Willow Rosenberg stepped softly into the library. "Hello?" she called out. "Giles?" The overhead lights were off, and he was nowhere to be seen. She let out a breath and took the backpack from her shoulders. It was heavy; she'd spent the better part of the weekend -- not to mention six months of her allowance -- filling it up.
She set the pack carefully on the largest of the library tables and began pulling items out of it: antique silver- backed hand mirror, crystal decanter of mineral water (ordered via the Internet from a small occult shop in Gary, Indiana), powdered saltpeter, beeswax candles, raven's leg bones (at least she hoped that truth-in-advertising held for this kind of thing), and a prosthetic glass eye.
The glass eye was an experiment. She didn't know what a Runsik radial orb was exactly, and she wasn't about to ask Giles. So she'd taken her best guess from the object's supposed function in the casting she wanted to perform.
"Okay," Willow said to herself and reconsulted the printout in her hand. The set-up looked right, but who could say for sure? She took a final item out of the bag: a brush with tangled strands of Buffy's hair that she'd found in her friend's locker, and set it across the handle of the mirror. She poured the mineral water across the face of the mirror and sprinkled a few grains of the saltpeter on the surface.
"Force of wind earth fire water," Willow recited as she lit the four candles and set them to either side of the mirror. "Eye to ear, ear to hand, hand to heart, as she walks under this sky, open the window of my mind to her passage."
Something was happening, Willow noted with a thrill. The candle flames were flickering like mad, and the surface of the mirror had taken on an odd silvery pink luminosity. She set her mind to bend the mirror's reflections back upon themselves, to open the mirror's eye to her will. "Open the Lens. Enter the Eye!" she commanded.
The surface of the mirror went utterly black. Caught by surprise, Willow gaped at it, losing track of her chant . . .
The room lost about twenty degrees of summer heat inside of a heartbeat, and reality seemed to take a half turn around her.
"Oh, boy," Willow said, and frantically tried to find her place in the chant again. But the letters on the page she was holding were swarming like incinerating insects. She dropped the paper and it burst into flames.
Something inside the mirror stirred, awakened, then blinked. Willow tried to back off, but it locked eyes with her. The total blackness of its gaze drew her towards it, swallowing up her world with a gulp --
-- light flooded into her subconscious, excruciating and unforgivable. The Eye shuttered, then withered in the radiance.
"STOP IT!" Willow screamed.
It slapped her. Hard. "Willow, look at me," It demanded in a vaguely familiar voice.
She would have pushed it away, but it hit her again and made Demands. "Willow, take this book. Now. Read me page 117."
She looked blankly at the book that had been thrust into her hands. The pages seemed to glide by under their own power. "Uh --" she said, trying to get around a tongue that filled her mouth to capacity. "Th' main p'ram'ters of th' Unix thystem's coding is the bilat'ral processing unique to the -- uh --" She blinked and looked hard at the book. "That's not right."
She looked up at a hazy but reassuringly familiar face. "Uh-oh," she said. "I made a mistake, didn't I, Giles?"
The Watcher peered intently at her a moment longer. "That would be putting it mildly," he said finally. He snapped off the flashlight he'd been waving in her face and stood up.
"I'm sorry," Willow said despondently. Her eyes were watering furiously. She swept the tears away with one hand, trying to pretend that they were only due to the bright light. "I was so sure that it was a simple spell."
"There's never anything simple about any spell," he said.
"I thought . . ." Willow swallowed, but went on, "if we could just see her, know that she's okay . . ."
Giles sat heavily down in the chair next to hers and surveyed her set-up.
". . . maybe we could even get some clue as to where she went . . ." Willow persisted.
He'd refused to even discuss the restoration spell after that last encounter with Angelus. If it hadn't been for Xander and his inability to keep a secret from her for long, Willow would have challenged his refusal.
But she had pushed Xander first, insisting that he tell her what he knew about what had taken place at the vampires' mansion that night. Xander had finally confessed to what he and Giles had discovered when they'd returned the next morning: a dormant Acathla impaled with a sword that apparently had been removed and then replaced. At least the sword had moved from where, to the best of Giles' memory, it had been earlier during his one brief glimpse of the demon. And Giles had known of only one way that Buffy could have replaced the sword, if it had been removed.
