Buffy, Xander, Willow and Anya looked up at the ceiling of Willow's dorm room.

"It could've just been someone dropping a pile of books or something," Willow said. She didn't sound convinced.

"Nope." Xander shook his head. "I hate to say it, but that was definitely a body-thump, not a books-thump."

Buffy nodded as she stood up. "I think you're right. And I think it's really, really sad that we can tell the difference." She walked over and grabbed her backpack. "We'd better go take a look." She walked out into the hallway, followed by the others.

As Willow locked her door, Buffy asked, "Will, who lives above you?"

Willow thought for a moment. "Angie Driscoll and Linda something. Tara knows them better than I do. It figures she's out of town," she went on as the group started moving towards the stairwell. "Angie came to one of our Wicca meetings last week, actually. She was looking for a spell that would let her know if her boyfriend was cheating on her, and another spell to make him regret it if he was."

Everyone stopped and turned to look at Anya. She bristled under their scrutiny. "What?" she demanded. "I don't do that sort of thing anymore." Then she shrugged. "I suppose I might recognize whatever spell she cast. If it actually is a spell. Shouldn't we go check?" She started off towards the stairs again. After a moment, the others followed her.

When they got to Angie's room, the hallway was deserted. Buffy smiled in satisfaction. "Looks like we get to do this without witnesses." She tried the door. "Locked. So much for the easy way."

Xander's face split into a wide grin as he winked at Buffy. "Would you like me to take care of that for you, little lady?" he asked in his best condescending-male voice. "Just step on back and let Big Xand take a shot at it."

Buffy speared him with a withering glare. "Why don't I do it? Just to keep in practice."

Xander shrugged. "If you insist. Little lady," he added, just to make Buffy glare again.

"I insist," she said through gritted teeth as Anya laughed and Willow smiled. Buffy shook her head and turned to the door.

Her foot lashed out, crashing into the door and tearing it completely off its hinges. They watched as it dropped into the room.

Buffy turned to Xander. "Whoops. Must've been your Big Xand-ness that did it."

Xander nodded. "I'd say so, yeah," he agreed absently as he poked his head through the door. "Shit!" He darted inside, followed closely by Buffy.

There were two bodies on the floor, both female. One of them was a short, plump brunette. The other was taller and rail- thin, with a purple crewcut. When Anya and Willow came into the room, Xander and Buffy were kneeling beside the women, checking for pulses.

Buffy looked over at Xander. He took his hand away from the brunette's throat and nodded, and she looked up at the others. "They're alive. Strong pulse." She pried the girl's eyelid open with her thumb. "Pupils are pretty funky, though. I don't think they're going to be waking up anytime soon. These would be Linda and Angie?" She directed the question at Willow.

The redheaded witch nodded. "That's Angie," she said, pointing at the brunette. Her eyes moved to scan the room. "And that," she said, pointing again, "must be the spellbook they used." She crossed the room and picked the large, leather-bound tome up off the floor, flipping quickly through the pages.

Something on one of the beds caught her eye, causing her to lower the book. "I think these must be the ingredients," she said as she moved to examine the mixed pile of herbs and powders on the bedspread. "I can't tell what spell they were doing, but it doesn't look like they used anything unusual. Nightshade, heartsbane, powdered granite. I'd say some kind of love spell." She paused and picked through the powders. "And a guy's class ring with what looks like blood on it." She turned to Xander. "Does Angie have any cuts?"

Xander ran his eyes over Angie's body, then lifted her left hand to look more carefully. "Yeah. Her ring finger's bleeding a little bit. Hey, Will, move that stuff, will you? We'd better get these two onto the beds."

Willow lifted the bedspread by the corners and moved it down to the floor, taking care not to spill anything. As Buffy and Xander moved the unconscious roommates onto the beds, Buffy asked, "Will, what are the odds on figuring out what spell they cast?"

Willow shook her head. "I don't know. This whole book is full of love spells. I wish Tara was here. She's the one who talked to Angie last week. She might know where to start looking. As it is, it could take me a while to figure out what they were up to."

"Addrilanne. They called Addrilanne." Anya's voice was soft. The others looked at her, surprised. They'd forgotten about her in the emergency.

The former demon was standing in front of the closet. She'd opened the double doors to reveal a portal that seemed to be made of black glass. The reddish stone frame was covered in thousands of tiny runes. As the group watched, flickers of lightning danced around the frame, highlighting each rune in passing.

Xander was the first to speak. "Okay, I'm gonna assume that didn't come with the room. Who's Addrilanne, An?"

Anya turned to face the others. "She's a love... I guess goddess isn't the word."

"Is she a demon?"

