Dawn threw out one arm as she raced up to the corner.  Whang! the aluminum pole of the street sign slapped into her palm, and muscle-shock tore up her arm to her shoulder as her weight swung over, out, around--she was Sheena of the Jungle, legs scissoring over the curb as she used the sign to slingshot around the corner.  She took off down Main the moment she touched ground again, her feet pounding down the narrow stretch of sidewalk, breath ripping in and out of her lungs.  Anyone chased by monsters on a regular basis really should go out for track.  That stupid story from second period English kept running through her head, the one about the magic of getting new sneakers.  She could use some magic sneakers about now.  When had Main Street gotten so long?  It was only a block or two from the corner of Main and Laramie to the Magic Box, but it was a block or two that stretched for miles--there!
         The mouth of the alley was choked with people--Spike, Buffy, Tanner, three more crazies.  Her sister's small lithe body blocked the sidewalk on one side, and Spike loomed opposite, boxing the crazies in.  In two more of Dawn's flying steps the tableau broke apart, the crazies charging Spike, Buffy lunging for the one in the blue cap.  Dawn saw an opening in the melee and swerved for it just as Blue Cap flinched away from Buffy.  His head came up, and his rheumy eyes widened with childlike delight as they met Dawn's.  He lurched forward, reaching out to embrace her with a gap-toothed grin.  Dawn made a futile effort to un-swerve--Spike and Buffy performed impossible maneuvers all the time, surely she could straighten out one turn--but momentum was not her friend.  She felt herself losing control, one body part at a time: feet skidding out from beneath her, arms flailing, center of balance shifting disastrously to the left.
         She slammed into Blue Cap full-force, bowling him over and falling backwards onto her butt.  He hit the pavement with a pained grunt, a flailing tangle of limbs and Salvation Army-reject clothing.  Still reaching for her, even now--gnarled fingers with black half-moons of nails pawed her ankles.  Dawn kicked free and was on her feet again with a clumsy roll-and-scramble, clipboard clutched to her chest.  Buffy sidestepped her to get at Blue Cap, but otherwise neither she nor Spike gave her a second glance.  Time to dump this thing.  She made to skim the clipboard away frisbee-style, but a voice shouting "Dawn! Over here!" interrupted her.
         Half-way down the alley, Willow leaned out from behind a pile of boxes on the loading dock, hopping up and down and waving an arm.  The auburn flag of her hair burned against the backdrop of alley-grunge.  Dawn dove for cover behind the dock and Willow yanked a stove-sized box emblazoned SCRYING BASINS, 1 DOZ. THIS SIDE UP in front of the both of them.  She burrowed into the corrugated cavern, utterly unfounded relief flooding her as the scent of glue and cardboard evoked childhood secret hideouts, where the monsters couldn't come.  She tossed the clipboard aside, drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them, trying to catch her breath.
        Willow nudged her knee with the corner of the clipboard.  "Keep it," she whispered.  "Just in case."
         "It doesn't work on them!" Dawn whispered back, making frantic beating motions in the direction of the crazies.
         Willow sat back on her heels and gnawed on her lower lip. "Shoot.  I never thought of that.  They can see your Keyness.  Stay here.  We should have them under control in a minute."  She started backing out, then paused, her eyes shifting from emerald to onyx.  "I really need you to keep hold of that clipboard, Dawnie."
         She was off, and Dawn sat there in a long-legged heap for a minute or so, trying to decide if she should just stay where she was or sneak out and try to get inside the Magic Box.  Either option involved scouting, so she grabbed the clipboard again (because, really important) and crawled forward on hands and knees, peering around the edge of the loading dock.
         Willow was crouching beside Tara, who was kneeling beside Tanner's crumpled body.  Dawn suppressed a shudder; his breathing sounded like the drugged-up wheeze of a patient she'd had to pass on the way to visit Mom in the hospital last year.  One day the bed had held a sheet-swathed lump surrounded by machines that went ping, and the next it'd been empty.
         The crazy in the blue cap was sprawled on the sidewalk, and Giles had the older one in the yellow windbreaker backed whimpering against the alley wall opposite Tanner.  Xander's car was just pulling up to the opposite curb, and Xander and Anya piled out and raced across to grab the third crazy, a non-descript, balding man with no convenient identifying clothing, before he could take advantage of Buffy's distraction and escape.
         And Buffy was big-time distracted, but why?  Dawn felt like the clue bus was coming and she'd lost her transfer.  Spike knelt on the sidewalk in front of her sister, his head thrown back and throat bared like some out-take from Animal Planet, the vampire propitiating his mate.  Buffy stared down at him with big frozen eyes, and Dawn didn't think she was just stupefied by the sight of that dorky striped sweater he was wearing.
         Xander, still wrestling with his crazy, cleared his throat loudly and nodded at Blue Cap, who was beginning to stir.  "You know, if you and the undead Marcel Marceau here can spare an invisible room to put these guys in, or even just lend us a hand--"
         Buffy came to life and hushed him with a gesture.  She dropped to one knee to bring herself level with Spike, the glint in her eye indicating that she was having a National Geographic moment of her own.  Her hand fumbled at the clasp of her purse.  Her gaze never left Spike's face as she pulled out--ohmigod, a stake, Mr. Pointy no less, you could tell because it was slimmer and sharper than the ones Xander turned out on the lathe, and sort of twisty, because for all her virtues Kendra hadn't been any great shakes at whittling, and was she going to she wasn't going to--she was going to!
         "Buffy!" Dawn screamed.  But no one noticed.
 

        There were eleven heartbeats thumping away within hearing distance, and he could match each one to a name each one without even thinking about it.  Jim, Blue Cap, and the Third Murderer (well, he had to call the bloke something), erratic with terror.  Tanner's, slow and labored.  Xander's, racing with the exuberance of youth; Giles's strong and steady but with less resilience than his younger companions'.  Willow's, a wild triphammer of anticipation; Tara's, sweet and smooth; Anya's bird-quick and fierce.  (And someone else?  Younger, been running hard?)
