Chapter Twenty-Eight

"Who was that?" Darla wanted to know.

William was less curious about that point. "That was the longest walk in the park on record," he grumbled as Willow took off her hat and gloves. "Where in the name of hell have you been?"

He had been busy for most of the afternoon, but after he got cleaned up and dressed, it had occurred to him that Willow had been gone longer than could be reasonably expected.

She bent down to detach the leash as Drusilla swept in to collect her dog, scooping him up. "Did you have an adventure?" she cooed to him.

Willow found the package with William's cigarettes. "Here," she said. "I didn't mean to be out so long." What she really wanted to say was something along the lines of 'I'm tired and I'd like to go lie down,' but she didn't really expect to be let off so easily.

He manufactured an interest in the bag that he didn't feel. "Here," she said, sounding too anxious, too eager to please, which didn't pacify him in any way. It should have. It only reminded him that she had compared herself to the dog to make a joke at her own expense, or a point that he felt more than a little annoyed about.

"Who was that?" Darla called out again, a bit more insistently.

"Princess Stavarski," Willow answered her. "I met her at the dressmaker," she hefted the package of fabric samples and preliminary sketches the dressmaker had provided her with and took them into the salon to give to Darla.

"You look a bit peaked," Angelus observed.

William followed her, leaving the bag on a table in the after he removed one wrapped packet of cigarettes to open. He paused to look at her. She looked tired.

"Headache," she said. "I'd like to—"

"Go lie down," William finished for her, only it was an instruction. "Your supper is waiting, but you can have it in your room. I'll bring it up," he offered.

Darla looked at him. This wasn't what she had in mind at all, and it didn't bother her that Willow was tired. "We will look at these later," she agreed, tempted to make her stay, but didn't say anything to stop her.

Willow retreated to the temporary sanctuary of her room as William lit a cigarette and Darla complained about him smoking in the salon. She felt something. It was like the pressure of silence, pressing against her mind as a teacher waited for an answer, except it was more intrusive and she was determined not to blurt out an answer to an unknown question. It was the house, or the magic binding the house, which was hers, trying to find her. She found herself walking to the window, pushing the heavy drapes aside to look down on the ruined garden.

Without recourse to memory she knew exactly where she buried the crystal that defined the boundaries of her ward. She felt it against the pit of her stomach. She had subverted the laws that bound the natural world. There was something out there that was evil and twisted and it was something she had created that knew her intimately.

And it was power, waiting and wanting to be called on. Power that reminded her that she wasn't helpless. It was power that rubbed up against the numbness that she had enveloped herself in when the watchers turned away from her in the park; power that could be used to punish them for ignoring her.

She flinched at the sound of the door opening from the hallway, half expecting to find William there, but it was Drusilla, with Mr. Buttons tucked under her arm as if he was as weightless as a stuffed animal.

"There were no cakes today," Drusilla told her.

The mention of food made Willow feel a little light-headed from hunger. She had hardly eaten anything today. She wanted to replace the hollow feeling at the pit of her stomach with something warm and sustaining. Was this what it felt like when they were hungry? Was it hunger for more than food, but for the comfort of filling themselves with something warm and sustaining?

She let the curtain fall and turned to face her . . . what? What was Drusilla to her?

She put the dog down and nudged him away from her with her foot. "It's the hairpins," she said. "Pressing too hard, holding things up that are meant to fall down."

Willow decided not to look for any deeper meaning, rejecting symbols and the featherweight of her own twisted work pressing against her. "My feet hurt, too," she said.

Drusilla cocked her head to one side, smiling sweetly, "And you smell," she put in, without a shred of malice, her nose wrinkling.



Willow was in the bathtub when William let himself in to her room. Drusilla was in there with her. There was another parcel on the bed with her purse; from the scent of the parcel he knew that she had made a visit to Zlata Ulicka. She was becoming too independent, despite the appearance of submission laced with resentment. Darla noticed it, too. He didn't mind it so much when it was directed elsewhere. He willed himself to be pleased that she had done no more than stay out later than expected.

The dog was on the floor, mouthing the leather of the half boot she wore for walking, watching him with the expectation of being ejected from the room. William sat on the end of the chaise and snapped his fingers at the dog. He wasn't the first pet that Drusilla had been given, but so far he was holding the record for longevity, balanced between Drusilla's continued interest in him and Willow's willingness to keep him fed and watered.

The dog had turned his head to watch him, interest sparking in his eyes, tail thumping on the floor with growing enthusiasm. He probably thought that resisting the appeal in William snapping his fingers was a kind of game, only he was playing with someone that wouldn't hesitate to snap his annoying neck. In that respect, Willow had nothing in common with the dog.

She emerged from the bathroom in a dressing gown that belonged to Drusilla. When the bathroom door opened, the dog abandoned her boots and scampered around her in the doorway to scratch at the connecting door to Drusilla's room. Drusilla opened the door enough to let him in while Willow pulled the door on her side closed, cutting off the draft of damp, fragrant steam that had been leached from the bathroom.

"Cook will bring a tray up," he told her as she went to her dressing table to sit on the bench, picking up her brush to work out the tangles in her towel-dried hair.

Everyone was on company manners tonight, Willow thought. It was a whole day of extra normal behavior if you didn't count the watchers who had seen her and decided that they didn't want to speak to her.

While she waited for the tray to be delivered, William moved from the chaise to her bed, lounging on it, rummaging through the contents of her package from the magic shop. He shot her a somewhat expectant look. "Visit to the stinky herbalist?" He picked up one of the small glass vials filled with the headache powder. "What's this for?"

"Headache," she said. "I had a headache. I thought I'd try something different."

"Where did you get this?"

"I went back to Zlata Ulicka," she said, relatively sure that he had already figured that out.

Her eyes went to the mirror. With her hair wet, she looked older to herself in a way that never failed to shock her. It wasn't a good mirror. There was a certain amount of cloudiness in it that she realized that she had sought.