Anya shook her head. "No. Definitely not. Well, maybe a little." When she saw the exasperated looks on her friend's faces, she sighed. "She's a special case. She used to be a human sorceress, about a thousand years ago. She specialized in emotion spells, especially love. She was obsessed with figuring out people's motivations when it came to love. Her big thing was to force people to look inside themselves and see the truth."

"Well, then how'd she become a demon, or a not-demon, or whatever she is?" Buffy waved her hand vaguely to convey her confusion.

Anya shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not sure anyone knows. I became a demon after I cursed Olaf, when D'Hoffryn showed up and offered me the job. Addrilanne never did anything like that. One day she was a normal sorceress, studying love. Then she disappeared. A century or so later, she showed up as... whatever she is now."

"Okay," Buffy asked patiently, "exactly what is she now? Or what does she do?"

"She tests the bonds of love. When someone like Angie here feels like their boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever doesn't really love them, they can call on Addrilanne to find out for sure."

"So where exactly does the coma part come in?" Xander asked, gesturing at the bodies on the bed.

"I have no idea," Anya said. "Normally, the portal appears behind a nearby doorway," she pointed at the door behind her, "and the caster steps through to find out the truth. It's all remarkably harmless, actually, except for the broken hearts when the truth isn't what you want to hear." She moved over to look down on the unconscious roommates. "I don't know what's different about this one."

"I do," Willow said. She was studying one of the pages in the spellbook. "I found Addrilanne. This spell isn't to help the caster learn the truth, it's to test the person the caster loves. And the penalty for failure is death."

"What?" Anya demanded, moving to read over Willow's shoulder. "Addrilanne doesn't do that. She's never hurt anyone before, at least not that I know of. I don't know why..." Her voice trailed off as she quickly read the spell. "Damn," she finally announced. "This isn't a normal summoning. It's a binding."

"That's not good," Willow muttered as she read through the spell again with a frown.

Buffy and Xander looked at each other. Xander shrugged. Buffy sighed and said, "Okay, for the benefit of those of us who aren't witches or ex-demons, why is that not good?"

"Hmm?" Willow asked, her attention drawn away from the book. "Oh," she said as she realized what Buffy had asked. She handed the book over to Anya and turned to face her friends.

"Well," she began, "a summoning is usually pretty simple. You call up whoever, the being you're trying to deal with, and basically ask them to show up and help you. Depending on what kind of spell you use and how powerful you are and the mood of the being you're summoning, it either appears or it doesn't. If it appears, you ask it to do what you want it to do."

"I'm assuming it doesn't go along out of the kindness of its heart?" Xander asked.

Willow shook her head. "Not usually, no. You almost always have to pay it in some way, sometimes with something simple like food, sometimes with something disgusting like a human sacrifice. If you summon it correctly and give it the right kind of offerings, it'll usually do what you want, if it can." She frowned. "That's a really simplified explanation, okay? I mean, with some beings, like demons, you can't trust them at all. They'll try to trick you any way they can and kill you. Other beings, like elementals, are dangerous but not evil. Others, like brownies or sprites, are supposedly pretty nice, though I've never seen one myself."

"I have," Anya broke in. She had moved over to examine the runes on the portal, but turned to face the others as she spoke. "We had a brownie in the village I used to live in. He was very friendly, as long as he got his milk every morning, and as long as you didn't try to pay him for his work. You don't see them very often anymore. They're almost extinct. It's a shame, they were great for doing chores. Real good singers, too." She went back to examining the runes.

"Right," Willow went on. "Most of the nice guys aren't around anymore. No one's sure why, really. There are a lot of theories, but we don't have time to go into them." She stopped, thinking. "Where was I?"

"Bindings," Xander prompted as he propped the broken door up in the frame. "There," he said to himself. "Ought to keep the riff-raff from wandering in, anyway."

"Bindings, right," Willow agreed. "Okay. A binding is pretty much the same as a summoning, but it forces the being to do whatever you want. No payment, and no choice in the matter. They're usually a lot harder to pull off than a summoning, and they can require some really nasty ingredients. This one," she said, gesturing towards the spellbook Anya held, "is pretty tame. In fact, I'm surprised it's a binding at all, considering the ingredients and ritual."

"Yes," Anya agreed as she turned away from the portal once again, "it is strange. I think I know what happened, though."

"What?" Buffy asked.

"It was D'Hoffryn. He's never liked Addrilanne. She takes away a fair bit of his business. You'd be surprised how many women end up cursing men who truly love them. With Addrilanne around, those women can find out the truth before they call on a vengeance demon. And a lot of times, even if Addrilanne tells them the guy doesn't love them, they just give up on him entirely instead of calling for vengeance. D'Hoffryn doesn't like that. He's the one who created this binding spell."

"How can you tell?" Willow asked curiously.

