"Tell me again," Xander was complaining as he steered Cordelia's red BMW down the highway, "why we have to go down to the beach for this."
"It's all in this book," Willow said as she thumbed through the old journal. "This German doctor was doing some spell casting stuff and he tried using moon magic in conjunction with the scrying spell. If we do it this way, we can talk to Buffy as well as see her."
Xander glanced back at her. "How old is that book?"
"Dr. Müller was conducting his experiments back in the 1950's," Giles said without looking up from the paperback that he was still perusing, despite the fact that they were fast losing the twilight.
"This is Book of the Month Club compared to your usual stuff, am I right? I thought you guys weren't going to try anything new."
"It's been tested," Willow protested. "Well, once anyway."
"And how reliable was this Müller guy anyway?" Xander continued. "Where did you stumble across this stuff? Because I'm guessing it wasn't in the Black Magic section of Barnes and Noble."
"I was doing some research on another topic several months ago," Giles said, "and I rediscovered this volume in my collection. Dr. Müller's researches have been noted by several Watchers. His earlier work is reliable enough."
"As opposed to his later work?" Cordelia said. She was seated in the front seat with Xander, squinting through the pages of an issue of "Vogue".
"Yes, well we'll steer clear of that," Giles said.
Willow shut the journal and tucked it back into her bag. "I wish Oz could have come. I hope I left him with enough water."
"Hey, we could have always snapped a leash on him and brought a frisbee," Xander said. "What's a beach trip without a big frisbee-catching dog?"
"Ooh," said Willow. "And I could get him one of those bandanas."
"All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't get involved with him," said Cordelia. "If you ever get changed into a dog, Xander, it had better be something good. Like maybe a Russian Wolfhound."
"Xander's more the fox terrier type." Willow leaned over to make out what Giles was reading.
"Fox terrier with really bad taste in clothes," Cordelia said.
"Hey!" Xander said. "A little more respect for the Watcher here?"
"Don't hold your breath," Giles murmured.
"I let Cordy pick out the silk paisley tie. Is it my fault that I'm getting bad fashion reviews now?"
"I didn't tell you to wear it with a plaid flannel shirt," Cordelia retorted.
"It's going to be cool on the Point." Xander turned on the headlights. "What time is high tide anyway?"
"Not for awhile yet," Willow said. "Giles and I have to look around first for the best spell casting spot, so you and Cordelia can go have smoochies in the car."
Xander took the turn-off to Pinson's Point and pulled the car onto a narrow stretch of concrete. At least a dozen cars were there ahead of them. "You guys sure you want to do your magic here? Looks like we're going to have an audience."
"We'll hike on down the beach." Willow grabbed the bag of magical paraphernalia and climbed out of the car. "We should find some place out of the way."
"Not like anybody's going to complain about anything you guys are going to be doing," Cordelia made a face at a group of painted drummers who had already set up on the bit of beach at the end of the parking strip.
Xander got out of the car. "So what are we looking for?"
"Stretch of relatively isolated beach, preferably with water on three sides, and an unobstructed view of the moon," Giles said. "And no large artificial structures close by."
"I know a spot, but it's a ways down. And god knows how many loonies are out on the point tonight," said Cordelia as she hauled a picnic basket out of the car and handed it to Xander. "We'll go with you guys. Drums aren't my idea of romantic mood music."
"They get me all hot and bothered," Xander said.
"Xander, a 'Yanni Sings Christmas Polkas' album would get you hot and bothered."
"What are you carrying?" Xander demanded, struggling to keep a hold of the overloaded picnic basket.
"I've got my purse," she said in annoyance, throwing the tiny handbag over one shoulder. "Giles has the books -- as per usual -- and Willow has the spell casting stuff. Get with the picture, Xander. We're all doing our part."
Willow hung back to walk with Giles, allowing Xander and Cordelia to move ahead of them down the beach. "You've been kind of quiet," she said. "Ever since we found that doll in the library. What's wrong?"
He said nothing. Her hyper-awareness of his mental state had pretty much faded since last night, but she still knew that he was troubled.
"Giles, you can't be holding back stuff from us right now. You know you can't. We can help you with it."
He looked at her oddly, as if seeing something new in her for the first time. "I keep forgetting that you're no longer children," he said quietly.
"Don't you run away from us too," Willow insisted. She winced, realizing how harsh that sounded. "We can't afford to lose both you and Buffy."
"You have to be prepared for any eventuality," he said.
She stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Sorry. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily." He sighed and looked out over the darkening ocean. "We need to see what we can do about moving Acathla."
