The cinnamon cat found a window open in the back of Margaret Hood’s townhouse. From the rear porch, the cat could just reach the frame, and her claws were sharp enough—mag-ickally sharp—to slice the screen. After making a hole for herself, there in the moonlight behind the townhouse, the cinnamon cat slipped through the torn screen and landed in the kitchen sink with a soft, whispery noise, claws clicking on the stainless steel.
The cat—the witch’s familiar—paused to listen for any cries of alarm. Margaret Hood led her own powerful local coven. It stood to reason that she would have some mystical defenses in place. But after several seconds without any response to her home invasion, the cat stepped up onto the counter, padded to the end, and dropped soundlessly to the kitchen floor.
Old-time jazz played quietly in another room.
Tara Maclay moved through the kitchen, becoming more and more comfortable in the body of the cat, and turned into the corridor that led toward the front door of the exquisite townhouse. As she did, she heard the doorbell chime.
Willow had arrived at the front door.
The cat pressed herself against the wall in shadows. She stood quite still and listened, and her attention was rewarded by the sound of someone rousing herself in a room off to the left—the same room in which the jazz still played.
The cat watched, anxious, breathless, as the slender, silver-haired woman emerged from the archway that led into the back parlor. It was the same room where Willow and Tara had met the witches who had gathered in Margaret Hood’s home in preparation for the Dark Congress. Maggie Hood was one of the witches chosen as ambassador to the Congress, so she wasn’t home at all, and they had seen only a handful of witches gathered outside the State House to witness the momentous occasion.
Catherine Cadiere had not been among them.
Willow and Tara had both suspected that she would be here, awaiting the outcome and holding court. The other witches seemed wary of her, but respectful. They treated her with both distance and deference. But tonight Catherine seemed to be alone, for the chiming of the doorbell had not disturbed anyone else. Nothing stirred. No sound came from within the house except for that jazz, the echo of the doorbell, and the footsteps of Catherine Cadiere.
But the silver-haired witch—that elegant, sophisticated woman—did not go to the door immediately. Tara heard her pause, and a moment later the sound of something being dragged across the floor of the foyer and into the living room, out of sight.
The doorbell chimed again. Willow was growing impatient.
The cinnamon cat grew curious. Tara remembered the old saying about what curiosity could do to a cat, but she could not help herself. Silently, she padded into the rear parlor, where a small, stained glass lamp provided the only illumination, a garish wash of multicolored light.
At first glance she thought all the witches in that room were dead. Women were sprawled on the sofa and in every chair. One olive-skinned, well-dressed woman had slid down so far in her chair that her skirt had been rucked up nearly to her hips. Purple-haired Alice lay on the floor, right cheek against the carpet, a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth. Staring at her, Tara realized that the witches were not dead. They were unconscious.
It could only be witchery. Magick had caused all of them to fall into some kind of sleep or trance state, and from the look of them, Tara felt sure it was nothing they had participated in willingly. Narrowing her cat eyes, she realized the odd glow around them was not merely due to the stained-glass lamp. They all had a pulsing aura of silvery light.
Voices came to her from the front of the townhouse.
Willow!
Panic seared her heart as she realized that Catherine had let Willow in, and that whatever the ancient witch had done to these women, she would not want it discovered. Frantic, Tara forced herself not to imagine what might happen next. The cinnamon cat darted back into the hallway and slunk toward the foyer.
“You’re not suggesting I had anything to do with this?” Catherine said, a dark edge to her voice.
From the shadows, the cat watched Willow’s face. She saw so many conflicting emotions there. This woman had given them back the love that had been stolen from them, the destiny they deserved. She had seen the potential in Willow and wanted to share with her centuries of wisdom and knowledge.
But that turmoil left Willow’s face after a moment, replaced by steely resolve. Goddess, how can I love anyone so much? Tara thought, studying that face.
“I’m not saying anything of the kind, Catherine. But someone murdered Kandida, and there was magick involved. Witchcraft seems a safe bet. I came to find you because if any of the witches who’ve come for the Congress would have that kind of magick, I kinda figured you’d know about it.”
