Xander pulled Oz's van up to the curb near Giles' apartment building and hit the brakes. The tires shrilled in protest as they came into conflict with the curb and the vehicle rocked. Leaving the motor running, he threw the door open and jumped out, circling the van at a run.
He walked around into direct sight of the Watcher's apartment and noted with relief that the apartment lights were on. And then the lights went out. Giles moved into view from the steps leading down to his unit. He was carrying his weapons bag. Xander faltered to a stop at the look of cold determination on the man's face.
"Willow?" Xander murmured to himself. He hurried forward. Giles finally saw him and stopped mid-sidewalk, waiting.
"What?" Xander demanded as soon as he was close enough to speak to Giles without shouting.
"It's Willow," Giles said. "Drusilla has her."
Xander closed his eyes. "Oh god. I left her for a minute. I should have stayed with her --"
"Yes." Giles moved past him towards the van. He opened the passenger side door and placed the bag inside. "Are you going to drive me, or do I have to drive myself?"
Xander broke out of his frozen horror and hurried back around to the driver's seat. "Where?" he said as he slammed the door shut behind him.
"The mansion on Crawford street." Giles reached down to unzip the bag at his feet.
The teen pulled out onto the street with another tire- eroding squeal. He drove in silence for several minutes, trying to track what Giles was doing out of the corner of his eye. "You got a call?" he finally ventured. "Is Willow --?"
"Drusilla called. Willow is -- still alive at the moment. As far as I could tell."
"As far --" Xander swallowed.
"How long has it been since Willow was last with you?" Giles might have been quizzing him on some history exam.
"Not long. Maybe thirty minutes." He glanced down at the dashboard clock and swallowed again. "I thought maybe she'd headed over to your place again. She was trying to call you. Oh shit. Did Drusilla say anything about Cordelia?"
Giles stilled a moment in his preparations. "Cordelia's missing?"
Xander nodded. "She was late to the Bronze. Willow and I went to the school to look for her. Willow found her purse. Drusilla didn't say anything about her?"
"No." Giles resumed whatever he was doing.
Xander turned onto Crawford street and slowed down. "Maybe we shouldn't park right in front of the house. You are going to do something other than just walk right into whatever she's got waiting for you?"
"Yes," Giles said. "You can park here, if you like."
Xander pulled the van up to the curbside, more carefully this time, and turned off the ignition and then the headlights. "Okay, now what?" He turned to face the other man.
"Here," Giles handed him the crossbow. "As best I could tell, she and Willow are alone right now. Drusilla did say that Spike was invited to the 'party' she had planned."
"Party," Xander echoed.
"If he does show, I need you to keep him busy," Giles opened the door on his side. "Don't endanger yourself more than absolutely necessary. Keep a sane distance. Under no circumstances come in after us."
"Wait!" Xander grabbed at his jacket sleeve. "What are you going to use as a defense?"
Giles smiled -- a Ripper sort of smile. "I have this." He held up Drusilla's doll.
Drusilla wrapped a long red silk scarf around Acathla's neck and tied it into a neat bow. "There," she said and stepped back to examine her handiwork. "What do you think, dear? Did you like the black one better?"
"Um. . ." Willow blinked blearily at the petrified demon from her pile of cushions on the floor. "I don't know. Maybe purple?" Her head ached and she felt like that time when she was seven at the Fourth of July picnic when she and Xander had a hot dog eating competition. At least her vision had cleared. Though given what she had to look at right now, she thought maybe she'd would've rather had her nausea go away instead.
"Purple?" Drusilla cocked her head to regard the demon.
"Or polka dots." Willow tried. "Purple with red polka dots." She'd been attempting to wrest her hands loose from the rope that Drusilla had looped around them, but it was hard to put much effort into it with her captor standing so close by. If she could get the vampiress to leave for just a few minutes --
"Maybe red and black together?" Drusilla pulled a black scarf from her shoulders and reached up to fasten it.
Vampires seemed to be incapable of dressing in any colors but red or black. Willow wondered dismally, if Drusilla were to turn her into a vampire if she could somehow avert destiny and wear purple. She scooched up, while Drusilla's back was turned, and tried to push her hands under her. If she could get them up front, maybe she could loosen the knot with her teeth.
"There," Drusilla said in satisfaction. "He's quite the gentleman, isn't he?" She turned back towards Willow. "But what are you wearing?"
Willow sat hastily back down. "Me?" she squeaked.
"You want to look nice for you lover, don't you?" Drusilla glided up and knelt in front of her. Willow cringed back as Drusilla reached out to run her fingers through her hair. The vampiress kept doing that; it made the girl want to scream.
"Black, I think," Drusilla mused. "We'd better hurry. He'll be here soon."
"What do you want from him?" Willow said fearfully.
"I want a dance," Drusilla said with a smile, and leaned towards Willow's ear to whisper. "It makes Spike jealous, you know." She sat back on her heels. "You talk to the moon. You know magic," she said solemnly. "May I ask you a question?"
Willow nodded, then found her voice. "Ye-s. But maybe I don't know the answer?"
Drusilla's brow furrowed as some tormenting thought bounced around inside her head. "What is a FAT32 partition?" she finally ventured, "and why should I want to do it to my hard drive?"
