Tribulations - Chapter 33

Buffy sneaked a quick look up from the book she'd been pretending to read for the past half hour. What use was it, anyway? She never got this stuff, and she doubted very much that the volume she'd been assigned held anything that could help them anyway. God, she hated this! Give her something to pummel and she'd be right on it, but hour after hour trapped with the musty books, with no chance of even escaping outside for a walk, was going to drive her up the wall with a quickness.

She gave a nod of thanks as Celeste set a fresh cup of coffee down near her hand. Celeste answered with a half-smile of her own before slumping in one of the straight-backed chairs with a very un-Celestelike expression on her face. Buffy suspected that her friend was just as bored as she was, and almost as frustrated.

Gradually, though, Celeste's expression faded into something else, a something that made Buffy look where she was looking. There, at the long table that usually lived in the back storage room, except for on special occasions, sat Giles and Seb, the two of them exactly like mirror images of each other with their big piles of books, matching fountain pens, yellow legal pads and identical studious expressions.

"Our men," Celeste mouthed. Buffy couldn't help but smile. Her frustration hadn't ebbed the least little bit, she was still way beyond worried about Willow, but darnitall, those matching Gileses were cute.

Her own Giles glanced up, probably feeling her gaze, and something came into his eyes that was fierce, loving and so absolutely Gilesian Buffy couldn't break it down into words.

"Any luck?" Buffy asked him quietly.

"Perhaps," Giles answered, glancing down at his pad, on which he'd turned back at least a dozen pages. Buffy knew without looking that no matter how fast he'd been writing, the notes would be in a tiny, completely readable script as neat as some kind of computer font. "Perhaps a bit," he added thoughtfully.

"Take a break?" Buffy asked him.

"I..." Giles glanced at his son, who was scowling at something in his own book. "Seb? What have you found?"

"I'm not sure, exactly. Tell me what you think of this?" Sebastian rattled off a string of words that bore so little resemblance to any language Buffy had ever heard they sounded made up, or as if someone had forgotten to to buy any vowels.

"Good God." Giles's face took on a matching scowl. "That's hardly encouraging, Seb."

"But if it does last long enough..."

"Rather a major 'if,' son," Giles answered. He didn't look happy.

"But, Dad, it might. Honestly, it might. We can't stay holed up here forever."

"We can't take such a risk. The consequences..."

"What consequences?" Buffy piped up. Celeste leaned forward too, looking interested.

"Sebastian's found a passage that seems to indicate that we can, at least temporarily, alleviate the worst effects of the Hellmouth curse."

All of which seemed to be good news, as far as Buffy was concerned, except that Giles hadn't lost his "I don't like this" face.

"I guess there's something stopping you from saying "bring it on, huh?" she asked. "Like maybe that whole "temporarily" thing?"

"I'm nearly positive the spell will work," Seb said encouragingly. "As for the time constraints--we'll just have to locate a more permanent solution quickly, that's all."

Giles ran a hand over his face and stood staring into space for a minute--a full minute, which made Buffy start to get nervous. She hated to see him looking so tired and frustrated. She had a feeling, too, that he'd have leaped on the chance Seb offered if it hadn't been for her. He didn't mind taking chances with his own life; she was the one he worried about.

"What are we talking here, Giles?" Buffy asked him quietly.

"If the spell works--and I do say if; we're certainly given no guarantees--we'll have an unspecified brief time to lift the curse once and for all. Should we fail, there will be no turning back. We'll have no zone of safely, as we have now, and no way to reestablish one. The results..." Giles's voice trailed off for a minute. He swallowed, then fixed his intense green gaze on her face. "The results," he concluded, in a voice that went beyond somber, "Will most likely be fatal."

"So, what else is new?" Buffy asked him, as lightly as she could, trying to smile.

Incredibly, Giles smiled back and even gave a small, dry chuckle. "Indeed." He lifted the huge red-leather-bound book from in front of Sebastian and turned back to the previous page, running his index finger down its words. When he looked up again his expression was full of a million things: tenderness, love, fear for her, impatience with himself--so many others Buffy once more couldn't put words to, but recognized nonetheless, because they were Giles's expressions and she'd come to know him so much better than anyone she'd known in her life.