"You said he could stay at the mansion for the time being."
"I did; there was no reason not to leave him there, since the lease had been paid for the year. But that was before Drusilla's return."
"But if Angel was the key, and Angel's gone now --"
"As far as I know now, there is no other way to open that gateway."
"But you're not sure?"
"I think that we need to move Acathla. However, we'll need help. And it might be awkward."
"Not really," she replied, cheered by the prospect of reassuring him. "Xander's mother's cousin runs a local moving company. Since we already know him, he won't ask a lot of embarrassing questions."
Giles nodded. "Good then. I'll provide you with the funds. Tomorrow you and Xander can make the arrangements."
"Maybe it would be better if you --"
He shook his head. "Come up with a new secure location and move Acathla there. I don't want to know where."
Willow studied her walking feet for a moment. "Why don't you want to know?" she asked.
He took off his glasses and cleaned them carefully. "That night," he said finally. "When I was a 'guest' at the mansion. . . Much of it is hazy in retrospect. I do know that Angelus had reached the limits of what little patience he had." Giles shrugged. "He didn't much appreciate being called a 'pillock', in any case."
Willow smiled then shivered. She let her hand drift to his.
Giles didn't avoid her touch, but he didn't return it either. "Some mention was made of chainsaws. Spike, however, intervened and suggested that Angelus try something else first."
"Spike?" Willow said, perplexed.
"I suppose I owe him my life," Giles admitted. "Although I think I could have held out if he hadn't intervened."
The thought turned her stomach. "But he did," she said hurriedly.
Giles nodded. "The 'something else' was Drusilla. She got into my head somehow -- it couldn't have been difficult for her, I was drifting in and out of consciousness by then -- and she discovered Jenny."
"No," Willow said, almost to herself.
"For a few minutes, she became Jenny. It was an obvious trick. I knew that it couldn't be her. But I believed in it anyway. And I told her what they needed to know."
"It wasn't your fault," she insisted, even while knowing that he'd never believe it.
"Drusilla's an empath, among other things," Giles said. "I think that for that short time, she was Jenny in her own mind. She's mad enough, she wouldn't think to question it."
"You think that she thinks she's Jenny?" Willow said incredulously.
"I think it's possible that the boundaries of her sanity are thin enough that she might have had trouble disassociating herself from Jenny then. And Jenny --" He swallowed. "She did love me."
Willow took a deep breath, not knowing how to comfort him. She had a sudden intense sense of how the feelings of loss, failure, and despair had been weighing on him these past few weeks. And yet he still had the strength to pull himself together to be there for her, to be her Watcher. She thought about Drusilla, watching him with Jenny's longing, and the previously unthinkable became an almost overwhelming fear.
"Or maybe I'm misreading her," Giles continued. "She may have simply returned to release her sire from Hell."
"She doesn't know that Angelus is Angel again," Willow said. "Maybe we should just let her try to bring him out."
"I suspect she's already been to the mansion, and failed. She may be seeking out help."
Willow moved closer to him. "You shouldn't be out after dark." They walked in silence, while she thought the situation over. "Could you help her bring Angel out?"
"Perhaps. I would have to consult several books that touch on Acathla's history. Books that I don't have in my collection. But recovering Angel would entail reopening the gateway, and I don't know if that could be done safely. Of course, Drusilla wouldn't care about the dangers."
"We'd better find out for sure then, what the dangers are."
He frowned and stared off at the darkening horizon. "This knowledge we're exploring is a two-edged sword. It can give us a great deal of power to use in our defense, but it as easily can be turned against us. I still don't know if it's worth the risk."
"We'll contact Buffy," Willow said confidently. "Once she knows we need her, she'll come back. And she can handle Drusilla. We can worry about the rest of it later."
"I'm just --" he paused a moment, then continued, "If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that you'll leave Sunnydale. The others too, but you especially." He took an index card from between the pages of one of his books and handed it to her. "The name of a man I know in England. If necessary, he can help."
She shoved the card into her sweater pocket and tightened her grip on his hand. "Nothing is going to happen, Giles," she said fiercely. And added an unvoiced, I won't let it.
They settled on an isolated rocky stretch of beach near the tip of the Point. The earlier wind had gentled to an almost stillness, and the light of the full moon was brilliant enough to read by. Xander and Cordelia sat together on a large rock, the picnic basket snugged between them like an odd stepchild. Using a piece of driftwood, Giles dug the outline of a circle in the sand, while Willow laid out the paraphernalia at the center.