Willow stared.
Drusilla ran her fingers through Willow's hair again, then yanked. Willow bit off a yelp. "You know," Dru pouted. "You took over my-her computer class. Just like you stole my-her man." She stood and wandered back to Acathla. "And this bad boy stole my daddy." She stroked the demon's frozen face. "All my men are gone away."
"What happened to Spike?" Willow whispered.
"Oh Spike." Drusilla returned to sit cross-legged by Willow. "Can I tell you a secret?" She leaned her head on Willow's shoulder.
Willow tried not to flinch away at the soft touch of Dru's hair against her face. "If you tell me -- would you have to kill me?"
Drusilla laughed. "Spike wants me all to himself."
"Oh well," Willow said. "How selfish of him."
"No," Drusilla declared, "but where is he now, hmmm?" She spread her skirt around her and smoothed it out. "How has he been? Does he miss me?"
"Spike?" Willow tried to edge away, but Drusilla looped an arm around her waist.
"Rupert," Drusilla said patiently. "Why are you trying to confuse the issue?" Her fingers curled slightly, the sharp nails drawing blood from Willow's arm. "But then you've always wanted him."
"No!" Willow said, afraid that the vampiress would notice the blood trickling down her arm.
Drusilla drew back and slapped her hard. Willow tumbled to the floor, her head ringing. "You shouldn't lie," Dru said, not sounding in the least bit aggrieved. "It isn't lady-like." She lay down on her stomach next to Willow. "I must tell you: You shouldn't get him talking to the moon. He might find his future there. And the future maddens."
"What do you mean?" Her nose felt wet; Willow was afraid that it was bleeding but she couldn't reach up to wipe it away. She averted her face from Drusilla's searching eyes.
"Nothing of any use to you," Drusilla mused. She sat up and threaded her fingers again through the girl's red hair, pulling Willow's head back to look intently into her face -- then she looked up. "Oh, he's come. And we haven't gotten you dressed yet." She pulled another black scarf from her shoulders, shoved it into the girl's mouth and knotted it at the back of her head. "That's a start." She landed a delicate kiss atop Willow's head and stood. "Wait here. I'll be right back."
"Listen," Xander was whispering to Giles as he followed the Watcher out the van's passenger door. "Nobody respects your Watcherly skills more than I do. Okay probably Willow does, but only because she worships the dust you walk on. And maybe Buffy does -- well I would have put her first except that she ran out on you. What kind of respect is that? Uh, scratch that. What I mean to say is that, uh, I'm kind of confused about your choice in weaponry here? I mean, wouldn't a stake --" he pulled a sharpened stake from his jacket pocket "-- be more to the -- uh -- point?"
"Drusilla killed Kendra," Giles said as he placed his weapons bag on the trunk of a nearby parked car and pulled the doll from it. "I'm not going to succeed where a Slayer failed."
"Okay then, crossbow bolt through the old heart," Xander insisted. "We can sneak around to the back of the mansion and take her by surprise."
"She's an elder vampire, Xander. She may be insane, but she's not going to be an easy target."
"So what, you're going to use the doll as a hostage for Willow's return?" Xander said in exasperation.
"Shut up and hand me the pocket mirror and the roll of tape from the bag." Giles loosened his tie and undid the top buttons of his shirt. Xander stared at him as he fished Jenny's rose quartz necklace out from under his shirt and pulled it off over his head. "Mirror?" Giles prompted again.
Xander pulled the items out of the bag and passed them over.
"Our problem is that the doll can be used in only one active spell at a time," Giles told Xander as he looped the rose quartz necklace around the doll's neck and dropped the stone under the doll's dress. "If Cordelia is relying on her illusion spell for protection right now, it's going to be broken."
Xander shivered. "Okay, but you said it would only be good for a few seconds anyway, right?"
Giles opened the doll's dress, taped the pocket mirror to its body, and refastened the garment. "The spell will last for as long as the target doesn't doubt the illusion. I may be endangering Cordelia by breaking the spell prematurely. If she's under its protection now." He looked at Xander.
"If she needed to use the spell, she probably used it right when she --"
"Probably."
"B-but this spell . . . Are you going in for the confusion factor here? Drusilla's not going to be fooled for long if you go in disguised as her, is she?"
"Willow mentioned something about recursion last night. It gave me an idea." Giles looked at Xander expressionlessly. "I need to cast a spell now. It's highly experimental. You're still my Watcher for spell castings. If you tell me to stop, I will."
"Can we get Willow out without it?" Xander said, chilled by the look in the older man's eyes.
"We can try," Giles said.
"Damn, I hate this," Xander said. "Remind me when we're out of this never to dis your Watcherly skills again."
Giles smiled with only a small spark of humor, but Xander still felt closer to him for it. The teenager wrapped his arms around himself to steady the shakes. "Okay," he said. "Go for it."
Giles set the doll down on the trunk lid, spoke a few phrases of Latin and waved his hand over it. "Done," he said, and carefully picked the doll up using his handkerchief.
"Done?" Xander blinked.
"Half done, then." Giles eased the doll into his left coat pocket. He picked up the weapons bag and handed it to Xander. "The rest will have to wait until I'm with Drusilla."