Catherine brushed the words away with a fluttery hand. “It wouldn’t take great power. Making a demon vulnerable to physical attack is magick anyone can learn. All it requires is the right words, the right hex.”
Willow flexed her hands. The cinnamon cat could practically feel the magick that ignited in her girlfriend.
“But you know those words, right? Any idea who else does?”
Catherine stiffened, raising her chin imperiously. She shook her head in disapproval. “You little bitch,” she whispered.
Willow flinched, hurt.
“I gave you the ultimate gift. Magick that the blackest hearts won’t dare to use, and I handed it to you, and protected you from the consequences. I safeguarded you so that you could have your heart’s desire. And this is how you repay me? This is your loyalty?”
Her voice rose higher and higher as she spoke. Though Tara could only see her profile, the change in her expression was equally unsettling. Her beauty turned ugly with rage and disgust.
Whatever Catherine had done to the other witches, Tara could not allow her to do the same to Willow.
The cinnamon cat closed her eyes and willed herself to change. It felt for a moment as though she were floating, and when she opened her eyes, she was Tara Maclay again, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail and her shirt untucked over jeans that never seemed to fit right.
“I didn’t come here to accuse you,” Willow said coldly. “But, gotta say, kinda thinking your reaction is a little fishy.”
Catherine sniffed angrily. She glared at Willow, and then she shot out her right arm, fingers pointed, magick pulsing from her open palm—aimed not at Willow, but at Tara. The spell struck Tara in the chest. Her heart thumped the way it did when she stood too close to the amplifiers at a concert, low bass notes thundering in her rib cage.
Then came the pain, like swords driven through her chest. She fell to her knees, gasping, no breath left in her to scream. Catherine might have twitched her fingers, but a second hex hit her in that moment and it blew her up off the floor, off her feet, and hurled her the length of the corridor. Her outstretched arm struck the frame around the entrance to the kitchen and she felt the bone give way as she dropped to the kitchen floor and rolled.
Drawing quick sips of air, the pain abating in her chest, she tried to rise but could only stare back the way she’d come at the scene unfolding all the way at the end of the hall, in the foyer . . . so far away.
“Bitch!” Willow had screamed, but Tara only heard the echo now.
Willow hooked her hands into claws and the hex leaped from the fingers of both hands, a wave of light with the tainted yellow and purple hues of a bruise. Tara heard the words in Latin. She knew the spell. It would age Catherine so swiftly and so badly that she would be crippled by her ancientness.
With a wave of her hand, Catherine stopped the spell. That magickal light—a bit of magick not quite wicked, but darker than Willow ought ever to cast—seemed to freeze in the air. It shattered, fell like rain to the floor, and then became a thousand spiders of those same ugly hues.
Willow tried again, but Catherine struck her with a hex that hurled her against the door. The spiders crawled onto Willow’s legs and began to spin webs. In seconds they seemed to cover most of her body.
Then Willow began to scream.
Tara shook off her pain and stood, staggering from the kitchen with murder on her mind.
Giles stared at the map of Providence spread out on the floor of his hotel room. Micaela had spilled honey on the four corners of the map—careful not to get too much on the carpet—and then sprinkled dried rosemary onto the open map. Any herb would do, really, but some worked better than others. If he could have found fresh rosemary, that would have been preferable. But still, this should have been enough.
Should have been.
“What’s happening?” he said, staring at the map, brows knitted in consternation.
Micaela sat on the edge of the bed. He had been wishing she would stop doing that, but at the moment his mind had other distractions.
“Nothing, obviously,” she said.
Giles took off his glasses and leaned against the bureau, tapping them against his leg. “We did the spell correctly. All right, the honey was a variation, but it did say ‘pure’ on the label. And the incantation was correct.”
“It’s pretty rudimentary magic, Rupert. It should’ve worked.”
“Let’s try it again.”