"I went to Zlata Ulicka," she repeated, making herself concentrate on anything but the mirror. "The way the shadows fall there, no direct sunlight for a good part of the day, and no lurking vampires. Vampires, yes, but not lurk-y ones. I wasn't alone and no one bothered me," she summarized, cautiously shifting on the bench to turn toward him.

He looked annoyed. "That's good to know, I guess," he allowed. "Are you out of your mind?"

She gave it serious consideration. "I ask myself that on a regular basis," she said with a hint of sarcasm creeping through.

He picked up the spell that Arik had copied out for her. The moment she walked into the house she had felt her magics crawling over her skin in a distinctly unpleasant way. She wondered what he made of it, but there was a knock on the door announcing the arrival of her supper tray.

He called out to Cook to enter. Concluding that he was probably carrying the tray, Willow got up to open the door. Hesitating only momentarily at the threshold, Cook brought the tray in and William told him to set it on the bed. Moving the tray to the other side of the bed, William tugged the linens down.

"Get in bed and have your supper, love," he invited.

She put the hairbrush down on the dressing table and moved to the bed and arranging the folds of the robe to accommodate sitting with her legs crossed. Her dinner was soup and bread, which was about all she wanted at the moment. Simple, uncomplicated, unambiguous comfort food.

The note was still in his hand and William gestured with it. "What's this?" he asked.

She opened her napkin and spread it over her lap before picking up the soup bowl. Spoon be damned. She blew over the surface of the soup and cautiously lifted the lip to her mouth to drink from the bowl.

Something about that struck him as humorous and he smiled. "Hungry?"

The lip was too broad to accommodate the way she was using it and she had to put the bowl down and blot her soup mustache. "It seemed more direct," she muttered, picking up the spoon. The soup was delicious.

"Pet?" he waved the note to remind her that he was waiting for an answer.

"Cleansing spell," she said, casting a wary look at him. "My magic is all . . . weird. I can feel it grabbing at me at odd times. It's worth trying."

He read the note, eyebrows lifting. "There's the pond in the park," he said, reading the underscored, 'body of water' notation.

She looked at him briefly before dragging her attention back to eating. "I want to try it tonight."

That might put a crimp in Darla's entertainment for the evening. He had an idea of what she wanted. She had largely ignored Willow for the first few months that he kept her, and then one lazy afternoon he had woken up to find Darla sponging blood and sweat off her body. He had come to bed drunk and used Willow to take the edge off of his drunkenness.

When Darla was satisfied that she was clean, she had rubbed oil into her skin. Malnourishment and abuse had left her skin white and papery, and while he watched, dozing, seeping in the heat of her body warming the bed, he watching her skin become supple, pinkening under Darla's ministrations with growing interest and appreciation.

Darla was almost always direct. Angelus was the master of the teachable moment.

She didn't kiss her, or bite her. Fully dressed, hands covered in crocheted gloves saturated with oil, she touched her everywhere while he imagined those hands on him. His introduction to Darla had come at the lowest point of his unlife.

"Nothing belongs to you," Angelus had sneered, and William had thought that they were talking about Drusilla, watching from the bed where she had been doing things with Angelus that William thought were reserved for him.

He hadn't believed it. He believed he could change it. Beaten, he knew what was coming. It was the lesson. Nothing belonged to him. Not Drusilla, who had watched them fight and had done nothing to help him. Beaten, he would watch his sire, the miracle that was his first lover, his impious and unholy bride, go to the winner, and he couldn't blame her for it anymore than he had ever blamed Cecily for turning away from him.

But that wasn't what happened at all.

His body hardened at the memory of Darla's oily gloved finger irritating and soothing his abused sphincter. Nothing belonged to him. Not even his capacity to resist. How many moments like that had he recreated for Willow, wanting her to understand that nothing belonged to her? He had only to look around at what surrounded her. Her room, her clothes, her books, and he savored the notion of them being hers. But only because he allowed it.

He watched her eat, imagining her hunger magnified until there was no difference for her between the food she was putting in her mouth and him, shivering as he remembered how she felt, her skin hot and slippery as she lowered herself on his cock, weeping for the shame of wanting him. Of preferring his attentions to the cold fire of being cleverly manipulated while Darla told her that she barely kept herself fed and clothed when she was a whore, but when she was beyond her prime, she made her fortune this way, preparing a girl or boy who pretended to be innocent for a customer who pretended to believe it.

She did belong to him. She had started to fall asleep on his chest after he had come and as much as he enjoyed her warm body covering him, he had been unpleasantly aware that her hair, under his chin was dirty. Darla had caught his eye, watching them, expecting him to push her away now that he was done with her as well as the pretence that had been played out for his entertainment.

He started taking better care of her after that. Or demanding that she took better care of herself and providing the means to do that. There was a tiny frown pinching her brows together, and she looked tired and hungry, but in the gaslight her skin glowed and the waves of her drying hair shone. She was so beautiful, in her own way.

"We can do that," he agreed when she looked at him clearly waiting for him to comment. "Angelus has been harping on finding out what you can do outside the wards you set up to see if your theory about them interfering is correct."

She bit her lower lip. "I—" she took a deep breath. It was a cleansing spell, a spell that would be centered on her, and it felt personal. "Could we go alone? Just you and me?"

He studied her face for a moment, wondering if she was pandering to him, before nodding. "We can do that. Finish your supper."

Lying on his side with his head propped up on his hand, he watched her eat. Not unaware of his attention, the scrutiny was making her nervous. Wary. His eyes narrowed, watching the way the gaslight behind her brought out the darker auburn parts of her hair as it dried.

"How did you happen to meet the princess?" he asked, changing the subject.

She tore off a piece of bread, dunking it in the soup. "I was at the dressmaker's shop, waiting to be seen, and she came in and," a tiny frown appeared before she shrugged, "She's probably rich?"

