Part Eleven


They made it back to Cordelia's car seconds after the thunderstorm cut loose. Xander hauled the rear door open and bundled Willow inside, then turned to get Giles. The man was leaning heavily against the side of the car with his eyes shut, all physical reserves having been apparently exhausted by the walk back.

"Com'on, G-man," Xander urged, pulling Giles' arm over his shoulder. "Just a few steps more."

Giles climbed, then fell, into the car. Xander shoved his legs up and in, then got in after him and slammed the door shut.

"Nobody said anything about rain," Cordelia was complaining from the front seat as she pulled wet strands of hair from her face. "A little warning next time would be nice."

"Cordy, shut up." Xander edged past Giles to check on Willow, who was shaking violently against the opposite door. "Do we have extra blankets in the car?"

Cordelia was already leaning over the back of the seat, unfolding a soft pink blanket over Willow. "No," she said irritably. "Since you were supposed to be Caution Man tonight, I'd thought I'd leave all the planning to you. God knows, I couldn't think that something might get fucked up and plan for it." She unfolded a second blanket, and Xander tucked it around Giles. "Are they going to be all right? Maybe we should drive to the hospital?"

"Just drive, okay?" Xander snapped.

Cordelia turned around wordlessly and flipped on the headlights. The rain was pouring down by now; even with the windshield wipers on high, it was impossible to see more than a few inches in front of the window. "Maybe you'd like to try driving in this, Xander, but I'd prefer it if some of us made it back to Sunnydale in once piece." She turned on the radio, but only managed to get static.

"All right, all right," Xander said. "Do you have any more blankets up there?"

A scratchy wool tartan blanket hit him in the face. Xander unfolded it and tucked it over the first around Willow. Cordelia bent over the seat to throw another blanket over Giles. "How is she?"

Willow gave him a shivery smile. "Okay, I think." He turned around to check on Giles. The Watcher lay curled on his side, half on and half off the seat, eyes still shut. Xander felt his cold hand and frowned.

"What?" Cordelia said, still hovering anxiously over them.

"I don't know." Xander pushed the blankets more closely around Giles. "I'd feel better if he were shaking like Willow though. Turn on the engine and get the heater going for a few minutes."

"Giles?" Willow pulled her blankets around her and sat up to look at him. Squeezing past Xander, she settled next to Giles' head. She took his right hand in hers and rubbed at it.

Giles moaned and started to shiver.

"That got it going," Xander said. "Guess he just needed a jump start. Cordy, do you have that thermos of tea up there?"

"In the picnic basket," she said. "Behind on the beach. Where you told me to leave it."

"Right. In the picnic basket," Xander said. He turned to Willow. "Okay then, what the hell did you guys think you were doing? When I said 'go ahead', I meant go ahead and fine tune that 'two tin cans and a string' spell you were supposed to be doing."

Willow winced. "We're sorry. When we got into the spell, something kind of clicked. Don't blame Giles. He wasn't expecting it. But since we'd already done the casting, we decided to go with it. We couldn't really come back and get your okay."

"What happened?" Cordelia urged, hanging over the seat again. "Did you get to talk to Buffy?"

Willow looked up at Cordelia, then down again at Giles. "Yes," she said.

"Well, finally. When's she coming home?"

"She isn't," Giles said in a raw whisper.

"But you talked to her, didn't you?" Xander insisted. "Didn't you tell her what's going down here?"

"We let her know we needed her," Willow said. "She -- she wasn't really hearing what we were saying."

"She gave you the raspberry," Cordelia declared. "Well, great. That was a big fat waste of time and energy."

"It was my fault," Willow declared, glaring at her. "We shouldn't have tried to talk with her in her dreams. You say stuff in your dreams you'd never say in real life."

"You're honest in your dreams." Cordelia turned back to the steering wheel. "The rain's letting up now. I'm getting us out of here now."

"We can try again tomorrow," Willow said as Cordelia pulled the car out of the lot. "We'll make sure she's awake this time."

"No," said Xander. "That's it. If you and Giles want to keep up this casting stuff, you can find yourselves another Watcher. Because Cordy and I aren't going to help you get yourselves killed. And Cordelia is right -- if Buffy gives you the raspberry in her dreams, she's not going to change her mind awake."

Giles struggled to sit up, finally managing to prop himself up against the other door. Willow scooted over to sit next to him and took hold of his hand again.

"We --" Giles swallowed painfully and began again. "Dreams aren't conducive to rational discussion." He kept his eyes shut, as if trying to marshall some missing inner strength. "It was a mistake to approach her there."

"And what argument are you going to feed her in the here and now that will get you any further with her?" Xander said. "You guys get an 'A' for Optimism. Now it's time to move on to another class."

Giles pulled his hand out of Willow's grasp and turned away to stare out the window. She bit her lip and huddled into her blankets, her damp hair falling limply about her face.

"Hey," Cordelia said after a long period of silence. "The storm's clearing." She flipped on the radio and managed to tune into a station. Sarah McLachlan blasted through the car, and she hurriedly shut it off.

The Sunnydale city limits sign flashed by. "So where to now?"

"Why don't we stop by the Bronze?" Xander said tentatively. "Or would you guys like to have a stab at All You Can Eat Night at Bucky's Fondue Hut?"

"You decide," Willow said listlessly.

"Look, I didn't start this," Xander said angrily. "You and Giles dragged Cordy and me into this without a by-your- leave. You scared the wiggins out of us, got me decked out in a paisley tie, broke promises, and now you're trying to go turtle on us."

"We didn't break any promises," Willow said, tears in her eyes. "Okay, we should have stopped the spell and come back and told you what we were doing, but we didn't know what was going to happen. And Giles told you the spell was unpredictable."

"So what went wrong?" Xander demanded.

"Nothing. The spell was a success," Giles said. He sounded and looked exhausted, but at least there was some life seeping back into his voice. "I have never been more than a merely competent spell caster, but I have a sense for the fine details. Willow is gifted, but she has an unreliable grasp on the intricacies of magic. Separately, we are wobbly spell casters. Together. . ."

"You're this really good team. Like Abbott and Costello," Cordelia said.

Giles stared at her a moment, then sighed. "I hadn't realized the extent to which our abilities complemented each other," he admitted. "That's what happened when Willow reinforced my casting -- instead of a 10 percent increase in power we got 1000 percent."

Xander slumped back against his door. "And you went ahead with it anyway?"

"We had the spell under control," Willow insisted.

"Barely," Giles murmured.

"Okay, so -- some things got thrown at us that we weren't expecting." She was sitting straight up, looking intently at Xander. "But we did it. It was a successful casting."

"What's the point," Cordelia said, "if Buffy's not coming back?"

Willow opened her mouth and shut it again.

"Look," Xander said. "Nobody's saying that you and Giles didn't give it your best shot. You gave it your all and you came through --"

"Yay Team," Cordelia interjected.

Xander glared at her. "Hey, I'm doing my best Watcher imitation here, okay? We're all busting our butts trying to cope. Except for Buffy. Well, maybe it's time we stop wasting our energy trying to pep talk the No Show and spend it on the Home Team instead."

"Xander," Willow said angrily.

"Where are we going?" Cordelia said as she braked at a red light. "Around in circles, like this argument?"

"So?" Willow said, ignoring Cordelia. "We give up on her? Is that what you're saying?"

"I didn't mean that," Xander retorted. "Mostly I didn't mean that, I mean. But we need to start thinking self- reliance here --"

"You said --" Willow started.

Giles opened the car door, stepped out, and slammed it shut again.

"Giles!" Willow turned around wide-eyed to see him cross around behind them and over to the sidewalk. He rounded the building at the corner and disappeared.

"Xander," Cordelia said, "I'm all for being blunt and everything, but that was more like a baseball bat to the head."

"Oh god," Xander said. "I forgot about these post-spell casting mood swings. Hey!" He grabbed Willow as she shoved the door open to jump out.

"We've got to catch up with him," Willow said desperately. "It's not good for him to be alone out here right now."

"Don't worry." Xander hauled her back in and shut the door. "We'll catch him."

"Question of the night: What do we do with him when we catch him?" Cordelia said in a faux-cheerful voice. "I forgot to bring my big butterfly net, Xander."

"Xander will apologize," Willow declared, with a furious look at him.

"If that's what it takes, okay I will," Xander snapped. "The light's changed, will you turn already? Or are we giving Giles a head start here?"

Cordelia grabbed the steering wheel, turned left, and hit the accelerator. She left a trail of rubber racing to the end of the block. But Giles was nowhere to be seen.

"Now what?" Cordelia demanded as Xander craned out the window to look up and down the cross-street.

"I don't know," Xander said unhappily. "Back to the school, maybe?"

"Not like there's an overabundance of places in Sunnydale he could be headed for this time of night," she agreed and turned the car around.

"Wait," Willow said. "Across the street. There's an all- night mini-mart."

Cordelia looked back at Xander. "He had a royal case of the munchies after last night's spell casting."

Xander frowned, then nodded. "Okay. I'll run in for a quick look."

She turned the BMW across the street into the store's parking lot. Xander hopped out. "You girls stay here, and I'll check inside. Keep the motor running." He half-ran to the door.

"I've got to call home," Willow told Cordelia. "I'm going to use the pay phone over there."

"Okay --" Cordelia said distractedly as she watched the door to the mini-mart. She blinked, then took her cell phone off the dashboard. Scooting over to the passenger side, she rolled down the window. "Hey, Willow --!"

