“Willow?”
The hesitant
query almost echoed in the silent room. Buffy Summers quietly pushed open the
door to Willow’s dorm and stepped inside.
A candle on the
desk next to Willow’s laptop glowed softly, flickering dangerously close
to the end of the wick. Buffy bent down to inspect it and found that the candle
had apparently been burning for hours—wax had melted all around it on the
desk and even dripped down to the carpeting on the floor. The Slayer’s
eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Willow never let her candles burn unchecked.
There was a
flapping sound. Buffy’s head jerked up, but to her relief the quiet
disturbance was only a curtain being blown by the wind from an open window.
The bed was made
neatly, the pillows plumped and Willow’s worn teddy bear propped between
them. Willow’s favorite pair of sneakers were tucked just under the bed,
the toes poking demurely from beneath the edge of the bedskirt.
The closet doors
were closed tightly; the usual clutter on the dresser had been straightened.
The laptop in Willow’s desk was shut, the light on the back pulsing. The
only thing out of place in the meticulous room was the candle.
But where was
Willow?
Buffy opened the
closet door with a slight tug and looked inside. All of her best friend’s
clothes were hung primly on plastic hangers, and extra things from home packed
into boxes and stacked on the shelf near the ceiling. Buffy’s eyes lit on
Willow’s chest of magic supplies nestled in the corner of the closet, and
the Slayer hopefully dragged the heavy thing out into the room.
A particularly
forceful flick of her fingers popped the delicate lock, and Buffy slid her
fingers under the top of the chest and lifted it off. On top of carefully
labeled bags of herbs, faceted bottles of unknown potions, archaic volumes of
lore and spells and a dangerously sharp athame was a ‘Hello Kitty’
mini-notebook marked “MY PLANNER” in Willow’s tiny, precise
script.
Buffy opened the
notebook and flipped to the last marked page. There were a series of
assignments from Willow’s classes—Popular Culture, Advanced
Psychology, Philosophy of Religion—and a short ‘to do’ list:
12:00 Take
laundry out
12:30 Pick up
mandrake and basilisk blood from Magic Box
1:15 Pick up Orb
of Thesulah from Willy’s
2:00 Remind
Xander about meeting @ Giles’, 6:00
2:30
Groceries—remember MILK this time!
3:15 Anchor
Angel’s soul
6:00 Meeting @
Giles’
Buffy gasped,
covering her open mouth with a small hand. Anchor Angel’s—
She threw the
notebook back into Willow’s trunk and got to her feet.
Where did Willow
usually perform spells? She obviously hadn’t tried the ritual in her
bedroom, as nothing was out of place except that candle. She’d probably
left it burning, thinking she’d be done with the ritual quickly.
But if Willow
had stuck to her schedule—and Willow always stuck to her schedule—she’d
begun the anchoring hours ago. Buffy checked her watch. 8:30 PM.
What had gone
wrong?
Buffy swallowed
nervously and ran out of the room, slipping slightly on the just-waxed corridor
floors. She skidded to a halt right outside the girls’ showers. Willow
had done a couple of spells in the bath- and shower-rooms
before—something about space, and acoustics, and water lending magical
energy. Buffy kicked the door open and skidded to a halt on the moist tiled
floor.
Willow was
sprawled, unconscious, inside a circle of brightly burning candles. Next to her
there were several toppled glass bottles, a mortar and pestle filled with
ground something-or-other, and a shattered Orb of Thesulah.
“Willow?”
Buffy rushed to her friend and stopped again, not wanting to step over the
candles. She had no idea what disturbing the circle might do.
Willow shifted
and whimpered as though she were in pain.
“Oh, God,
Willow,” Buffy murmured, and ran back out to the hall to find a phone and
call Giles.
She just hoped
she wasn’t too late.
Willow shrieked as
Darla exerted more mental pressure, crushing her down to almost nothing inside
her head.
“STOP!”
Willow shouted hoarsely, and desperately pushed against her opponent as fire
blazed through her mind.
Darla stopped,
and Willow paused, breathing heavily, and tried to examine her surroundings.
Dark, grim, smell of stale—blood? Motel room. Willow grimaced.
“Where am I?”
