With a distant church bell tolling the midnight hour, Buffy saw the demons emerge from a sewer grate—tossing it back with a clang—and begin to trail two women who must have been walking home from a party. Drunk as they were, they still ought to have noticed the three lumbering Charnel demons—monsters whose bodies were constructed from human corpses—following them down Benefit Street. Yet, once again, as in other cases she and Xander had seen in the past two days, the demons seemed all but invisible to ordinary people.
People who weren’t looking for them.
Buffy moved through the dark, avoiding the splashes of light from lampposts. Her hair was tied back and she wore a dark jacket, despite the warm August night. The demons might be invisible, but she was not. If there was trouble and some of the people living on Benefit Street looked out their windows, all they would see would be a young blond woman. She didn’t need a visit to the local jail, especially not when she was trying to figure out just what the hell was going on in Providence.
Whatever it was, one thing seemed certain—it was huge. The idea that a little corner of the world like Providence, Rhode Island, could draw this much supernatural attention seemed absurd until she wondered where else all of these monsters would gather. Why not here?
Obviously, they agreed.
Buffy picked up her pace. The demons hung back, not getting too close to the stumbling, drunk women, who laughed together at something that probably wouldn’t have been funny had they been sober. The demons laughed as well, if that sound—a kind of explosive crackle—could be called laughter.
Whatever these things were, they weren’t anything she’d seen before. Their bodies were made of some kind of stone, but were pitted with holes from which red fire flickered, burning endlessly, as though inside they had only furnaces. The way the fire burned made Buffy think of volcanoes, and that got her thinking that their bodies might be made of lava rock.
Not that it mattered. They were on fire, and made of stone, and they weren’t going to be easy to stop. She’d called in plenty of Slayer backup, but none of the others had shown up yet. Buffy would make do. She was used to being on her own. But the cavalry would have been nice.
The Charnel demons began to catch up to the drunken women, who seemed to be trying to figure out if they had passed the house that was their destination.
Time to go, Buffy thought.
She took off in a sprint, arms pumping, racing toward the demons, focused on the holes that pitted their bodies, the fire roaring up from inside. Lava men. How the hell did she fight lava men?
The drunken women staggered up to the front door of a house, one of them pulling out her keys with a jangle of metal.
Buffy leaped into a flying kick at the back of the nearest demon. The impact sent a jolt up her legs, but the demon staggered and then went down hard, spurts of fire shooting from the holes in its body. Off balance, Buffy could only fall. She hit the street, rolled, and tore off her jacket as she stood, wrapping it around her right hand. Hitting these two would hurt. Her ankles were singed from the kick.
The two Charnel demons still standing turned toward her. Buffy swore, blinking in surprise. They didn’t have faces. Or, rather, where their faces should have been were only featureless rock slabs shot through with those fire vents. Flames burned inside those holes, but none of them looked like eyes.
Somehow, though, they could see.
One of them moved. Buffy dropped into a defensive stance, but the demon surprised her by running away.
“Fleeing. There’s something you don’t see every day,” she said. “At least, not until after the butt-kicking.”
But the others weren’t running away. The one who’d stayed behind but hadn’t been hit yet seemed to waver, uncertain. But the lava demon on the ground stood up, hands and knees and feet scraping the street with a rasp of heavy stone, and it came at her.
“That’s more like it,” Buffy said. “I’ve had enough of all the nonviolent evil. Been wanting to hit something.”
With the jacket wrapped around her fist, she took a step forward and threw her weight behind the punch. Lava rock cracked, connecting two of the fire vents and making the flames jump higher from the demon’s broken face. One of her knuckles might have broken. Buffy shouted with pain, and then with frustration as her jacket lit on fire.
She threw the burning coat to the ground, then faced the two lava demons in a combat stance.
“Thanks a lot, pyro. That’s the only jacket that went with this top.”
Where the third one had run off to, she didn’t know. Beyond the remaining demons, she saw the two drunken women finally get the door open and stumble inside. Somehow they’d been unaware of the whole fight, and Buffy didn’t think they’d been blinded by beer goggles.
“So, we have a fight here, or are you two candy-asses gonna scamper like your friend?”
Candy asses. She’d been spending too much time with Faith. Soon she’d be saying “wicked.”