But the pavement by the pay telephone was empty.


Drusilla sat on top of a newspaper vending machine and waited. It had been a long night and she was hungry and that horrible moon had started its singing again. Sea chanties this time. She was going to have to find a way of smashing the thing into silence sooner or later.

She'd gotten a hat off a wandering lady last night. A nice wide-brimmed moonhat with flowers that hissed. It helped keep the moon away some, but the hissing muddied her thoughts. And so she was trying to sort out again why she was sitting here.

She needed a companion. Badly. "Naughty naughty Miss Edith," Drusilla growled unhappily. Miss Edith had run away, and Dru didn't have anyone to talk to now and tea parties didn't work very well with just one. She could never decide which cup to drink from. There was this pretty mug that used to sit on her desk and she would take it to the teacher's lounge and fill it with coffee to drink during those sunny morning hours while she drew up her lesson plans and the Watcher would come and smile at her and talk with her, and then Spike would walk in with a big red macaw in a cage. But she didn't like bird blood. It never filled the cup up.

"Naughty teacher," Dru said, running her fingers hard through her hair. Her Family had cut her adrift, left her to the mercies of this awful moon that sang and jigged overhead. And to that horrible teacher who was wandering through her head again.

The naughty teacher had gotten stuck in Drusilla's head when Dru had taken her from the Watcher's memories. At first it had been amusing. She would have the teacher to tea and would spill scalding water all over her while serving. But the naughty teacher had been sneaking in, now that Spike wasn't around to watch out for her, and had substituted some of her memories for Dru's.

Drusilla was fairly certain that she didn't need or want to know what a 'Monster Truck Rally' was, and she was more than a little confused in discovering the she felt melancholy at the thought of 'nitro-burning funny cars'. At least she hoped these notions of memories had nothing to do with her. If Spike were here, she could ask him, he would reassure her and chase the teacher away, and she could get back to the business of being Drusilla.

"Spike," she muttered, and kicked in the side of the vending machine with the back of her heel. He was never around anymore when she needed him. And Angel was no better.

She remembered now why she was here, sitting and waiting across the lawn from the Watcher's darkened flat. She cheered up at the thought. Once she took him, he'd make the irritating teacher go away, and then together they'd go find Angel and Miss Edith.

Drusilla picked her head up and listened intently. Somebody was walking rapidly up the street in her direction. She hopped off the vending machine and drifted across the lawn to the shadows of the staircase that led to the upper flats of the building.

The Watcher turned up the walk, moving at a furious pace. Drusilla prowled quietly to a position where she could intercept him; but he blew past her hiding place before she could do a proper stalk. She moved in behind him, determined to catch him before he could reach the safety of his flat -- but as she closed with him she came up against the glamour again.

He was throwing off waves and waves of that aura of raw magic. After last night she'd been expecting it, had even anticipated the taste of it. But this was something else: the tightly coiled power of cold dreams and moonlight and the wild ocean. She faltered in the face of it, and then he was opening the door to his flat and inside.

She moved to the front window of the flat and watched his shadow move upon the draperies. He would come back out to her very soon. She sensed his agitation. The magic was driving him. He was going hunting tonight.

Drusilla smiled now. The strength of the magic had surprised her, but it didn't frighten her. He was alone and new to it, and she was confident enough in her own powers that she could handle him. This could be a wonderful game.

She had a hunt of her own in mind.


Part Twelve


Willow hurried across the street and halted panting in front of Giles' apartment building. Lucky that Sunnydale was so small, she thought. She could almost run across it without having to stop and get her breath. Still, she was glad she was in good shape.

The window to his apartment was lit. Not that she needed any evidence that he was there. She'd known where Giles was heading from the moment he'd bolted from Cordelia's car. His physical need to be doing anything was acute; she was feeling it herself. But he shouldn't be out hunting alone, particularly not with Drusilla stalking him. She had to convince him to take her along, so that she could watch out for him. If she'd brought Cordelia and Xander they'd have only driven him away again. So she'd ditched them and come alone.

Willow walked up the sidewalk and moved under the stairs to the door of his apartment. The thunderstorm had apparently not made it this far into town -- or the warm night air had already erased any traces of precipitation. She ran a hand nervously through her hair: it was almost dry again.

"Nerves, nerves," she admonished herself, bouncing from one foot to the next, trying to calm down. Giles wasn't going take her seriously if he thought she was anxious.

A shadow shifted behind her at the periphery of her vision; she whirled and looked around wildly. All was still.

"It's just post-casting jitters," she said to herself. "I ought to write that in my notebook, except I left my notebook in my bag in Cordelia's car."

The door to the apartment opened and Giles stepped out, bag in hand. He stopped when he saw her, but he wasn't terribly surprised to see her there. "Willow, go home."

"You're going on patrol," she said, staring hard at the bag.

"Somebody has to do it," he said savagely and turned to shut the door behind him.

"I'm coming with you." She stood in his path, determined not to move until he agreed.

"Where are Xander and Cordelia?"

"They were going to go to the school to look for you."

"You should have gone with them."

"Well, I didn't. And you should have too."

They stood glaring at each other. Willow felt steady now, as if his anger had settled her down. In a peculiar way, it was a shared anger, as if they were feeding off of each other's aggressions.

"This has nothing to do with you," Giles finally said. "I should have never let any of you -- or Jenny -- get involved. This isn't your world, Willow. Go back to your computers, the Bronze, your school-girl life -- and let me get on with my work."

"And you, what about your life?" Willow said indignantly. "We're not allowed to get involved, and you don't get to do anything else? You and Buffy, you're only ones allowed to fight the things out here? And -- and now that Buffy's run away from it, it's all up to you?"

He turned away from her. "Buffy and I were born to it. You, Xander, Oz, Cordelia -- you have your lives ahead of you. You don't have to do this."

"Well, maybe we choose to do it anyway!" she said. "You know, you should give us a little credit. I know we're not the Slayer. But at least we're here and not running away. So -- so you can either accept that and work with us, or you can pull a Buffy on us and make us work on our own."

"You don't know what the hell you're saying," he snarled, and pushed past her to move down the walk.

"You know I do." She dogged his heels. "What, you think I did that spell tonight for kicks?"

"Yes." He stopped and turned to face her. "That's precisely what I think. It's been one big game to the three of you. You take risks, you have no thought of what could happen --"

"That is so unfair." She grabbed his sleeve and hauled back. "Okay, we make mistakes sometimes. But we've survived against some pretty scary things. We're not children any more. You said it yourself tonight. Well, you'd better stop treating us first like adults and then like children just because it suits you to do it sometimes. We've proved ourselves."

Giles looked at her with a staggering intensity. "Is that so?" he said in a voice like dry ice.

Willow stood her ground, fed the intensity back by looking him straight in the eye. "Yes. We can take anything the Hellmouth can dish out."

He dropped the bag he was carrying, wound his hand through her hair and shoved her backwards until she was pinned hard against the door to his apartment. Willow grabbed at his wrists as he leaned in towards her. They glared into each others' eyes for a heartbeat, then he moved in on her.

She had never been kissed all out before, and the intensity of it made her knees buckle. She let go of his wrists and grabbed at his body in a desperate bid for equilibrium. Pressed hard against him, she felt his arousal hard against her. Willow whimpered and opened her mouth. Their tongues glided past each other, and she shifted her grip to his shoulders, wrapping one leg around his so she could hike herself up to get closer to him, to deepen the kiss until she'd totally lost track of her breath.

Abruptly, they both found themselves sitting on the pavement, Willow half in and half out of his lap. Giles looked more than a little stunned.

"Whoa," said Willow. "Where did that come from?"

"That," Giles panted. "Was a mistake."

The remark should have hurt her, but she was in tune with him enough to know exactly what he was talking about. It was kind of cool too that she could hitch herself up to his lips to resume the kiss with absolute confidence that, mistake or not, he wasn't inclined to push her away. He caught her hand in his, held it back for a moment, then let it slip past to wrap around his neck while he reached around her hips to pull her closer.

Willow immersed herself in him, allowing her tongue to wander across the planes of his face to touch on the complexities of his ears. He nipped gently at the back of her neck, and she responded in kind, then pushed herself up so she could run her hands down the back of his jacket while she kissed the top of his head.

"Willow --" He reached back to grab her hands. "I was saying something about mistakes. . ."

"So what's one more?" Willow said. She looked at her hands where he held them away. "We're sparkling."

Giles blinked and looked. Ropes of light coursed up and around their joined hands, lacing down their wrists like luminescent vines. "We're still suffering side effects from the spell cast--"

Willow pushed his hands down and went back to exploring the inside of his mouth. His hand slipped up to the back of her neck, and he wrapped his other arm hard around her. She mewed and surged up against him and felt an answering hardness between them.

They toppled sideways hard onto the pavement. Willow winced at the small rap to her still sore head, but tried to hang on to the kiss anyway.

Giles broke it off and let go of her neck to rub at her sore spot. He looked up, then scooted away from her. "I think," he said, "that we'd better stop, now." Waves of light rippled through his hair, flashed across his glasses. Willow stared at him, entranced, then moved to get her hands into that light.

"Willow -- we're more than a little conspicuous?"

"What?" She sat up, flickers of light drifting down her shoulders, and realized that they were sitting at the core of a slowly turning sphere of coruscating radiance, which was beginning to encompass a good portion of the apartment building as well. "Oh! Are we doing that?"