Her vision spun
abruptly, and she found herself facing a mirror, staring at Angel’s
beautiful sire. “You’re in my head, youngling, and I don’t like it
one bit.”
Willow could
only shift her grip on the precarious mental hold she had and try to get used
to having someone else in control of her every move.
It wasn’t
quite as easy as it sounded.
“You’re
dead,” she could only stammer. “Angel staked you—years ago,
he staked you. I saw
it!”
“And rest
assured, I felt it,”
Darla replied with a smile. “But apparently someone decided I was needed.
Here.”
She sounded so
disgusted and so sad at the same time. Willow cursed her sympathetic
personality as she extended reassurances. “But, you’re human,
right? You can… rebuild and stuff.”
Darla managed a
most unladylike snort. “Please. Rebuild? Start a life? I don’t want to. Do you know what it’s like to
have done the things I have and to care?”
“Angel said
something almost exactly like that when we all first met him,” Willow
whispered.
Darla sneered at
her own reflection, toying with her hairbrush. “I sound like poor, weak
Angelus, then? That’s just lovely.”
“He’s
not weak!” Willow said hotly.
“Ooh, did
I push someone’s buttons?” Darla asked. “Sorry.” She
very clearly was not.
They sat in
front of the smoky mirror in sulky silence for a long while, until Willow said:
“Why don’t we—”
“Don’t
finish that thought,” Darla interrupted. “I know what it is, and I
don’t like it.”
“You think
I like it?” Willow shrieked. “Can you imagine what that would be
like? ‘Hi, Angel,’ I’d say, if you even let me take control
for five minutes, which I doubt you would… So, ‘Hi, Angel’, I’d
say. ‘Look, uh, I’ve got myself in this predicament, see. I’m
not Darla—well, I am, sort of, but I’m Willow too, stuck in
Darla’s body. Why? Gee, I don’t know. It might have something to do
with the fact that I just did a really advanced spell that permanently anchors
your soul. Why did I do something so risky? Oh, it’s this huge crush
I’ve had on you for about five years now, sorry I landed us in this great
stupid mess—’”
“Stop
feeling sorry for yourself.” Darla rolled her eyes. “And we will not go to see Angel, because I don’t
want to be near him.”
“What are we going to do, then?” Willow
asked, her voice a low hiss.
Darla shifted a
little on the hard seat in front of the vanity. “I don’t
know,” she said.
A pregnant
pause, and then Willow said: “Ah.”
They both
decided to remain silent as they contemplated their options, of which there
weren’t many. Darla sighed and dug a cracked tube of lipstick from her
handbag. She pulled off the top and slowly smoothed the bright red color over
her mouth.
Willow exhaled
heavily. “Darla, you’ve got a great pout, but that shade of red is really not your color.”
Darla’s
mouth twitched. “I know,” she replied. Willow could feel the
amusement coursing through her mind. Carefully, Darla picked up a tissue and
wiped the lipstick off.
“I guess
we’d better get out of here,” Willow said. “Go anywhere else. It doesn’t matter
who’s looking for us—your Wolfram & Hart or
Angel—they’ll find us here.”
Darla agreed.
“Let’s get gone.”
They sat,
staring at their reflection for a moment longer, until the door to the motel
room rattled.
“What—?”
Darla whispered. “Oh, come on—we were just about to go!”
They sat frozen
in Darla’s petite body for a long moment, watching the knob
shake—apparently whoever was on the other side of the door wasn’t
overly patient—until the door finally opened.
Lindsey stepped
in, frowning slightly. Darla and Willow stared at him, half-relieved and
half-dismayed.
Lindsey turned
and handed the manager of the motel a tight wad of cash.
“Little
bastard,” Darla hissed. Willow chuckled grimly and agreed.
The manager
darted a glance at the icy young woman perched on the bench before the vanity
and fled.
“You’re
a hard one to find,” Lindsey commented.
Darla’s
body fainted, and Willow darted home.
“Giles?”
Buffy’s tearful voice echoed over the phone line, and the hand that
didn’t clutch the payphone to her ear fluttered nervously.
“Buffy!”
Giles’ normally calm voice seemed flustered in response to Buffy’s
distress. “Did you find Willow?”
