Brignac. Oh, and some baby formula. Yeah, room 719." She hung up the phone with a thunk and sat back onto the pillows, twisting her hands together anxiously.

Spike found the remote and turned on the television (a flat-screened behemoth hidden in the stone wall across from the bed) and flipped through the channels until he found an old samurai movie. The television screen reflected in the dark windows, and Faye watched a fight scene that way.

"We're in over our heads, aren't we?" Faye asked Spike abruptly.

"We might be," he said mildly. "But we've been tied up in worse."

He kept his eyes on the screen, watching as one of the samurai plunged a sword into his stomach, causing a bucketful of ketchupy-looking fake blood to spurt across his robes. Several shrine maidens wailed and fainted in the background. Faye grimaced.

"It's too late to back out now, though, isn't it?"

Spike said nothing, and Faye exhaled sharply.

"Why are we doing this?"

He turned to look at her. "What do you mean? To help Jet - "

"Why are we doing this, Spike?" Faye asked again, meeting his eyes. "Why did you find me?"

Spike opened his mouth to answer just as the doorbell rang, and he strode across the carpet to get the door. Faye pursed her lips as a pimply young waiter wheeled a cart into the room, followed by another waiter holding a bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. They placed the oysters, baby formula, and champagne onto the table before stepping back to stand expectantly by the door.

"Oh, right," Faye said, digging through her purse for a couple of crumpled Woolongs. She thrust them at the pimply kid, and he bowed and motioned for the other waiter to leave. They exited without saying a word.

Faye grabbed the bottle of champagne and poured them both two large glasses. Spike joined her at the small table beside the piano and crossed a lanky leg over a bony knee. Setting the formula aside, he started dishing out oysters onto both plates. The shells clattered against the china. Faye felt a wave of deja vu as they both sat there drinking quickly and staring away from each other. The baby stirred, waving her small arm for a moment before settling back into slumber. Low peals of thunder continued to rumble outside. Faye wished it would hurry up and rain already.

Why was she so nervous? Faye Valentine could get every man she ever wanted. All Faye Valentine had to do was flash some skin to melt men to putty in her hands. But she wasn't Faye Valentine anymore.

She was Faye Leung, the promising young pianist, a girl with parents and a past and a boyfriend (sort of), and she didn't know how to act around the man who broke her heart and came back for more.

There it was again, that vertigo.

"You're not hungry either, are you?" Spike asked, poking at his food. Faye glanced up and shook her head.

"I'm not crazy about oysters," she said as Spike opened a bottle of Tabasco with his teeth.

"Really?" he said, laughing. "Why the hell did you order so many?"

Faye laughed too, embarrassed. The champagne was going to her head, but she poured herself another glass.

"I don't know. I thought you'd like em," she confessed, tipsy enough to tell the truth.

"I bet you've never had Martian oysters, though. They're different. Something in the water. Here," he said, assembling an array of condiments, "let me make you one the right way."

He chose a particularly succulent oyster off of the ice-covered tray and started to sprinkle things onto it: a squeeze of lemon, a dash of Tabasco, and a pinch of something that smelled like wasabi but was a shade of bright neon blue.

"You know how to eat them?" Spike said, a mischievous flicker in his eyes. "The right way?"

Faye scoffed and reached for the oyster.

"I'm not that big of a plebeian, you know," she said, but Spike shook his head and tipped the oyster into the palm of his hand. He held it to her lips, and Faye stopped breathing.

"You must be crazy," she told him, trying to push his hand away. "I'm not - "

"Trust me," Spike said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "The shells are sharp. You'll slice your mouth. Again," he added. Faye felt herself flush violently.

Feeling ridiculous, she leaned down and ate the oyster off of Spike's palm. When her lips touched his warm skin, she heard him make a tiny sound under his breath. Perhaps the oyster did seem different from its cousins on Eatth: saltier and richer-tasting, but Faye's senses were too busy processing the rush of dizzying heat spreading from her temples to her thighs to think much about the taste.

"So?" Spike asked in a strained voice. "What's the verdict?"

She looked at his hand in his lap and noticed that a few drops of Tabasco still clung to his long fingers. Slowly, deliberately, she took his hand and lifted it to her mouth. His eyes widened.

Gently, Faye licked the hot sauce off of Spike's fingers, one by one. He drew in a shaky breath. When she finished his pinky she released his hand and leaned back in her chair, sipping her champagne like nothing had happened.

"Not bad," she said lightly, surveying him from underneath lowered lashes. "You want one?"