Giles shot her a sardonic look and struggled unsteadily to his feet. "Bloody magic --" she heard him mutter under his breath as he rummaged through his pockets for his keys. Willow felt something cold digging into her lower thigh where the skirt was rucked up, and she pulled the missing keys out from under her. She stood and reached around him to put the key in the lock and turn it.

He opened the door and turned towards her to gesture her in. "Now we'll see what we can do about getting you home --"

Willow pushed his jacket off his shoulders and grabbed his tie. Dimly she thought that maybe she shouldn't be acting like such a slut, but her natural modesty had apparently gone on a post-spell casting vacation. If she could only get Giles' inhibitions to do the same --

As if on order Giles shut the door, wrapped an arm around her waist, and walked her backwards towards the couch. He dumped her onto her back on the cushions and moved over her, his good hand moving delicately down her side to the hem of her skirt. Willow reached up to pull the glasses off his face so she could get closer to his eyes, and they were kissing again as if they would never get enough. She felt his hand moving tentatively up under her skirt, and she let loose of his tie to urge his hand up, until it was under the waistband of her cotton panties. She left it there to its own devices, and reached to remove the tie and undo the buttons to his shirt.

Her fingers traced out fragile ripples of light where they touched his bared chest. Willow watched in fascination as she painted out a pulsing golden wave over his beating heart. He moved down to gently nip at her hose, then licked down to her throat. She let her fingers glide up the planes of his face, creating eddies of silvery-blue and crimson ripples of light across his skin. Sparkles of pure white and saffron danced in his hair at her touch. "Wow," she gasped, and lifted her hips as he pulled her panties down. "This is like making out and finger painting with laser lights at the same time."

"Willow. . ." he murmured warmly from somewhere between her breasts. "Stop talking, or I'm going to start listening to my second thoughts about this."

Willow bit her tongue and moved her legs up around him, looking up at the play of light on the ceiling above the couch. Giles pushed her shirt up over her head and eased his hands under her to fumble at the back of her bra. Smiling, Willow let him work for it, taking advantage of his absorption to slip a hand down the back of his trousers to rest on the bare flesh of his ass.

He drew in a long breath, moved up to gaze intently into her face as he pulled her bra off her shoulders. Out of reflex, she moved to cover her exposed breasts, but the look on his face convinced her otherwise. She stretched her arms out and he bent to one breast, sucking at it passionately. Willow laced her fingers through his hair and shut her eyes, allowing herself to bask in the sensation.

With her eyes shut and giving her body wholly over to him, she realized she was beginning to develop an odd sensation of overlay. She opened her eyes. "Giles --" which sounded odd, given the circumstance. "Rupert?" which sounded odd too. She thought about 'Ripper', but shivered with the realization that she wasn't brave enough to try that yet.

He hesitated, then moved to look her in the face again, his hands resting tentatively on her breasts. The sense of being in two places at once disappeared. "We should --" he began, his eyes glowing green in the darkened room, like a cat's.

"Shut up," Willow said, and kissed him hard to cut off any more of that. She was a pretty good kisser when she trusted herself -- Oz had said so, and she sensed that Giles was vibed into her kissing technique too. "It's just --" she said breathlessly as she broke the kiss, not wanting to give the Watcher any more room for trouble-making. "Are we going to -- um -- blow up anything -- I mean anything you'll have to repair -- if we keep this up?"

Giles reluctantly tore his gaze from hers to look about the room. The halo of light that had encircled them before was back again with a kaleidoscopic vengeance. "Actually," he said, "the excess magical energy has to be worked off in some manner. This is as safe as any other."

"Good." Willow threw her arms around him and hauled him in for another kiss.

He drifted down her bared torso, leaving hot kisses and flame-like glimmers of light in his wake. Willow gasped as his tongue flickered across her navel, and then he'd passed over and below. She scooted back against the arm of the coach to give him room, dropped her head back, and cried out as she felt his tongue move inside of her. Desperate for more of him, she grabbed at his head and looped her legs up over his sides.

Giles gasped and drew suddenly away. "Willow --"

"Sorry, sorry," she said in chagrin, letting her legs down. "I forgot."

He moved up to kiss her on the belly. "To tell the truth, so had I."

Willow reached to pull his shirt off of his shoulders, wincing at the sight of the still livid bruises that ran up and down his ribs and across his belly. He hadn't said anything to any of them about broken ribs, but he'd been tightly taped on one side.

"A couple of cracked ribs," he reassured her. "The endorphins are helping again. Just go a little easy on. . ." He ran a hand over her knee.

She nodded and leaned to kiss him lightly on the lips. He smiled at her, eased her back, and moved south again.

Willow threw her head back and melted into the sensation of his mouth moving on her down there. Having to remember to keep from hurting him -- she let one leg fall off the edge of the couch -- she felt weirdly powerful. He'd taken control of her body to the extent that she felt as if he were manipulating each and every nerve ending, but even with the power he was exerting over her she still had room to be protective of him.

She sensed Giles vibing in to her almost maternal feelings. He grabbed her thighs with a bruising passion and moved in on her with a compensating -- and somewhat annoyed -- aggression.

Willow's amusement was overrun by a sudden overload of sensation of him. Light pounded at her and she grabbed at his head in a desperate attempt to hang onto the precipice forever. Inevitably she toppled with a wail.

He licked her once more, then moved up to lay his head on her stomach.

"Uh -- wow --" Willow managed, blinking rapidly to clear the stars from her eyes. She realized that, although he wasn't complaining, she had her legs wrapped up around his sides again. She hastily brought her knees down and pried her fingers from his hair, then rested her hand against the side of his face. "Uhm -- did you --"

"Mmm-hmm," he said, still resting on her stomach.

"I thought so," she said in satisfaction, and let her head drop back against the arm rest. The room was spinning and it took her a minute to realize that the effect was more a result of the lights whirling about their bodies than of any wooziness on her part. "Maybe we're going to need sunglasses to -- to -- do what we were just doing."

Giles groaned and propped himself up on his elbows to look at her. His hair was mussed -- Willow gave into the temptation to smooth it back into place, even though she knew it would only annoy him more. "Willow," he panted, "you didn't mention anything about experiencing increased libido after your previous castings."

She frowned. "Increased --? Oh. Well. You didn't ask."

"I told you to write down everything you were feeling. I didn't think I'd have to ask," he said, trying to look stern. He was having a hard time of it in his present position, however.

Willow scooted a bit further under him, determined not to let him get pedantic on her. "Well, what about you?" she demanded. "You didn't say anything about what spell casting would do to your libido."

"It wouldn't have mattered if it hadn't affected you in the same manner. . ." Willow pulled his head up and took his ear in her mouth, smiling at the effectiveness of that maneuver in cutting him off. Giles sat up, drawing her with him into his lap, and they wandered off together in another lingering kiss that gradually started building into sexual tension again.

"Oh, lord," he muttered as they broke off for air.

Willow unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. "Neither of us wanted to bring the subject up," she giggled. "So now we're stuck with the consequences." She moved back, tugging his pants and boxers down around his hips and stared at the erection that sprang forth.

"Yes?" he said with an almost evil humor.

She wrapped her hand around the base of his cock and pulled. He threw his head back and grabbed at her hand. "Gods," he panted.

Willow smiled at him and shut her eyes to concentrate. When she focused like this, she'd found that she could hone in to how she was affecting him and just how to go about getting more. His hands moved up to her arms, then up to her head. Willow grabbed his shoulders and shifted herself upwards, achingly needing to bring him inside her.

"Willow, no," he said, although she sensed his painful desire to have her there.

"It's okay," she insisted. "I want to."

He carefully pushed her away. "You're one week from your menses. You can't risk --"

"Oh, right," she sighed. She had condoms -- an as-yet unopened box -- but they were in the bag she'd left in Cordelia's car. She knew without having to ask that Giles had some in his bedroom. But to mention them out loud would bring up the ghost of Jenny Calendar, which she knew would effectively darken if not end this encounter.

"Here," Giles said gently, and moved back out from under her. "We can share without going to the wicket here."

Willow tilted her head quizzically, then picked up on the cricket metaphor. "We call it 'getting to home base'." She leaned forward to run her tongue down the length of his cock.

He ran his hands over her hair, whispering her name. If he had picked up on her memories of having already gone this far with Oz, Willow couldn't tell. She pushed Oz guiltily to the back of her mind. She knew that they were going to have to deal with any number of awkward problems that were going to result from this, but since the problems weren't going anywhere, she was going to keep things simple in the here and now.

She took the head of his cock into her mouth and sucked, savoring the residual taste of his first orgasm on her tongue. His fingers wound painfully through her hair; he was holding back from thrusting. It's okay, she thought to him, I've had a little practice, and moved to prove it by sliding him further back into her mouth. He was big though; the thought of taking him any more than that intimidated her. Their mutual empathy alerted him to her hesitation and he pulled back slightly to give her some breathing room.

They fell into a gentle rhythm, almost like dancing, and as Willow relaxed she experimented with taking him to the back of her throat. Definitely, that was going to take some getting used to, and she abruptly realized -- as Giles tensed -- that she wasn't going to get much more practice at it this time out. She hastily pulled back, grabbed at his cock, and climbed into his lap again; he came, pumping wildly into her hand, against her belly. Willow felt the shockwave of his climax pass violently through her body, and she cried out his name. He slipped a finger hard up inside of her, and then she was pulsing in her own orgasm.

They slumped heavily, clinging to each other. Willow heard the telephone ringing off in some other dimension. They waited for it to stop, but it kept on ringing.