"Should we set it all up right now?" she wondered as she worked.
Giles tossed her the vial of quicksilver. "Yes, but leave the vial capped until we're ready."
Willow set the vial on top of the mirror and got to her feet. She and Giles sat down alongside Cordelia and Xander on the rock. "Are you guys sure the water won't get up this high?"
"Oh, yeah," Cordelia said as she dug through the picnic basket. "Xander and I set our blanket down by the rocks over there last time. We sort of lost track of the time. My shoes were ruined."
Xander accepted a sandwich from her and devoured half of it in three bites. "Hey," he said between mouthfuls. "You guys didn't finish the circle."
"We won't until Giles is ready to do the spell," Willow said. "Once the circle is completed we shouldn't break it again until we're done."
Xander frowned. "I'll bite. What happens if you break the circle before you're done?"
"Nothing more than an aborted spell," Giles said as he took a sandwich from Willow. "Usually," he felt compelled to add. Xander stared at him hard. Damn, he thought. He couldn't very well start withholding information after drafting the boy into Watching over the spell casting. "It won't be a problem unless the interruption comes at a critical point of the casting. This spell has only two such points, and one is a collapsible flex point --"
"Giles, in English," Xander said.
"There's only one point in the casting where a breaking of the circle might be dangerous," Giles said. "Because this variation of the spell has only been tried once before, I don't know what effect an interruption might have. I can make an educated guess, but I can't say for certain."
"And the guess is?"
"Instability in the casting interface could cause a spatial discontinuity --" He looked at Xander and sighed. "It could open a gateway. The spell caster might get sucked through."
Willow was staring at him, looking appalled. "Giles, you didn't say any of this before we came out here."
He looked at her in exasperation. "Willow, I shouldn't have to explain it to you. You know the risks."
She opened her mouth, then shut it. "I do," she admitted with surprise. "How do I know? And how do you know I know?"
"You know the risks because you have an intuitive sense for how magic works," he explained with as much patience as he could muster. "But if you continue refusing to look at the dangers, then you're a menace. To yourself, to me, to Xander and Cordelia. Grow up, Willow. I can't shield you from dangers that you're willfully creating for yourself out of your own self-imposed ignorance."
She huddled on the rock, looking down at her hands that were clasped in her lap. Xander looked torn between comforting her and lighting into him for causing her this distress. To the young man's credit, he kept painfully silent.
"I'm sorry," Willow said, obviously struggling to keep her tears at bay. "And you're right." She looked up at him. "I don't want you to take the risk. I know the odds against something going wrong here aren't very high, but I don't want you to do it."
"Willow," he said gently, "I know it's easier to overlook the dangers when all you're risking is your own neck. But sometimes you have to step aside and let someone you care for assume that risk himself. Believe me, I know how difficult that is."
She nodded.
"And to be honest, I took more of a personal risk letting Xander drive us out here tonight."
"Your vote of confidence will go into my Fuzzy Feelings Scrapbook," said Xander.
Giles smiled. "The dangers of modern technology are at least as pervasive as the dangers of the black arts. We simply live with the first every day -- we tend to overlook them."
"So why the earlier riot act?" Xander gnawed nervously on a carrot stick.
"As the spell gets more complex, the dangers of it going out of control become decidedly more pronounced. As does the potential for damage."
"But this spell is one of the really simple ones," Willow hastened to add. "Kind of a telephone call of a spell."
"More like two tin cans and a string as spells go," Giles said. "To -- uh -- strain the technological analogies." He checked his watch. "And before it gets too much later -- give me your scarf, Cordelia."
She blinked at him, then unknotted the silk scarf from around her neck. "Okay. But I really don't think it'll go with that suit."
Giles took the scarf and laid it out over the top of the rock. He pulled a small mirror from his pocket and set it at the middle of the scarf. Willow watched in fascination.
"Um," said Xander. "I though we were going to wait until high tide?"
"Shh, Xander," Willow said. "I think I know what he'd doing."
"I don't," Xander insisted. "Com'on, Giles. Share."
"It's an illusion spell, isn't it?" Willow prompted.
"Yes," Giles said. "Be quiet for a minute, both of you."
Xander opened his mouth, but Willow touched his wrist. He shut up again and watched. Giles murmured several words of Latin over the mirror, then reached into Willow's bag.
"Should we be mixing spells tonight?" Willow said worriedly.
"This is as much of a parlour trick as an actual magic," Giles said, "and no, normally we shouldn't. But since both spells are mirroring type spells, and moon-driven, no there isn't a problem." He placed the gagged doll on top of the mirror and pulled the edges of the scarf in a loose knot over the two.