The Charnel demons started to shake. The fire that rose up from the holes in their stony bodies burned higher, sparking geysers from the vents in their faces. Red, molten lava flowed like tears from those holes.
Then they came for her.
“About time,” Buffy said. She wasn’t going to get any answers from these demons, but if she kept patrolling, kept causing trouble, eventually she’d drag down a more talkative nasty.
One of them lunged. Buffy knocked its hand away—burning her arm—and then shot a kick at its chest, shattering stone. Liquid lava poured out onto the pavement, but the demon did not fall.
Buffy hesitated. “Okay, possibly not the smartest fight I ever picked.”
The gust of wind came out of nowhere. She staggered, nearly going down, and then the sand swept around and past her as though purposely avoiding her. It started as just the wind and grit, and then the sand struck like a wave, passing by Buffy and enveloping the two lava demons. It swirled around them in twin cyclones that ground their heads away in seconds. Fire flickered in the midst of those twisting funnels of sand and wind, and then was snuffed out.
When the sand retreated, gusting back the way it had come, chunks of rock fell to the ground and shattered. Nothing else remained of the demons.
Buffy turned to find a sandstorm behind her, a cloud of spinning wind and sand that billowed and pulsed in a controlled sphere. Within that sphere stood the silhouette of a man, the very same creature she had come back to Benefit Street in search of. Through the sandstorm she could make out bright white eyes like the glare of the sun and a humanoid body as perfectly sculpted as Michelangelo’s David.
He was beautiful.
“Not sure a thank-you’s appropriate, since you almost did the same thing to me the other day. Make it up to me. Tell me who you are, and what’s happening here. And if you say ‘something wonderful,’ I’m going to have to kick your ass.”
The sandstorm churned and billowed as though with the inhale and exhale of the creature’s breath. There was something hypnotic about it. Buffy couldn’t stare directly at the man’s eyes, but didn’t mind having to look at his body instead.
“I am a demon of the desert,” a voice said, sounding like the rasp of sand across the pavement. “And you have made a mistake, Slayer. Do not disrupt the peace. You have a vital role to play in the days ahead, and I would not see you harmed before that time has come.”
Buffy cocked one hip and gave her head a small shake. “That’s great, thanks. Do you take classes in vague? How ’bout some elaboration?”
The sandstorm collapsed, the wind dying, and the sand showered to the pavement just as it had done before. Then a breeze picked up and the sand skittered slowly along Benefit Street, disappearing into the night.
Buffy sighed. “And yet another first date with a hot, mysterious guy where I end up more frustrated than ever.”
Tired and sweaty, with stinging burns on her arm and ankle, she kicked at the scorched remains of her jacket and started back to the hotel. Half a mile later she found a cab. Providence wasn’t New York City, but it seemed to have more taxis per capita than L.A., at least.
She gave the driver a decent tip, mainly for not staring at her in the rearview mirror, and made her way up to her room, pleased to find that her momentary fear that she’d left her key card in her burned jacket pocket was unfounded. But when she’d gotten into her room and kicked off her shoes, Buffy halted halfway to the bed.
There were voices coming from Xander’s room. He wasn’t alone.
Warily, she padded to the connecting door and raised a hand to knock. Even as she did, a knock came from the other side. It startled her and then she rolled her eyes, feeling foolish.
“Buffy?” Xander called through the door.
She unlocked it and pulled it open. Xander stood there in jeans but barefoot, his T-shirt on inside out. The patch over his eye drew her focus, as it always did, and probably always would.
“Hey! I thought I heard you coming back. We’ve got company.”
Before Buffy could ask, Faith appeared from behind Xander and moved up next to him. Her pants were copper red and zipped up the side, and her boots were killer. The spaghetti strap tank she wore left little to the imagination. She looked damn good, which made Buffy feel even more a wreck.
“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Faith said with a grin. That same old Faith grin that always seemed to say she knew more about what was going on in your head than you did—maybe more than you wanted to know.
“You talking about me, or yourself?”
Faith glanced heavenward, then at Buffy again. “Me? I look fine, B. You, on the other hand, look like you’ve been in a real scrape.”
“You could say that.”
Faith shrugged. “Me too. But I guess I came out of it a little better off.”
Xander held up both hands. “Ladies, let’s not bicker. There’s plenty of me to go around.”
