Chapter
1.08
Thursday, May 16th, 2002
"So who exactly do you think she's going
to try to summon?" Giles asked Spike.
The vampire turned on him irritably. "Do
I look like the bloody watcher in the pack? I thought that was
what you were here for? Better yet, ask demon bint. She's been
to half these places... Or maybe Tinkerbell'll
know what's in the books they've got between them.
All I know is the so-called Master's meant to
have tried the like after that earthquake, an' before they managed
to send the bugger back where it came from, the Brotherhood of
Aurelius found themselves short a couple of dozen flunkies, Darla
not included, unfortunately. Mind you, he was a soulless,
evil, arrogant sociopath rather than just an amoral
one, so at least he had an excuse.
Bit, go get dressed and when you've done that,
come back down and bring your cell and an overnight bag, just
in case. Quick as you can. Reckon as we're goin' to have to see
if Lover Boy's okay with a change of venue."
"Right, Giles, Wes, you get The Magic Box."
Buffy fell into organising mode. "We'll drop Dawn off and
then head for Willow's parents.
Anya, you're at yours, right? I can't think of
anywhere else in town itself that we need to check and Giles can
let him and Wes into the shop. So, if you can call Tara back and
bring her up to date with what we think and then stay there for
just now, you're not too far from either the campus or the town
once we have a definite location."
"Buffy, if you're right, anything that would
do what she wants..." Anya told the slayer, knowing that she was asking to get her head snapped off. "It's going to want a sacrifice in return. That
kind of magic can change someone. If you do find her she may not
be the Willow you know."
"Thanks, Anya." Buffy answered, too calmly Anya thought for her to have fully absorbed the import of what she had told her. "We'll be in touch."
"Okay, guys. More bad news. Anya says the
spell would need a sacrifice. I'm guessing you guys all know more
about the significance of that than I can tell you."
"Not so much, pet." Spike gave her
an uncomfortable look. "Won't bother her half as much this
time as it did the first time around."
Buffy and Wesley both looked shocked. Giles,
Spike noted, did not.
"Willow's done this before?"
"I suppose I can't say for certain, but
you tell me anywhere you know where you can buy the blood of a
pregnant doe? I mean, reckon there's quite a few folk of the fanged
variety would pay for a delicacy like that but I've never heard
tell of anywhere sellin' it. What about you, Rupes? You heard
tell of anything like that, bein' in the trade an' all?"
"No, Spike. You know I haven't."
Spike shrugged. "Like I said, second time'll
be easier, an', if she thinks she can take that back along with
everything else, she might not even think twice."
"You say that like she won't be able to?"
Buffy asked, her voice concerned.
"You know they say there's no such thing
as a free ride, pet. If you're talking about magic you can take
that and double it. Actually, depending on the school of thought,
you can either triple it or multiply it by seven. Whatever stunt
she pulls, it'll come back on her."
"Then we've got to stop her before it gets
that far." She looked over at the two watchers. "We're waiting for Dawn. What's your excuse? Call us as soon as you have
a location."
Buffy and Spike drove away from Brandon and his
father's house, having promised, if possible, that they would be
back to pick up Dawn at ten, otherwise they would call to let
her know what happened and pick her up at seven the next morning.
"It was for me, wasn't it?" Buffy asked
as they pulled away.
Spike shrugged. "What other spell of hers
d'you think I'd bother to check out?"
Buffy sighed. "All the lines she's crossed
with her magic. They're all my fault, from putting Angel's soul
back to ritual sacrifice. They've all been for me."
"Pet, the way I recall it, you were restin'
happily up in heaven. You didn't ask her to do what she did... And
if you want my opinion, that whole crock about thinkin' you were
in hell was just a smokescreen Red put up t'con the others into
goin' along with her.