William wasn't sure why she asked. "Probably," he agreed.

She nodded. "So . . . the dressmaker wanted to show me the sketches she had, and normally I would have—" she made a face. The odd thought that she had about facilitating the patronage of a small business owned by a woman wasn't something that he would understand. "Darla doesn't care what I think about clothes. We looked at the sketches, and had wine and pastries. Oh! And she had her driver walk Mr. Buttons and I think he did something to him because he sort of heels now."

She ate her soup-saturated bread. "Was that fun?" He tapped the glass of wine on the tray to draw her attention to it.

She shook her head. "Headache-y. No more wine for me," she declined. "I don't know. It was weird. I don't always know who to be," she tried to explain. "Um . . . I'm interested in magic? Angelus doesn't approve."

William grinned. "I suppose not," he drawled. "He was very pious with that missionary rot last night."

She tilted her head to one side. "Then that was probably right," she concluded. "She asked what you thought about it, and I said that I didn't think you cared." She shook her head. "She looked like she didn't think that made sense."

"Hmm? Ah," he nodded. "Angelus alluded to an 'understanding' existing between us." At her blank look, he elaborated. "An understanding that we are going to be married, love."

As soon as he said it, he wished that he hadn't. She got a very strange look on her face. "No," she shook her head. When William first brought her to London to rejoin the older vampires, before she had any idea that he was a younger version of Spike, she had woken up, starving to find herself face to face with Drusilla in a bloodstained veil. William had been lounging in bed, peppering Angelus with questions about a wedding Angelus had interrupted. "No . . ."

Stung by the horrified look on her face, his lip curled in a sneer. "It's not like I went on bended knee and asked, now is it?"

She sucked in a breath. "It's not going to happen?"

"No," he was curt.

"I used to have nightmares about it," she admitted. "Blood everywhere," her eyes squeezed shut. "Screaming."

He was getting a mental picture. No hearts and flowers for his girl. Blood spattered flowers and real hearts. For a moment he didn't know what to say.

He straightened and picked up the tray, setting it down on the floor with a rattle of flatware and dishes before coming back to her, smoothing his hands over her cheeks, slipping one hand under her hair to rub the back of her neck where the muscles were taunt and unyielding under his fingers.

"I'd never let that happen," he said, and he meant it. More or less. If she ever managed to get away from him and thought that she could give herself to someone else . . . he'd make her nightmares a bedtime story before he was through. He had crashed a few weddings in his time with Angelus, and he would never leave her stranded at an altar while people died around her. His fingers worked at the tension in her neck and he kissed the top of her head. "Sssh. No wonder you have a headache. You are so tense."

"You promise?"

"I promise," he assured her, shaking his head as he nudged her over in bed to get in beside her. "I was angry with you for being out so long," he told her. "It's hard to think of rotten things to do to you when you come up with something worse to scare yourself with," he complained.

"I knew that you would be mad," she admitted.

"Did you?" he kneaded her neck.

"I had your cigarettes," she pointed out.

He let his chin rest on top of her head as she started to relax against him. How much of the day had she spent balanced on the fine edge of awareness that he would be annoyed with her for extending her absence? "And then there was that."

"Go to sleep. I'll wake you up later."




It was hardly the first time that they had snuck off on their own in the middle of the night. For a while, it had been a bit of a habit. He would come in a few hours before dawn and take Willow out for a few hours. There had been a hotel rooftop in Paris. Stargazing with actual stars until the first streaks of light broke over the horizon. They had been out alone in the early morning hours in Lisbon when they had been ambushed. Vampires brought stakes and crossbows to a fight with vampires. The shot fired at Willow had been from a gun. Someone had noticed their late-night wanderings and come prepared for her.

First-rate thinking, really. Once she was down and bleeding, she would slow him down, or distract him, except that he had understood exactly what had to be done and nothing would have stopped him from seeing it through.

She was snoring lightly in her sleep. His cigarettes had been left across the hall in his room, but even after she was asleep he stayed, running his fingers through her hair. He was a little surprised that they had been left undisturbed for such a long time. Drusilla came in on her way out with Angelus and Darla. When he asked her to get his cigarettes for him, she answered with an indulgent smile before wandering across the hall as requested.

She came back with cigarettes, matches and a candy dish he had been using for an ashtray and he kissed her fingertips while she smiled at this new game of hushed voices and silent, meaningful gestures and turned down the light before she left them.

He dozed off at some point and he was back in Lisbon. Walking in the street, alone. She was out there somewhere. Hiding. He had told her to hide, but he had forgotten to tell her not to hide from him. He had to find her first. He had to find her before it was too late.

It didn't happen that way at all. He had known exactly where she was. The smell of blood, the harsh sound of her pain-constricted breathing had been with him, like a metronome to measure out fight and flight.

She woke him up when she started to shift away from where she was lying against his chest, and he loosened his hold on her to let her find a more comfortable position. She ended up on her side with her chin digging into the inside of his elbow until he moved to slide his arm out from under her.

It was approaching midnight when he woke her up, spooning behind her, his lips finding the soft warm spot under her ear. He thought for a moment about simply stripping her of the robe and making love to her while she was still half-asleep and the house was quiet around them, but she avoided his lips when he tried to kiss her mouth and mumbled something about needing to go to the bathroom.

She looked less than alert when she shuffled into the bathroom, but when she emerged and got dressed, tying her hair back, she was awake. There were things that she needed from her cellar and while she got them he made a visit to the weapons locker to get a crossbow and a knife.

The spell called for blood. Hers. He was taking no chances in the event that she drew unwanted attention. Cook and Lucius were in the kitchen, which was cleaned and restored to order. He largely ignored them as he got a plate of thinly-sliced turkey from the icebox and made a sandwich and wrapped it in a napkin and found an opened bottle of wine cooling. Weeks ago he had some idea of a picnic in the park, and he kept putting it off, or finding it in conflict with something else.