Buffy couldn’t help it. She snickered. Faith did the same, and then the ice was broken. Shaking their heads at Xander’s delusions, the two Slayers came together. Faith put out a fist and Buffy bumped it with her own. So much ugliness had passed between them that there was always that bristling wariness when they came together again. But they were allies now, and had been for a while. Whatever bitterness or resentment had once been there had not been forgotten, but it had been set aside.
“So what happened to you?” Faith asked her.
“You first,” Buffy replied.
“No, no,” Xander interrupted. “Me first. I already told Faith the story and I’m on a roll.”
So Xander began, and the three of them exchanged stories until they had caught one another up on all of the evening’s exploits, leaving them all more baffled than they’d been when they began.
“There’s more,” Faith said afterward.
“I can’t wait,” Buffy replied.
But Faith wore a grim expression, and a frisson of uneasiness went through Buffy.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I got in touch with some of the others. I’m not the only one who got ambushed on my way into town. Every Slayer you asked to come to Providence has had a welcome wagon waiting for them, and the hospitality is sorely lacking. Adrianna told me their car got rolled. Dori was driving. She and Ngaio are in the hospital. So are a couple of others.”
All the humor had left Xander’s face as well. With the patch and the grim set of his jaw, he looked old. No trace of the laughing boy he’d once been remained. He was all soldier now.
“Any casualties?” he asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Faith said. “But I’m the only one who’s gotten through.”
Buffy thought on that for a minute, then got up to pace the room. There were no answers yet, and it didn’t seem like throwing Slayers into harm’s way without any idea of what they were up against was a smart solution.
“So far all the demons and monsters have been peaceful, even with me—except the ones I went after tonight. They’re trying to keep all of the other Slayers out of Providence? All right. We let them.”
Faith cocked her head. “You sure that’s a good idea, B?”
“As good as any. Right now we want answers. Giles and Willow and . . .” She paused, remembering Tara. The resurrection still unsettled her, but she didn’t want to have to explain it to Faith just yet. “They’re due in tomorrow. So we wait, and we see if they can get a better handle on this puzzle than we can.”
“You’re the boss,” Faith said.
A moment of awkwardness passed between them. Buffy hadn’t always been the boss. There was a time when Faith had usurped that role. She hadn’t wanted the job, had sort of gotten it by default, but it had happened. The truth was, she’d done it well.
“Excellent,” Xander said. “Does that mean sleep and breakfast come between now and more monsters?”
“You’re in heaven,” Buffy said, smiling.
“Only if I stay here while you two change for bed.”
Faith arched an eyebrow. “Change into what? You know I don’t wear a stitch to bed.”
Buffy shot her a look. “You do if you’re sleeping in here.”
Xander sighed. “A young man’s dreams, crushed under the cruel heel of reality.” He looked at Buffy. “You want me to make some calls, tell the other Slayers not to try to get into Providence right now?”
“Yep. But tell them not to wander far, just in case we need them.”
Faith flopped down on the bed.
“Need them? Come on, Buffy. It’s you and me. Ain’t nothin’ we can’t handle.”
Willow’s eyes were itchy and her mouth felt dry. Her muscles ached in places she hadn’t known she had muscles. In spite of all that, she felt exultant just to be off the airplane. She and Tara had woken up early and made it to the airport in Athens that Friday morning just in time for their flight, then tried to nap while crossing the Atlantic. They’d flown into JFK Airport in New York, then switched to a small puddle-jumper flight to T.F. Green Airport in Providence.
It felt like they hadn’t stopped moving for days.
How strange, then, to arrive in Rhode Island on a beautiful summer afternoon. Back in Athens it would be quite late, the city swathed in darkness. But here the sun shone brightly and Willow couldn’t help but be happy.
“I feel like I’m coming out of hibernation,” she said, pulling her wheeled suitcase along behind her.
Tara had only a small carry-on that Willow had bought her in Athens, filled with a few days’ worth of clothes. She took Willow’s hand and smiled.
“Me too. But more literally.”
Willow felt a shiver of real joy go through her as she squeezed Tara’s fingers and smiled at her. What a gift she had received, this second chance. As a little girl, she’d felt bliss often enough to know that it existed. But growing up tarnished a child’s ability to feel bliss, so she knew how precious it was, what she felt now.
Whatever came their way, it wouldn’t matter, as long as she could have Tara with her.
