Pensioner, part3

• * *

Let me welcome you to Le Perdu.

Buffy Summers had found my house in the desert hills outside Sunnydale, and this was no small feat. My house is not what it seems; my house is many houses in many places and many times. There are no magic wards to protect me. Wards are the solution and the final resort of the frightened and the amateurish. I am neither, and my sanctuary is called as it is for a reason. The Slayer had, in fact, been lucky in her quest for me, because at any given moment, Le Perdu may not be visible to the eyes of the world, or even in this world.

Le Perdu, my home, my refuge, my quiet floating isle of Gramarye. Here is where I keep my bed, my weaponry, my witch's garden, my music, all my passions and all passion spent. Here is where I keep my damaged flesh and what remains of my angry restless spirit. Here, too, is where I keep spells that no one could touch but me, and books that my ex-lover would kill to get, if killing was his way. Despite the old nickname, Ripper, killing hadn't been his way when I'd known him, except as a last resort.

The Slayer watched me as I meditated. She said nothing at all, merely waiting for me; this was a wise child, if she could regnognise those rare moments when passivity was her ally.

I sighed, knowing what was wrong with the young witch, knowing where she'd gone, knowing what was pulling her back to a place she should never have been in the first place. The help was mine to give, and it would mean a few things that weren't going to make me happy, foremost being a trip into the living world. First, though, I had to confirm what I believed.

I went to the door, the cats watching me with the same blue straight gaze as the Slayer. "Hilde!"

"Madame?" She was outside the library door, and it was obvious she'd been there since leaving the coffee tray. Hilde was never happy when someone new breached the quiet sanctuary of Le Perdu. "What do you need?"

"Tea, Hilde. Black tea, in a wide white dish, a shallow dish. Make sure it's leaves - this isn't for drinking. And some cured catnip, and asphodel, and sweet alyssum - I need it fresh, from the garden. As quickly as you can, please. Also three flowers, white campion. It's the stuff growing near the lavender. Make the tea first, and let it cool while you gather the plants. And hurry - this must happen before the sun is over the yardarm. All right?"

She turned and went. I turned my good eye back to my beloved library, and found the Slayer smiling.

"Wow," she said, with no special emphasis. "You're - decisive."

"I know what I'm doing, you mean? Yes. I do." I sat down in the window seat, letting the last of the afternoon sun touch the ruined tissue on my right jaw and cheekbone. I could still feel warmth, even if I could feel little else. "Hilde will come back with what's needed soon. In the meantime, I need to know where your friend is now."

"Willow? Well, I'm not positive, but she's pretty much always at home with Tara these days. She's too disoriented to deal with much, and Tara needs her anyway." She reached for her purse. "I could call."

"Don't bother; that thing won't work here. It won't even turn on, much less give you a signal. This - this is not an ordinary house. Besides, it isn't needed. I can find her without a phone." I glanced out the window and saw Hilde, carefully putting a sprig of alyssum into her gardening basket. She was almost ready. I took a deep breathe, and faced the Slayer. "Listen to me. I'm going to show you something, and I might as well tell you not to bother trying to do it, or interfere, no matter what you see, or think you see. This is my spell; no one can do it but me. I want a promise you'll only watch, and touch nothing unless I tell you. Anything else could be dangerous. Understood?"

"Yes." I was beginning to admire her; not one unnecessary word, no questions. The simple promise held force. I was beginning to understand some of the deeper strengths Rupert would no doubt have seen and honed. When I had last seen him, he'd held the promise of a superb Watcher in the making.

"Good. Then sit quietly and concentrate on your friend's safety. Just envision her well, and safe, and home. I can't do anything until Hilde comes back."

"I'm here, Madame." And she was, fast and efficient as always, with everything precisely as I had asked.

(continued)

The Slayer came and stood nearby, her arms folded against temptation. "Where do you want me?"

"Exactly where you are." I took the dish of tea and arranged it in the center of the tray. The asphodel and alyssum I left alone, the protective breaths of the spell itself; the catnip I put aside for my familiars. The campion was the heart of the spell. "Can you see the dish?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed. "Good," I told her. "Watch, now. And touch nothing."