         The only one that mattered was Buffy's, three feet in front of him.  You'd think hers would be another bird-flutter in that tiny chest, but no--the Slayer's pulse was as deep and powerful as that of the earth itself, strong enough to shake him to the bone.  His sensitive ears caught the rustle of clothing as she dropped to one knee, and his whole body quivered as something hard and sharp jabbed him in the abdomen.  The wooden point didn't penetrate the skin.  "That's not my heart, love."
         "Shut up."  Her voice was brittle with tension.  The stake-point slipped under the waistband of his jeans and tugged the hem of his pullover free.  "Why didn't you tell me?"
         "Tried," he gasped.  "Couldn't."  The muscles of his stomach twitched as the sharp point snaked its way upwards, pulling his shirt with it and drawing cool night air across his exposed skin in its wake.
         "How long has it been?" Buffy whispered.
         Spike swallowed, one convulsive bob of his Adam's apple, and heard her breath hitch.  Never could see the sense in her fixation with his throat.  "I can't tell you that."
         "Did you get it taken out?"  She leaned towards him, straddling his thighs.  Her scent was a ravishing medley of blood and sweat, anger and arousal.  Her pert little breasts brushed his bare chest through her thin rayon blouse. The stake-point traced its way higher, up over the vault of his ribcage, digging into his flesh slightly with every irregular panting breath he took.  "Or did it just stop working?"
         Hoarsely, "I can't tell you that either."
         "Can't?"  The deadly sliver of wood traveled up and down the line of his sternum, then wandered across to his left pectoral, drawing ever-tighter circles around the fading scar where Glory's fingers had dug through flesh and bone.  His nipples went taut and he unsuccessfully tried to stifle a groan.  Buffy's warm breath, smelling of orange Tic-Tacs and the second-hand traces of his cigarettes, caressed his cheek.  "Or won't?"  The stake-tip flicked his left nipple, then dug in a few inches above it, imprinting its mark on his skin.  Right over his heart.  Oh, God in Heaven, he was either going to die or come in his jeans, and either one would be a relief.
         To hell with tradition; his eyes flew open to meet Buffy's.  "Can't!  I've tried!  Tried with you, tried with Dawn--the words won't come, I--"
         The stake disappeared.  Buffy surged upright, taking her weight off his knees, and something small, oblong, and black rushed towards his face at supersonic speeds.  Thwack!   The purse smacked him across the nose and Spike lost his balance and toppled over backwards.  "Next time," Buffy hissed, "try a little harder!"
         Spike lay spreadeagled on the sidewalk, blinking up at her. Hey, Slayer, I can see up your skirt from here didn't seem to be the cleverest segue to a new topic of conversation at the moment.  "Not going to kill me, then?" he croaked.
         Buffy grabbed Blue Cap by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet, hustling him towards the alley.  "Maybe tomorrow."
         Thus speaks the Dread Pirate Buffy.   Spike sat up and got to his feet, yanking his pullover down over his middle and slapping the worst of the sidewalk grit from his duster.  "You didn't ask--" The big question, the do-I-need-to-stake-you question, the question that should be first and foremost in a Slayer's mind when she finds out her demon lover has his bite back.
         Buffy turned.  The anger had fled, leaving her face grave and quiet.  She looked up at him, moss-agate eyes searching his.  "If you've killed anyone?"  She'd worn that look the night she died, the night she said Come in, Spike.  "I didn't think I needed to."
         She turned away and Spike followed her, chest drum-tight with an emotion too deep and terrible to be joy.  There had to be something he could kill, just so he could lay it at her feet.
 

         Willow's hands clenched as Buffy leaned forward, pressing the stake to Spike's chest.  The air in the alley went heavy, glassy, an oily heat-mirage shimmer of emotion.  Her own appalled gasp, Dawn's shriek of warning, were both stifled under the weight of an alien anticipation.  Tara sensed it and looked up from her preparations, trying to pinpoint the source of the disturbance.  Then Buffy was on her feet and Spike was flat on his back and undusty.  The tension ebbed away in seconds, and Willow felt the anticipation give way to a philosophical acknowledgment that something which seemed too good to be true usually was.
         When are you going to tell me what is this all about? Willow demanded.
         You will know within the hour .
         Willow probed further, but her only answer was quelling silence.  Her bravado was starting to fray around the edges.  Much more of this and she was going to dissolve into a puddle of nervous goo.
         Spike caught her eyes as he and Buffy herded the crazies into the alley, his own still full of Why?   Willow turned away, digging into a heaping helping of feeling crappy with guilt sauce.  She couldn't give him whys when she didn't have any herself.  She hadn't yet been able to get the vampire alone to cast the forgetfulness spell on him, and she had the awful feeling that he'd recognized the Lethe's bramble for what it was in the Magic Box.  They all tended to forget that though Spike didn't normally trust magic, Drusilla'd dabbled in it, and he'd helped his one-time vampire love conduct more than a few dark rituals in his day.
         She couldn't even say Trust me.   He would, she knew.  He'd charge through a crowd of foes he couldn't fight, up a tower to meet an imminent sunrise and an unknown menace of indeterminate strength just because she asked him to.  Because she was Buffy's friend, or because on some weird post-geek supernatural creature level, they shared an understanding?  Or because Spike was, or had been becoming, her friend?
         And she was betraying him.
         Maybe.  There wasn't anything intrinsically bad in keeping her role in the chip removal a secret, she reassured herself.  There had to be a good reason for it, something to do with the crazy-curing spell, maybe.  Maybe everything really was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and she wasn't just playing Pangloss to her vampire Candide. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed in, gathering calm to the center of her being and tacking it down with a stapler.
         When she opened them again, Tara was draping the silver chain over Tanner's head.  Her love centered the medallion of twisted silver wire and amethyst on the unconscious man's chest.  Sitting back, she drew her athame from the pocket of her sweater and pulled the sheath from the short triangular blade, whispering a few words of sanctification.  She held it up and pricked her forefinger, letting a single drop of blood fall on the central crystal (probably, Willow thought, the darkest spell Tara'd ever ventured) and placed the funnel over it.  "With silver I find you, with heart's blood I bind you," Tara whispered.  "Be sealed in this covenant till I release thee, on the names of Maktiel, and Abdiel, and Alekh-Madab." She grasped Tanner's limp shoulders in both hands and cried,

     Powers of the mind, and heart, and soul!