He gave Willow the sandwich when they met in the foyer. She had a cloth bag slung over her shoulder to carry her supplies.

"Do you really think that this has to be done tonight?" he asked when they were on the walk.

"Uh huh," she nodded. "I can't go around losing control when I get angry."

"Is that what happened last night?"

She paused, looking up at him. "You know about that?" She shook her head. "Of course you know about that. Lucius," she reminded herself. "Nothing actually happened, but I could feel it building up, trying to get out," she shuddered.

"And?"

"And what?" She took the hand he extended to her.

"Got yourself a little power, love. Don't tell me you don't like the way it tastes."

She thought about that for a moment. "Power," she tested the word. "Power that pokes at you in places where you think you could kill people."

Vampires were not people, Matilde was not people, except that they started to seem like people if you were around them long enough, Willow realized. Nor was it just vampires. When she had been standing at the window, she had been thinking about people. It reminded her of Amy, who had seen magic as an advantage that she had over people, even if she chose not to use it indiscriminately.

"I'd chose control over power," she said instead. "Does that make sense?"

For her, it did. For a somewhat graceless woman, she managed to walk an unimaginably treacherous tightrope. "Let's get this done."



From the window in the dining room, Darla watched them head off in the direction of the park. She had stayed in tonight. She fingered the fringe on the drape. She had spent a part of the evening looking at the fabric samples and patterns that Willow had brought from the dressmaker. It was a task she would have preferred to have company for. Angelus could be counted on for an opinion, but she was still annoyed by his aborted attempt to turn Claire Hamilton.

Drusilla's interest in the patterns had immediately turned to her vast collection of dolls.

That left Willow or William, or both of them, but they had slipped out of the house. She considered summoning Matilde, but she wasn't entirely out of charity with William's notion that her hostility toward Willow required containment even as she was aware that her own behavior had fostered the sentiment. She wasn't required to be fair and consistent.

Drusilla's dog appeared in the foyer, whining softly, possibly at the realization that he had somehow been left behind. Darla walked to the pocket doors, watching him for a moment. He was lying on the floor on his back, rolling back and forth, and shedding silky white and brown hairs on the rug. When he sat up, she saw what inspired the violence. Drusilla had pulled tuffs of his hair into small topknots tied with bows that ran from the back of his neck to his tail. The loathsome little dog looked up at her, panting slightly.

He lifted a paw and waved it at her. When that got no response, he flopped over on his side and started rolling back and forth again. Cook, leaving the kitchen, spotted the dog and walked down the hallway.

"Where is his leash?" Darla found herself asking.

If the idea of Darla walking the dog to any place other than a shallow grave or a dustbin seemed unlikely, Cook gave no sign of it as he found the dog's leash and attached it to his collar, half-expecting that he would be the one walking the dog. With an odd little smile, Darla took the leash from him and left the house with the dog.




Cleansing spells were less about incantations and appeals than clarity and focus, Willow decided as she held her bleeding hand over the water. She concentrated on breathing, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her hand throbbed, but she found that the pain was more tolerable if she didn't think about it. The fresh air was clearing her head. The cold sweat that she had broken out in when her body reacted to the bite of the knife drawn over her palm was leaching out the poison of alcohol in her blood stream.

She had not drunk to excess, so the effect was fairly subtle but the focus that she was gaining seemed to expand her senses. It was a cleansing spell. It made perfect sense that any alcohol that remained in her system would be forced out. Her nose wrinkled at the slightly metallic scent of her own sweat with an undertone of onions, probably from the soup she had consumed.

When her hand stopped bleeding, she felt a twinge of disappointment but checked the impulse to make a fist to squeeze out a few more drops. If the spell was meant to do more than purge her system of impurities it would happen before she stopped bleeding. She reached out beyond her candle, feeling no resistance, no sense of breaking the circle that she had made and put her hand into the water to rinse the last of the blood off.

Her vision swum. She saw herself touching a clouded mirror, brushing away dirt and grime to see herself as she really was, wavering in candlelight, growing young and old before her face changed, rippling into a vampire's game face. She saw herself, not quite human nor vampire, her face leached of color, eyes black, hair turning black as she sucked power from the earth and was filled with the bile of things that rotted and spoiled.

There was a part of her that recognized that power. It was the power to unmake the mistake that had brought her here.

She saw herself in a room that she didn't recognize, sitting on a floor inside a circle reciting a spell that she instantly recognized without understanding where it came from. "Control the outside, control within," she heard herself say and her heart leapt in her chest. That was exactly what she needed.

Clarity and control. A spell that made her will manifest.



When her hand touched the water, her body convulsed. William saw it out of the corner of his eye. He had turned away from her ritual, distracted by the sensation of being watched. They were not alone in the park.

This wasn't part of the spell he had taken time to read. Whatever was lurking about would have to wait. She was crawling into the water, disappearing into it headfirst, the silk of her gown floating on the water for a moment before he reached the edge of the water and then sinking in the weight of the water, just beyond his grasp.

He went in after her, feeling for her, and then shifting to his nature state, eyes opening in the murky darkness of the water, full of silt churned up from the bottom. For a moment, he couldn't see at all, and then he realized that he was looking for the wrong thing. The gray of her dress was too hard to pick out. He looked for bubbles, for the air escaping her lungs. The water was ridiculously shallow, hardly four feet deep where she was curled up on the bottom. He had the stray thought that only Willow could manage to drown herself in a shallow pond before he reached her, feeling her fingernails rake his cheek as she fought him.



"Something has gone dreadfully wrong," Giles told her.

Willow sat up, staring at the thing in front of her. A black box that showed her reflection, framed in pebbled white plastic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment trying to remember the word for it. Her hands were lying on the keyboard and the processor squawked at the confusing input from her hands when they pressed down on the keys. She flinched at the sound.