I dunno... Maybe by the time she got around to
actually doin' it she convinced herself as well. Thing is, are
you tellin' me a witch as smart as Red couldn't have found a way
to check? Are you tellin' me someone that bright couldn't figure
out that dyin' for your little sis and the rest of the world would
get you a ticket to heaven, even if you hadn't been an angel all
along?" He gave her a flirtatious grin, trying to lighten
the mood just a little.
"In my book Red brought you back for one
reason. She thought bein' the slayer was this great important
destiny. Well, two reasons. Anyway, when she got left to run things,
she found out the difference between goin' with you on an odd
patrol and fightin' the demon's night after night, and she didn't
want to carry that responsibility any more. She did it for her,
not for you.
Y'know, at the time, I didn't get why Red didn't
grieve, not after the first couple of days. Guess she just couldn't
take it, so she was plannin' on bringin' you back almost from
the start. It was always all about her, pet.
Don't you think that, if she'd done it for you,
she'd have been there for you when you came back? Or that, if she
was worried about you, that they'd have helped out on patrols to
give you time to readjust? Or that maybe she could have paid a
bit of extra rent and got an upgrade or something instead of a
whole new laptop?
I know you hang onto those bloody 'best friend'
labels. I'll even admit, with Harris, he had good reason to be a
bit preoccupied, an' when all's said an' done, if I got staked
tomorrow, it'd make me feel better to know he'd be around for you,
even if I can't stand the prick. All the same, it seems to me
that the person who's actually been your best friend for the last
year, is the one you don't bother givin' the title to. An' Red
gets the credit, but I doubt she's done anything to suit anybody
but herself in a bloody long time."
Silence filled the car and Spike began to think
he'd overstepped the mark. Just the same, the fact was whatever
else came of this night's events, the only way that Willow and
Tara would still be a couple at the end of the night was if Willow
succeeded in her goals and no one but her was ever any the wiser.
This time, if Spike had any say in the matter, it would be the
aggrieved party who got the support of her friends not the person
who he considered was as guilty of rape for what she'd done to
Tara as Sam was for what she'd done to Dawn.
Seconds ticked by and the overly tense muscles
in Spike's jaw ticked along with them. Then, Buffy's fingers brushed
against his face. In her touch, he could feel her regrets and
her reluctance but also her understanding and her acceptance.
"You're right. Last time this all fell to
pieces, we none of us treated Tara as well as she deserved. I
hope when this is over that she'll choose to stay with us. Either
way, I put Willow's feelings over Dawn's after the car wreck and
I told myself she'd get over it. After this though, I just don't
think Dawn's ever going to feel secure living in the same house
as her. I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't feel the same, even if
I didn't have Dawn to consider. I think she has to leave."
Spike pulled the car over in front of Willow's
parents' house and turned to take Buffy's face in his hands.
"It's your house, love, and, whatever you
decided, I wouldn't interfere, other than maybe to express an opinion,
but I want you to know that I understand this was a hard decision
for you. I'm proud of you for making it and I agree with you one
hundred percent."
Buffy's eyes were bright as she looked up into
his. "That's just it. It should be hard, but you know, it's
kind of not. Sometimes it's like I don't know her at all. Sometimes
she scares me."
Spike pulled her into his arms, holding her close
and under cover of the embrace, his light-fingered left hand slipped
the orbs from his own pocket into Buffy's.
"Sometimes she scares me, too, love,"
he whispered in her ear. "Sometimes she scares me, too."
As they pulled apart, Buffy looked the vampire
in the eye. "You know, you make a lot bigger shield to hide
behind than I do, and we still don't know what Travers is up to."
"I'm still only worrying about staking,
beheading, fire and sunlight. You could get hurt a whole pile
of other ways."
Buffy sighed. "I suppose I'm just lucky
that you waited till after sunset to be all chivalrous."
Spike gave a snort of amusement. "Chivalrous
is one thing, pet. Suicidally stupid is another. Speaking of which,
let's go see if the red witch is making a parental visit."
