Chapter 11
Dawn settles on reading for the distraction and the added bonus of helping us find more demons or more ways to determine what type of demon it is to make it easier to narrow down how to kill it. She’s over at the bookshelf looking for another volume when Anya comes back in with a tray of drinks, babbling a little bit about the state of the actual shop down the high street.
“Coffee, coffee, coffee—”
The air starts to feel sharp, and there’s a tickle up the back of my spine. I look around warily.
“Hot chocolate for Dawn.”
“Idiot!” Dawn snaps, turning slowly around from the bookshelf.
“You can have Xander’s coffee.” Anya says, not batting an eye.
“Hey!” Xander says.
The spewing of insults from Dawn’s mouth I expected, considering the way things were with Buffy, and the things she said before, “Did you think the blood wouldn’t reach you? I smell the death on you!” and the like. What I did not expect was her to also spew fire, and real fire given that as Willow and I dive to try and catch Dawn as she collapses, Xander and Anya are flumphing things around to try and put out the books.
“Dawnie?” I ask her, as she murmurs a little incoherently.
“That was it. That was li-like Buffy, but with fire.” Willow explains.
“Is Dawn okay?” Xander asks.
“Did I look like that?” Anya asks, “I hope I didn’t look like that.”
“I’m sure you looked so much better with a knife all up in your face.” Willow mutters.
Anya makes a scoffing noise.
“Woah,” Dawn remarks bracing herself on my arm and Willow’s to sit up, “That was—is that what happened last night?”
I nod, fretful, “I-I thought it was just me seeing things after the ritual…”
She wraps her hands around my neck, and I rub a hand down her back.
“You’ll be okay.” Willow says, pinching her cheek.
“It was the demon thing?” Dawn clarifies.
I nod against her neck, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Though you’ll probably experience some dry mouth.” Anya adds, “The fire breathing.” She continues when we look at her confused.
“It’s gone though.” Xander says.
“Yes, but where?” Anya asks, as I guide Dawn to sit at the table, “I mean, evil things. They plan. They have things to do.”
Xander offers Dawn the hot chocolate which she takes gratefully and sits for a while just sipping on it while we cautiously go back to our reading. I know I’m getting to the giddy stage of exhausted considering I’m working on yet another cup of coffee and I’m going to be peeking into the third day of being awake and that gets to the point where you might start hallucinating. I nod off for a little while, at least, given Dawn wakes me up to see if there’s a way I can get myself into a more comfortable position but that has me going back to the books instead.
After I’m not sure how long both Anya and Dawn are asleep on the books, and I figure getting up and stretching would be a good idea. Xander has had the same idea and is at the window when I walk over there, and notice that the faint light of morning is starting to peek over the horizon.
“It’s getting light out.” He says, when I join him, “Buffy’s probably on her way home from patrolling.”
“I like sunrise better when I’m getting up early rather than staying up late, you know?” I tell him, especially two days in a row, “I feel like I’m seeing it from the wrong side.”
Xander makes a nervous laugh, out of place and jarring, “Hey, Tara, this is probably crazy…but Spike got me thinking about the spell. It’s having consequences, isn’t it? I mean…it sure seems like it, and I was just wondering…did you know this might happen?”
“No!” I swallow after.
“Do you think…could someone have known?”
Surely he doesn’t mean…and I have to defend her, because no, she couldn’t have, “Willow is a talented witch. She would never do anything to hurt anyone.” Now I’m thinking back to all the comments about blood being spilled. I mean, Willow did have to spill her blood; but also the liquid she marked her face with, that I thought was fruit—could that have been blood too? Where would she have—stop being stupid. She would never.
Xander sighs, “I know. I know.” He raises his hands defensively, “Here’s me backing off quickly, hands in the air. I just meant—”
Willow cuts off the rest of his sentence with her loud declaration, “Thaumogenesis!”
She’s at the counter looking through yet another book.
“Bless you!” Xander remarks.