     Cunning of the fingers and cunning of the tongue!
     Be ye a spring dried, a wind stilled
     Be ye a fire quenched and a field made barren!

     Thus I command ye, and what I say three times is so.
     Thus do I bind the strength of Daniel Tanner
     Thus do I break the staff of Daniel Tanner's power
     Thus do I drain the virtue that lies within Daniel Tanner.
     Be it so, be it so, be it so!

         Light flared from Tanner's body all around the necklace, swirling into the mouth of the funnel and out through the nozzle.  Tanner's eyes shot open as his body convulsed in Tara's grasp.  For a full thirty seconds his rigid body was wreathed in witchlight, and then all went dark as he sagged back against the bricks.  Tara's head fell forward to rest against Tanner's, and for another few seconds both of them were totally limp.  Then he stirred, and Tara drew back.  His mouth worked for a moment, and he wet his lips.  "What... what did you..."  He lifted one hand to the necklace.  Sparks flared and the scent of ozone filled the air, and he snatched his fingers away.
         "I've bound your magical abilities, Mr. Tanner," Tara said.  "Just for the time being.  We couldn't risk you doing what you did to Willow again."  She ducked her head, a little embarrassed at being the focus of everyone's attention.  "We really do want to help you."
         The corner of Tanner's mouth quirked, halfway between bitter and humorous.  "And you couldn't just toss me some spare change, or a temperance pamphlet?"  He squinted up at Willow, as if she were out of focus.  "Rotten.  The heartwood's rotten... you silly girl, I had nothing to lose.  It'll betray you.  That's its nature."  The dark mad eyes flicked to Spike.  "Ask him.  He knows.  He's part of it at the root, the roots go deeper, deeper, digging into your brain and all the little moles... mole-runs in your head..."
         "Is this the pointless, insane rambling, or the creepy, prophetic rambling?" Xander asked.  Spike shrugged, looking baffled.
         "Never got the hang of the difference, myself."
         "Either way," Willow said, "we're here to go Sigmund Freud on its tookus."  She turned to Tanner.  "I can fix you.  And them."  She waved a hand at the other three crazies.  "Do you get that?  I can make you all better, for good, and you won't have to live like this anymore."  She dropped to a crouch beside Tara and put a hand on her shoulder.  "I remember what it was like, when Glory did this to her.  I remember what it was like when you did it to me.  It's horrible, and I want--I need to fix this.  You can make it easier by helping, but one way or another I'm going to do it."  Because Buffy is depending on me, and this time I won't screw it up.
         Tanner stared at her for a long moment, and then his thin shoulders began to shake.  He broke into a thin, scary chuckle that choked off in a half-sob.  "Honor among thieves," he gasped at last.  "Oh, God, kid, go ahead.  Why the hell not?  I should get my thirty pieces of silver, shouldn't I?"  He braced himself against the wall and began levering himself painfully to his feet.  "Spread the wealth!"
         Willow let out a breath of relief.  "Let's get cooking."  She clapped both hands together.  "'Get these three onto Tiphareth... that's the sephira in the center of the tree... right, that one there.  See how everything comes together there?  It'll all flow through that center point."
         "This isn't all of them," Anya pointed out as Xander grabbed the crazy in the windbreaker and dragged him over to the central sephira.  "There are more.  Should we find them first?"
         Willow forced herself to stop worrying her lower lip.  At this rate she was going to own the west coast Chapstick monopoly before midnight.  Anya was right; this wasn't even half the band, and she'd promised to cure all of them.  Maybe she should have pushed for a raid on the dump after all; it would have been much easier to do all of them at once that way. Now she was going to have to come up with some other scheme for getting Dawn in position to cast the spell a second time.  And speaking of which--
         "If this works, I'll get you the others," Tanner said.  He hobbled over to the edge of the tree-of-life diagram, wincing a little at each step, and looked down at it, frowning in uncertainty.  "Spiderweb," he whispered.  "Spinning, spinning..."  He took Jim's elbow and urged him forward.  Jim whimpered and balked, and Tara got up and came over to help.  Together the two of them coaxed the three men into a loose huddle around the centerpoint of the tree.  Jim tried to follow Tanner when he stepped away.
        "Be still," Willow said, laying a finger on the man in the windbreaker; caught in coils of power, Jim froze in place and stood shaking on the sephira of rebirth.  She wished she'd learned a little more Hebrew than was necessary for her bat mitzvah; her translations, she was certain, sucked the big one.  She swallowed her nerves and stepped back.  "OK, everyone--almost ready.  When I call you, come stand on the sephira I point to.  I need a minute to, uh, meditate."  She backed over to the loading dock; Dawn was leaning against it, making a futile attempt to comb the wind-tangles out of her hair with her fingers while still holding fast to the clipboard.
         "I'm such a feeb," Dawn snarled.  "I totally suck."
         "Dawnie," she whispered, "You don't suck.  I need someone to stand on Kether.  That one right there at the top.  For balance.  I was going to have Tara do it, but I think that first spell's pretty much drained her."  She was only half fibbing there; Kether had been intended for Dawn all along, but Tara was slumped in place, her face the color of oatmeal.  Dawn looked doubtful, and Willow gave her a companionable nudge.  "Please? I really need someone in the top spot.  It's necessary to the spell, and if you don't do it I'll have to, and it'll work better if I'm free to--"
         Willow saw the doubt in Dawn's eyes vanish, replaced with determination to make up for her big scaredy running away-ness.  "OK.  I'll do it.  Do I need to do anything or say any--?"
         "Just step up when I call, and stand there," Willow assured her.  "I'll do all the rest."