Willow trusted Giles' memory for details, even when he was under extreme stress. She'd known then that the brunt of the blame for Angel's probable damnation, and for Buffy's pain, lay on her head. And she'd been afraid to approach Giles about her explorations of the scrying magics, afraid that he'd bring up her guilt in the matter.
"Any time you open a gateway -- any gateway -- there's always a danger, Willow," Giles said. His quiet matter-of- factness was more punishing than a fit of temper would have been. He picked up the glass eye and rolled it around in the palm of his right hand, then looked at her.
"I couldn't find out what a Runsik radial orb was," she admitted, "so I improvised."
Giles sighed and set the spheroid down again. "Willow, you can't go around improvising at will with these old magics."
"I did so with the scapulars I made," Willow tried to defend herself.
"Th-that was a ward, a quiescent magic." Giles waved a hand at her set-up. "Surely you can see that this is something entirely different?"
She hung her head. "I'm sorry. I needed to do something, and I thought -- I really messed up again, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did," he said. He sounded distant, however, almost distracted. Willow looked up at him. He was staring at the hand mirror. Its surface had turned a corroded milky white in the aftermath of the spell. Fearful that he'd fallen into a trance, she almost waved a hand in front of him; but he suddenly looked at her again. "As have I, unfortunately."
She shook her head emphatically. "Giles, this was all my --"
"I am -- I am supposed to be -- the Watcher here. I've been neglecting my responsibilities. If I'd been paying proper attention, you wouldn't have been in a position to try this sort of thing on your own."
"You couldn't have stopped me," Willow began, feeling more than a little rebellious again.
"Perhaps not." He looked and sounded so tired, that Willow instantly regretted even that little bit of harshness. "I should have been aware, however, of what you were up to. Willow, you are not responsible for sending Angel to Hell."
"I am," she insisted. "And don't you dare say I'm not. If I hadn't done the ritual that second time, Buffy would've only had to defeat the demon. Angel wouldn't have been dragged down to Hell with him."
"Then we're both responsible," Giles said. "If I hadn't told Angelus the correct ritual, he wouldn't have removed the sword in the first place."
"Giles, you were being tortured at the time. Nobody expected you to --"
"I expected it of myself. Buffy needed that strength on my part. I failed her," Giles said simply.
Willow looked at him, wanting to ask but not really wanting to know all the same. All she knew about Giles' ordeal at the hands of Angelus was what Xander had told her about his condition when he'd pulled the Watcher out of the mansion -- that and the more obvious physical manifestations that she could see for herself on a day-by-day basis. She reached out now on impulse and laid a hand over his bandaged hand where it rested on the table.
Giles picked up the glass eye again in his good hand. "I can obtain a Runsik radial orb, but it may take a week. And we'll need another silver-backed mirror; this one is useless now."
Willow threw her arms around him. "Thank you, Giles!"
"I'm only going to agree to this if you accept my supervision. You can't continue to explore the magic arts on your own. I want your express promise that from now on you will tell me everything."
"I promise!" she said happily.
"Willow." Giles pushed her away and looked her solidly in the eye. "I want a considered promise. It's important that you understand."
"I --" She blinked. "Okay. I promise that I will tell you everything."
"Giles, are you out of your head?" Xander said angrily. He was standing by the reading table, his arms crossed over his chest. "Willow's still getting headaches and you're going to let her mess around with this stuff. Oh, wait, you're not letting her do anything -- you're going to give her all she needs to really screw around with it."
Giles sighed and closed the book he'd been skimming. "You've known Willow far longer than I have. Are you seriously suggesting that I can discourage her from her explorations once she's set on pursuing them?"
"Yes," Xander insisted. Cordelia jostled him in the ribs with her elbow. Xander glared at her.
She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Think, Xander. You can do it. Just rub two brain cells together before you blurt out stupid stuff."
"Well, you don't have to help her do it," Xander said hotly. "Hell, you got Amy to stop her little experiments."
"Amy," Giles said, "was vulnerable to emotional blackmail."
"Yeah, she fell in love with you," Cordelia said to Xander. "Which should be enough to put anybody off their lunch for a while."