Computer.

She looked up and saw that she was in the library. "What?" she looked around in stunned disbelief. Was it that simple? It wasn't exactly click her heels three times and she was whisked home, but it was close.

"Where am I?" she asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "We haven't been able to determine that as yet," he said in a tone that was full of annoyance and regret.

If this was another dream, it was the cruelest one yet. "But you are trying?"

"Insofar as we can, Willow," he frowned at her. "You keep changing things. You wished that there were no vampires and caused Buffy to cease to exist. I didn't believe you when you told me about her, but then you unwished it. My bloody diary reads like Kafka—were you planning on meeting him? If you stick around long enough—"

"No," she shook her head. "It's another stupid dream. You aren't making sense. Spike will show up next, and—"

"Already here, pet," he interrupted, behind her on the stairs.

"Like the proverbial bad penny," Giles grumbled. "You are remarkably consistent in including him in your adventures," he scolded.

Spike squatted down next to her, handing her a folded handkerchief that felt real enough. "Your nose is bleeding again," he told her. "Actually, it's you that doesn't make any sense, love. You keep wishing yourself into having things that have repercussions, and then unwishing them. Just tell us what you did and we'll figure out a way to undo it and bring you home."

"You aren't supposed to be here," she said.

He titled his head to one side. "At least that wasn't a wish," he said dryly, "Or I wouldn't be here." He took the handkerchief from her and held it to her nose, tipping her head back. "But, I'm always here. I guess that's better than 'I love you, too' but, I'd settle if you had a mind to say it."

His tone was dry and sarcastic, but his eyes were searching her face and she felt the subtle pressure of his expectations. He could have tortured her and made her say anything, but he had not—William had not.

"I'll give you a wish for anything but that," she said rashly.

He smiled crookedly at that.

"Where are you Willow?" Giles pressed.

She looked at him, pushing Spike's hand away from her face. "Prague. 1898. It was a spell—"

"We know that. A spell to have your will done," Giles told her. "And we know about Prague. Where are you right now? What did you do?"

"Bloody hell, she's fading again," Spike said.

"No, that's good. She doesn't belong to this reality. She has to return to where she cast this spell and undo it. You have to stop," Giles told her. "It isn't the answer."



Darla stayed on the groomed path, letting the dog lead her. She wasn't sure what she expected to find in the park. She was curious about what they were like when there was no audience to influence their behavior. Years of compelling Willow to indulge his tastes had only served to narrow what William was willing to demand of her.

She realized that she admired that.

She caught a glimpse of them through the trees, near the edge of a pond, lighting candles and stilled to watch as the dog tugged on the leash and then sniffed around the base of a dogwood. It was not a tryst. It was magic. A spell cast with William's apparent complicity or possibly at his insistence. She had never approved of Angelus' encouraging Willow's interest in magic and felt that William was even more skeptical of it than she was.

What were they up to?



Pond water bubbled up and poured out of her mouth. William rolled her over on her side, feeling her heart beating sluggishly. "Breathe, damn you," he swore at her. "I'll beat you half to death for this you stubborn, stupid bitch. No more magic, do you hear me?"

He shook her and she convulsed again, her legs folding in on her chest as her body fought to void the contents of her stomach and God only knew what else. He had never seen vomit that glittered black in the moonlight and instinctively, he pulled her heaving body away from the mess, not wanting any of it to touch her.

He was wiping her face off with a handkerchief when she blinked and realized where she was. The handkerchief was real enough. Drusilla embroidered enough of them. Real, she thought dreamily. All real. She could wish herself back, even knowing that for some inexplicable reason she would wish a version of William back with her.

"Even when I try I can't imagine a world without you in it," she whispered, closing her eyes.

A strange sound escaped him, something halfway between a frustrated grunt and a laugh. "It's not 'I love you, too' but I'll—"

Her eyes flew open, "settle," she finished for him, and then shivered. "Mega, maxi weird," she muttered, grimacing at the foul taste in her mouth as she struggled to sit up.

He stared at her, startled by the way she had finished the thought, unnerved by the odd tone of her voice when she said that she couldn't imagine a world without him in it.

Fractured moments trickled through her consciousness. Time stood still. She wished for no vampires and eliminated Buffy but not William, who was mortal in her memory. She wished to return home and found Spike there. It didn't happen, but it could happen.

She felt him lifting her to her feet and then she felt him go still, listening to something, muscles tensing. In Lisbon, he had been there every time she opened her eyes, just like this, alert, aware that there was something out there he could destroy, choosing to stay with her instead.

Did she do these things or did she dream them? Was Giles aware of what she had done and trying to bring her back?

It wasn't the answer? What did that mean? The answer to what exactly?

She rested her hand on William's shoulder and a clammy trickle of cold water ran down the back of her hand. "You are soaked," she said, confused. "When did that happen?"

His hands tightened under her arms, shaking her a little. "Less than a minute after you went into the pond," his voice was hard. "What was that about?" he wanted to know. "What the hell were you thinking?"

She closed her eyes. "It's complicated," she muttered, pushing against his shoulder to stand up. "Let go. I can walk."

He rose with her, his hands on her arms in case she was overstating. She swayed a little when he let go of her, but she didn't fall. "Very weird," she said, puzzled by the outcome of the spell. "I don't feel any different."

He wasn't listening. "We need to get out of here," he said, eyes scanning the park. "There is something out there."

"Animal, vegetable or vampire?" she asked, going back to her circle. For a second dizziness swamped her senses. The candles had extinguished themselves and the acrid smell of the smoldering candlewicks made her feel slightly nauseous. Wind whipped through the trees.

"Oh, crap," she muttered, wondering if the spell was through with her. She felt so weird. Her body was sending conflicting signals to her brain. She felt like she needed to drink something, throw up, and pee, pretty much all at once.