I ran my fingers around the edge of the dish. Once, twice, a third time, and a soft plangent note twisted its way free of the dish. "Lumiere cassée," I sang. "Lumiere cassée, Willow domina, lumière cassée, lumière cassée, ombres perdues héritées."

The dish echoed, picked up my pitch, sang back to me. I swirled the leaves of black tea. One crushed campion blossom, two, fell lightly into the brew. "Arrivent, arrivent." I crushed the third, and held it over the dish, and let it fall. "Arrivent!"

The clear liquid grew murky. Light flickered along its planes and edges, and the spherical music sang.

There was a girl in the dish, a young fox-faced girl with campion flowers in her hair. This was my sister, the young witch. I knew her face. She was of my tribe. She was one of mine. And she was in agony.

Fire, moving tendrils of flame. They reached out of blackness behind her, twisted through her red hair, slid into her eyes, turned the blue veins in throat and cheekbone into angry scarlet vines, growing, covering her consciousness like the evil thorns in a fairy story about a cursed sleeping princess...

"Help me." The voice laced the music, a tiny distant wail from a faraway place, from the girl in the dish. "Help me help me oh please, please..."

"Willow? Will!"

But the spell was done, the liquid still, the music silenced. I had seen what I needed to see. it was no more than confirmation of what I'd expected.

I turned to the girl at my shoulder. Her teeth were sunk into her lower lip. There were tears pouring down her face, splashing unheeded to my library floor.

"Where is she?" The Slayer could barely speak. "Where - what was that?"

"She's where I thought she would be," I told her. "She crossed over. That was a dimension that exists in an anomaly. She started a spell from the Malleus. The problem is that she never exited properly, and now it's trying to pull her back in permanently."

"Help her." The plea came straight from the heart, and I felt something I hadn't felt in a long while, a kind of empathy with a human being. "Please. Can you help her?"

"Well, yes. I can." I smiled at her. How odd; it was probably my usual half-frozen death rictus, but it felt like a genuine warm smile. It tapered away into a grimace as I briefly contemplated what lay ahead. "I'm going to. But I'm not going to enjoy myself at all."

• * *

It had been a long time since I had left Le Perdu and its surrounding hills for the world of man. Tonight, I had no choice.

A college dormitory seemed an odd haven for two witches, one damaged, the other being eaten alive. Perhaps there was safety in hiding among many, or perhaps they had no place else to go. I didn't ask.

The Slayer led me through crowds of lounging students. I could have gone invisible, had I chosen, but invisibility takes energy, and I was going to need all the energy I could muster. So I kept my eyes on the Slayer and followed where she led, suffering the curious stares, the small undisguised shudders at my ruined profile.

We came to the witches' room, and the Slayer, after two short taps, let herself in.

"Willow?"

"Buffy - there you are."

I froze behind her. I knew that voice. For a long, desperate moment, I wished I had opted for invisibility after all.

(continued)

"Giles! What are you doing here? Did something happen?"

"Willow called me. When I got here, she was sleeping. It's not natural, Buffy. Her eyes are half open and she seems to be fading in and out. She's in the other room, curled up with Tara. I gave Tara a sedative - she was agitated, a bit violent. I thought I should..." The voice I remembered, that had once been an integral part of my emotional landscape, died away. He had seen me.

"Oh, dear god," he said quietly.

"Rupert." The dead side of my face was burning intolerably. It took a second to identify the source, the hot tears leaking, scalding my face. I swallowed hard, and tasted salt. "It's been awhile."

He was staring at me, something I couldn't read painting his face. Loathing, repulsion? Or perhaps nothing more than the unbearable weight of memory? "What are you doing here? How can you possibly be here? Buffy..."

"She asked for my help." Something in my own uncertainty steadied me. I stepped into the room, locking both eyes on Rupert's. Those damned glasses - they were such an effective shield against my reading him, and they always had been. "I can help, and I intend to."

"God, god, god." He shook his head. "You intend to help, do you? How? A nice fire spell?"