"I say we try," Sebastian put in.

"Yes," Buffy agreed, not taking her eyes from Giles. "I say the same."

Xander wasn't sure what made him try the magic shop, but he did, and there Willow was, standing out front and blinking in the sunlight, as if she'd just woken up from the world's longest nap.

"Will!" he called. "Yo, Will!"

She looked up, and for a minute Xander could have sworn she didn't even recognize him, which scared him more than anything she'd ever said or done. Even seeing her nearly dragged into hell wasn't that scary. During that minute, she wasn't his Willow, but somebody else entirely. A somebody Xander wasn't sure he wanted to, or even could know.

"Willow," he called to her softly, wanting to make some sort of joke, to do something that would snap her back to her real self, or at least demonstrate for sure that he'd imagined the whole thing. He knew he hadn't imagined it, though. She looked--for want of a better word--completely witchy. Which he (no pun intended) hadn't thought he had a problem with. But maybe he did. Maybe he had a BIG problem.

"Xander," she answered, sounding just like his Willow, only maybe older and sadder. Xander didn't like that either. He hated for his Willow to be sad, even though he guessed he'd made her sad plenty of times himself, especially in the past couple years.

"Whazzup?" He put on his IdiotXander grin. If he tried hard, if he clowned around enough, he might be able to shake her out of this, whatever "this" might be.

"Nothing," Willow answered, sounding serious. Sounding way too serious, even if these were serious times. Her fingers looked white, clutched around the rolled-up top of a brown paper bag from the magic store. "I've been at the hospital. With Joyce."

"Ya know, we have these groovy new inventions called pencils and paper. I've heard that some people are even crazy enough to use a pencil to write something called a note on a piece of paper. I dunno--you might wanna try that some time. Just for kicks."

"I should have left a note," Willow said, but she didn't sound sorry or guilty or any of the other predictable Willow responses. She sounded more as if she'd said it because that's what Xander expected her to say, with about as much sincerity as a parrot. This from his Willow, who was never not sincere. About anything.

Xander shrugged, trying to hide how freaked out he was by it. "No biggie. You forgot, that's all."

"I forgot," Willow echoed, Parrot-girl striking again.

"You've had a lot on your mind," he answered, almost begging her to snap out of it, to come alive, to be REAL again.

Willow just nodded, shifting the brown bag until she'd hugged it to her chest with both arms. "Look, Xander, I need your help."

"With what?" Xander put a hand on Willow's shoulder, nudging her gently toward his car, trying not to let on to his anxiousness.

"A spell," Willow answered distractedly.

"Not really my line," Xander said, opening the passenger door. "Maybe you should ask the G-man?" Giles would know what to do; that's what he was there for. Being the grown-up. Having the answers.

Willow gave him a look, one that was suddenly so very Willowesque Xander couldn't resist. "Okay," he told her hoarsely. "Okay, okay. You win. Where to, fair lady?"

Willow should have smiled at that--she always had before--but she didn't. "My house, I guess. I think that will work."

All the way to the Rosenbergs', Xander kept glancing over at his best and oldest friend, but didn't say anything. Willow didn't say anything either, until she'd unlocked the door to her parents' house and carried her bag inside.

"Wait here, okay?" Willow said. After such a long silence her voice sounded weird, or maybe it was just his ears. Xander couldn't tell.

"Why? Where are you going?"

"Just to my room. For some..." She whisked away, so quiet Xander couldn't even hear her go.

He peeked in the bag, but the contents didn't give him a clue as to what might be up. Sure, it was magic stuff--big surprise there--but what kind of magic stuff? What did Will think she was doing? Xander could see candles, and smell their honeyish beeswax smell. He could see a bundle of stinky herbs, and what looked like the bones left over from an eight-piece box of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He could even see a handful of rocks with squiggly writing on them. All of which told him exactly nothing.