"You oughta get that," she said drowsily. "It might be somebody important.

"Right," Giles said, not moving at all.

"If you don't answer, they might be cranky," she tried again. "They might come over here."

He sighed and leaned back to fumble the telephone from its place on the end table. "Giles here," he murmured. Willow snuggled up to his chest to listen. "Xander. No. I'm quite all right. Really. Yes. Willow's all right. She found me. No. I'll make sure that she gets home okay. . . Not necessary, we've already called a taxicab. Yes, I promise. No vampire hunting tonight. You and Cordelia enjoy yourselves." He dropped the receiver back on its hook, and shut his eyes.

"Liar," Willow said.

"We'd best call the cab. It's almost midnight. We don't want your parents to worry."

She sighed and pulled back to examine her arms. They glowed with a soft, shifting pastel light. "Like they won't worry when I come in glowing like something from the radioactive bog?"

"I take your point," he gave in without much of a fight. "You should call them though."

Willow picked the telephone up and dialed her home. As she expected, her father was still up. She didn't really want to lie to him, so she tried to keep it as short as she could. "Hi dad! Uhm yeah, really great except for a freak thunderstorm. Listen, is it all right if I stay over tonight at my friend's house? Okay. I'll call you if I'm running late tomorrow." She let the receiver fall back and laid her head back on his chest.

"I'm sorry," Giles said, running his hand down her back. He lay back and turned to his side, and pulling her to lie tightly against him. On the narrow couch they barely fit, but Willow felt secure. She draped an arm over his waist. "You shouldn't have to lie to your father. Willow --"

"We've been through this already," Willow said tiredly. "And that wasn't the first time I've told them I was somewhere I wasn't. If they call Cordelia's house, she'll back my story."

He said nothing. After a minute, Willow realized that he'd fallen asleep. She gazed at his sleeping face for a moment, traced a finger across the partially healed gash over his eyes, then looked at the glowing flesh of the arm he had wrapped around her shoulder. The Eyghon tattoo was still there -- she wondered why he'd never had it removed -- flat and dark, the only thing about him untouched by the magical light. It troubled her; she ran her thumb across it, trying to pick up on why it felt so wrong.

Willow reached up to the back of the couch and pulled the blanket that was spread there over their half-clothed bodies. Wrapping her hand again around his, she fell into a warm sleep.


Drusilla stood outside, by the door to the Watcher's flat. He was infuriatingly close, had been on the brink of stepping out into her world, but that little red-headed bitch had gotten in his way.

"No party for Princess tonight," she growled to herself. She was going to have to do something about that girl. Rival, Drusilla thought. But the Watcher was obviously going nowhere without his little strumpet. Well, she'd just have the tart for her dinner, that would fix him.

There was that connection between the two however, that she'd have to be careful of. They seemed oddly reluctant to embrace the full power behind the link, and that was fine by Drusilla. She could put that connection to work in her favor.

No use in waiting on the doorstep tonight though. The two of them had tumbled together into a deep sleep. Dru slunk off into the darkness. She was ravenous and needed to take her frustration out now on something young and tender. The girl and the Watcher would wait until tomorrow.


Part Thirteen


Giles opened his eyes to a shadowy dimness. For a terrifying, disorienting moment he had no idea where he was, he only knew that it was dark and that his body ached. He lifted his head cautiously and finally managed to piece together his situation. His apartment living room. He was lying stretched out on the couch, with the black and white afghan covering him. A dim, pre-dawn light filtered in through the front draperies. A harsher interior light was coming from the kitchenette.

There was someone in the apartment. He slowly sat up, fumbling about in vain for his glasses. He was only half clad, he discovered moments later when he tried to stand and his trousers slipped down around his hips. He pulled them up and fastened them, still warily eyeing the kitchen.

"Oww!" That whispered feminine exclamation brought the night back. Giles rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then stood. His shirt was nowhere to be found, but he did manage to locate his jacket on the arm of the couch and his glasses on the floor just under the end table. He shrugged the jacket on and moved quietly to the front door.

It was barely light outside -- just the first hints of dawn in the eastern sky -- and pleasantly cool. He stepped out to the sidewalk and, with a sigh of relief, found the bag where he'd dropped it the night before. He hadn't wanted to lose his best crossbow, and there were several early risers who lived in the building who would have been sure to stumble across the stray bag on their way out.

Willow stood watching him from the open door to the apartment, dressed only in his shirt and munching from a jar of maraschino cherries that she'd raided from the larder. "You can't go out like that," she said, somewhat anxiously.

"You have my shirt," he retorted, hefting the bag up to carry it inside.

Willow grinned at him and held out the jar. He helped himself to several of the cherries, then moved into the kitchenette. She trailed after him. "You don't have enough food around here. No wonder you're getting so thin."

Giles opened the cupboard doors over the sink and pulled out several small paper sacks. "I've been relying on take- out," he admitted. "I haven't had the time to cook."

Willow opened one of the bags and pulled out a box of gourmet crackers and several wrapped wedges of cheese. "This is better," she said. "No ice cream though?"

He went to the fridge to examine the insides. Several bottles of cider, an almost empty jar of pickles, and a bottle of plum preserves. "I wonder if anybody delivers at five in the morning?" Wandering back to the table, he sat down, claimed a box of crackers and tore it open.

"Pizza would be good." Willow started devouring a box of raisins, clump by clump. "And Chinese. We could call out for kung pao chicken."

"There's a grocer down the block, but they don't open until six," he said, already halfway through the crackers.

"Okay." Willow had finished off the raisins and was now spooning out cherry syrup from the maraschino jar. "It's too bad conjuring spells are so hard," she said between slurps. "We could zap ourselves up some nachos and cheese in the meantime."

"The energy expenditure would exceed the caloric gain. I must admit though to a craving for fettucini alfredo."

"Ooh, Italian! Ziti!" Willow exclaimed happily. At Giles' quizzical look, she grinned. "Sorry. It's a girl thing. Are we still loopy from the spell casting?"

"I suspect so." He dumped cracker crumbs from the box into a bowl.

"Um, good." She put down the jar and scooted around the table to climb into his lap. "Smoochies please?"

"Willow --"

"Just to pass the time until the grocery store opens?" She threw her arms around his neck and shifted to press closer.

His resolve melted. "Just a few . . ." but she was kissing him again before he had a chance to put any closure to that thought. The ravenous hunger he'd been feeling sublimated into hunger of another kind, and he wrapped his hands around her waist. She threw one leg over him, so that they were pressed tightly chest to chest, her thighs moving up to hug his hips.

Giles still had an acute sense of her, of her warm bliss, of the rhythms of her body. Intellectually he suspected that this preternatural closeness was not necessarily a good thing, but at the moment she seemed as necessary to him as the blood in his veins.

He stood, still kissing her, holding her ass gently. Willow started to pull her legs up to wrap around him, but she immediately sensed the beginnings of painful strain on his bruised ribs and let her legs drop again to the floor.

"Sorry," he groaned. "I'd like to sweep you off your feet . . ."

She smiled apologetically. "Hey, you have! And I'm a modern woman. I can stand on my own feet."

He kissed her on the nose and let his hands wander up under the shirt. She wanted him to take her upstairs to the bed; he was reading her desires far too clearly. And she his. His reticence was plainly hurting her.

"Willow . . ." He started to push her away and discovered that he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. "Please. We're too connected right now, and this has gone too far as it is."

She buried her face in his shoulder. "I know, but -- I've never felt this close to anybody before."

Giles ran his hand through her shimmering hair. "Neither have I. But a good part of this closeness is the magic. And that's not going to last -- even as long as today."

Willow held him tighter. "I don't want to let you go."

He shut his eyes and kissed her head. "Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere as long as you need me."

Her grip loosened. "Okay. But you still won't take me upstairs?"

He had a vivid flashback of discovering Jenny's body in his bed and shuddered. Willow sensed his distress and understood. "Oh. Okay. Last night on the couch was nice."

Giles kissed her again and boosted her up to sit on the kitchen table. "Bedrooms are over-rated."

Willow pushed the jacket off his shoulders. She moved a hand down his bruised stomach to one hip and urged him closer so that she could explore the line of his neck with her lips. He nudged her thighs apart and slipped a hand under the shirt, stroking her pubic hairs, then slipped a finger inside her. She moaned quietly and arched her back, tilting her head so that he could kiss the hollow of her throat.

She undid his trousers with more practice than she'd shown the night before, and they slipped down his thighs. Her hand clutched at his erection, sliding along it to caress his balls. Giles slipped a second finger up into her, and moved up to the table to sit beside her, his hand cupping her hot womanhood. Willow gave a small cry and bent her head to one side. Her hand tightened on his cock and she stroked down on it hard.

He gasped and grabbed at her hand, pressing the fingers of his other hand hard up against her clitoris. Willow yelped and began to moan as she pushed onto his questing fingers. The sight of her face, eyes turned up in mindless pleasure, sent him over the edge and he came spattering them both with his seed. He turned, licking at her neck, then on an impulse bit her.

"Yes!!" Willow cried out at the pain, and climaxed violently.

They tumbled back on top of the table in a tangle.

"Talk about your smorgasbords," Willow said finally, her voice more than a little shaky. They'd knocked over the cherry jar in their passion and were now both covered in syrup, cracker crumbs, and the products of their exertions.

"I admit there may be a good reason why the kitchen isn't at the top of the lists of best places to . . . uhm . . ." Giles brushed cracker crumbs from her bared hip.