The words were cruel as only Rupert Giles knew how to be cruel. The scar tissue that laced the right side of my body bore his name, after all. A thread of white-hot anger warmed me. "This is a witch's business, not a Watcher's," I snapped. "The girl is one of mine. You can search your books but you won't find a damned thing. I know where she's been, and what to do. So why don't you take your animosity and your disgust at what you did to me outside, and let me help the child?"

"Stop it, Giles." The Slayer spoke to Rupert, but now she looked directly at me. She had turned her back on her Watcher. "I'm waiting outside, unless you need me in here?"

"No. Go. And don't worry. I'll bring her back." I kept my eyes on the man I had loved and lost, barely noticing the door closing behind her. "Why are you staying, Rupert? Do you think I'll do that girl some damage? Or are you just so enchanted with what you did to my face that your feet won't work?"

"Still have that hornet's backside for a tongue, I see." He was smiling at me. Something had changed in his face in the last few moments. "Do you know, I find that comforting? We're about to watch the world as we know it die, and you haven't changed one iota. Comforting. Amanda, my darling, my only one, I thought you were dead. Come here, beloved. Come here to me."

He had used the old words, a lover's words. For a moment lasting centuries, I gawked at him.

Then he took off his glasses, and lifted his face, and let me see the love still there. He held out his arms, and I collapsed against him.

"Damnation." Eons later, I was mumbling into his chest, my fingers clutching his sweater. "Hellfire and damnation. I thought you were completely gone, out of my life. I'd put you out of my mind."

"You've never been out of mine." He held me, one cheek against my dead one; we were much of a height. "How could you be? I thought I'd killed you. When I interrupted your spell - I thought you were murdering my father. I didn't know what the interruption would do to you." A remembered anguish colored his voice. "How could I have possibly known?"

"I wasn't trying to murder him, he was tryin to murder me. I was using a fire-spell to repel him. Self-defense; he was trying to kill me. He had the Council's blessing, and one of their nastiest weapons." We had never talked about it, but the memory was never completely out of my head: the angry Watcher, seething with malevolent impotent rage at his own inability to control me or stop the passion between his son and the girl he regarded as his property. He had come for me, armed with a malison from the Council's personal sorcerers. I had wanted to tell Rupert the truth of it for nearly thirty years, and all that time, he had believed me dead. Now he was here, and ready to listen. But this wasn't the time.

(continued - sorry, I did issue the warning about it being long....)

"This witch in trouble - Willow." I ran a finger along his cheekbone, and felt a nerve jump, and the arm resting at the small of my back slacken out. He had always responded to my touch that way. It was nice to see he still did. "Rupert, did you know she'd been playing with the Malleus?"

"What?" He blinked. So defenceless with those glasses off, so wise, so touched by time with tiny lines. He was absolutely beautiful. "That's very unlike Willow. Are you certain?"

"She opened a portal, and she never exited the spell properly. Bloody little idiot, messing about with things she had no business going near. I did a location spell - oh, don't look so horrified, nothing more than tea and campion. I even let your Slayer watch, she had no idea how much her concentration helped. That's a very powerful girl you've got there. But the point is, I found her friend. She's still partly in the portal, in a chaos dimension." I got a good look at his face, then, and drew a sharp breath. "And I'd like to know why the very word 'portal' just stopped your heart for a moment. Rupert, what's going on? It's something huge, isn't it?"

"Yes, love, it is. But let's help Willow first, shall we? I'll tell you then." He let go of me, and tilted my face up to his. "I've wanted to do this for thirty years," he said quietly. "If I'd dreamed you were still alive, even for one moment, I'd have found you and done it. You can always turn me into a toad when I'm done."

The kiss was long and deep, and very effective; it dissolved thirty years of buried bitterness out of my heart and washed all the starch out of my backbone. For a few minutes, I forgot the deadness under my flesh, the blood that no longer ran warm, the lost sensation. I forgot that this death of feeling was Rupert's doing, and concentrated instead on another kind of little death. I forgot everything but the moulded lips against me, the touch of tongue to tongue, the unsteady pulse of breath. When at length we moved apart, two things were different: his walls were breached, and I was alive again.