Micaela gave a small shrug to indicate that she didn’t think it would do any good, but was willing. Giles doubted it would make a difference either, but the result was so odd that he had to at least consider the possibility that they’d made a mistake.
They couldn’t start over from scratch. The honey was already on the map. But they swept all the rosemary off the map and Giles picked up the bottle again.
“Incantation first this time,” he said.
Micaela began. The words were German, a language Giles was only passably familiar with, but enough to know that they were performing the spell correctly. When they reached the end of the incantation, he began to tap out a small shower of dried rosemary above the map.
None of the herbs hit the paper.
They hung, suspended, above the detailed image of Providence. Giles kept tapping the bottle until all the rosemary had sifted out, watching hopefully. The first time it had just scattered across the paper. This time it hung in the air, inches above the map.
Not moving.
“It’s working perfectly this time,” Micaela said.
But there was no triumph in her voice. The opposite, in fact. Giles understood. If the spell was working perfectly, the rosemary ought to have been moving, collecting, gathering itself into concentrated points to represent the influence of the Powers That Be, and to that end, their Champions.
“Could it be Malik and the others have left?” Giles asked.
“Anything’s possible,” Micaela said. “But it’s odd that the herbs are just hanging there like that. You would think that with all the magick, all the destiny in play in this city tonight, the influence of the Powers would be everywhere. The Champions would show up as more significant, but the Powers are always at work when something this major is at stake.”
Even as she spoke, Giles saw that Micaela was wrong. The rosemary did have a much higher concentration in one particular area of the city. But the location meant nothing to him. That didn’t help much, however. They were looking for individuals, and the locator spell had not found anyone directly influenced by the Powers.
“What the hell’s going on, Rupert?” Micaela asked.
“I’m not sure. But one thing is clear. There are no Champions in Providence tonight.”
* * *
One of the vampires had a sword.
Faith laughed at him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? Might as well have made it rain holy water, dumbass.”
The vampires swarmed all over one another trying to get to her. The smell of mint candy filled her nostrils. It seemed to coat the walls inside the old Charlotte’s Candies factory. Huge rows of industrial windows lined the walls, high up, and many of them had been broken. Moonlight washed across the floor, the dusty, useless, broken-down machines, and the bloodsuckers that came at her like sewer rats.
But these things were lower life forms than sewer rats, and not half as smart: witness the sword.
Faith punched a stake through the chest of the nearest vamp even as she shot a side kick out, high and hard, crushing the throat of another leech. One of them—a long-haired female who screamed like a banshee—leaped off of the top of a piece of machinery. Faith grabbed her arm, twisted, and hurled her into the rushing swarm of vamps.
She ran at them as they fell and stumbled over her. With a quick shot of her left fist, she broke a nose. With the stake clutched in her right, she dusted another vamp. She planted her foot on the back of the long-haired vamp chick she’d just tossed at the others, stepped on the neck of a second, who was struggling to rise, and then launched herself into the air. The somersault took her in an arc over the heads of fourteen or fifteen snarling, fanged vamps, their faces all ridged and ugly.
When she touched down, she knocked aside a leather-boy vamp who looked like an extra from Braveheart, then found herself facing the moron stupid enough to bring a sword to this fight. He feinted with the sword, trying to protect his heart.
Faith jammed the stake through his right eye. The vampire went down, writhing and twitching but alive. As he fell, she snatched the broadsword from his grip, then swung it in an arc that took his head off.
“That’s my one act of mercy for the day,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
Already a vampire reached for her, long, pale fingers grasping for her arm. Faith pulled away, the claws raking her arm, drawing blood.
She took the offending hand off first, then the head.
Some of the vampires were at least smart enough to pause at the sight of a Slayer with a broadsword. Some of them, she felt sure, knew exactly who she was. Faith Lehane had a reputation among the vampires. The way she’d heard it, the whispers around the bloodsucker campfires gave Buffy Summers the edge when it came to efficiency and the whole resurrection thing. The smart vampires, the ancient ones, they were more afraid of Buffy than anyone because she was likely to bring down their entire operation. But the rank and file, the grunts and savages, they were more afraid of Faith because all the whispers said she liked it more. Buffy did the job. For Faith, killing them was a party.
