The blade caught the green light from the Tiffany lamp, giving it an otherworldly glow. Anya accepted it gladly. It was much lighter than the axes she had wielded in her human life. Metalworking had come a long way in the last eleven hundred years. The silver edge was less than an eyelash thick and wickedly sharp. She imagined hacking the Marnoxon gem off the top of the slayer’s dowsing rod, letting the magic refill her veins.

Angelus settled himself in the chair on the other side of the desk and stretched his long legs on top of the weapons trunk.

“Now,” he said. “How about a drink?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Anya said.

Out of a drawer, he retrieved an amber-colored bottle and two cut-crystal glasses. “Whiskey okay?” he asked.

“I’ve never tried it,” Anya admitted. “I usually order beer. There’s been beer as long as I’ve been alive. Almost everywhere I’ve been had a drinkable ale that wouldn’t make you go blind.”

Liquor glugged out of the bottle and into the glasses. Anya noted that the vampire poured an equal amount in each. She appreciated not being condescended to. The fumes wafting out of the cups were less appealing. The smell reminded her of the poison they poured down the wheatgrass-clogged drains at Best Pressed.

Angelus lifted his drink to her. “Sláinte!”

“Back at’cha,” she said.

Their glasses clinked. The single sip she took disinfected her esophagus and bleached her stomach lining. One of her eyes squeezed shut. Upon exhaling, Anya found her breath to be pure ethanol.

Angelus drank most of his whiskey in a single gulp. It must have been easy to build up a tolerance when most of what he consumed was blood. At least whiskey was a thin beverage. Blood was like iron-filled syrup.

Angelus leaned back, swirling his whiskey cup in lazy circles just beneath his jaw. Anya wondered if the drink made an interesting sound that close to his ear. She tried it but heard nothing but sloshing.

“So, you don’t consider yourself human?” he asked.

“Do you?” Anya inspected the inside of the cup for a moment before hazarding another sip. The whiskey already in her had started to heat up, sending warmth through her limbs. “I haven’t been human a lot longer than you.”