"Forgive me." He wasn't talking about the kiss, and we both knew it. "Tell me when you can, what really happened that day in Oxford when my father died, after you died, but please - tell me you forgive me?"

"I forgive you. And you know what?" The good half of my face smiled at him. "It feels damned good. But now I have a spell to do. Come and catch me if I fall."

• * *

(on and on and on)

• * *

I knew how deep Willow's trouble was as soon as I saw her.

She was spooned beside Tara, one hand thrown across the girl's hip. It should have been a charming picture, restful, but it was neither. Tara's sleep was the fever-sleep of the drugged or mad; her eyes opened occasionally, small incomprehensible sounds tore themselves free, and fragmented into the air.

And Willow, whom I had come to help, was fading before my eyes. I took a few precious moments, seeing her, trying to get her scent, should vision fail me in the dark place I was about to travel. She seemed, at one moment, to be a white corpse laced with indigo veins; at the next, she was almost transparent. Weakened by anger, led down a path she couldn't hope to map into the black wood of the Malleus, Willow was deep in the thrall of a devouring spell.

"It's getting worse." Rupert stood at my side, looking at the two girls with pain in his eyes. "It isn't just that I don't want to lose either of them, you know. We can't afford to, not now. It's critical that Willow be here, present, all of her. I can't tell you how important it is."

"Yes, you can, and you're going to tell me, assuming I get back safely." I watched Willow's hair, tumbled across the pillow, partially covering her face. Even as I looked, I saw it fade to a weaker color. "Rupert - I can't wait. I'm going in after her. Even if I can't get out myself once I've pulled her back -"

"I know." There were thirty lost years in the words. "I know, Amanda. I'll be here, no matter what."

"And I know that. So promise me you won't interfere this time and then kiss me once, by way of remembrance, will you?"

"Come back safely." When he took his mouth from mine, the words came so quiet I could barely hear. "Do you know which spell you have to break? All right, then. I'm here. I won't interfere. I swear."

As I turned towards the sleeping girls, the last of the day's light faded from the room. I could wait no longer. As I came to them, I pulled three strands of hair from the crown of my skull. They would be needed.

I lay down on the bed, between the two girls, separating them. Tara made an angry, confused noise, but quieted as I laid my back against her.

Willow lay motionless. I took her into my arms, and began to sing. There would be two songs: one to free us, one to let us pass and close the portal behind us.

"Á ce refuge, venez sans risque," I chanted, and pulled one strand of her red hair free. A quick roll of my fingers, and the strand entwined with my own hair. The girl moved slightly in my arms, and I tightened my hold.

"Dans ce sanctuaire, vivez entièrement," I sang, and a second hair entwined, making the first two thirds of the spell-breaker. Shakespeare knew what he was doing: the spell was winding up. Willow began to writhe, and I clamped her with both knees, like a rider with a panicked horse. I mustn't let her slip from me, not now. With one hand free to finish the spell-cast, I completed the incantation song.

"De cet endroit foncé, vous êtes libèrès!"

The third strand of hair, the protecting knot complete. I held all three strands. They mustn't break, none of them, before the exit. If even one did, we would both be trapped. If all three broke, we would die where we lay.

A wailing of fetid air burst like a hurricane around us. The girl opened her eyes, unseeing and wide, and began to scream and thrash. I clung to her, fighting her, covering her, protecting her. Around us, the maelstrom that was this dimension of chaos sucked the strength from spirit and bone.

I screamed the first exiting command. "La porte, s'ouvrent entièrement!"

The portal opened. And at that moment, I nearly lost us both. I saw what Giles was going to tell me.

Somehow, I still held the three strands, unbroken. In shock, in terror, I cried out the second command: "Permettez le libre accês a tous ceux qui ne s'attarderaient pas ici!"

I saw it. I saw dimensions opening, creatures of fire and death, turning all life to dust. I saw the Beast, too old to be named, triumphant in her greed. I saw things incomprehensible to me: a young girl on a high tower, her blood falling in slow steady drops to the earth a hundred feet below. I saw the Slayer, triumphant, then dying.