Willow started to giggle uncontrollably. "Maybe we should take a shower before we go anywhere?" she finally managed. "But you're gonna have to wash this shirt."

"Maybe I'll retire it instead. For services above and beyond." He gathered her close to his chest and ran a hand up her thigh, wiping away the stray cracker crumbs. "We probably should get on with that shower. Xander and the others will undoubtedly be checking up on you first thing. And we still need to see to the groceries."

Willow clung to him, obviously not in any hurry to get on with the day. "Maybe we can . . .? Before we get all washed up, I mean."

"Tell you what." Giles eased her off the table. "We can shower together." He sensed her reluctance to let go of the night. He couldn't honestly say that he didn't share her fears. With the morning came a new set of troubles that neither of them wanted to have to face. And he had no idea how or if any of them were going to get resolved, although he suspected resolution was not going to come cheap.

Giles gathered her up in another gentle hug. Willow returned the embrace fervently. He'd failed Buffy. Not a final failure, but she'd run to a place where he couldn't help her. Willow, however, was here, as close to him right now as his own heart. He was determined to keep her safe, whatever it took.


Part Fourteen


In the silvery pre-dawn light, Drusilla wandered back to the mansion. She'd fed and then played with her food for awhile before finishing him off, but she felt aggravatingly unsatisfied. The full moon had finally fallen silent and was sinking to the horizon. She sensed the raging sun waiting at the opposition, poised to seize the last of the night and rend it to pieces.

For the first time in scores of years, she remembered how that fierce light felt on her mortal flesh. Dru took off her flowery moonhat and stood looking out to the eastern horizon, considering that memory. She wanted to feel that heat again, even if it meant letting it tear her immortal substance to dust.

That wicked teacher was back, putting false memories in her head again and tempting her to destruction. Drusilla smiled grimly, and placed her hat back on her head. She knew what the teacher was up to now -- trying to protect the Watcher, her chosen Man. "Go to sleep, dearie," she said to the teacher. "Princess is safe home now, and she shall take your beloved tonight no matter what you do."

She opened the front door and stepped inside, shutting out the first piercing rays of sunlight.

Dru realized the instant the door was shut that she wasn't alone in the mansion. She moved silently into the courtyard where Acathla stood. "Did you bring me a present?" she sang out.

Spike moved from the shadows from behind the petrified demon. "Does my Princess deserve one?"

Drusilla smiled at him. He was terribly angry with her, he was never this angry with her. "I'm going to have a party," she said and moved past him, barely brushing his arm. "There will be guests." She reached up to caress Acathla's frozen grimace. "Angel will be there."

"Angel has gone to Hell," Spike said angrily. "I'm quite sure, Dru, that he's not coming back for a party."

"We're going to have cake and punch and treacle," Drusilla continued.

"We're going back to Seattle," Spike said. "You can throw your party there. We'll make a right bash out of it --"

Drusilla ignored him. "We will have music and dancing. And I will be the belle of the ball, won't I Spike? All the handsome men will dance with me."

Spike pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and lit one, eyeing her intently. Dru smiled at him and continued to circle round and around Acathla. "Who's invited to the event, Dru?"

"New friends," she said vaguely. "And old. Miss Edith will be there. He will bring her."

Spike frowned. "Who's 'he'?"

"The Watcher," she said. "He will dance with me and we'll all be good friends, won't we?"

"Is the Slayer coming too?" Spike said, carefully controlling the anger in his voice, but Dru could hear it clearly.

"The Slayer's far away," she said.

"That's one small favour," he growled. "Pity she's not dead and buried. Tell you what Dru, we'll tie our lad Acathla here up top of the car and take him off to Seattle with us for the party."

"You don't want to see me dancing with all the handsome men," Dru scolded him.

Spike didn't bother to answer that one. Instead, he crushed his cigarette under foot and moved to grab her up in his arms. She smiled as he nuzzled her neck, scraping against her tender flesh with a fang. Despite the mischief he intended to try to play with her plans for the night, she was pleased to have him here. He settled her back in her skin again, would silence the thoughts the naughty teacher had been slipping into her head.

"Pet," Spike murmured into her ear. "You know how good we are together. We don't need anybody else here mucking up the works. Tonight we'll move on; back to Europe, if you like."

Drusilla smiled to herself and reached up under his shirt to draw her fingernails lightly up his chest. She smelled his blood.

"Do you like my new hat?" she asked him coyly.


Oz sat on the school steps watching the incoming morning summer school students and practising wrist flips with a drumstick. Several of the students eyed him curiously as they entered the building, but only one of them bothered to stop and talk.

"Hey Oz!" Larry caught the drumstick on its downfall and eyed the sharpened end. He carefully handed it back. "You coming to class today?"

"Later, maybe," Oz said vaguely. "I wanted to talk to Willow first."

Larry grimaced. "Yeah, wish I had an excuse. But if I don't get caught up on some of these courses I'm going to have to repeat Senior year. Not that the coach seems to mind. But hey, I already saw Willow going inside, like about half an hour ago."

Oz blinked in surprise. "Okay," he said. "Thanks, man."

He got up from the steps and made his way to the library. He peeked in through the door windows. Willow and Giles were already at the books. The two of them sat next to each other; Willow was talking to Giles with that mischievous smile -- the one that made Oz go squish -- on her face. Giles had his head cocked towards her and was smiling faintly. Oz felt a glimmering of loneliness as he watched them talking together like that; it was if they were wrapped in a world that nobody else could access.

He shrugged the feeling off -- they were in a world of their own and he had no desire to get tangled up in magic just so he could join them there. He had enough problems trying to live with his Inner Wolfiness.

"Hey, guys," Oz said as he pushed the door open and walked in. "Any news of the Prodigal Slayer?"

The smile on Willow's face vanished, and she looked at Giles.

"Fill Oz in," Giles told her quietly. "I'll go put some tea on."

Willow watched the librarian as he went into his office. The look on her face was intense -- and unreadable. For the first time in their relationship, Oz discovered that he hadn't a clue as to what was going on with her. "If this is a bad time, I can go back to lurking outside for a while."

She stared at him.

"If you and Giles were in the middle of something --"

Willow opened her mouth, then went back to staring.

"Willow?" Oz stared at her hard, trying to puzzle out her mood. He was missing something really obvious, he knew it and still couldn't guess what it was. It was hard to focus on anything but her wide, beautiful eyes. He guessed that she still had a bit of glamour from the last night's casting about her that was unfocusing his mind, but it still didn't make it any easier to focus. He didn't want to focus on anything other than her eyes. "You wanted to tell me something?"

"Yes! No!" Willow suddenly got up and ran into Giles' office.

Oz stared after her, totally perplexed. Had something gone wrong with the casting last night? But she and Giles had seemed to be in a good mood when he arrived. Maybe it was more of that post-casting wigginess.


"Giles," Willow whimpered, holding the door to his office shut behind her. "What do I tell him?"

The Watcher finished pouring the tea out, trying to keep calm, although her panic was beginning to affect him. "What do you want to tell him?"

"I don't want any secrets. Secrets are bad," she said emphatically. "They always come back to get you. But I don't know what to tell him."

"Here." Giles handed her the tea tray. "It's up to you. But I will suggest that neither of us is in any condition to be undertaking any deep emotional decision-making now."

Willow looked at him intently. "It's already dying back," she said unhappily. "I can't tell exactly what you're feeling anymore."

He sighed. "I told you the empathy we were experiencing earlier was a temporary effect of the magic."

She set the tea tray down again. "I didn't think it would feel so bad to lose it." A tear escaped her eye and coursed down her cheek.

"Willow . . ." He finally moved to take her in his arms. "I meant what I told you earlier. I'll be here for you as long as you need me. But the closeness we were feeling can't last. And we both have lives outside of that magic that we have to relate to. You have to deal with your boyfriend -- and I have my responsibility to Buffy."

She stiffened in his arms. "You're not going to help me with the magic any more."

Giles very gently pushed her away. "Years ago I walked away from my involvement in the magic arts," he said. "It was the right decision, for me. I happen to think that it should be your decision as well, but I can't force you to follow my lead. I don't want you to think that I won't watch for you if you decide to continue on this path, but I can't actively help you any more."

"But we're good together," Willow insisted, then blushed. "With the magic, I mean -- and oh yeah the other too. Don't you think maybe we were meant to be partners?"

"We're a little too good together, as far as the magic is concerned." Giles sat on the edge of his desk and considered his broken hand. "We managed to destroy a large portion of the school's electronic equipment with one minor spell gone slightly awry. Mistakes like that shouldn't matter -- but we're effective enough together as spell casters that it does matter. And the magic is seductive. There's always a temptation to go one step further with it."

Willow sat down next to him. "You were right. It is a high. And it was incredible, being with you when we were connected like that. I don't want to lose it."

"It wasn't real."

"What's real?" she said, suddenly angry. "You're saying that you aren't really attracted to me? I know what you were feeling last night."

"Can't you see the trap?" he said in exasperation. "Can you tell me if those were my real feelings or not?'

"They were," she said defiantly. Then -- "Weren't they?"

"Would you have ever thought about relating to me on that level without the magic?"

"Well, yes," Willow said, surprised out of her anger.

Giles looked at her with such startlement that she felt an tension-relieving urge to laugh. "First time I ever walked into the library and saw you shelving books. I-I had this flash, that I walked right up and kissed you. And, well there were some pretty steamy dreams. In between the Xander steamy dreams."

He stared at her. "I never knew . . ."