 

         Dawn fidgeted beside the delivery door, twisting a strand of hair around one hand while Willow walked back over to the chalk diagram.  The others formed a ragged circle around the edge.  She wished she could chuck the clipboard and really participate, but somehow she just couldn't seem to get up the nerve to drop the thing.  There'd be Buffy freakage, and there'd be questions, and the squirmy possibility that her sister would realize she'd been following them when they'd gone all Roman Polanski on the street corner.  At least this way she could do something useful tonight.
         Willow stopped at the top of the tree, bowed her head, and said something in Hebrew.  Then she straightened and held her hands high overhead.  "AIN SOPH AUR, from whence all things proceed, I invoke thy blessing!  Addonai Elohim!  I invoke the Supernals!  I call on the Crown, the First Emanation!  I call upon thy virtue; thou partest the veils of nonexistence.  Kether!"  She made a discreet beckoning motion with one hand, and Dawn edged nervously past Giles to stand on the sephira at the pinnacle of the whole design.  A tingle ran through her scalp as she stepped onto the symbol, and the hairs at the back of her neck lifted.
         This wasn't the first major ritual she'd participated in.  She'd helped Willow raise Buffy from the dead, and she'd been hanging out around witches for years now--Dawn knew a few things about magic.  The Raising had taken hours, and involved all kinds of repetitious chants and waving of hands.  She and Spike had had detailed lists of instructions telling them where to walk, where to stop, what powder to sprinkle and what words to say when they got there.  The description of the loa-summoning had sounded like a lot of the same thing.  But here--Willow was just waving people into place willy-nilly.  It felt weird, with none of the intricate buildup of word and gesture and symbol Dawn had grown to associate with really big magic.
         But this was really big.  She could feel the vibrations in the long bones of her arms and legs, like when she was six and her Dad took them to LAX and they parked under the flight path of the jets.  Willow was already moving on.  "I call upon Wisdom, the Second Emanation!  Great Father, the giver of life!  Through thee is creation engendered.  Chokmah!   I call upon Understanding, the Third Emanation!  Great Mother, the nurturer of life!  In thee is creation made manifest.  Bineh!"
         As Giles and Willow in turn stepped into place, completing the Supernals, Dawn felt the tingling surge downwards, lapping over her shoulders.  Willow's singsong chant continued: "Addonai Elohim!  I invoke the days of Creation!  I call on Mercy, the Fourth Emanation; in thee is the Law with ruleth the universe, and from vengeance shall you forge mercy.  Chesed!"  Anya took her place, and the electric-wintergreen feeling skittered down to Dawn's elbows.  Was this right?  Was it normal?  Willow hadn't exactly told her what to expect.
         "I call upon Severity, the Fifth Emanation.  Thou art the destruction that cleanses, that we may create anew; from thy chaos shall we forge order.  Geburah!"  Spike stepped gingerly into his place, and Dawn's fingers jerked as if she'd touched a light socket.  Verdant sparks dazzled her eyes for a moment.  "I call upon Harmony, the Sixth Emanation!  Thou art the balance of all things, thou art the rebirth of the spirit.  Thou restorest what is broken to wholeness!  Tiphareth!"
         Many-layered strata of censer-smoke drifted past, teasing Dawn's nose with the heavy drugged scent of incense.  Willow was really into it now, her eyes like jet in her pale face.  "I call upon Victory, the Seventh Emanation!  Thou art the power of the heart; in thee we feel, in thee we love!  Netzach!"  As Xander moved in, Willow herself stepped onto the next sephira.  "I call upon Splendor, the Eighth Emanation!  Thou art the power of the mind; in thee we think, in thee we reason!  Hod!"
        Dawn gasped, trying to hold herself upright; her backbone was a T1 cable carrying a million jolts of energy a second.  All the lines connecting the sephiroth were glowing neon serpents in rose and gold, and she couldn't tell if it was her eyes or if they were really moving.  Willow's voice was inexorable.  "I call upon the Foundation, the Ninth Emanation!"
        Tanner, his drawn face and blank eyes making him look deader than Spike, stepped into place, and Dawn almost fell to her knees as the jolts of energy converged down there.  Was this the feeling that made Buffy jump Spike on a street corner?  She'd felt bits and pieces of this, thrills when giggling over Teen Beat with her friends, sweet liquid fire in her first taste of cool male lips.  This was bigger, this was dangerous, the kind of danger you'd do anything to taste again.  Appalling, intriguing thought If I'm made of Buffy...   Was something in her drawn to that kind of danger, too?
         Willow kept going. "Thou art the channel whereby enlightenment passes from Heaven to Earth; thou art the sign of magic and of the sacred union.  Through thee shall pass all things!  Yesod!"
         A vast soundless roar battered at Dawn's ears, or perhaps she was the vast soundless roar.  The censer-smoke was underlit with green now, and in the eerie light--where was it coming from?  Not Willow.  She could see the whites of everyone's eyes, a sickly, glistening cerise.  Willow's voice rose--or did it?  It was no louder, but it filled the alley from gutter to the bruised-indigo vault of the sky overhead.  "I call upon the Kingdom, the Tenth Emanation!  Queen of the Underworld, thou rulest the Manifested Universe, That Which Is!  Malkuth!"  Buffy took a step forward and as her feet touched the last of the sephira, a circuit closed and power surged from Dawn's head to her toes.
         "By this Key let every gate be opened!" Willow cried out, "Let the fire of heaven descend to Earth, and be these men healed thereby!"
         And something within Dawn blossomed like a terrible flower.  Her blood had razed the walls between worlds before, but then she'd felt nothing but the pain of the knife-cuts in her side.  Now she was light.  She was sound.  She was nothing and everything.  Worlds without end, an infinity of infinities, tesseracts of possibility nested one within the other--all the worlds that ever were or ever could be, and she was the reality beneath the reality from which they sprung.  Power beyond measure, beyond imagining, was hers--not to command, for no Key could turn itself--but to channel.
         Torrents of emerald light lashed outward, the raw unformed stuff of creation, crackling through the net Willow'd woven to trap them.  The rays shot down from Kether through Chokmah and Bineh, seared through Chesed and Geburah to collide in Tiphareth and lance out again through Netzach and Hod, converge in Yesod and finally in Malkuth, and from Malkuth shoot back to Yesod once more.  The Tree lit up like an insane pinball machine, energy racing from point to point and back again, growing in power and intensity with every new circuit.