I was falling myself, dying myself, spinning into the voids opening in the skies behind us. Somehow, I had held on to Willow. In the recesses of the mind that was my way home, there was something I had to do. There was something -

I remembered.

Three hairs snapped, torn in half. A final command. "La porte, fin!"

A soft rush of warm human breath. It tickled my one working eye. I opened it.

Willow clung to me. Her cheeks were rosy, a healthy normal glow. But her eyes were wide open.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." I sat up, pulled myself off the bed. I'd scarcely gotten my head turned around before Rupert was there, holding a glass of brandy to my lips. His other arm had gone round my shoulders without my noticing. Buffy had come in, also without my noticing. She had her arms wrapped around Willow.

Over the Slayer's shoulder, the young witch stared at me. I saw recognition in her eyes, a knowledge of kind, a face in the mirror of what she was. She knew me. I was the grandmother of her tribe.

"Who are you?" The question, which Buffy hadn't asked, demanded an answer. "What are you?"

"Oh - sorry. Rude of me. I'm Amanda Lisle. I'm the world's only living retired Slayer, as least so far as I know. I'm also a rather decent witch."

• * *

I had to tell them.

Willow had been there, she had gone through the portal and felt the roar and shred of the chaos dimension, but she hadn't seen what I had seen. She couldn't know what I now knew: soon, very soon, a key would be set into a lock, and the doors that separated where we are from where we should never be would swing wide. And a hideous, devouring darkness would follow.

Willow hadn't watched the Slayer die. But I had, and I had to tell them.

The problem was, the image was blurred. Some things were clear: the girl who bled, whose blood opened the gateways to hell. That one I could have picked out of a crowd of thousands. The tower itself, a massive crooked structure. The Beast, an ancient evil whose new form hid nothing.

I stood by the dormitory window, looking out into the darkness, Rupert at my side. In the room beyond, Willow tended to Tara. The girl's sedative had worn off, and she was restless, hard to quiet. Buffy sat curled in an overstuffed chair, watching us, looking relaxed. I wasn't fooled. I had been a Slayer once, a brief tenure, it was true, but there are things a Slayer doesn't forget. I knew that one motion would bring her out of her chair and across the room. She was as tense as piano wire.

"What was it like in there?" Rupert's voice was pitched low, barely carrying. "You looked as though you'd seen a ghost."

"Bad. It was bad." I dropped my own tones to match his. "Rupert - what you said to me, about the world as we know it dying - is it Glorificus? The Beast?"

His head jerked painfully. "Is that what you saw?"

"Among other things. Dimensional gateways opening. I saw a chimera. I saw a girl on a tower, bleeding." I went nearly inaudible. "I saw your Slayer. This is bad, Rupert. It's going to be bad. The worst that could happen, for you. Maybe for all of us."

He said nothing, but I felt the tremor run through him. He understood what I was saying. I reached out my hand and took his, and squeezed it as hard as I could. Before that day at Oxford when my world ended, I could have crushed bone and sinew. Now the fingers curled limply, exerting only the faintest pressure. They were Slayer's hands no longer. But they were still a witch's hands, and a healer's hands. They still had power, even if they had little strength. Even if I couldn't crush, I could hold and I could catch...

An idea, faint, perhaps not even possible, began to form in my mind. Witch's hands, healer's hands. Hands that could manipulate, hands that could catch what fell...

"I'm going home." Buffy stood beside us; we'd neither of us heard her move. "I'm going to get Dawn - she's with Spike. I want her to sleep in her own bed. God only knows when she'll be able to do that again." She turned to go.

The idea came clearer. Was it possible? Even if not, surely it was worth trying. "Buffy."

She stopped in her tracks. I saw her awareness; some quality in my voice had triggered her spider-sense. I had to warn her, to let her know we needed to talk, yet I couldn't let Rupert know. This was not for him, not yet.

I spoke carefully, without emphasis. "My house - could you find it again at need? In daylight?"

"I'm pretty sure I can, if it's where you left it." She was very quick, was Buffy Summers. I caught the barest lift of an eyebrow and a tiny signalling nod, away from Rupert's eye. "If it was daytime."