The ones who didn’t hesitate learned too late. The sword flashed in her hands. Some she decapitated, others she cut in half and returned to with a killing stroke afterward. The only time she paused was when she had to wipe the ashes from her eyes, because the smell of mint in Charlotte’s Candies had been finally erased by the dry, scorched-earth stink of dead vampires, a cloud of dust that swirled around in the warm breeze of a humid summer night.
Sweat beaded her skin. Faith became coated with a grime from the ashes of dead vampires, but she kept killing. Grinning.
From outside the factory there came howls and roars that painted hideous pictures in her mind. Oz was busy as well, or so she assumed. The truth was driven home when the massive wolf leaped through the open factory door, clamped his jaws over the head of a vampire, and shook her like a rag doll, tossing her at a machine. Bones shattered and blood burst from her nose and mouth.
Oz bounded to the fallen vampire, put one huge paw on her chest and the other on her ruined skull, then separated the two. The vampire seemed almost to pop like a New Year’s Eve confetti popper, dust swirling away.
Vampires launched themselves at the werewolf. One straddled his back, plunging fangs into his flesh. Maybe into his spine. Oz ran at the wall, leaped, twisted in the air, and left the vampire as a smear along the corrugated metal.
Faith had seen him as a wolf before, but she’d never seen him let the beast out like this before. Oz’s savagery was a revelation. She was glad he was on her side.
A vampire lunged for her. She kicked him in the chest, knocking him back, even as she brought the sword around in a long arc that decapitated another. How many had been hiding in the darkness of this factory? Dozens, at least. They had been nesting, but seemed to have expected an attack—which meant that Christabel could not be too far away.
Three of the vampires, all pretty girls who looked like runaways, rushed at her. Faith raised the sword—
Only to feel cold steel punch through her back.
The point of the blade emerged just below her collarbone, above her left breast. She blinked, staring at it, saw beads of her blood glide down the blade and drip to the floor. Whoever held the sword gave it a twist and removed it.
Faith screamed and fell to her knees. Remembering herself, and her peril, she raised her own sword. But too late. The three runaway girls fell upon her, driving her to the floor. Her head struck concrete and she blacked out for a second. One of the girls yanked her head back. Another darted down toward her throat, fangs bared.
With a grunt, Faith kicked her in the mouth, breaking her teeth. The girl wheeled away from her, one hand over her bloody lips. The other pulled her farther back. Faith used the momentum to pull herself into a backward roll, swung her legs up, and wrapped them around the girl’s neck, twisting and breaking it. That wouldn’t kill the vampire, but it would slow her down.
Not enough.
The third girl snatched the sword from Faith’s hand as several others fell on her. She heard the werewolf howl and then a whimper. Oz didn’t seem the type to whimper.
Hatred burned in Faith. She was not afraid of death, but she despised these creatures so much that it disgusted her to think that her death might be at their hands.
“Well done,” a silky, feminine voice said. “Stand her up.”
The vampires dragged her to her feet. Faith was spun around. A wooden match scratched against the ground flared to life and she saw the beast himself, the child-eater, Haarmann, crouching six feet away from her with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He drew in smoke and shook out the match, then tossed it down.
Haarmann held the sword in his right hand. The blade was still wet with Faith’s blood.
“Can’t even begin to tell you how dead you are,” she said.
Haarmann grinned, but he didn’t speak.
Just behind him, one hand on his head as though he were some kind of pet, stood Christabel de Tournefort. Faith had seen portraits of her in books so old that the pages were crumbling away. Once she had been pale and fragile-looking, a girl made of bone-white lace. She had been rather plain-looking, but her eyes in those centuries-old pictures sparkled with raw intelligence.