“I found
her,” Buffy said, nodding. The tears fell faster.
“What’s
wrong?” Giles’ voice climbed a pitch. “She
isn’t—”
“She’s
not dead,” Buffy said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She did—she did a
spell and she’s out cold, and I don’t know what to do…”
“Okay, Buffy,
calm down,” Giles said. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll send
Xander and Spike over right away to help you.”
“I’m
at the dorms,” Buffy said. “The third floor, girls’ showers. Please hurry.”
“Yes, yes,
of course,” Giles said, his voice strained. “And, Buffy… can
you tell me what kind of spell she was doing? What ingredients were
involved?”
“She was
anchoring Angel’s soul,” Buffy told him hoarsely. “But the
Orb—the Orb of Thesulah—”
“Yes?”
Giles waited tensely.
“It’s
smashed. And not from her falling on it or something, either, and I know that’s not supposed to
happen.”
“Oh,
my,” Giles said. Buffy heard him fade a little as he turned away from the
phone. “Willow’s dorm, Xander. Quickly!”
“Oh,
Buffy,” he said, returning to her. “You haven’t disturbed the
circle, have you?”
“No,”
Buffy said. “Did I—was I supposed to?”
“No,
no,” Giles said. “I haven’t the slightest—I’ll go
with Xander and Spike,” he said, amending his words. “I don’t
know how we’re to move her safely. We’ll be there in a moment, Buffy.”
He paused. “Buffy?”
“I’m
here,” she said.
“I
don’t like to ask this of you, but… call Angel. Ask him if he knows
anything.”
“Can
do,” Buffy replied, forcing cheer into her voice. “I’ll check
on Willow and then I’ll—I’ll call him.”
“Good,”
Giles told her, distracted. “All right, we’re leaving now, Buffy.
We’ll be there as soon as is humanly possible.”
“Okay,”
Buffy said, and hung up the phone, wincing as she realized her super-human grip
had cracked the plastic considerably. “Geez.”
The Slayer quickly
retraced her steps to the girls’ showers to look in on Willow, who still
lay collapsed in her circle of slowly burning candles, the shards of the Orb of
Thesulah beside her.
Buffy gracefully
sank to her knees on the floor just outside the circle. “Oh,
Willow,” she whispered. “Please, please be okay.”
Then she
remembered her task, and she reluctantly rose to her feet again to call Angel.
Cordelia paced
the length of the Hyperion’s lobby, stopping every once in a while to
shoot a glance towards the cellar door. Finally she paused and turned to
Wesley.
“You know,
he’s been down in that cellar a long time…”
Wesley looked up
from his own brown study. “I keep hearing a ‘chuck-a,
chuck-a’ sound… What is he doing down there?”
Cordelia snorted
and started her pacing again, gesturing with her hands as her ire grew.
“How should I know?” (Here she rolled her eyes.) “He barely
says, ‘Good morning’ and ‘Get me a glass of blood’
anymore.”
Wesley nodded,
his eyes following Cordelia’s movements. “I know.” The former
Watcher sighed and looked as if he was considering taking off his glasses and
cleaning them with a handkerchief. Thankfully, he refrained. “He’s
just so distraught about—”
“Don’t
say Darla,”
Cordelia snapped. “I am sick and
tired of hearing
about Darla. If I hear the name Darla one more time…” She ground her teeth
together. “And, he’s not ‘distraught’. He’s
obsessed! I thought you were going to be a man and talk to him about
this…”
Angel sighed and
leaned against the inside of the basement door, listening to his colleagues
argue. He didn’t like worrying them—or, in the case of Cordelia,
royally pissing them off—but he was torn. And understandably so, if he
did say so himself. Abandoning his sire, whether or not she was actually still
a vampire, was unthinkable for him.
Angel sighed
again, and then tensed as he heard the dryer skip in its warm chuck-a chuck-as.
The thing had malfunctioned once and shrunk a whole load of black socks; Angel
wasn’t sure if he could go through that kind of trauma again. He silently
slipped down the basement stairs to stand by the machine and glare at it.
Hopefully that would make a difference.