"Good. That's a load off my mind. Be careful how you go, child. I'll hope to see you when the sun shines again."

She shot me a look, and I knew she had understood my instruction. Then she was out the door and gone.

Willow came out and joined us, closing the door quietly behind her.

"She's fallen asleep. Finally!" A travesty of a grin twisted her lips. "Now I know what the mother of a colicky baby must feel like. I'm ready to fall over, myself."

"We should let you get some rest," Rupert told her. "The next few days are likely to take all the energy we've got. Or would you rather we stayed, in case you need help? I'm perfectly willing -"

The red hair swung. "No. I can deal. If I can't find a way to bring Tara back, I'm going to have to deal with this 24/7 anyway." Her voice faltered. "For as long as we're both alive, anyway."

Rupert and I left the building, and went out together into the warm summer night. For a while we simply walked; we were both busy with out own thoughts, but I was intensely aware of him. We walked for a good long time, off the Sunnydale campus, down the dark streets. On the main drag near the college, people sipped espresso, looked in shop windows, went about their lives. Couples held hands and stopped in doorways to kiss.

I shook my head, like a swimmer coming clear of deep water. "It's bizarre, isn't it? So bloody normal."

"I know. Sometimes I feel like an extraterrestrial, Amanda. I walk these streets and no one ever seems to realise what's going on behind the curtain. And it's such a thin curtain, too."

The curtain was thinner than even Rupert could guess. I moved in the cold airy spaces between dimensions, I knew what there was. Rupert, who had always lived in the comfort of books, couldn't possibly know.

I realised we hadn't been walking aimlessly after all when Rupert's steps slowed. "Ah. Here we are. Let me get my keys."

"Oh, are we somewhere? Where is here, precisely?"

"My place of business, the Magic Box. This is my shop."

I would have known this place was Rupert's from the moment of entry. It smelled like him, it felt like him; the warm shadowy room, oversized but happily cluttered, bore the stamp of his scent and his personality. I stood still, absorbing it, as Rupert moved around, checking that all was well. Outside, there was danger, the four horsemen approaching us at the speed of cataclysm. The magic shop was still a sanctuary.

"Amanda?"

His voice was at my left shoulder. I turned my head, disturbed that I hadn't heard him come up behind me. If my left side ceased to function at its usual level, I might as well be a dead woman.

"I'm sorry, beloved. I should have trusted you, that day in Oxford. I had no reason not to, and heaven knows, I had every reason not to trust my father. I don't know why I reacted the way I did."

The pale shroud that I had drawn over the memory filmed and became translucent. For a moment, I was back in the Watcher's sanctum behind the bookshop in the Woodstock Road. I heard my Watcher's voice, the voice of the man who was supposed to protect me, to cover my back, chanting out a curse as evil and ancient as anything the Watcher's son would ever be likely to find in his volumes of wisdom and silliness. I remembered feeling the malison hit, the deep bite and binding pain in stomach and bowel. I remembered the fire-spell, designed to repel, not to hurt, a wall of towering heat that would give me the precious moments I needed to escape. And I remembered my lover, the final excuse the Council of Watchers needed to dispose of a Slayer, the like of whom they'd never seen...

"I should have trusted you." Pain came from him in waves, shocking and raw. "Amanda - why did it happen that way?"

I closed my eyes, not against the memory, but so that I might better sharpen its edges. My own voice coming high and wild, summoning the witchfire, the wall behind which shelter I could escape to safety. I remebered the chant: flamme de mon coeur, flamme de mon oeil, repoussement mon ennemi! Venez entre nous! Couvre-moi! Couvre-moi! Couvre-moi!

Three times, to wind up the spell, to control it. But the crucial third time had never come. Rupert, shouldering open the door to his father's sanctum, seeing me calling the fire, not trusting me enough...

"Your command," I told him quietly. "My spell was specific, yours was not. Do you remember what you said? "Flamme de la sorcière, retours?" You broke in before I had control of it. I was trying to erect a wall, so I could run. He had a malison, an ancient Scots spell to destroy a witch. You never specified where the flame was to return to. So it went both ways, and took us both." A smile, small but genuine, twisted my face. "You always did think faster in Latin than you did in French."