Faith recognized the eyes. The rest had long ago been transformed by the demon inside. Christabel’s nose was like a pig’s snout, the mouth permanently stained red, lips perpetually drawn back to reveal teeth like long spikes, a bear trap of teeth that prevented the vampire from closing her jaws. All that remained of once black hair were oily straggles of gray and white.
But sheer power emanated from her and she looked down upon Faith like an empress upon a serving girl.
“You fight well, Slayer,” she said.
Several vampires dragged Oz along the concrete in a thick net that had little bundles of something—wolfsbane, perhaps—tied all over it. The wolf whined, eyes on Faith. There was nothing she could do, of course. She wished he would quit it.
“I can’t say the same for your front lines,” Faith told her. “Seriously, I’d be embarrassed.”
Christabel inhaled sharply, moist phlegm rattling in her throat. Or perhaps it was coagulating blood. Vampires didn’t have to breathe, but they could when it suited them. When expressing anger, for instance.
“Haarmann,” she said.
The butcher reached out with his cigarette—Turkish, from the stink—and pressed the tip into Faith’s abdomen. Faith bared her teeth with the pain, but turned it into a smile.
“Gonna have to do better than that, de Sade. That kinda thing comes with the pillow talk where I’m from.”
Oz let out a low growl. One of the vampires kicked him but he didn’t even struggle with the net. Faith glanced at him and saw that the werewolf’s gaze was still locked on her, as though he was waiting for something.
Faith arched an eyebrow, then looked at Christabel with renewed interest.
“You gonna kill me, or you just gonna stand there and whistle ‘Dixie’?”
“I’ve never met a more insolent wench,” the ancient vampiress said. “But I should not be surprised. Slayers are contrary by nature. We have spies in the city. Allies. We knew you would come, and our outriders watched you for miles. I have a message for the arbiter, and for the Dark Congress. We came to this gathering to protest the exclusion of our kind, but we have nothing to do with Kandida’s death. Nothing.”
Faith cocked her head. “We’re supposed to believe you?”
Christabel’s hand fluttered dismissively; her fingernails had grown so long that they had startled to curl, like the nails of a corpse long in the ground.
“I care nothing for what you believe. I give you this message, that is all. We came to argue for inclusion in the Congress in the future. What would be the point of assassination?”
“Never quite understood politics, myself,” Faith said.
Christabel sniffed in disdain.
The tip of Haarmann’s cigarette glowed orange in the moonlit shadows of Charlotte’s Candies.
Faith glanced down at the werewolf, trussed up in the net on the ground. She winked.
The wolf surged upward, all four legs in motion, claws shredding the net. As he moved, Faith dropped to the ground, using her body weight to pull the vampires who’d been holding her down as well. She twisted her right hand, grabbed the one holding that arm by the throat, and shattered his head against the concrete. Then she snapped her head back, using her skull to break the nose of the one behind her. Cold blood dripped onto her neck.
Her right hand free, she pulled a stake from inside her jacket and plunged it into the heart of the vampire who’d been holding her left arm.
Others rushed her, but she was free.
The growl that came from Oz’s throat sounded more like a roar. He bounded at Haarmann. The centuries-old butcher lifted his sword just in time and caught the werewolf in the chest, but the vampire was a fool. The sword wasn’t silver, just steel.
Oz clawed the concrete and forced his own body down on the sword, and its tip came out his back. He dragged himself closer to Haarmann—close enough to reach out a paw. His claws flashed out and he tore the vampire’s face off.
Haarmann screamed and let go of the sword, and Oz had him then. He took Haarmann’s head in his jaws and bit it off, then spat it out as both head and body exploded into dust. The werewolf stood up on his hind legs and dragged the sword from his chest, tossing it to the concrete with a clang.
Faith and Oz both looked around.
“Where did the bitch go?” Faith asked.
The vampires, mystified and wide-eyed, glanced around as well. Christabel de Tournefort had withdrawn from the battle. Her message delivered, she had left her minions to fend for themselves.
Slayer and werewolf were both wounded. There were a couple dozen vampires left in the mint-and-scorched-flesh-smelling factory. But the bloodsuckers didn’t like the odds.