"I've had a lot of practice hiding my teen lust," Willow said ruthfully. "You're not saying that you never thought about me too, so I'm guessing you have?" He evaded her eyes, and she sighed in relief. "Giles, I don't think we could have worked as well as we do together unless the feelings were real."

"Maybe. But what about Oz? Or, for that matter, Xander?"

She frowned. "I don't like this," she said finally. "Having a boyfriend is supposed to be nice, not messy. At least it's not supposed to be messy for me. A year ago I didn't even have one guy to be messy with."

"I suppose it could be worse," Giles sighed and sipped at his tea. "At least you don't have to worry about Xander's taking an interest."

Willow laughed. "Lucky me! What do you want to do?" she pleaded. "It's your decision too."

"What I want is immaterial," he said. "I have to concentrate on finding Buffy. I'm her Watcher, and she needs my help now whether she realizes it or not."

"You love Buffy too," she said.

He didn't said anything, but then he didn't need to.

"So," Willow said, "what do we do now? We've tried magic, which Buffy isn't having any part of."

Giles took her hand and turned it over. "I'm going to put out some calls to people I know. You can start consulting your 'Net'. Maybe the mundane approach will work where the mystical failed."

She nodded, hopped down from the desk, and picked up the tea tray. He moved to open the door for her. "But Giles -- what about us?"

He looked down. "We need to let the magic die first, Willow. To see what's left when that's gone. You need to decide what's happening between you and Oz. And I need to find Buffy."

"Because she always comes first," Willow said with only some bitterness.

"I'm sorry."

"I want to be noble and say it's okay. But it isn't really." She sighed. "But I know why it has to be."

Giles nodded. "It's something you have to consider." He bent forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Go sit with Oz before he starts wondering where we've got to. Tell him whatever you think he needs to know. You know him better than I do."

"Yeah, and do I know what he'd say to this?" Willow said unhappily. "Xander, I could predict -- and no, there's no way I'm gonna tell him -- but Oz. . . Maybe he'd be okay. I mean it's not like we've decided to go steady or anything. Of course, it's not like either of us thought we needed to decide to go steady since we kind of took it for granted that neither of us was interested in others. Although Oz should have known I might, because he knew I have a crush on Xander. Except that Xander is with Cordelia, maybe Oz thinks that isn't a problem any more. . ."

"Willow -- you're babbling." Giles steered her out the door. Oz looked up at them from a big book he'd been paging through.

Willow gulped.

"You did have an errand to run for me today," Giles prompted her as he led her to the table.

Willow looked up at him in a panic.

"Acathla?"

"Oh, yes." She took a deep breath. "Oz and I had better go find Xander then. But Giles -- it'll be loads easier to deal with the problem by you staying out of Drusilla's way, okay?"

He smiled and nodded at her. "Don't worry about me. I'll be at home tonight with my books and the telephone."

She shot a look at Oz and sighed. "Okay then. We'll work out the rest on our end."


"So why is Giles so keen on moving Acathla now?" Xander was grumbling. He was carefully dissecting a bran muffin across the coffee bar table top. So far he'd successfully avoided eating any of it. They were waiting for Oz at one of the outdoor tables. It was late afternoon and the summer heat was pretty much at a high point for the day. They all huddled miserably under the small patch of shade the umbrella offered, but none of them had the energy to initiate a move inside.

"He thinks that with Drusilla in town -- she might be after Angel," Willow said, gnawing nervously at an uneven fingernail on her right hand. "So we need to move the gateway so she can't try to open it again."

"Yeah well so what?" Cordelia said. She pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead to glare at Willow, then seized her hand and pulled it away from her mouth. She took a nail file from her purse and handed it to the redhead. "She needs Angel to get it open, and Angel's already locked away inside."

"Giles isn't so sure that there isn't another way. So we move Acathla to make sure." Willow awkwardly tried to file the ragged nail using her left hand. Cordelia took the file back and grabbed Willow's fingers to work on the nail herself.

"But why the cloak and dagger routine?" Cordelia grumbled. "I mean okay, get Xander's cousin to move the awful thing, but you've got us borrowing the truck and doing all the hard work ourselves. And Giles -- whose big fat idea it is -- isn't even going to help?"

"We don't want to put Xander's cousin in danger, which he might be if he knew where Acathla was," Willow explained. She examined her finished nail. "Thanks!"

"Hold on, I'm not done." Cordelia reclaimed the hand and started in on the other nails. "How long has it been since you've had a complete manicure?"

"Manicure?" Willow said.

Xander was frowning as he watched them. "Will, you're holding onto something. Give."

"Nothing! Really!" Willow insisted, gnawing at a fingernail on her left hand.

"Look, we'll deal." Cordelia took out another digital instrument and started to work on Willow's cuticles. "You'll make sure Giles stays in at night and keeps busy looking for Buffy, and the rest of you guys will take over the patrols. Between the three of you, you should be able to manage an undignified retreat when necessary."

Xander stared at her. "Besides the giving orders thing, what is your function in all of this?"

"I'm going to be in Mexico. Hopefully getting a decent tan." Cordelia finished Willow's right hand and pulled her left from her mouth. She did a double-take. "Nice hicky there, Willow! You and Oz get past the holding hands stage?"

"Mexico?!" Xander said. "You're running away to Mexico when all this is going down?"

"It's not like I have a choice, okay?" Cordelia watched speculatively as Willow pushed her shirt collar up around her neck. "Here." She reached into her purse and pulled out some cosmetics. "If you want to hide it, try these. A scarf would work too, but you'd have to change your outfit."

"I'm okay," Willow said in a small voice.

Cordelia shrugged and put the cosmetics back in her purse. "My father decided on Las Palmas this year, so it's off to Mexico we go. At least I'll be able to spend a few days in a row without the obligatory scare."

"Oh right, just the occasional hormonal overload from all those buff cabana boys padding about the beaches in nothing but their trunks," Xander snapped.

Cordelia smiled dreamily. "Maybe." She took his hand in hers. Xander started to retort, but shut his mouth at the glimpse of the nail file in her hand. Cordelia started to work on his nails.

"Ooh, here's Oz and the van!" Willow said, jumping up.

"How long are you going to be gone?" Xander demanded.

"It's a summer vacation, Xander. Take a guess," Cordelia said. She put away her file and looked around. "I left my sweater back in the library."

"Oz will drive you back," Willow said.

"No, don't bother. Oz's van is so not air conditioned. I'll take my car and meet you guys later at the Bronze. Besides, you've got to go get Oz settled for the night."

Xander was suddenly staring at Willow's neck. "Wait a minute! You didn't have a hicky last night!"

"No?" Willow said weakly.

"Oz hasn't been taking you into the utility closet, has he?"

"Cordelia, can I please please please borrow your scarf?"

"This is my magicked scarf, but here." Cordelia pulled another one from her purse. "That one goes better anyway."

Willow snatched it. "Thanks! I'm going into the Girl's Room, tell Oz? Uhm on second thought --" She whimpered and ran.

"Willow!" Xander shouted after her. He sat slowly down, scowling. Which changed to a look of alarm. "Hicky!"

Cordelia dropped her sunglasses back on her nose. "Stay out of it, Xander."

"But if he bit her --!"

"Hickies don't count," she said.

"Who says hickies don't count!?" Xander demanded.

"Willow knows what the risks are. She wouldn't let a guy nibble her if it was going to do weird stuff." Cordelia waved at Oz, who'd parked the van at the curb and was now making his way to the table. "Oh, and Xander?"

"What?"

"Find some other topic of conversation other than hickies, okay?"

"Why? She's my best friend. I have a right to --"

"No you don't, you moron. Lay off or I'm gonna have words with you later tonight. Lots and lots of words. Instead of smoochies. Your choice, lover boy." She stood and flounced off towards her car, confident that Xander's eyes were on her back every step of the way.


Willow sat on the chair between Xander and Oz, and fidgeted.

"Look," Xander was saying to Oz. "It's a matter of need to know, okay? I mean, say if you were to accidently nibble me, or something --"

"How would this interesting turn of events come about?" Oz said, eyeing Xander warily as he sipped his expresso.

"Okay, uhm. Let's say I -- uh -- got bit by a snake and you had to suck the poison out."

"Snake bite kit," Oz said.

"Huh?" Xander said.

"That's dangerous. Sucking the poison out. I'd use the snake bite kit."

"All right then, say that you don't have a snake kit --"

"There's a snake bite kit in the first aid kit in the van." Oz looked at Xander over the rim of his cup.

"Say somebody broke into your van, stole the first aid kit, then threw a poisonous snake at me, and I got bit. So you start to suck the poison out --"

"What kind of snake was it?" Oz asked.

Xander floundered. "Uhm -- I don't know. So you start to suck the poison out --"

"I'm not going to suck any poison unless I know what I'm sucking," Oz stated.

"Okay! Rattlesnake. So you start to suck --"

"Big rattlesnake or little baby rattlesnake?"

"I'm going to make a phone call guys okay?" Willow said.

Xander looked up at her anxiously. "You all right, Will?"

She stood, nervously twisting her purse strap in her hands. "I'm just real -- perky! That's it! And uhm -- I need to talk to -- I need to go to the girl's room too."

"You're not -- You're not feeling. . . furry or something?"

"I'll be right over there, Xander," she said in exasperation, and fled for the public telephone.