“You’re ruminating again,” Tara said as they walked through the baggage area and toward the exit.
“I’m musing—on the return of my muse. That’s you, in case you weren’t sure.”
Tara bumped her hip against Willow’s. “It better be me.”
Willow grinned. The electronic doors swept open at their approach and they went out onto the sidewalk. Taxis and buses and cars and hotel shuttles went by. Police officers and airport security directed traffic and sent double-parkers on their way. Passengers were hugged by the people who’d come to pick them up.
It all still felt like a dream. Like heaven.
Willow faltered, her fingers slipping away.
Tara turned to look at her, eyes full of the same openness and empathy that Willow had fallen in love with in the first place.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. Let’s just—”
“Willow.”
With a sad smile, Willow relented. She glanced away and then forced herself to meet Tara’s gaze. Her girlfriend deserved that.
“When Buffy was dead,” Willow began, “and I brought her back, she said she’d been in . . .”
She stopped, unable to say the word.
Tara reached out and touched her face, caressed her cheek, lifted her chin. “Heaven?”
Willow nodded. “Were you . . . did I pull you out of—?”
“No,” Tara said quickly. Then slowly, more firmly. “No.” She set down her carry-on and pulled Willow to her. “It couldn’t be heaven without you.”
Tara kissed her temple and tucked Willow’s hair behind her ear, then gently kissed her there as well. Willow felt Tara trembling against her and was overwhelmed yet again. How could her heart be so full? How could the scars of her grief simply have vanished?
A deep sense of contentment spread through her. Reluctantly, they parted. Tara picked up her bag. Willow still had a grip on the handle of her wheeled suitcase. They turned together to walk toward the taxi stand and nearly collided with Rupert Giles and Micaela Tomasi.
From the way Giles only stood there, staring at them, Willow thought he might have been a gape-mouthed, wide-eyed statue, erected on that spot decades past for pigeons to roost on. Micaela seemed confused, looking back and forth between the astonished Giles and the two young witches.
“Giles!” Tara said excitedly.
But the man only glanced at her, confusion and hurt in his eyes, and then stared at Willow.
“What have you done?”
Tara flinched, and Willow glanced at her and saw the way the words pained her. Her face flushed with anger.
“It’s not what you—”
“What else could it be?” Giles snapped, his voice echoing off the windows of the terminal and the passing cars. People stopped to look at them.
Micaela touched his arm. “Rupert?”
Giles shook her off and approached Willow, ignoring Tara as though she were not even there.
“After all you’ve been through, the promises you made, the people who put themselves out for you when you didn’t deserve absolution for the things you did when magick had gotten the better of you, I’ll ask you again, Willow: What have you done?”
Giles glanced at Tara, his face falling with despair.
Willow felt fury raging inside of her. The temptation to do magick—to do him harm—was great. But Giles was right about one thing: She had made promises to him and to Buffy and to the coven of witches who had taught her to control her darkest impulses and to use magick only for positive ends, and not because she needed it.
Taking a deep breath, she put a hand flat on his chest.
“Giles, listen,” Willow said, staring into his eyes, making sure he was focused on her and only her. “I didn’t do anything. Not really. Kennedy and I fell apart. I went to Athens, and I met a witch unlike any of the ones we know. Catherine Cadiere. Does the name mean anything to you?”
Giles shook his head.
Willow shrugged. “She’s older and more powerful than any witch I’ve ever met. She knows magick that pretty much nobody else has remembered for centuries, and she said she sees something in me, offered to work with me. Bringing Tara back . . . it was her gift to me.”
She’d said the words with all her heart, knowing he had to see reason, had to understand that she had not broken her promises. Willow had not let the darkness tempt her again.
But Giles only shook his head. His upper lip curled in revulsion. He turned to glance at Tara, and there was pain in his eyes before he shifted his gaze to Willow again. The hydraulic brakes on a bus squealed and a car horn blared. Somebody swore loudly. A baby was crying not far away.
“You really see it that way? As a gift?” he said. “Haven’t you learned yet that nothing comes without a price? Magick costs us, Willow. This Catherine woman, if she’s that ancient, she’ll know it better than you or I. Magick costs. I hate to think what this will cost.”
He turned to Tara. “Is it really you?”
Tara had begun to cry. Her eyes were red and tears streaked her face. Willow wanted to hit Giles for making her cry, wanted to punch his lights out. But now Giles reached for Tara, and she went into his arms and the two of them wept together.