They ran, trampling one another to get out of there. Oz started to follow, but Faith called to him. The wolf stopped, hearing the man’s name. After a minute or so, when it was certain they were alone, he transformed back into the odd little redheaded guitar player she’d always found such an enigma. Never more so than now.
Faith stared at him. “You believe her?”
Oz shrugged. “Kinda.”
She chewed on that a moment, then pulled out her cell phone and dialed Giles at the hotel. There was no answer in the hotel room so she rang Micaela’s, but still no joy. Faith had to leave a message.
“Hey. It’s me. It isn’t the vamps. Me and Oz, we’re okay, but we’re gonna have to catch our second wind.”
When she hung up and put the phone away, she found him watching her curiously.
“What?” she said. “I’ve got a friggin’ hole through me. So do you, in case you didn’t notice. The bleeding’s stopped, but I need a little time on the bench, coach. Giles’ll call if he needs us.”
Oz looked down at his chest, where blood wept from a thin gash. Like Faith, he was already healing, but it hurt like hell. He looked around the factory.
“Wonder if they kept a stash of those mints in here when they closed down. I’m a little peckish.”
* * *
Spiders crawled in Willow’s hair. Her heart thundered in panic and revulsion. She tried to shake them off, but they weren’t just in her hair, they were all over her, and these things that Catherine’s magick had spawned were unnatural—things of black magick. The spiders had nearly covered her body with webs. Her arms were held where they had been, frozen by webbing. She had struggled as much as she could, but the spiders had her. One of them crawled across her right eye.
Willow screamed, felt one on her lower lip, and clamped her mouth shut, breathing frantically through her nose and staring in venomous hatred—a righteous fury unlike anything she’d ever known—at this woman she had thought might be her friend and mentor. Catherine Cadiere had presented herself as elegant and sophisticated and full of wisdom, but her veins ran with evil.
“Try any spell you like, and I shall counter it,” Catherine said. “Better yet, simply listen to me a moment.”
Catherine had given Willow the magick to resurrect Tara, but now Tara came staggering out of the kitchen, bruised and bleeding from a cut on her hand, cradling a broken arm against her chest.
But Catherine had underestimated Tara. Tara’s innate magick might not be as powerful as Willow’s, but she had a bigger heart than anyone Willow had ever met. That made her a formidable woman, someone not to be trifled with.
“Leave her alone,” Tara said, her voice measured, words clipped. “Get those things off of her.”
Catherine Cadiere turned pitying eyes upon Tara. Willow wanted to rip them from her head.
“You misunderstand me, sister,” Catherine said.
“I’m not your damn sister.”
“No,” Catherine said with a condescending smile. “You are my cat.”
With a wave of her hand, she transformed Tara back into the cinnamon-furred cat that Willow had first seen sitting on the old witch’s lap back in Athens.
“No!” she screamed, grief clenching her heart. “Please!”
Catherine seemed to deflate, a sadness coming over her. With a wave of her hand, the cat transformed again. Tara appeared, lying on her side on the floor. She scrambled to her feet, eyes full of regret and sorrow.
“Will,” she said.
“Hush,” Willow told her.
“No. You should see the other room. All those women we met the other night, the witches, they’re all unconscious. She’s done something to them.”
Catherine ran her hands through her silver hair and smoothed her clothes, as though all of this was beneath her dignity.
A spider crawled across Willow’s mouth and she blew it off her, twisting in disgust, trying to shake them away.
“Get them off!”
“Tara speaks the truth,” Catherine said. “My sister witches are unconscious at the moment and the magick is my doing. I am borrowing a bit of their magick for myself—siphoning it from them. There is a reason I am as ancient and as powerful as I am, a reason I am able to perform dark magicks without ever giving in to them.”
“Not giving in? You’re stealing magick from other witches!” Tara shouted.
“They will never know the difference,” Catherine said. “Save for lethargy and diminished power for a few weeks. And they will all have benefited from the magick I’m able to perform because of it. I have tasted wickedness, Willow, just as you have, but I’ve managed to escape its grasp. I could have taught you the same.”