         In the past Dawn had wondered, idly, how things would have turned out if the monks had made her a toothpick or a Porsche or a grain of sand in the Gobi desert instead of a human girl.  Would Glory ever have found her?  Would the ritual for using her still have required blood, or would it have magically revised itself to suit whatever form she was assigned?  She'd never know the answer to those questions, but she knew this: a toothpick or a grain of sand wouldn't feel like she did now.
         The human shell that was Dawn Summers screamed and clutched at her head as the forces ripped through a form never designed to contain it, scouring her mind to the bedrock.  Memories flashed past, a jumble of precious lies, things that had never happened but which defined the scope of her manufactured life.  She tried in vain to grasp them before the floodwaters bore them beyond her reach.  Scenes from her childhood, scenes from her teens--backyard cookouts, Buffy and cousin Celia tying her to the tree while playing Power Girl and forgetting her, the spelling bee, lying awake in the night and listening to Mom and Dad argue while Buffy held her tight, the divorce, moving to Sunnydale, Angelus's mocking eyes and sharp fangs--whirled away from her one by one and sucked into oblivion by a savage undertow of power.  She was dissolving, eroding from the inside out, and no one could see her, no one could tell.
         She didn't see the man in the Dodgers T-shirt stumble around the corner of the alley and stand there swaying back and forth at the sight before him, a bubbling moan rising from his throat.  She didn't see Spike, staring at her through the humming beams of light, his dark brows twisted in an expression of desperate confusion.  Dawn Summers was beyond seeing anything at all.
         "!la muchacha verde del sol!" wailed Ramon, rushing towards Dawn and enveloping her in a bear-hug.  His weight staggered her, pushing her off the sephira, and at once the net of power snapped and collapsed in a tangle of hissing green loops.  Dawn, rag-doll limp, sagged in Ramon's arms while he hugged her and babbled broken prayers and entreaties in Spanish.  A bone-chilling snarl of rage split the night, thin and small after the music of the spheres still ringing through Dawn's head, and a lean black-and-ivory blur tore Ramon away from her.
         "Not this time, you sodding bastard!"  Ramon's garbled entreaties became a scream of terror, choked off short as Spike slammed him into the pavement, fingers clamped around his throat--the grip that could snap a human neck in an instant, long before Buffy, at the opposite end of the alley, could reach him.  If Buffy and everyone else hadn't been jarred off their feet by the unexpected breaking of the spell.  If Buffy and everyone else weren't blinking and trying to figure out what Spike was doing with the... something, someone, nothing important.
         She was still carrying the stupid clipboard, and couldn't for the life of her let go.
         The vampire's eyes were flat golden coins in the dim light of the alley, and his fangs gleamed.  "Spike!" Dawn choked out.  She couldn't get up and stop him.  All her joints were on fire.  She was dizzy and aching, her whole body a taut rind of pain surrounding a ringing emptiness which yearned after the very power which had nearly destroyed it.  But even before she spoke, something in his stance changed, lapsing from immanent slaughter to a relaxed predator's stillness ready to explode into violence again at any moment.  His free hand went to the inside pocket of his duster for a second, and his eyes dropped to Dawn's.  "He hurt you, pet.  Shall I kill him?"
         His tone was utterly conversational, as if he were commenting on the weather or asking her if she wanted sausage or pepperoni on her pizza.  She'd fantasized about this, hadn't she?  Her own pet vampire--better be nice to me, or he'll bite your head off.  Only now it was real, and Spike was looking down at her with those terrible eyes and Dawn knew without a single doubt in the world that if she said yes Spike would rip Ramon's head right off, slam-dunk his skull in the dumpster and use his severed carotid for a drinking fountain.  And the only possible thing that would stop him would be Buffy saying no a little bit faster, but Buffy was still shaking shards of green light out of her head and crawling over to see if Willow was all right.  And the worst thing was seeing the eager, vicious light in his eyes and the way his tongue curled over the rending points of his fangs and knowing, also without a doubt in the world, that her good pal Spike was really, really hoping she'd say yes.
         "No," she rasped.  "No, he didn't... he kinda saved me, I think.  The spell..."  Her knees wobbled, and in an instant Spike had dropped Ramon and was at her side, holding her up.
         "Dawn-love, you're--" He placed one palm, chill as the air around them, on her forehead.  Felt so good, like pressing her face to an air-conditioned window-pane in summer.  "Burning up!  What're you doing here?"  His eyes, blue again but no less deadly, scanned the alleyway.  He glanced down at the clipboard and raised an eyebrow, then yanked it out of Dawn's hands before she could object.  "Who gave you this?"
         "Willow," Dawn said.  Spike growled, a sound like a jaguar swallowing a rusty buzzsaw, and flung the clipboard across the alley with force enough to shatter it against the far wall.  Uh oh.  Willow would be pissed.  Dawn's head felt muzzy. I just saved a man's life.  Ramon would be little shredded bloody lumps right now if I'd said 'yes.' All Spike's cool stories about little girls in coal bins had happened to people as real as Ramon was.
         "Dawn!"  Buffy shrieked, scrambling to her feet.  "What are you doing here?  Are you all right?"
         The world was starting to spin.  How come she always ended up fainting just as things got exciting?  It wasn't fair.  "Spike..."
         "Yeh, snack-size?"
         "You're evil."
         His face didn't show anything, and that in itself was unusual for Spike.  "'Fraid so."  He gave Ramon a kick in the head to make him stay down, whipped off his duster and wadded it up.  "Here, have a lie-down."
         Part of her wanted to protest that no, she wasn't going to lie down, this was important, but Spike's big cool hands felt so wonderful on the hot papery skin of her cheeks, and it was easier to sink down onto the cushion of worn black leather, breathe in the comforting smell of bourbon and smoke and close her eyes.