She made herself concentrate on picking up the candles. She started picking them up, stuffing them into the bag she had carried with her aware of a growing ache in her lower back that felt familiar and foreign.

When he didn't answer her at once, Willow looked for him and found that he was gone, probably off to find an answer to her question.




The confessional was the only confined space that had never felt claustrophobic to Drusilla. Her fingernails scrapped the latticework of the grille that separated her from the priest. There was a lovely hum of voices in the background, like music. She no longer had anything to confess, but the quiet of the confessional made her feel pure.

Angelus liked the ritual. He wanted to hear the words.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," she whispered for his benefit.

The world was a terrible place. She had known it before she had taken her terrible place in it. The petitioner's side of the confessional sang with terrible things made equal in the perfume of guilt and fear that was soaked into the polished wood and worn leather of the stall.

She had lost her virginity in the confessional. Not to man or worldly beast, but to the violence of her own hands violating her own body. She swayed as she considered whispering that sin to the priest, feeling her triumph over the creature that tormented her as if she were still human and sane.

She cocked her head to one side, her attention caught by the sound of clothing rustling and the strangled, pleasured sound of a man's voice biding her to continue.

A slightly sullen expression settled on her face. William was more polite. He always asked her if she wanted to eat first. She rubbed her tummy. She wasn't particularly hungry, but that wasn't the point.

"Drusilla?" Angelus prompted.

Her hands shaped the wood separating them, her mind wandered. She smiled at the idea of confessing that her confessions were made up.

There was another strangled gasp from the other side of the confessional.

She ignored the priest. He wasn't paying attention to her. Closing her eyes, back arching as her head fell back, she savored the images that played against her eyelids, backlit by the glow of a single candle left in the petitioner's stall. The banality of stale sins whispered to her. 'I lied . . . I cheated . . . I stole," and she savored the unspoken yearning to explain it, to give it reason that mocked contrition, to be forgiven despite being unable to forgive. It was all so delicious.

She saw them. Darla was standing in the woods under a tree, watching William and Willow. Drusilla had a fleeting sense of restlessness that flickered with the light behind her eyelids. She growled softly in the back of her throat. William cancelled out Darla, so strong were her impressions of him, hard and bright and primed to kill. He was gleaming like the blade of a knife, unable to see the blood on his hands as he congratulated himself for not killing Willow all at once.

Willow was a kaleidoscope. Humanity gave her a capacity for change that they lacked. She tumbled and whirled, always changing. Drusilla saw a sweet-faced woman child version of her with darker hair, looking solemn and slightly chastened that made her lips draw back into a silent snarl until she was replaced by an older version with sweetly-soulful eyes, alien in a vampire's visage.

More beautiful and terrible than they had any right to expect. There would be hell to pay when she understood that.

Her fingers grasped at the air as she cast her net further. Prayers. Priests. Silly plotters, plodding along in the mud of their imagination. She knew what needed to be done.

When she emerged from the confessional, Angelus was waiting for her. She paused to open her purse and drop two coins in the offering plate before she slid her hand inside the crook of his elbow and stepped daintily over the two dead bodies left in the aisle.

"Did you light a candle?" Angelus asked.

"I lit them all," she confided. "Such a lot of concerns I have," she pouted prettily, reaching out to dip her fingers in the holy water at the door.

Angelus caught them before she could complete the gesture, giving her a sideways look to remind her that she wasn't to touch things in church.

"Will we bring flowers for the girl?" Drusilla asked, wondering if they would go to visit her grave.

"Maybe another night, princess," Angelus said.

Or not at all, she decided. Maybe another night usually meant not at all. Which meant that the girl wasn't coming out of the grave to live with them. "I didn't like her," she confessed, her nose wrinkling.

If he sought the satisfaction of inspiring jealousy, Drusilla was more likely to provide it than Darla. For that matter, so was William. He wished that he hadn't grown impatient with Claire. He could have kept her around longer.

"Where are we going?" Drusilla asked.

"Anywhere you like," he answered.

She tilted her head to one side, eyes closed as she sampled the air, searching for something. "I know where there is a party," she said, turning to walk backward, eyes shining as she tugged Angelus along. "Someone is going to wake up and they will be ever so hungry, but there will be no cakes and tea for them."

"Why not?"

"You'll see," she caroled. "Such a surprise for everyone."



Emile held a stake in his nicotine-stained fingers, waiting patiently, staring at the boy laid out in the front parlor. The other boy, the one whose heart had been removed from his chest would not wake, but this one might. He had gotten his neck broken, so even if he did wake, he would be unable to do anything but lie there, helpless, unable to move. If he was fed, he might heal, but that wasn't going to happen.

The mother was sitting beside the coffin, dressed in a hastily-dyed black dress that smelled of the dye that had been used. She had a bible clutched in her hand; once white, it was stained by perspiration from her hands. He suspected that she probably carried it on her wedding day and possibly intended for it to be placed in the coffin with her son's body when it was buried. The expression on her face was stoic, but her eyes were angry and confused.

Her husband was standing nervously at Emile's side. "We'll never get over this," he said, thinking about his wife.

"You will," Emile said, masking the irritation that he felt. They had other children. Older children with children of their own who had crowded into the house earlier in the day to mourn.

He thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. The involuntary ripple of facial muscle. He took a step closer to the coffin and turned to the few relatives and friends left in the room, looking to the priest who had come with him.

Interpreting the signal, he cleared his throat and invited the mourners to leave the parents with the deceased for a moment just as the doorknocker sounded. The woman who went to the door was the husband's younger sister, a widow who boarded with them. She invited the couple on the doorstep in, not recognizing them, explaining in a hushed voice that they had been invited to wait outside the parlor for a few moments.

She missed the look that was exchanged between them as they crossed the threshold. She noticed that they slipped inside the parlor before the doors were closed, and shook her head, trusting Brother Emile to usher them back out after they paid their respects.