"Okay, I'm ready now." Once again, Xander hadn't heard Willow come up behind him. She'd caught him snooping red-handed, but she didn't say a thing. Instead, she started laying out the stuff, pouring water from a bottle into a wide, shallow bowl, scattering out the rocks and bones. She used a Zippo lighter to start the stinky herbs burning, then wrapped Xander's hand around the dry, herby handle. The smoke tickled his nose and he fought the urge to sneeze, but the smell didn't seem to do anything to Willow at all.

"Almost ready," she murmured. Carefully, as if it weren't any stronger than an empty eggshell, Willow unwrapped a round something rolled up in purple tissue paper. Xander didn't know why she bothered to be so careful--the thing looked like the kind of crystal ball gypsies tell your fortune on at the fair, only with a thousand cracks running through it.

Gypsies made Xander think of Miss Calendar, which made him think of...

"Oh, no no no. Uh-uhn, Will. No way!"

Willow appeared slightly annoyed, but only slightly. "Xander, you can help me, or you can get out."

"You're trying to do another soul-restoration spell, aren't you? 'Fess up, Willow. Aren't you? Who the hell on?"

"On whom," Willow corrected absently, with a faint smile. "Don't worry, Xander. It worked fine before. The first time, I mean. With Angel."

"This is big, bad magic," he protested. "And with Angel..."

"It worked," Willow answered. "It worked fine. It'll work fine this time, too."

Xander's heart pumped away in his chest at what felt like five times its normal speed. His mouth had gotten Sahara-desert-dry. "But, Will, who are you doing it to?"

Willow gave him a look that was amused and annoyed all at the same time. "Use your brain, Xander. On Wesley, of course. That's what Moira asked me to do."

I'm twenty-four, Melissa thought. I'm twenty-four years old, and I'm gonna die. This wasn't supposed to happen. She sat still, watching the vampires. The two of them hated each other, she could see that clearly enough, but that mutual hatred wasn't going to do her any good. Her hands and feet already felt icy cold, as if death wanted to get a jump start on her before she was even gone.

Alone in the dimly-lighted warehouse, with the lap of the waves beneath her feet and the briny tang of the Pacific all around her, she thought of her brother's death-trap convertible, cruising down to San Diego with the the top down and the Beastie Boys blasting away in the CD player. The Beastie Boys and They Might Be Giants, and the California sun beating down on their heads, bleaching their red hair nearly blonde.

I'll never see the sun again. I'll never be able to wear this again, she thought, touching the little silver cross that hung on a whisper-fine chain around her neck. Her grandmother had given the necklace to her for Confirmation. A billion nevers crowded through her head until she almost couldn't breathe, until she almost missed the hard, cold hands clenching down on her shoulders, and the touch of cold lips against her throat.

The vampire's teeth, breaking her skin, hurt more than she expected, more than she should have been able to stand, but for some reason she couldn't move or speak a word. The vampire's dark hair brushed against her cheek, and Melissa was surprised to feel how soft it was, and how good it smelled--just a clean, masculine scent, nothing creepy at all.

That didn't seem right. In fact, it seemed more wrong than the fact that the vampire was drinking from her, gulping down her blood in great, thirsty swallows, or that the room had begun to swing around in nauseating loops, the way a much different room had spun the one time she'd tried to give blood without eating breakfast first. Black spots danced in front of her eyes like the notes to a really complicated piece of Classical music.

She thought again of her brother, who was goofy and annoying and lovable all at the same time. She thought of her mom, who was kind and had a wacky sense of humor, and her dad, who wasn't around much, but loved her too in his own clueless I-don't-know-how-to-show-it way. She thought of all her friends, especially Joyce, who was probably already lying dead back in her Bridge-lady's hospital room.

The smelly warehouse went dark around her. Her heart tapped away like someone impatient, rapping on a door she knew wasn't ever going to be answered. The hands on her shoulders no longer felt cold: they no longer felt like anything, just weights holding her down when all she wanted to do was fly away.

"Now drink," someone said, a million miles from her.

Surprised, without meaning to, Melissa opened her mouth, and a cool, sweet, saltiness flooded her throat.