“I missed you so much,” Giles said.
“You’ve got a f-funny way of showing it,” Tara whispered.
Giles could only smile then, but his anguish did not disappear. “You’d become the heart of us, and we hardly realized it until you were gone.”
“I missed you too,” Tara said.
But then Giles was stepping away from her and picking up his suitcase. Micaela gave his upper arm a squeeze—not the touch of a lover, but the supportive gesture of a friend—and looked at Willow and Tara again.
“It appears our destination is the same,” Micaela said. “Perhaps we should go on to the hotel. Rupert’s already called ahead to let Buffy know we’ve arrived.”
Willow nodded. Tara wiped away her tears and smiled at her, but there was a kind of veil across her eyes now. She bore the burden of Giles’s doubts, and Willow knew they would both be haunted by the words for some time to come. Part of her wished they had stayed in Athens and just reveled in their reunion, never letting the outside world intrude upon their bliss. They’d found their little piece of heaven in that pristine hotel in a grimy neighborhood in Greece’s capital city. Willow was determined that, when the situation in Rhode Island was resolved, they would hide away together again and reclaim that peace.
“Let’s go,” she said.
The cab ride was tense. Giles sat in front with the driver while Micaela joined Willow and Tara in the back. The gorgeous Watcher—whose onetime betrayal Willow had forgiven but not forgotten—struck up a polite conversation with Tara about Athens and their long travels. Willow remained mostly silent, fidgeting in her seat and looking out the window, doing anything to avoid looking at Giles. Not that it would have mattered, as in her few glimpses of him all she saw was the back of his head as he stared out the windshield.
At the hotel, Willow started to get her money, but Giles paid the taxi driver before they got out. She didn’t argue. It hurt her to feel so frozen out by him, but if the tension compelled him to pick up the fare, that was fine with her.
The driver unloaded their bags and they went into the hotel together, leaving the pleasant heat of the August day for the air-conditioned lobby. The hotel received them warmly. Willow felt at home here. How strange for the brainy little small-town girl to have come to look at checking in to a nice hotel as a homecoming. But she traveled so much these days that all of the hotels she stayed in had sort of blended into one for her.
“We’ll check in, see if Buffy’s about, and meet in, say, half an hour to exchange information and decide upon a course of action?” Giles said, looking at her.
Willow nodded. It was the first time he’d spoken to her since they had hailed the taxi. “It’s a plan.”
The four of them walked toward the front desk, where velvet ropes defined a queue for check-in. There was no line, but one guest was in the midst of checking in.
Oddly, Tara recognized him first. She reached out and tugged at Willow’s shirt. Willow glanced at her, saw where she was staring, and looked again at the guy standing at the front desk. She blinked in astonishment, wondering how she could not have known at first glance that it was him. Perhaps it was simply that she had not seen him in so very long, and that running into him here, at this time and in this place, seemed so incredibly unlikely.
Short guy, spiky red hair. First love. The only boyfriend she’d ever had, before she realized what she really wanted was a girlfriend. But she’d loved him, just the same.
Giles was the one who said his name.
“Oz?”
The woman behind the counter had just given him his key card and he’d bent to pick up a big, heavy-looking duffel bag. Now Oz turned, only slightly curious, as if someone calling out his name in a hotel lobby in Providence, Rhode Island, were the most ordinary thing in the world.
He saw them coming toward him, Giles and Micaela, Willow and Tara. Willow felt sure she saw a flicker of something in his eyes that betrayed his laconic nature, some surprise or possibly regret or that melancholy that had been such a part of him when they’d last parted, and when he’d seemed to have become so wise.
Oz only smiled.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Willow replied.
A long, awkward moment passed.
“I presume you’re here to see Buffy,” Giles said.
Oz cocked his head. “No, actually. Just checking in. Is Buffy here?”
“This can’t be a coincidence,” Micaela said to Giles.
“Perhaps we should all go up together,” Giles suggested.
Oz waited while they all checked in and Giles asked for Buffy’s room number. Tara ended up next to Oz in the elevator. He looked at her, nodding to himself.
“What?” she asked.
“You look good. Kinda radiant.”
Tara nodded. “I was resurrected a few days ago.”
Oz arched an eyebrow. “That’ll do it.”