David had chosen the park for the exercise in field observation because it was close and they were known to frequent the park. He really had not expected to find anything, which would confirm something he suspected about Prague in general and the Fanged Four in particular. Lesser demons would give the areas where vampires lived a wide berth. In many respects it was the exact opposite of Prague, where the German influence had trumped the Czech, and the two rubbed along together to create something splendid, albeit with a slight inferiority complex.

From what he had learned from Emile, the vampires indigenous to Prague were more parochial and territorial than the inhabitants of the city.

The exercise was more an exercise for its own sake. Harry's last real field experience had ended badly for him. He had pushed hard for them to take action, but faced with a real threat, he had been unnerved. It wasn't surprising and David was not inclined to take it as a fault, but he was convinced that he needed to get Harry out into the field as soon as possible so he could work out his own ambivalence and, if not, so that he would have a better idea of his partner's limitations.

The last person or vampire he expected to encounter on the paths was Darla. They had no choice but to brazen it out.



William was back a moment later, "That prat from the party is limping around the park," he told Willow, not bothering to mention that he was with his friend, having a neighborly chat with Darla who was walking the dog.

What Darla was doing out with the dog on a leash was a question that was all too likely to be answered in his view. The nosy bitch had followed them.

Willow paused to look at him. "Is he still limping around the park?" she asked pointedly.

William's eyebrows lifted. "For the moment," he drawled. "Which reminds me—"

She shook her head. "No, I didn't speak to anyone in the park," she answered before he could form the question.

He took her bag from her. "But?' he prompted.

"I saw them," she said. "Leave him alone," she seemed to realize that it was a demand that might have been better phrased as a request. "Will . . ."

He caught her hand. "I'm not completely insensitive," he said, rolling his eyes, "you'll blame yourself. You'll think it was your fault."

He reeled her in, picking a wet strand of her hair off her cheek. "I didn't kill him, did I?"

She didn't answer. "I need a bath," she said instead.

"Do you think it helped?"

For a moment, she closed her eyes. As unusual, she had more questions than answers and nothing seemed to help her make sense out of anything. "Maybe," she allowed.

He didn't press and they made their way back to the house, which was probably the real test. Once she was inside, Willow waited to feel the subtle pressure of the wards. They were still there, but muted. She tried to decide what it meant as they climbed the stairs, absently rubbing the small of her back. The ache there was becoming more intense. William went across the hall to his room while she started her bath, the second of the day. She struggled out of her wet clothing. The dress was ruined. She fingered one of the flower-shaped buttons.

She had always liked pretty things, and there was no end of pretty things that she could have. She could even enjoy them if she didn't dwell on where they might have come from. This dress had been made for her, and some of the money that made it possible was from sources that were . . . she shook her head and put the dress and her undergarments in the hamper, refusing to rationalize.

She brushed her teeth twice to dispel the foul taste in her mouth and washed her hair over the side of the tub while it filled, feeling her belly cramp painfully.

She was lowering herself into the tub when William came in, offering her a glass of pale brown liquid.

She looked at it as she took it. "Whiskey," he identified the liquor. "Very much watered-down."

She sipped it cautiously as he undressed, clearly planning to join her in the bathtub. Before he turned down the gaslight jet, she noticed a fading scratch mark on his cheek.

He came to the tub and started to take the glass from her hand before he saw that it wasn't empty. "Finish it," he ordered.

She looked up at him. His hair was still wet and clinging to his head and the back of his neck where it wasn't sticking up in places. The tone of voice was more bossy than stern. She was eye level with genitalia. It was just there. A collection of parts that she was more than familiar with even in their relaxed state.

His hands moved to his hips and she found herself smiling at the picture he made. Bossy, and ridiculously boyish. His protest that he wasn't entirely insensitive came back to her now.

"Don't be dainty. Just toss it back," he insisted, wondering at the smile that flitted across her face, too charmed by it to question it.

She swallowed it down without making a face and he took the glass from her and set it on the closed lid of the hamper. There was a moment of confusion when he started to get in the tub and Willow tried to anticipate where he wanted to be. He usually preferred to have the higher end of the tub at his back, but he pushed her back against it and arranged himself between her legs with his back to her, moving down to the drain end enough to lay back and submerge his head. For a moment he relaxed against her, his head pressing against her stomach, momentarily taking the cramping feeling away.

Then he sat up, sending the water in the tub sloshing near the rim. He looked at her over his shoulder, a small smirk appearing. "Such a lazy thing you've become," he mock scolded. "Wash my hair. Scrub my back," he waved to her. "Get on with it."

Her stomach still felt crampy, but she wasn't tired, and she wasn't willing to spoil his mood even if it did make her feel guilty. She washed his hair and his back, and it felt so odd to do these things for him and to realize that her resolve to find a way to leave was in no way diminished. She was equally aware that she would probably remember this. Remember everything about how he felt under her hands as she washed his hair and ran the palms of her hands over his shoulders and back, leaning into it to knead his shoulders when he made a guttural sound of approval.

Her hands slipped on his ribs. That's all it was. Her hands slipped, but suddenly she was hugging him, gritting her teeth as the cramping in her stomach intensified. He untangled himself from her after a moment, ducking under the water to rinse the soap out of his hair, twisting around to face her. Wet hands unnaturally warm from the bathwater held her face as he sought her mouth, water splashing on the floor as it lapped over the edge of the tub.

William was in his own world of heat and lust. 'I can't imagine a world without you in it,' she said in the park and he didn't know what it meant exactly, but coupled with the way she had been touching him he was sure that it meant something. Drusilla seemed to hint that he would get some approximation of what he wanted eventually, but he wanted it now. He wanted it from her lips, from the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. His knee slipped on the smooth surface of the tub sending another ripple of water over the edge as his chest met hers.

