Chapter 8
Willow is still on the phone, so I do all the getting ready for bed things. I’m brushing my hair when she comes back in the room and starts changing clothes herself.
“How did he take it?” I ask her.
“Fairly well.” She says, “Lots of ‘Dear Lords’. I think I actually heard him cleaning his glasses.” She stops putting lotion on, “He is coming back though. It’ll just take a few days to get everything sorted out, of course.”
He probably has to meet with The Council too given I’m very sure that they had worked out Buffy was not actually alive.
“We never did get another Slayer showing up though, maybe because Faith is still—” she trails off, “Well, no, Buffy was alive when Kendra died, and we got Faith in the first place.” She purses her lips.
“Maybe they Awakened and have had something to do elsewhere in the world.”
We climb into bed.
“Are you doing, okay?” I ask her.
“Yeah.” She says.
“Will, this is me.” I remind her, “You don’t have to have to be brave.” I slide closer across the bed.
“It is a little noisy up here.” She admits, pointing to her head.
I slide closer to hug her, “Better?”
She nods, chin brushing the top of my head, “It’s narrowing things down.”
“To what?”
“Well, Spike was talking about bad things which could happen from this and Buffy doesn’t seem—I mean I thought she’d be happy—grateful.”
“You thought she’d thank you.”
Willow nods.
I push more soothing towards her, “She just got back.” I remind her, “She probably half thinks it’s not even real. She was in Hell, Will, give her a little bit of grace.”
Willow nods and puts a hand on the arm I have draped across her and squeezes slightly.
“There’s something strange whi—” I don’t get to finishing my recounting of the Not-Dawn moment because the picture frame above us shatters, and Buffy is somehow yelling at us from the foot of the bed.
Buffy’s voice drops to a scratching, creeping one as she demands of us what we did, and starts accusing us of having hands that smell like death, “Rattling the bones.” She scrapes, “Did you cut the throat? Did you pat it’s head?” This culminates in her grabbing a crystal ball from the nearby low bookshelf and hurling it at us.
Willow has been climbing out of bed to turn on the light. This puts her between the door and Buffy.
The crystal ball shatters against the picture whose frame is now broken.
Buffy is gone.
She didn’t push past Willow. She’s just gone.
There’s no glass or broken crystal in the bed, either, which I point out to Willow who is standing shaken by the side of the bed. I try to slow down my pounding heart rate. It wasn’t real? We both saw it though clearly, so we weren’t asleep.
I follow Willow to Buffy’s room to check on her, and she’s sleeping, wrapped up in her blankets. She’s clearly been asleep for a while.
“What was that?”
I think back to Not-Dawn, “Something’s in the house. Before Not-Buffy happened. I was about to tell you before that happened. There was something with Dawn.”
“What with Dawn?” she looks nervous.
“I was saying good night.” I explain, “and suddenly her eyes were white, and she was saying similar things to what Not-Buffy was saying, but just two sentences before she slumped against me and was herself again. She thought she just got dizzy from being tired, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to worry her but—”
Willow nods and grabs the phone we keep on the bedside table, “I don’t know what it’s after but let me check with—” and I don’t need to guess who she’s calling.
“Xander,” she says, “it’s Willow. We were just attacked.”
Willow puts the phone on speaker so I can hear.
“—pire?”
“No. It was Buf—well, it was something that looked like Buffy. Given it threw things, broke picture frames, but everything went back to normal when she disappeared, and Buffy was sleeping and then Tara had a moment with Dawn before that. She was telling or trying to tell me about it when the Not-Buffy thing happened.”
“What happened with Dawn?”
“It was like she was possessed for just a minute or two…” I explain, “So, that’s why we think there’s something in the house.”
“You need to get out of there.” Xander says, which is a good idea, “Wake up Buffy and Dawn, don’t make a big deal out of it tho—Anya!” he shouts.
“Xander?” Willow calls, “Xander, what’s happening?!”
We hear the phone clatter to the floor and him calling her name from the background and a flumping noise that is something soft hitting something hard, something big and soft and Xander still calling Anya’s name but more softly, and then Anya sounding confused. Was it her dropping to the floor?
The phone gets picked back up, “So, uh,” Xander starts, “Maybe not safe somewhere else. Anya just—well, she—”
“What?” Anya asks, “What did I do?”
“It wasn’t you.” Willow says, “It was whatever was going on.”
“I just—” Xander isn’t sure, “I don’t—well, okay. It looked like you’d cut your face, both cheeks, with a knife.”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“It’s a trick.” Willow says.
“Y-yes.” I add in, “Something’s wanting to scare us.”
“I think we should table this discussion until tomorrow. In the daylight. Hopefully outside it can’t get to us.” Xander sounds, as exhausted as I feel, “I can barely focus right now.”
I don’t think I’ll sleep.
Willow agrees, and we hang up.
We wind up downstairs eating leftover pancakes and trying to talk about random other topics while we clean up as quietly as possible so as not to wake anyone who is actually sleeping upstairs, hopefully. I imagine if something had happened to one of them, they’d have been looking for us, especially Dawn.