He felt her before he saw her. The hairs on the back of his neck seemed to rise. Then he smelled her perfume. He didn't know the name of the scent, but he had never smelled it on anyone else. Flowers, of course, but with an undertone, a very subtle one, of decay, like flowers which had been laid on a grave several days ago. He didn't turn around.

"Darla." He said her name the way he said everyone's name, with a little upturn at the end, as if it were a question.   That was one of his quirks that Darla didn't know whether to find endearing or annoying. Lilah had always found it annoying.

"You were expecting me. I read the ad in the personals column. 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' Leave it to you to be clever and also to flaunt your education. Tell me, did you know the stanza and verse or did you have to look it up?"

His lips curved in a smile. "That's my little secret. The other was Angelus, wasn't it?

'Is that a Death? And are there two? Is Death the woman's mate?' I'll bet you knew Coleridge personally."

She smiled one of the slow sexy smiles that had driven him mad. "We came to him in his opium dreams. He wasn't sure we were real. We kept him alive as long as we could so he could keep on writing. Finally we knew his time had come. We let him take as much opium as he could before we drank him. Angelus and I were on an opium high for a week."

He laughed. "I guess Spike and Dru weren't part of this."

"No, just Angelus and me. We didn't like Wordsworth. He wrote such trite poetry:

'I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils.'

Boring!"

"Very singsongy, I always thought. The rhythm hit you over the head. You probably liked Blake, I'll bet. Was Angelus the 'Tyger, tyger, burning bright?'"

Darla nodded.   "And Poe was a friend. We helped him with some of his stories. The Masque of the Red Death was based on our own experience."

"I'm not surprised."

"Why don't you tell me why you wanted to see me, Lindsey? Do you want me back?"

"How could I want you back, Darla? You were never mine, in spite of everything I did for you. No, I don't want you back."

"Do you want to die then? I'll kill you, but I won't make you one of us. Frankly, I'd find you quite annoying."

"No, that's not what I want. I don't know if you've heard, but I've left Wolfram & Hart. I have a new hand," he held it up in front of her face, "and I'm starting a new life. I wanted to say goodbye to you. I wanted closure."

She looked at him. He stood there, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, nothing in his hands. No stake. "Closure, Lindsey? I'll give it to you."

"One last kiss, Darla. And don't look for a weapon. I can't kill you; if I killed you, it would be murder because I wouldn't be killing a vampire, I'd be killing the woman who betrayed me."

"One last kiss, Lindsey." She put her arms around him and kissed him gently. Then she went into vamp mode.

"This is how Tosca kisses, Darla. Except with fangs, not a dagger."

"Showing off until the end, Lindsey? You're pathetic."

"And you're dead, Darla." He moved to the side just slightly as Kate, who had been hiding in another room, shot her through the heart with a crossbow.