"Looks like voodoo to me," Xander said skeptically.
"The doll wasn't my idea. We work with what we have," Giles said. He murmured several more Latin phrases over the objects. "Cordelia, put your hand here."
Cordelia set her hand gingerly next to his.
"Don't say anything until I tell you." He spoke several more words of Latin, then pulled his hand away. "I want you to think for a minute and then say something that you would never normally say. Now."
She opened her mouth, then shut it again and thought. "I bought it off the rack," she said.
"Very good." Giles untied the knot, took away the mirror and the doll and handed the scarf back to her.
"That's it?" Xander said. "No whirling lights or smoking fingertips?"
"I felt this warm streak go up my arm," Cordelia said. "Did I do a spell? Wow!"
Willow smiled at her. "No, that's just the trigger you set. Put the scarf back on."
Cordelia tied the scarf tentatively. "So?"
"Now say the triggering phrase."
"Oh." Cordelia squinched up her nose. "Okay. 'I bought it off the rack.'"
"Yi!" Xander almost fell off the back of the rock. Even Willow, who'd known what to expect, recoiled against Giles. He steadied her.
"That worked rather better than I'd hoped," Giles said somewhat smugly.
"What, what?" Drusilla\Cordelia said, aghast at their reactions.
"Okay," Xander said. "Great party trick, Giles. Now reverse the spell and turn her back."
Willow sat up straight again, grinning at him. "We don't have to, Xander. It's an illusion."
Xander looked at Drusilla\Cordelia again and blinked, and suddenly she was just Cordy again.
"As I said: a parlour trick," Giles said. "It doesn't take much to break the illusion. Just a moment of doubt."
"And that proves that the doll does belong to Drusilla," Willow said.
"You made me look like Drusilla?" Cordelia pulled her compact from her purse and spoke the trigger again. "Wow," she said again, peering intently at the new image before changing back.
"Cordelia, this is meant for defensive purposes only. If you encounter another vampire, it should hopefully confuse him so you can get safely away. Don't play around with it, or the spell will wear itself out."
"Okay. . ." she said. "Hey, can you do one where I look like myself, but without these scratches on my face?"
"You're going to do one for Willow now, right?" Xander asked. "And for the rest of us?"
"Can't," Willow said. "The doll can be used for only one spell at a time."
"This type of magic works best when the subject -- Cordelia -- bears some physical similarity to the source." Giles slipped the doll and the mirror back into the bag. He studied Cordelia for a moment. "If you could adopt Drusilla's style of dress, you'd reinforce the spell. It might give you a few extra seconds."
"No thanks." Cordelia grimaced. "The Goth look is so not me."
Willow's face lit up. "Maybe we could strengthen the spell anyway."
"No," Giles said as he helped himself to a bottle of mineral water from the basket. "It's really a very basic spell. Not much we could --"
"It's a mirroring type spell, right? What if we reinforce it with a clarifying spell?" She fumbled at her wrist and unfastened a bracelet. "Look, I've even got some silver!"
Giles stared at her. "Yes. . ." he said slowly.
"Cordelia! Give me your scarf!"
"Wait." Giles shook his head. "It's too simple."
"Why?" Xander said gleefully. "Because it's coming from Willow, and not one of your old dusty Watcher books?"
"Quiet," Giles growled at him, still thinking. "Silver, mirrors -- damn, what am I forgetting? Ah, secondary spells. It's the interference pattern, of course. You could reinforce the illusion spell in that fashion, quite powerfully, but you'd create a point of instability about which the entire spell would flux. Eventually the spell would fail and collapse. Permanently."
"Permanently?" Willow said weakly.
"Illusion and reality would cancel each other out. Cordelia would cease to have any corporeal existence on this plane. Of course, it might not necessarily happen right away, or at all."
Cordelia snatched her scarf back from Willow. "No offense, Willow, but maybe you'd better stick with Magic for Dummies."
"No, no," Giles said, thinking hard. "Actually, she may have an idea there. If we were to place something at that dead spot. . ." He pondered the possibilities.
"Like maybe a reflection of the illusion spell itself?" Willow said.
"Now there's a notion," he said. "Hmmm. Interesting. I've read something in my books not long ago about recursive spell casting --"
"Guys," Xander said, "I hate to interrupt this Magical Mystical Geekathon, but high tide is just about here."
Giles looked up in surprise and checked his watch. "Oh! Quite right. Let's get on with it then."