The dryer gave
one last defiant chuck-a and then ground to a halt. Done! Angel beamed and
fetched the laundry basket, still keeping an ear strained to hear the
conversation upstairs.
“Tea is
how men talk about
things in England!” Wesley was saying, sounding mildly offended.
There was a
pause, and then Cordelia muttered, “Shhh! Listen, it’s
stopped.”
Darn. Now he was
going to have to go
upstairs.
Angel shoved his
warm clothing unceremoniously into the basket, stomped ill-naturedly up the
stairs, and entered the lobby to the sound of the telephone ringing.
He noticed with
a slight smile that Cordelia and Wesley had both sprung to incongruous
positions behind the reception desk and were studiously ignoring him.
The phone rang
again.
“Is one of
you going to get that?” he asked blandly.
There was a mad
dash for the phone. Cordelia, always the victor when she got aggressive enough,
picked up the phone with a smug look at Wesley and spoke. “Angel
Investigations…” Her eyes widened, and grimace crept across her
features. “Ah. Wanna talk to… No?” Angel shot a glance at Wesley,
who shrugged but mouthed “Who is it?” exaggeratedly to Cordelia.
She rolled her
eyes at him and mouthed back, “Buffy.”
Angel raised his
eyebrows. Why was Buffy calling? To his knowledge, nothing much was happening,
either in Sunnydale or in L.A.
Cordelia put her
hand over the receiver and turned to Angel. “Buffy says Willow tried to
anchor your soul permanently, and did you notice anything strange or do you
know why Willow’s currently unconscious?”
Willow had tried
to anchor his soul? “Uh… no. She’s unconscious? Is she
okay?”
Cordelia rolled
her eyes again and brought the phone back to her ear. “He says no, he
doesn’t know anything and he wants to know if Willow’s okay.”
She listened for
a second and then her eyes widened. “Oh, my… Oh. Really? No, go
ahead.
“She says
it looks like the Orb of Thesulah exploded from the inside, and then she said
she heard something, and she’ll be right back,” Cordelia reported.
She kept her ear to the phone, flipping a pen worriedly between two of her
fingers.
“Buffy…!
Is everything okay? She is?
That’s great!” A huge smile graced Cordy’s features, but then
the smile was quickly wiped away and the corners of her mouth twitched.
“You’re joking. What? No, it’s just that we’ve been
having some problems with that same girl lately… Yeah, sure.
“Buffy says
Willow woke up, which is good, but she’s babbling about Darla being
inside her head, which is bad. Do you have any idea what’s going
on?” Cordelia’s eyebrow ascended to its highest, most commanding
level, but Angel had nothing to tell.
“No,”
he said.
Right on cue,
Gunn slammed open the front doors of the hotel and charged excitedly in.
“I found Darla! And it wasn’t easy, but you said keep
lookin’, and my wide-rangin’ knowledge of L.A.’s low-rent
motels finally paid off.” He shoved some photos into Angel’s slack
hand and then paused.
“Geez. Who
died?” Gunn asked. His hands went to his hips as he looked around.
Cordelia turned
back to the phone. “Buffy, we might have just gotten something. Call you
back, okay? Yeah. Yeah, we should! Good luck with Willow. Love to everybody.
Yeah. Okay, ’bye.”
“Good
job,” Angel was saying to Gunn. “The Royal Viking Motel?”
Gunn nodded,
looking pleased with himself. “Conveniently located mere steps from Skid Row. I guess she’s not
living off Wolfram & Hart anymore.”
Angel shuffled
through the photos, agitated. “And not by their choice, is my
guess…”
“What do
you think they’ll do if they find her?” Gunn asked, leaning towards
the door.
“Let’s
get there first and not
find out,” Angel suggested. “And I wanna know what she—or
they—are gonna know about Willow, too…”
Wesley rushed to
get Angel’s coat. Angel took it and drew it on with a flourish.
“Let’s go.”
“Good
luck,” Wesley told Angel and Gunn seriously.
“Call if you find anything,” Cordelia
added. “We need to find out what’s going on.”
Angel nodded
once, and then he and Gunn were gone.
“So,”
Cordelia said in the silence that followed, “Buffy wants to do coffee.
That’d be nice, don’t you think?”