“She’s possessed!” Anya says, blearily, apparently she and Dawn were woken up by Willow’s remark.
“No, thaumogenesis.” Willow repeats.
“I think you’re right.” Dawn says.
“I’m not possessed. I-I think I figured it out. It’s not a hitchhiker it’s a demon we made.”
“We made a demon?” Xander says, “Bad us.” He holds out his hand for a slap so I oblige.
Dawn says, “Please explain.”
Willow turns around properly in her seat to face the rest of us, “Think of it like—the world doesn’t like you getting something for free, kinda like that time I lit a fire but the rain started. I didn’t want to think it was my fault but it might have been. Anyway, we asked for this huge gift: Buffy being pulled from Hell, and the world said, ‘fine you can have that, but you get this too.’ Or maybe it was Osiris’ rule, but still—boom—demon.”
“Technically that’s not a price.” Anya remarks, “It’s a gift with purchase.”
“Okay,” Dawn says, slowly, “but if we—you guys—made the demon, how come none of us can see it? All we see is us, doing creepy stuff.”
“I think it’s out of phase with this dimension.” Willow speculates, “Like it’s consciousness is here, but—but it’s body is caught between existing and not existing.”
“So, it doesn’t have a proper body so it’s borrowing ours, well Dawn and Anya, so far.”
“It manifested that copy of Buffy too.”
“It’s using people to scare and attack us.” I add.
“So, we need to uncreate it?” Xander asks, “Send it the rest of the way out of our world.”
“Except it’s linked to the spell, right?” Anya puts in, “So, if we sent it away couldn’t it mean the spell would have been canceled and, well, never happened.”
“You mean like it never brought Buffy back?” Dawn asks, voice trembling.
“Yes.” Willow answers, softly.
Well, okay, so we need a different solution.
“You can’t do that!” Dawn stands up, sharply, almost knocking some books from the table, “You can’t think for a second you’re going to do that.”
“Dawn—” I start but she cuts me off as she’s stalking towards Willow.
“If you think you can give her back to me and take her away again—” she snaps, voice edging on screaming, and this is exactly why we didn’t tell her we were trying, “No! That’s worse than if you never brought her back! You can’t mess with people’s lives this way!”
“Dawn,” Willow says, evenly, “We’re not going to do it that way.”
“How can you let her do this?” Dawn demands of the rest of us, “How can you even talk about letting her go?”
“Dawnie you’re not listening.” I go towards her, “We’ll find another way.”
“We will.” Xander confirms.
“Then do it!” Dawn slumps against me.
Willow’s scouring the book, again, already, “Wait.” She says, “Wait, Dawn, everybody—” she’s practically grinning.
“What?” Anya asks, “Why are you smiling? That’s inappropriate.”
“Because it’s temporary.”
“What is?” Xander asks.
“The demon. It’s gonna dissipate. It can’t survive on this plane unless it kills the subject of the spell.”
“So, wait, if it killed Buffy?” I ask.
There’s that energy shift, again. Crap.
“But that’s not gonna—” Willow starts.
“Thanks for the tip.” Xander says, voice gravelly and then falls to the floor, limp.
Anya is, naturally, the first to reach him. Dawn sobs against my shoulder. I assure her we’ll fix it. We can find a way to get it before it gets her.
“Won’t that mean Buffy dies again?” Dawn asks, softly.
Willow’s smiling still, “Think about it—” she says, “The book only says we lose Buffy if we send it away, take it off this plane. What if we pull it through and Buffy kills it. It would be like it killed her and got to stay. She kills it and gets to stay, not us booting it from reality. It’s dead.”
“Okay—” Dawn says, “How though? How can she kill it when its not fully formed.”
“We make it fully formed.” Willow looks at me, “If we can make it solid. She can kill it.”
I nod, “Okay. Let’s sort out that spell then.”
“We’ll head over to the house.” Xander says, “See how we can help.”