Giles unfurled his arms from around Wesley's
waist, giving the bubble gum pink helmet the same disgusted look
as he took it off as he had when Wesley had first passed him the
monstrosity. 'I knew I should have got a hire car,' he
told himself.
He found that the motions of opening up the store
were no longer second nature to him. He had to think about which
keys to use, and fumbled through fitting them to the locks. Once
inside, everything was much as he remembered, however. Between
the two of them they quickly found the relevant spell book and
started pulling the required crystals and powders from the shelves.
"Do you really think we can do this in time
to stop her?" Wesley asked the older watcher.
"Stop her turning back time, or stop her
summoning something powerful enough to kill us all?" Giles
asked.
Wesley looked the older watcher in the eye. "You
know none of us believe that she can actually summon something
that powerful and have enough power left to make it obey her."
"I'll assume you meant the latter, then.
Prophecies can be thwarted, but... in this case, I have my doubts
about it happening quite so conveniently," Giles explained
even as he arrayed the spell components as shown in the book.
Several minutes later, Giles snuffed out the
latest conflagration to take hold on the magic shop's Sunnydale
street map. The paper sheet looked as if it had long been owned
by a group of particularly careless stoners, but only the latest
"spliff burn" was of interest to the two watchers.
"You ring Anya," Wesley suggested.
"I'll call Tara. Whoever finishes first can get Buffy."
"Let me just ask one little tiny question
here, Giles." Anya spoke in her best 'Are you all complete imbeciles?' voice.
"Yes?"
"I get the whole talking her out of it idea...
but what exactly am I meant to do if I get there and this thing
is already chewing on her bones?"
"Well, in that case, I would say you have
two options," the sentence became more laced with sarcasm
as the watcher continued. "You either run, or, if you prefer, maybe
you can die just a little sooner than the rest of us."
"There's no need to snap. I just wanted
to know if you had actually made any plans for that eventuality.
I shall go now and steal Xander's car keys and
drive illegally to my inevitable doom."
"Anya," Giles tried to interrupt but
the former demon was on a roll.
"When Xander sobers up tell him I said I
love him too." With that somewhat melodramatic exit the line
went dead.
"You know, Bunny, I'm sure my husband will
be able to tell you where we put all Willow's things when
we converted her room into a study, but it's so nice to see you
again. Willow said that you'd got engaged last time she called.
I assume this must be Mike.
How is your mother? We never did get around to
doing lunch after that whole thing at the town hall. You know,
I really meant to call her, but everything was just so hectic,
and with Willow dating that rock musician we were so worried about
her." She cast a worried glance at Spike's coif as if she
were suddenly wondering whether such a style was possible for
someone who wasn't in a band. "Why don't I get you both a
soda? I'm sure Ira will be home in a couple of minutes and he'd
be so disappointed to miss you."
"Really, I think we should be going. Maybe
we can find a pet store that's open at one of the out of town
malls or something. It's just when the heater blew, Willow said
that all the bits for her fish tank were packed away over here
and that it would tide us over till we could get to the store."
Buffy raced through her cover story again. "'Cause the fish
might get cold... at night... because it's colder then than during
the day."
Buffy had never been so pleased at the prospect
of facing a hostile demon, as she was when her phone rang and
Wesley told her where to find the redhead.
"We, em, have to go. That was my little
sister, well, her date actually," she amended when Spike's
raised eyebrow intimated that the timbre of Wes's voice had probably
been heard by Willow's mother. "They've, um, broken down
and we need to go pick them up. So we have to go... now."
"Okay, dear. Well, if Ira knows where that
heater is, should we drop it across for you?"
Buffy tried to think of a good excuse for the
house being empty and failed. "Why don't you do that?"
she replied with a false smile instead.
As they opened up the DeSoto again, Spike passed
Buffy ten bucks. "You're right," he told her. "I
didn't think anybody could suck that bad at the undercover
stuff." |