Too hard, too hard. He knew it instantly from the way her breath gusted into his mouth, from the stifled cry of pain trapped in her throat. He braced one hand on the lip of the tub and opened his eyes, gentling the kiss until he was just grazing her lips, feeling them tremble under his.

"Something is wrong," she whispered, her hands moving down to her stomach.

His knee slipped on the tub, away from her, he recalled. "I didn't hurt you," he said, as much for her benefit as his.

Her arms were wrapped around her middle, a grimace contorting her features. She tried to draw her knees up, gasping. "Hurts," she gritted out.

Confused and slightly alarmed, he sat up on his knees and saw something like a dark wavering ribbon and flakes of something that looked like tissue or dried blood in the water. Her head fell back against the back of the tub with a thud, a low pain-filled moan clawing at his gut.



A student of behavior human and otherwise, Darla was not, but she was still willing to bet that there was something suspect about meeting David Giles and Harry Wyndom by chance in the park after midnight. They both smelled of fear, but Harry positively reeked of it. There was at least one simple explanation that had occurred to her. They were lovers and the park offered privacy that could not be gained in the house they were staying in. That was more likely than the idea that they knew what she was and that she could kill them both.

She was more curious about what she witnessed in the park between William and Willow. Mr. Giles insisted on escorting her back to the house, a courtesy that she could not very well refuse since she looked monumentally foolish for wandering around in the dark alone. He suggested to his friend that he should return to their lodgings or wait for him there in the park.

She did not invite Mr. Giles in, nor did he seem to expect it, waiting at the gate until she was safely inside the house. Lucius appeared and she flung the leash at him. "William?"

"Upstairs," Lucius nodded to the stairs.

They weren't in his room, so she crossed the hall to Willow's room. The lights were on and the bathroom door was ajar. She heard a long, pained moan from the bathroom and walked to the door.

William was climbing out of the tub when she came in, expecting him to snarl something rude at being interrupted. Whatever she might have said died on her lips. They had well-established patterns of behavior. She didn't like William and he returned the favor. On their best days they tolerated each other. On their worst days, when they were facing something that threatened them—their eyes locked.

A low cry, vibrating with pain and fear had him turning back to Willow. He started to lift her from the tub. "I don't know what's wrong with her," he said to Darla.

She did, though it seemed impossible. "Don't," she said sharply. "It's warm in there. Get a blanket," she told him, moving between the sink and the back of the tub and sinking down to wrap her arm around Willow's upper body to keep her from slipping. "Get a blanket," she told him.

He hesitated for a second, and then went to do as she told him for once.

Darla made Willow look at her. What appeared to be happening wasn't impossible, and before today Darla would have said that it was highly improbable. "You are having a miscarriage," she told her.

"It feels like it," Willow managed to say. "Spell," she gritted out. "Cleansing . . ." a harsh bitter laugh escaped her. "I had a miscarriage once," she admitted. "On a staircase in an awful place," her voice shook. "I was so . . . I hated it. I hated it," tears spilled down her cheeks. "I wasn't supposed to be pregnant. I wasn't supposed to be there! And I hated it," her hands were pressing into her abdomen so hard that Darla wouldn't have been surprised to see bruises.

The 'it' that she was talking about was a distant memory for Darla. It was the cruel cosmic joke of being used in an act of lust that unfortunately also begat life. She hated the baby she carried. She hated herself for carrying it.

"Oh God, I hated it so much," she whispered. "You can't imagine what I did to get rid of it."

Darla could imagine, but the words kept coming. "I almost had enough money. We went out every night. Every night. It was one awful thing that I had to do and the rest, to get the money, it didn't seem so bad compared to it. Jane would say, don't look at them. They aren't even people. They aren't anything but pennies to gather."

Darla nodded, stroking her hair. "She was right," she said, ignoring the tremble in her own voice.

"So, it was a lucky thing. Because I didn't have to pay to have it done. I just hated it and hated it and hated it until it . . . died."

The scent of blood was slowly reaching her. The bathwater was tinted pink with it.

"We went back out the next night," she said, so low that Darla almost missed it. "I—I don't understand that. There was a bottle on the floor and I could have broken it and used the edges. I thought about it. I think about it still. I thought it would be better if it was gone, and it wasn't."

"I hated what was left."

Darla stared at the wall beyond the end of the tub, feeling the stillness of her heart. Relishing it. Hate for the girl she had once been, the one who was dying from the curse of the trade before she was twenty-five years old thrummed in her veins.

She felt William behind her and wasn't sure how long he had been there. He had a blanket and towels. Darla shifted to sit sideways on the lip of the tub, effortlessly lifting Willow, holding her against her body. That got William moving. He put the blanket down on the hamper and started drying her skin. He hesitated only when he noticed the blood trickling down her legs and only then to look at Darla.

What she saw in his face wasn't unlike the night he came home with her bleeding from a gunshot wound in Lisbon.

He wiped the blood away and got the blanket to take her from Darla, carefully maneuvering around the door with her.

Feeling inexpressibly old, Darla got up and went to the end of the tub to yank the chain connected to the plug on the drain, watching the pink tinged water slowly swirl away. She used the discarded towel to mop up some of the water on the floor before she turned the water on to wash the nearly empty bathtub. The only reason she could have thought to give for doing any of these things is that they needed to be done and she had no intention of letting anyone she didn't trust do them.

Which was an extremely short list, she reflected grimly.

William returned to the bathroom to rummage in the cabinet before coming up with a brown apothecary bottle. "What are you doing?" Darla asked.

"Laudanum. It will calm her down. Make her sleep," he said tersely. He looked puzzled by something.

Darla felt irritation rise. He never failed to find a way to annoy. "You are welcome," she said tartly, picking his discarded pants out of the hamper and throwing them at him.

He put down the bottle to put them on. Before he could retrieve the bottle of Laudanum, Darla picked it up and returned it to the cabinet.

"She's crying," he protested.

"She's human. They do that," Darla shot back.