Willow’s upper lip curled. “Yeah, I don’t think so. If you think you can mess around with the darkness and not get tainted, you’re wrong. I’m thinking you need a new mirror, Catherine—one that shows the real you.”
Catherine lowered her head and sighed, then looked up at them again. She shifted her gaze from Willow to Tara and back again.
“My heart is heavy. I thought you, of all of them, would see the wisdom in my path. I was wrong. Whatever happened to Kandida, it was not my magick. I have already told you that such witchery is not especially difficult with the right spell. I could have done it. But I did not. And as for the two of you . . .”
Anger flickered across her features.
“I hope you will be very happy together in your hypocrisy. You have both been given your heart’s desire, but you hide the truth from yourselves. The magick you spurn—my ventures into the darkness—gave you this gift. You will not be able to hide from that truth forever.”
Catherine whispered a spell and gestured at Willow, and the spiders all fell away, now nothing but bits of gray dust. The webbing turned brittle. She went to the door, opened it, and walked out, closing it firmly behind her.
Tara ran to Willow and began to break the webbing. It came away easily now, like dry papier-mâché.
Willow stared at her eyes, but Tara would not meet her gaze, and she knew that they were both suffering the same weight upon their hearts.
“We’ve . . .,” Willow began, but could not continue.
Tara sat back, kneeling beside her while Willow tore the rest of the webbing away.
“Been in denial?” Tara asked, without looking up.
Willow felt tears burning at the edges of her eyes, blurring her vision. They spilled over, running down her face. How could she have been so foolish? Buffy had tried to make her see it, and so had Giles. Real, human death could never be undone so simply.
“There’s this d-debt,” Tara said, taking short, hitching breaths, her own tears beginning as well.
Willow sat up and took her hands. They were on their knees, facing each other, but still Tara would not meet her gaze.
“Debt?” Willow asked.
Tara nodded. “Wherever it comes from, the b-black magick, whatever d-deity or whatever those spells tap into, there’s a debt. Magick costs something. Always. I knew that. I j-just didn’t want to think about it. The debt is too much, Willow. I c-can’t owe my joy to that. And I can’t let you do it either.”
Panic stricken, Willow shook her head. “That isn’t up to you! You don’t get to decide!”
Tara paled, staring at her. “Once, you used magick to make me think everything was okay, and it almost destroyed us. Are you going to do that again?”
Ashamed, Willow looked down, shaking her head.
“Then it is up to me.”
Willow’s throat felt like it was closing up. “Baby, no.”
At last Tara looked up. Her eyes were fierce with love and determination. She nodded. “Yes. I don’t belong here. We b-both know it. You’re needed too much for me to go now, but when this is all over . . .”
Her face twisted up and she reached for Willow, pushing her fingers through Willow’s hair. Tara held Willow’s face in her hands. They wept silent tears. Willow could taste salt on her tongue.
“When it’s o-over . . .,” Tara began again, but she could not continue.
Willow knew she had to say it aloud, to say it for both of them.
“When it’s over,” she said, “we have to return Catherine’s gift.”
She choked on the last word, on the irony, on her anguish. Willow found she could not hate Catherine. The ancient witch might be corrupted by darkness, but Willow was grateful to her for even the little time she had spent with Tara. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. But in life, the bullet had taken Tara away without their ever having a chance to say good-bye.
They had their chance now. Time for a proper farewell.
Willow took Tara in her arms and kissed her deeply. Slowly she stood, brushed herself off, and reached for Tara’s hand. The town-house was quiet, and with the spell the witches were under, it would remain quiet for hours. She led Tara up the stairs of the Victorian townhouse.
She wished she could take Tara in her arms and hold her forever. But as always, the darkness encroached upon the world, and Willow had to stand against it. Tara knew. She understood, and always had. Soon, they would have to go back out into the city and join the fight again. The world needed saving.
But for just a little while the world would have to wait.