She dialed Giles' home number, and checked her watch as she waited out the rings. An hour to sunset. She'd never looked forward to sunset on a full moon night before. She bit at her lip in agonized guilt, which turned to worry as the phone continued to ring. He'd left the library at the same time this afternoon as she had. He'd said he was going straight home. . .

"Hello?"

Willow let out a sigh of relief. "Giles. It's me. Willow."

"I know your voice, Willow." She heard the smile in his voice. "What do you need?"

"I-I wanted to check on you is all, I guess. I'm feeling really weird and Xander and Oz aren't helping."

"Weird?" She pictured him taking the phone to a more comfortable seat -- the couch. "You're at the Bronze? Should I come out?"

"Not yet. And no," she said hurriedly. "I feel better knowing you're at home. I mean, I knew you were going home, but I keep getting these weird danger feelings. Guess I'm still wired from last night."

"Maybe you should go home."

"No, I've got to wind down some." She bit her lip, then forged ahead. "I'd like to come over."

There was a pause. She still had enough sense of him to read the longing in his silence. "What are the others going to be doing?"

She sighed. "We were going to the Bronze, after we take Oz home. But Xander's being -- he's in Big Brother mode. I don't know how to deal with him."

"You're welcome here, Willow. You know you are. But you can't start avoiding your friends over this. And we'd decided . . ."

She nodded, knowing that he'd sense the nod. "I know what we'd decided. We wouldn't have to do anything." Liar, she thought, and sighed. "Okay, I'll go to the Bronze with Xander and Cordelia. But -- I can call you, right?"

"Of course. Although, I may be on the phone quite a bit tonight."

She smiled. "Okay then. I'll feel better anyway knowing that you're at home." She hung up feeling calmer. You can handle black magic, Willow, she told herself as she walked back to the table. You can manage your relationships too.

Xander and Oz glanced up at her as she slid back into her seat at the table. "Okay," Xander said, still looking at Willow. "Forget the water moccasin then. Pretend that it was a scorpion."

Willow whimpered and hid her face in her hands.


Part Fifteen


Spike woke suddenly from a sweet dream of Drusilla in his arms. They'd both been drenched in Angel's blood and had been making slow love on his dismembered body.

He sat up with a scowl. The long drive from Seattle had done him in, and he'd overslept. He sensed that it was past dusk. Drusilla had already slipped from the bed and was gone. She couldn't have been gone long, wouldn't be leaving Sunnydale until she had purged Angelus from her system. He had time.

Spike lit a cigarette and drew several drags, then climbed out of the bed and started dressing. Apparently she'd fixated on the Watcher now. Simplest strategy might be to kill the man. But he didn't want to add to Dru's tally of grudges, not to mention angering the Slayer, who was conveniently out of the picture at the moment but could and very likely would reinstate herself at the worst possible moment. If only he had a way of making Drusilla forget about Angel, he could handle the rest.

Handling her had always been a dicey proposition at best.

Spike shrugged on his coat and stalked out of the mansion. Drusilla would be near wherever her intended prey was, which meant either the school or the wanker's home. He headed towards the school. If the Watcher was holed up at his apartment, they weren't apt to be going anywhere. Best to check the school first.


Cordelia unlocked the doors to the library and switched on the lights. She looked around hesitantly, then moved to the reading table to snatch up her sweater. Only thing wiggier than being in the library at night was being alone in the library at night. Fortunately, she only had to be in and out again. She ran out the doors and was halfway back down the hall, before she remembered to go back and lock up again.

"Not cool," she muttered to herself as she locked the library doors and walked back out to the school's entrance. "Definitely not so cool. Got to work on poise." Pausing at the doors, she pulled her red sweater on while trying to fumble her car keys from the purse, and dropped the keys. Grinding her teeth in irritation -- she would have made Xander drive her except that he'd been getting on her nerves obsessing over Willow -- Cordy scooped the keys up and pushed her way out the door.

Somebody was standing outside on the front walk to the school. A male somebody in a long black coat, his back turned towards her. Cigarette smoke wafted from his hand.

The hair on the back of Cordelia's neck rose, and her purse slipped from her hands. "Ohmygod," she whispered. Her hand went to her neck and she felt the silk of her magicked scarf against her fingers. "I bought it off the rack!" she spoke the trigger phrase.

He turned and stared at her. Petrified with fear, Cordelia could only stare back.

"You shouldn't look so surprised, luv," Spike said mildly. "I know what your game is." He sauntered up to her, smirking, and grabbed her hard by the arms. Before she could quite comprehend what was happening, Cordelia found herself being heavily frenched by the vampire.

Ohmygod, he thinks I'm Drusilla! she realized. And: Ohmygod, he's a good kisser. It would have been a bigger turn-on if she wasn't quite so aware that he more than likely was going to break her neck, if he didn't suck her dry, when he found out that she wasn't his girlfriend.

"Baby," Spike murmured into Cordelia's ear. "You know I'm all you need. I'll take you to Prague if you like, but let's leave this place tonight."

Giles had said that the spell would be effective until the viewer doubted the illusion. Acutely conscious of her hammering, all-too-human, heartbeat, Cordelia pushed Spike away. She had to keep him thinking she was Dru, until they were some place where she could get safely away. But ohmygod how did the insane vampiress act with him usually?

"I'm -- I'm -- uh -- There were daisies in the gym -- uh -- and the cheerleaders were wearing Guccis with Lycra! And -- uh clowns were there! In polyester!" Cordelia attempted a lunified smile.

Spike frowned at her. "Who have you been drinking off of, Dru?"

"Oh, some guy. He smelled really gross," Cordelia laughed wildly. She had to get him to take her some safe place fast. "Take me shopping?"

Spike broke out in a smile. "Sure, ducks. Anything you like." He wrapped an arm around Cordelia's waist and pulled her with him towards a black car that sat at the curb. "Where to?"

Cordelia did a double-take. "Anything?"

Spike pulled a Visa Platinum card from his coat pocket. "Anything that we can charge to this. All right, pet?"

She smiled, suddenly finding a center of calm. "All right, Spikey." She tentatively put an arm around Spike's waist and leaned her head against his shoulder. That seemed to be the right thing to do. The vampire pulled her against him with a bruising force and bent to nibble at her ear.

"You don't know how much I've missed you," Spike whispered. "Promise me you won't run off again?"

"Um -- oom!" Cordy said.

"You won't regret it." Spike kissed her passionately again. "I'll set you up in style, a proper barbarian queen. We'll be on top of this world, and we'll stomp it bloody."

"Not in these shoes," she protested wobblily.

He scooped her up and carried her to the car, staring intensely into her eyes every step of the way. Cordelia forced herself to smile and meet his adoring gaze. Spike set her gently inside the car and moved around to get into the driver's seat. "Where to, my poppet?"

"What?" She blinked. "Oh! Spikey, there's a new Neiman Marcus just outside of town?"

Spike started the car. "We're there. But Dru -- stop calling me Spikey?"

Cordelia slowly smiled. Drusilla obviously had her man properly trained. And it was dawning on her that maybe the vampiress was unpredictable enough, even to her lover, that anything she did wasn't going to seem out of the ordinary. She could handle this.

She inched over and snuggled up to Spike's shoulder. He grinned and pulled her tightly against his side, throttled the car up, and they tore out into the night.


Xander and Willow sat at a table at the Bronze. A full cup of coffee sat in front of Xander. Willow was halfway through her third cup of Earl Grey tea. Xander kept staring at the scarf around her neck. The band was excruciatingly bad, and Cordelia was way late.

"She probably ran into some of her friends," Willow said, trying to pretend that she wasn't aware of Xander's obnoxious scrutiny. She jostled her tea so that it slopped across the table top and soaked the elbow of his shirt, but he failed to be distracted. "Or Ricky Shruggs! The quarterback! I saw Cordy talking to Ricky this afternoon."

"Oz seemed cozy when we got him settled," Xander said. "That was a sweet little good-bye kiss you gave him. Kiss and not nibble."

She finally got a little bit angry. "Full moon is up, Xander. I'm not going wolfie, okay? Stop looking at me like I'm a -- a bug or a werewolf or something." She folded her arms across her chest and steeled herself for him to ask her why she wasn't going werewolfie if she had a hicky. The only reasonable conclusion he could come to was that she hadn't collected it from Oz.

Xander looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I should have believed Cordelia, I guess. It's just -- I worry about you."

Willow frowned at him. "Believed Cordelia about what?"

"She said that a hicky couldn't turn you into a -- well I mean how could she know that? But I guess Giles must've told her. I'd thought he'd said that any bite or scratch could infect you."

She stared at him, aghast.

"Please don't tell Cordy the subject of hickies ever came up?" Xander said. "She threatened me with Words if I brought it up again."

"I won't." Willow sank back in her chair, bewildered. Why would Cordelia feed Xander a lie that hickies didn't count? She realized then that Cordy had very probably pieced everything together from the circumstantial evidence. But why was she protecting Willow?

Xander checked his watch. "She's an hour late now."

"She's been late before. She wouldn't be caught dead ever being early."

He looked up at the word 'dead'. "You know, this band really sucks. Maybe we should call Cordy and tell her to meet us somewhere else?"

"Okay." Willow grabbed her purse and they made for the public telephone. She waited as he dialed Cordelia's cell phone number, bouncing nervously and wondering if she could get Xander to go into the Boy's Room for a minute so that she could call Giles. She could call him anyway, make sure he was staying put tonight. But she also wanted to tell him that she'd been thinking about him most of the night, in between worrying about what she was going to do about Oz and dodging Xander's hicky obsession.