        She heard her sister's anxious voice from a million miles away: "Give her here--oh, Dawn, oh, God, Dawn..."  Buffy reached for her, taking her from Spike's arms and cradling her to her chest.  Small and slender as Buffy was, Dawn felt insubstantial in comparison, translucent enough to see through her own flesh to her bones.  Spike gave her hand a last squeeze and got slowly to his feet.
         A swirl of dislodged memories fluttered down onto the surface of her consciousness: Spike slumped in the beanbag chair in a mute, inexplicable fury, the emberglow of Willow's hair in the basement light, and the prickly-musty scent of crushed herbs.  Dawn had a moment to think Waitaminute, the chip-- And then there was darkness, and it felt awfully good.
 

         When the veils of everyday reality were stripped away, the world was a CGI wonderland of interlocking lines of force.  A vast matrix of mystic lines of force, indigo, black, and violet, swirled round the vortex of the Hellmouth.  Crumpled sheets of shimmering bronze and copper underlay them, power of the earth itself, too vast for any single wizard to bent to his will.  The trace-lines of a thousand thousand spells cast in Sunnydale over the last century wove and tangled throughout, glowing in mauve and azure and gold: old spells, new spells, spells of ward and guard, spells to lure, spells to deceive, spells to find money and love and power, all paling before the new-cast glory of the spell she was weaving now.
         Tides of magic surged through and around her, and Willow reached out, grasped them bare-handed and wrested them into the shapes she desired.  No clumsy approximation of word and gesture here, no dithering over whether toadflax or motherwort would produce the effect closest to what she wanted.  She was working directly with raw magic, fresh from the heartspring of the universe.
         Auras shone around her--Buffy and Spike in gold and ebony, Tara in pale springtime green, Xander royal blue, Anya violet, Giles a startling black-shot scarlet.  Dawn outblazed them all, a pure and endless paean of brilliant emerald light radiating outwards in all directions.  Willow trapped the power in the rose and gold net of the sephiroth, bound it, shaped it, sent it singing back in complex chords of emerald and olivine.  Without the strength provided by her silent partner, she could never have hoped to control this wild floodtide of power.  It would have burnt her to the bone in seconds.  But with it--with it she was Morgan Le Fay, Titania, Endora, all rolled into one.
         She could see the traces of Tanner's brainsuck spell as sluggish bruise-colored whorls in the auras of the crazies, and of Tanner himself.  The flaws in his technique were obvious, as was what she'd need to do to repair the damage to her minds for once and all.  With complete assurance Willow plucked a strand of light here, tweaked a node of power there, calling on the green just as she'd called on Glory's stolen power to heal Tara.  Malachite arpeggios and with descants of aquamarine danced from node to node along the net, meeting and parting and meeting again in cascades of creme-de-menthe sparks.  Tanner first.  Child's play to send verdant cascades of light down the ley-lines of power, focusing the energy she commanded on Yesod and illuminating a mind cloaked in the shadows of madness.  The torch of her power banished the horrors back to the sub-basements of thought they'd crawled up from, forging new paths from axon to dendrite in a springtime glow of renewal.
         She could sense Tanner's connection to the three crazies within the compass of the spell, and all the others as well, bonds forged of a long summer of shared misery.  Willow's senses telescoped out along the lines of power.  Three more in Weatherly Park, six more back at the dump, and a lone figure shambling down Main Street, goal-less and forlorn.  Ramon.  She knew his name, his history, could see in the mangled remnants of his mind a wife, a daughter, a life--he'd been an auto mechanic in the Chevron station on Fourth an eternity ago.  And she, Willow Rosenberg, was going to return him to all that.  Fix him.  Fix all of them.  She could do that.
         So simple, so easy, to take up the reins from Tanner's lax grasp and make them her own.  The spell-cords binding the crazies to Tanner lit up like a bundle of glow-sticks at a rave as she sent power flooding through Yesod and into Tiphareth.  Come to me!   Her partner was pleased with her; she could feel its dark rejoicing thrumming through her veins.  Could she go farther?  Do more?  Could she just reach out, like so, reel in the cords and draw them all here...?
         The cords resisted her efforts.  Impatient, Willow called on more power, and it answered her summons willingly.  The universe could well spare this tithe of its substance in a good cause.  Somewhere someone was crying out in pain, but no matter--she'd fix that too, in good time.  It would take too long to wait for the crazies to come here, she decided.  Why not send healing to them directly?  First to the six in the dump, then...
         Without warning the spell snapped with all the force of an axe-cut hawser, and Willow howled in agony as it lashed her mind in a whip-crack of thwarted power. NO! screamed the black voice. Too soon!  She was supposed to die! The Tree of Life contained and deflected the worst of the damage as Willow tumbled headlong from the exalted heights of pure magic, falling back into the confines of her own body with bone-jarring force.
         At first she thought it was the black voice again, but no, it had come from outside her head.  Willow realized she was lying face-down in a heap in the alley, her nose mashed into the oil-spattered concrete.  She fumbled with her hands--she couldn't remember exactly how to work them for a minute--got them underneath her torso and shoved herself upright.  Groans and whimpers reached her ears from all sides; only Buffy and Spike were still more or less standing, courtesy of supernatural muscle, but everyone seemed to be moving.  A warm trickle crawled down her neck and her fingers came away smeared with crimson when she rubbed at it.  Something had gone wrong.  The crazy she'd called--darn, he hadn't been bound by the spell, and he'd blundered into Dawn, wrecking the whole thing.  She'd have to start it all over to take care of the rest of them...
         An inhuman yowl of rage interrupted her meandering thoughts.  Seeing Dawn in physical danger must have been enough for Spike's natural vampiric resistance to spells of mental confusion to kick in.  For a second he crouched over the terrified crazy, a hawk over a rabbit, his duster mantled like great black wings.  A second later he'd abandoned his prey to rush to Dawn's side, and a second after that, the clipboard spun past Willow's ear and smashed into three pieces against the bricks.
         Oopsie.