Anya turned to point at a short series of runes on the portal. "That's D'Hoffryn's work. His signature, I guess you'd call it. It definitely doesn't belong there, not on Addrilanne's portal."

"All right," Buffy announced. "So a harmless spell just got turned harmful. What do we do about it? How do we break Angie and Linda out of their comas?"

"I don't know that we can," Willow said.

"We probably can't," Anya stated flatly. "There's nothing in the ritual about the casters falling asleep. They must have made a mistake when they cast it. If the spell isn't completed, they'll probably die. And the spell won't be complete until Angie's boyfriend goes through the portal and gets tested."

"I'm thinking he won't want to do that," Xander said from where he stood by the broken doorway. "Although," he mused, "what if he does love her? Then he'd be safe, right?"

"Not necessarily," Anya said with a sigh. "The tests might be lethal even if he really loves her. That's the sort of thing D'Hoffryn would set up. And if no one takes the test, Angie and Linda will eventually die. As long as someone dies, D'Hoffryn will be happy."

"Nice boss you got there," Willow muttered.

Anya shrugged, and said, "Hey, you're the last one he offered the job to."

Willow glared at her, but had the grace to look embarrassed.

"What if," Buffy began with a speculative look on her face, "someone else took the test for Angie's boyfriend? I mean, does it have to be him who does it? Could I take it instead?"

"Ooh!" Willow squealed. "That could work. Let me see the book," she said to Anya, who passed it over. Flipping the page, Willow said, "Okay, here's the part about entering the portal. Aha!" She looked up triumphantly. "The ring is the key. The owner of the ring is the only one who can pass through the portal."

"Okay, Will," Xander said patiently, "I don't know much about jewelry, but I know that ring isn't Buffy's style."

They all turned to look at the class ring that lay on the bedspread with the rest of the spell's ingredients. It was definitely a man's ring.

"It shouldn't matter," Willow explained. "Owner can be a pretty vague term in this sort of spell. If Buffy wears the ring, she can probably enter the portal."

"Great!" the Slayer said as she bent down to pick up the ring. It was too big for her fingers, but she found that it fit fairly well on her thumb. "No time like the present, I guess. Anya, what am I likely to run into in there?"

Anya considered the question for a moment, then said, "Probably nothing you can't handle. D'Hoffryn's out for blood, but Addrilanne's in charge of the tests, and she never kills of her own volition. She has to make failure lethal because of the binding, but she'll make it as fair as the binding lets her. And since the spell is intended to test normal people, you should be able to handle it easily enough." She turned to Willow. "Does the book say anything about what exactly the test is?"

"Yeah," Willow answered after a second. "Here it is. It's actually three tests. One part tests the Body, one part tests the Mind, and the last part tests the Heart."

Buffy seemed nervous. "Okay, Body I'm not worried about. Mind is a bit scary, but I aced the SATs, right?" Willow and Xander nodded encouragingly, and she went on. "But what about the Heart part? I mean, I don't love Angie. Can I pass that?"

"I don't know," Anya said. "Like I said, Addrilanne isn't going to want to kill you, so maybe she can change the test so you can pass. Or maybe you can handle whatever she does if you don't pass."

"I'm not too crazy about those maybes, An," Xander said. His girlfriend could only nod her agreement.

"Me, neither," Buffy agreed. "Is there any way to break the spell without going through the portal? What if we got Giles and Tara in on it, too?"

Willow shook her head sadly. "According to this, the spell must be completed before midnight of the day it's cast. That only gives us a little more than an hour. We'd never get Giles and Tara home in time."

"Damn," Xander muttered. "Y'know, those two picked a really inconvenient weekend to run off to Vegas to get married by an Elvis impersonator."

"Xander!" Willow scolded. "For the thousandth time, they did NOT run off to get married. Giles went to Las Vegas to get some stuff for the shop at the big occult trade show, and Tara went with him to fill the orders from our Wicca group. Plus," she added with a giggle, "Tara's a big Tom Jones fan."

"Hey, who isn't?" Buffy asked with a smile. She sobered quickly. "Okay, we can't wait to try and break the spell. I guess I just go in loaded for bear and hope for the best, huh?" When no one disagreed, she crossed the room to where she'd dropped her backpack as she first entered. Rummaging through it, she withdrew a few stakes, a pistol-grip crossbow and several bolts, and a wickedly sharp machete.

"'Be Prepared,' that's the Slayer Scout motto." Xander was smiling, but his eyes were serious. "Be careful, Buff."

"Yeah, Buffy," Willow agreed, "don't get overconfident just because we think the tests won't be too bad."

"Good luck," Anya said.

"Thanks, guys," Buffy said quietly. "See you soon." Then she turned and walked purposefully into the portal.

And promptly bounced off.