"She's not answering." Xander slammed the phone down on the hook.

"Maybe she left her cell phone in her car?"

"Cordelia?" Xander looked at her as if she were coming unhinged.

Willow nodded. "We'd better go find her."


Xander pulled Oz's van up into the student parking lot. Cordelia's car sat to one side like a lone wounded cardinal. "Looks like she's still here," Willow said hopefully.

"Her car is." He got out and stepped over to the BMW, circled it once, then walked towards the school's front entrance. Willow hesitated, then left the van to follow him.

They peered inside the front doors, but all was dark inside. Willow was fumbling through her purse for the master key, when she spotted a dark shape lying on the ground. "Uh oh," she said softly, and bent to pick up Cordelia's purse.

Xander grabbed it from her hands. "Damn!" He looked around helplessly, as if Cordelia would materialize on cue to claim her property. "Oh shit."

Willow swallowed. "Maybe we better call Giles," she suggested.

Xander looked out into the parking lot again, but nothing was moving anywhere. "Let's go inside."

Willow nodded and fit the key into the lock. They moved inside to the darkened hallway.

"Come on." Willow led the way to the pay phone in the student lounge. She dug around the bottom of her purse for a quarter; Xander stood close to her watching the shadowed corners around them and looking like a spooked rabbit. She finally found a coin, fed it in, and dialed.

"You'd think that the night janitor, at least, would be around," Xander said.

Willow reached back to squeeze his hand reassuringly. She frowned then, hung up and tried again. "Busy," she said to Xander with a helpless shrug.

"Busy?" he said indignantly. "How can it be busy? Giles doesn't talk to anybody but us."

"He was going to make some calls tonight. About Buffy."

Xander shook his head. "It's not like Giles is going to be able to do anything to find Cordy that we can't do. I'm going to check the library."

"We should check with him anyway," Willow said stubbornly.

"Cordy may be in trouble. Wait here and see if you can get through to Giles. I'm going down the hall to the library, then I'll come straight back and we'll get out of here. This place is giving me the wiggins all of a sudden."

"Okay . . ." Willow said reluctantly. Xander smiled at her and hurried from the lounge. Two minutes, it shouldn't take him more than two minutes to run to the library and back again. She dialed Giles' number again. Busy. She was obviously going to have to talk to the man about the modern conveniences of Call Waiting. She put her finger on the hook and waited.

"Does the moonlight make you want to scream?" a soft voice spoke.

Willow blinked and pulled the receiver from her ear to examine it.

"There were auguries storming the moon when I looked last. Do they speak to you too?"

She dropped the receiver and turned, backing away from the presence by her side. Drusilla stood almost within touching distance, regarding her quizzically.

"Maybe they were -- I-I wasn't listening," Willow said. She fumbled a cross from her purse and held it up.

Drusilla didn't seem to take any note of it. "But you were talking to the moon just last night," she said. A smile shifted across her lips. "You have secrets together."

"Secrets?" Willow said weakly.

Drusilla picked the dropped receiver up. "I know why the stars cry. They listened in on the moon and heard things they were not meant to know." She hurled the receiver at Willow's chest. Willow threw her arms out to ward the object off, and realized a split second later -- as the vampiress's fist connected with the side of her head -- that she should have been more canny in choosing her defenses.


Giles sat at his desk at home, nursing a scotch while he sorted through old correspondences. He'd been lax since coming to the United States, allowing his preoccupations with being Buffy's Watcher and then later his involvement with Jenny, to overshadow his academic connections. Many of the people he'd known or had been corresponding with from England were no longer at the old numbers. Much of the night's telephoning had ended up only alerting him to the depressing fact that his address book was seriously out of date.

The few people that he had managed to contact tonight -- most of them part of the Watcher's Network -- had seemed reticent in speaking with him. He wasn't particularly surprised -- he'd known for a long time that he was held in low esteem by a significant segment of the Old Guard -- but he was feeling the pinch now.

Giles flipped through the pages of the address book. So many of the entries were now ticked by question marks: people he needed to make an effort to track down and reestablish his ties with. School friends, academic colleagues, distant relatives, a few from the Watcher's Network that he'd at one time or another been on easy terms with. He'd never considered himself social or particularly well-networked, but skimming down past question mark after question mark suddenly brought home to him now how totally isolated he'd become since moving to Sunnydale.

Giles tossed the address book to the floor and reached for his glass of scotch. He'd have to turn to formal Watcher channels. He'd known, of course, that news of Buffy's going absent without leave would get back to them, but to have to ask for their aid in locating her -- well it wasn't going to help his already tarnished reputation. No help for it now.

He downed half the remaining scotch, then stopped himself and set it aside. He wasn't going to do any one any good if he allowed himself to slide down this slope. It was a long, steep slope, would be so very easy to abandon himself to. He'd been on the verge ever since Jenny's death, but his obligations had kept him off the brink. Obligations, and Buffy's need for him to be there for her.

But Buffy had left and all he had left were the so very tiresome obligations, which he was no longer equipped to fulfill. A bloody muck-up all the way around. Giles once again tried to trace back along the train of events of the past two years, to determine at which point he'd made the fatal error. There were so many mistakes in retrospect, but even now he wasn't certain if he could have changed what had happened.

The mental exercise left him exhausted and aching again from his recent injuries. He wanted to fall into bed and sleep until the Hellmouth swallowed them all up.

Giles finally recognized the incipient post-magic depression for what it was and forced himself to get up, toss the rest of the scotch in the sink, and start trying to think about fixing himself something to eat. At least he and Willow had managed to generously restock the larder this morning, he thought with a small smile as he considered the contents of his freezer.

Willow. And Oz, Cordelia, and Xander. More than obligations, they were his friends. The only ones he had at the moment. And Willow had somehow managed to become something more than a friend.

Giles sighed, sorely tempted to go back and refill the glass with more scotch. Face it, old man, he thought. You're lonely and tired and totally at sea. Willow threw you a lifeline of magic and of her own vibrant loving self, and you latched onto it for all you were worth.

He shut the refrigerator door again and leaned back against it. He'd given up the magic once before. At this point in his life it had ceased to hold any fascination for him beyond the purely intellectual. But he was going to have to give up Willow too, and that realization was a pain he wasn't sure he was strong enough to stoically withstand.

The telephone rang. Giles moved his head to stare at it, tempted to let it ring. But one of his old contacts might be returning his call. He pushed himself away from the refrigerator and stepped over to the telephone.

"Giles here," he said into the receiver.

For a long moment nobody spoke. He thought it might be a crank call, then had a wild hope that it might be Buffy.

"I'm having a party," a woman's voice, cockney accented, finally informed him. Her tone was at once coy and knowing.

He knew the voice. Giles felt the hairs raise on the back of his neck. "Drusilla," he whispered.

"You're invited." He could hear the smile in her voice. "We will be dancing and eating cake and I will be wearing my new hat."

He cleared his throat, his eyes darted nervously towards the front windows to his apartment. Was she close by? For an insane moment he thought about accepting the invitation, about going to the rendezvous with crossbow in hand. Whatever happened then, at least some of his problems would be solved.

Giles forced himself to sit down. "Who else will be there, Drusilla?"

She giggled, clearly pleased that he had called her by name. "Friends, foes, and lovers. My Spike has come all the way down from the North for the dance. And your red-headed sweetheart has come."

A ball of ice formed inside his chest. "Is she there now?" he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. "I want to talk to her."

"Dearie?" he heard Drusilla speak to somebody in the background. "It's your lover, he wants to talk to you. Ask him to bring the wine?"

"Giles?" Willow's voice. "I'm sorry . . ." She was slurring her words slightly, didn't seem wholly awake.

He shut his eyes, trying for some semblance of calm. "Willow, where are you?"

"Don't come," Willow insisted. "Please. She -- she just grabbed me so she could get you out here."

"But I like you," Drusilla insisted in the soft background. "You're so very pretty, and your hair burns my fingers. And you're a clever girl; you took over my class so very well."

Willow sobbed quietly. Giles' grip tightened on the receiver until his hand ached. He forced thoughts of what might be causing her to weep from his head. He had to focus. "Willow, I need to speak with Drusilla again. I'm not going to abandon you, all right? Please trust me to deal with this."

She sniffled. "Giles."

He was hit suddenly with an intense sense of affection/terror/trust. The empathic connection to Willow had flared back into life. The depth of her trust shook him; he would never be able to come close to feeling worthy of it. But he had to at least try.

"Shall we count on you to come then?" Drusilla said cheerfully.

"Where?"

"You know where. Our last rendezvous." The line went dead.

Giles stood, clutching the receiver in both hands. Ripper was clawing to take control, to send him into the same suicidal motion that had gripped him in the aftermath of Jenny's death.

But Willow wasn't dead. He couldn't help her if he were spiraling out of control. Calm. Giles took a deep breath and hung up the telephone. He began to go back over the conversation word for word. Something had struck the reasoning part of his mind, behind the blind terror of the conversation, as odd.

Drusilla had complemented Willow on her cleverness. On her ability to take over 'her' computer class,

"Dear god," Giles murmured. He felt sick at the thought, but forced himself to run with it anyway. In some small corner of her mind, Drusilla must have 'become' Jenny.

It was a weakness. One that, perhaps, he could exploit.

"Jenny, forgive me," Giles whispered as he moved to get what he needed for the 'party'. He took what small comfort he could from the certainty that Jenny would have forgiven him; but he had no such assurance that he was going to be able to forgive himself for what he was planning to do.

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