         Buffy, just putting a hand to Willow's shoulder and ask if she were all right, froze as she realized what had been going on in front of her eyes for the last several minutes.  She took off towards her sister like a scalded cat.  Willow groaned and buried her face in her hands.  It was all going wrong!
         The chill black voice demanded, Renew the spell.  Do it now, while all is still prepared.
     Whoa, whoa, whoa, Willow protested. Do you fail to notice the mass disruption, here?  Buffy freakage?  General debilitation and achiness?  No way can I put this spell back together right this red-hot minute.  And what's this about the dying?  No dying!  Maybe we should all just take a juice break or something and calm down--
     You blind, stupid little fool, the dark voice said. The Key's mortal form was to be destroyed in this spell.  The vampire would then turn on you as the author of her demise, and the Slayer would be forced to destroy him.  Or he would destroy her--either outcome would have been acceptable.  Thus would the Balance have been restored.  But now the Key lives, and-- It cut off as Willow looked up and saw Spike rise and begin a fluid stalk towards her, murder burning in his ice-colored eyes and  every lineament of his body. But perhaps, it continued rather more cheerfully, all is not yet lost.
 

         "You lied to me, Red."  Half a dozen swift steps covered the distance he'd taken in a single leap going the other direction.  "Told me Dawn wasn't going to get hurt. "  Willow was still on hands and knees in the alleyway, looking up at him with her hair all wild about her pale, shocky face, her sweet little strawberry of a mouth hanging open.  She swayed to her feet, alley dirt all over the knees of her hippy-dippy Indian-print skirt and the top that almost but not quite didn't match--never was a clotheshorse, was Red, not in her high school days, not now.  Spike kept coming, step by step, backing her up against the alley wall, slapping palm to the bricks behind her and blocking her escape with his outstretched arm.  She shoved at him, but she might as well have been shoving brick and steel; no one without Slayer strength could hope to budge a vampire who didn't intend to be budged.
         "What happened to 'I can kill you,' Red?"  He lowered his face to hers, nose to nose, and he knew it was a hell of a lot scarier that his features remained perfectly human while the look in his eyes was anything but.  "Dr. Evil leave you a bit short on the old mojo?"  She was bleeding from a scrape on her temple, and scarcely noticing what he did, Spike drew a finger across her cheek, held it up to the light, and licked it clean.  Always suspected Red would taste divine.
         Willow cringed back against the bricks.  "No!  I didn't mean...I never thought... Spike, you--you like me!  You wouldn't--you said you wouldn't--!"
         His voice dropped to a rasping growl.  "I like lots of people, Red.  Doesn't stop me from getting a grin out of their messy demise." He wasn't enjoying this nearly as much as he should have.  Bugger.  "Bloody hell, Will, you sodding near fried Dawn!  What the fuck are you playing at?"
         By the time he'd finished the sentence there was more bewilderment than threat in his voice, and the face before him changed.  There was no other word for it; panic and confusion and horror drained away, replaced by a hard, calculating smile in a transformation as complete and profound as if she'd switched to game face.  "I'm not playing, Spike.  Your mistake if you think I am."  Her eyes went onyx, and she drove both small fists at him simultaneously, a blow he'd barely have felt had it only been physical.  The stink of ozone bit his sinuses, and black-violet lightning arced from her hands to his chest.  Needles of fire and ice exploded throughout his quiescent heart and Spike reeled backwards with a scream of agony.  Willow took to her heels and ran.
         For future reference, Spike old lad, if Will says she can kill you, she means it.  If she hadn't been weakened from the backlash of the interrupted spell, he'd be ash right now; power that could send a Harrier packing could incinerate a vampire in seconds.  Hugging the excruciating throb in his chest, Spike turned for a quick look at Buffy; she was talking to a still-groggy Giles about the pros and cons of taking Dawn to a hospital or just getting her home to bed.  She caught his eye: Take care of it, Spike.
         For a moment he thought of bringing Tara along; she might be able to reason with Will where nothing he could say would penetrate.  But Tara didn't look much better off than Dawn was, huddled in a sick soft heap on the ground with Anya fussing over her.  Xander was trying to keep Tanner and company from panicking.  Well, then.  Looks like the cavalry is you.
         Tracking conditions on Main were terrible--cold dry air that didn't hold a scent well, and hundreds of competing odors to confuse the trail.  But Willow'd passed this way only a minute or two ago, and creature of the sodding night, here.  Spike vamped out and stood still as death, listening with ears that could hear worms crawling in the ground below the sidewalk.  He took a deep breath, held it, testing the air--Yeah.  That way--and took off running, following the distant drumbeat of running feet and the fugitive scent of cinnamon.
         She'd been smart, taken a corner as soon as she could to get out of his line of sight, but it wasn't enough; he caught and cornered her against a parked Mercury within three blocks.  This time he didn't press his luck, keeping a wary distance between them.  "Don't want to hurt you, Will--"
         "Oh, don't you?" Willow said with a wild laugh.  "Sure looked like you wanted to back there!  And I didn't see Buffy the Vampire Layer rushing in to save me, either!"
         "Bit occupied with her sis, don't you think?"
         "It wasn't supposed to happen this way!" Willow's resolve face peeled away, revealing bone-deep misery beneath.  "You don't get it.  You can't get it.  I couldn't let her down again!  You don't know what it's like to be this--this boring, ordinary, mouse of a person, when everyone else around you is magic!  When you'd do anything to be special, make them notice--"
         Spike threw up his hands with an eye-roll that would have done Buffy proud.  "Oh, give it a rest!  I'm a fucking vampire, Will!  How'd'you think I got this way, sent in boxtops?"  He schooled his restless body to stillness again and tried for coaxing.  "Come on back with me, pet, tell us what's going on and all's forgiven--you know that."
         "With you?  After that little performance in the alley?  Incendiere!"  Willow gestured and red and gold flames blazed up in a ring all around her, scorching the paint job on the Mercury, and Spike fell back with a surprised yelp.  "How stupid do you think I am?"