Giles got up to reshelve the book. "If Willow is exploring the magic arts, she needs someone halfway knowledgeable to play safety for her. I may not be an experienced practitioner, but I at least know enough to keep her out of the more dangerous waters."
Xander turned to Oz, who was sitting at the table leafing through a copy of The Hidden Life of Dogs. "Oz, you're her boyfriend, why aren't you arguing against this craziness?"
"'Cause I know Willow," Oz said. "And because she needs to do something to help right now."
"It sure beats sitting around on our butts all summer waiting to see if Buffy is going to stop giving us all the brush-off before some Big Nasty shows up." Cordelia sat by Oz and pulled a book off the top of a pile. "Parasitic Vespules," she read off the cover and opened the book. "Euwwww! Pictures and everything!" She fished through the paper bag at Oz's elbow for a cracker, and continued to leaf through the book.
"The scrying spell itself is fairly fool-proof once properly set-up," Giles continued. "If we're successful, we'll at least be able to see Buffy, and perhaps get some clue as to her whereabouts."
"Maybe she doesn't want to be scryed out," Xander retorted. "Gee, you think maybe she just wants to be left alone?"
Giles said nothing.
"Weren't you the guy who was so hot to go running after her without the slightest hint of where she went?" Cordelia said. She peered at a picture in the book. "EUWWWW! Oz, look at that!"
Oz peeked over. "Grossage," he said. "What do those proboscis thingies do?"
Cordelia turned the page over "-- for inserting its inseminated eggs into the cranial cavities of its paralyzed -- EUWWWW!" She turned the page back to study the picture some more.
"My going after Buffy wasn't going to endanger Willow -- Is anybody here paying any attention to me at all?"
"Nope," Cordelia said, crunching on a cracker.
"Xander," Giles said. "I understand your concern --"
"No. You don't. Or you wouldn't even be considering this. But you Watcher guys have to put your job above everything else, don't you? Including the lives of anybody stupid enough to get mixed up with you."
"Xander Harris." Cordelia slammed the book shut and stood up.
"It's true stuff, Cordelia," Xander said bitterly. "You know it. Somebody's got to say it." But he couldn't look Giles in the eye. Pulling his indignation about him, he stormed out of the library.
"Damn him," Cordelia muttered. "He knows better than that."
"He's concerned about Willow," Giles said. "And he's right. Don't damn him for that, Cordelia."
Oz looked up from the book. "But you're still going to back Willow on this scrying thing."
Giles took his glasses off to clean them. "It's been a quiet summer again, fortunately for us," he said. "But the Hellmouth hasn't gone away. We can, perhaps, successfully cope with the more mundane situations that the Hellmouth might throw in our way --"
Cordelia gave a short laugh.
"Hey," Oz said, "we did manage to take down that demon last week."
"It was more of an imp, actually," Giles corrected him. "And it was a stroke of luck that it happened to be violently allergic to dog hair."
"And that it chose a night of the full moon to come out," Cordelia continued.
"Buffy's the Slayer," Giles said. "We need her to take point against the dangers here. Failing that --"
"Failing that, we're gonna bite it. Sooner or later." Cordelia sat down.
"Yes," Giles admitted. "With absolute certainty. And probably sooner than later."
Oz frowned. "But even if you find Buffy, that doesn't mean she's going to agree to come back."
"She will come back, eventually. The question is: can we hold against the forces of darkness here while she resolves her issues?" Giles took a chair next to Cordelia and started leafing idly through Oz's dog book. "Buffy has enough on her shoulders now without having to deal with the additional burden of any of our deaths."
"Not to mention our problems with dying," Cordelia said acidly.
Giles had the grace to look abashed at that. "Well, yes. Xander is correct. The black arts are nothing to be trifled with. I-I had some exposure to them some years back --"
"Demon Summoning For Fun and Profit!" Cordelia said.
He sighed. "Yes, yes. I learned enough then to know that I didn't have the inclination nor the wisdom to continue the practice. I still rather wish that Willow would give up the notion. But a few magics might give us the edge we need to survive, at least until Buffy returns. And Willow does seem to have a small natural gift for it. I'll be with her to watch and intervene if necessary. As long as we're careful, she should be in no danger."