         Spike, you're evil.  Well, so he was, he'd never made a big secret of the fact.  "Stopped, didn't I?" he demanded.  "Both times.  D'you think Buffy would've sent me after you if she thought--"
         "Stopped?"  Willow laughed.  "Come on.  Got stopped, you mean.  Wittle Dawnie got upset.  Well, Dawn's not here, and Buffy's not here, and you don't care quite as much about the rest of us, do you?"
         His hand moved towards his duster pocket, tracing the outline of the flat stiff rectangle within.  "As a matter of fact--"
         Willow's face underwent another transformation, from desperation to wicked amusement, unnerving in its swiftness; for a second Spike was reminded of expressions Darla used to get.  The ring of flames parted for her like the Red Sea, and Willow swayed towards him.  "Didn't you want to kill me there for a moment, when you thought I'd hurt your precious little Dawn?  And you do like me, Spike.  I can tell."  Her voice had grown low and sultry, almost teasing, and her eyes were orbs of polished jet against the pale, flawless skin of her face.  She walked straight up to him and slipped her arms around his waist; Spike, stunned into immobility, made no move to stop her.  "Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet."  She reached up and tapped a finger to the tip of his nose.  "No.  More.  Chip."
         She arched her neck, exposing the pale, perfect line of her throat, and the roots of Spike's fangs began to ache; he could feel the points of his canines digging into his lower lip.  "You know you want it," Willow whispered.  "It would be easy, right now, when I'm not so much with the big magic.  You could bite me right here.  Bite me, take me.  Up against the wall.  I'd scream.  You'd like that, wouldn't you?  How long since anyone's been really afraid of Big Bad Spike?"
         Oh God in Heaven, far, far too long.  Hypnotized by possibilities, his head dropped towards the delicious angle where her neck met her shoulder, lower, lower.  "That's right," Willow crooned.  "This is what you're meant for.  You're so tired of fighting yourself, aren't you?"  The blood-scent was fresh and maddening, far more so than such a small cut should have been.  "You want this.  You ache with every fiber of your being for the simple, sure days when you were Death incarnate, clad in power and glory.  You don't have to pretend any longer.  You can take what you want again.  I'd be afraid," she whispered.  "I'm not really into boys any longer, but you're very pretty, and maybe I'd even--"
         Her scent rose up around him like an herb garden in summer, mint and cinnamon and rosemary and Willow , warm and living.  Willow who'd given him a cookie to wash the Buffy-taste out of his mouth.  Spike shoved her away with frantic strength.  "No," he gasped, chest heaving like he'd just come off a marathon.  "No."
         Willow fell back through the flames and banged into the door of the car, face twisted in fury.  She slammed her fist against the hot metal, heedless of the blistering paint.  "Who do you think you're kidding, Spike?  You want this!  I can feel desire coming off you in waves!"
         Spike shook himself, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth.  "Sounds awfully familiar, this.  Someone gave me a pretty speech just like it once before.  Blah-de-blah, beast who must and will be free--soon as you do what I want you to, Spike, soon as you play fetch and carry all over Robin Hood's barn, Spike, soon as you change the leash you're wearing for the shiny new one I've got behind my back, Spike.  Well, tough on you, the chip's out already and you've no more cards to play on me.  And maybe I still have a yen for slaughter now and then, but you don't.  You're not Will.  I don't know what--"
         "Oh, I'm Willow, all right," she sneered.  "You think anything but what Willow wanted, what Willow decided was best, got us here tonight?  This is the way it always works.  I suggest, I explain, I point out the obvious--but it's always they who act.  But you?"  Her voice dripped scorn.  "You were magnificent, once.  You were an extraordinary monster.  Now?  You're pathetic, pretending you're on their side when everything in you cries out to be on the other.  You can try for the rest of your damned existence and you'll never be good, never be more than a killer on a leash--and your leash is gone, Spike.  You say you know what it is to want more?  Well, more's right here."  She yanked the collar of her blouse down.  "All you have to do is reach out and take it.  Because you can."
         Spike stood trembling.  That was the only reason he'd ever done anything, when it came down to it--because he could. Two years, two long years defined by can'ts-- can't hunt, can't feed, can't so much as kick someone in the shins without calling a firestorm of pain down on his head.  Over now, and had it really sunk in yet?  He could kill.  "No."
         Willow smiled, licking her own blood from her chin.  "Give me one good reason," she whispered, "why not."
         Spike squeezed his eyes shut, seeing the face of the woman he loved, the woman he'd live for, die for, kill for-- not kill for.  I didn't think I'd need to.
       In that moment he almost got it.  Almost, not quite--as close as a creature of sodding darkness could come, maybe, on short notice with the smell of blood and smoke in his nose.  Spike opened his eyes, and his hand went to his duster pocket again.  He pulled out the envelope Lisa had given him that morning, slightly dog-eared now, and flipped it at Willow.  The uprush of heated air caught it and sent it dancing across the flames for a moment before it fluttered, dipped, and burst into flame.  For a brief second the bright colors of the card within showed through the charring envelope, and then they too were gone.
         "Because I've gotten a taste for being treated like a man, Will.  Or whatever you are.  Found I quite fancy it.  And if I want to be treated like a man, I'd bloody well better act like one, hadn't I?  What the fuck has a century of being evil gotten me?  Dru left me, Angelus betrayed me, Darla--that bitch never gave me anything but grief to begin with!  At least I know the white hats'll stand by their own."
         Willow flung back her head and laughed, a completely delightful sound.  "Act like a man?  You mean pausing to ask permission of a fifteen-year-old girl before eviscerating a man for... what, exactly?  Being in your way?  All that stands between you and total carnage again is the whim of a couple of children less than a fifth your age.  Spike, Spike, Spike--if this is the best imitation of a man you can manage, what happens when they stop treating you like one?"
         With that she brought both hands together with thunderclap force.  The ring of flame roared up, twenty feet tall and red as blood, then winked out, taking Willow with it.  Spike stood alone on the sidewalk, staring at the ring of charred pavement and blistered paint which was all the evidence left that Willow had ever been there at all, ran a hand through his soot-streaked hair and muttered, "Bloody hell.  Knew there had to be a catch to it."

Part 27                                                  Part 29