The huge searing ball of witchfire, flaring like sunspots in both directions. I was younger than the Watcher, and faster; I came out technically dead for less than a minute, heart stopped, but I was in the end injured, not destroyed. I had mind, I had power, even the right side of my body was left scarred and worthless. The Watcher died, blind and burned, and his sanctum with him.

And Rupert had pulled him out, and left me there, believing me dead.

"Amanda..."

"No." I patted him lightly. How odd this was, that I, spoiled and destroyed, should be consoling him. "It's past. And he was your father, Rupert, with everything that implies. I've not been unhappy, you know. I have my house, Le Perdu. Someday..." My voice spiralled down, when I realised what was coming, tomorrow, the day after, much too soon. "Someday I want you to see it."

"You called your house The Lost?" His hands slid down my shoulders. I saw his cheekbones gleam in the nacreous light; outside the magic shop, the moon hung in gibbous enormity, nearly at the full. "Ironic."

"Not ironic at all. Literal. Eventually you'll know why, perhaps." His hands were producing reactions in me, things long buried. Even the dead side seemed, somehow, to be tingling. The hands travelled up, travelled down. I arched my back; the response was uncontrollable. "Rupert, what are you doing?"

"Apologising. Seducing you. Possibly both. Does it matter? Do you mind?"

"No," I said, and reached for him in the last warm place we might ever share.

The coupling was a fire unto itself; thirty years of everything unresolved between us made for a heady release. I made him cry, once, and then let him lose himself in me, the woman trying to remember, the man trying desperately to forget. He made me cry twice, once from the shattering of my belief that I would never again feel anything worth feeling. I licked salt from his collarbones, and he touched every inch of what he had ruined so long ago. I think he found it beautiful; he said he did. Later, much later, we slept, surrounded by crystal balls and massive books and all the paraphenalia of the sorcerer.

It was nearly full daylight when I woke. Rupert slept, spooned against me. But he opened his eyes at my first motion to rise.

"Amanda, before you go - there are things you ought to know, about what's coming."

I shook my head. "I know it all. I saw it, in the chaos dimension. I have a part to play in this, but that part isn't here. You likely won't know about it unless I fail. If I succeed, it may be a long time before you know that, either." I had broken a rule I had never thought to break, more than one rule. I regretted nothing, not one moment of it. But something, a chilly moment of realisation, moved over me, and for a moment I tasted my own mortality. How many more rules would I have to break, to see this thing through?

"You're talking in riddles." He sat up, naked and shivering. "And you're unnerving me, rather badly. You can't possibly know all of it."

"I know enough. Except - Rupert, there's a young girl I saw. She was tied to a tower, a high metal object. Not a building; it looked thrown-together, like a steel altar. Probably about fifty, sixty feet tall." I buttoned my shirt. "All I really need to know is, who is the young girl I saw? Thirteen or fourteen, prettyish, long brown hair, frightened half out of her wits?"

"Dawn. Buffy's sister." Even with the glasses in place, his face was pinched, drawn. "You saw her bound? On a tower?"

"Bound and bleeding. And she's nobody's sister. She's the Key. Glorificus will get to her, Rupert; you can't stop that. It's in the future. But Buffy will be able to stop the worst of the damage. And I may be able to do something more."

He said nothing. His eyes were on me. I zipped up my boots, and looked directly into his face.

"But this time, Rupert, you're going to have to trust me."

• * *

This time, when I let myself into Le Perdu and saw Hilde waiting for me, I knew what she was going to say.

"Madame?"

"Is the Slayer in the library? Good. Have you brought her anything?"

"She asked for tea. I brought her fruit scones and jam, to go with." Hilde's moments of unguarded humanity were rare, but endearing. "She's a skinny little bit, that girl."

She was in the window seat, with Isis and Anubis on her lap. Isis was stretched up adoringly, her sable-tipped paws resting on the girl's shoulders, searching her face. Anubis was curled on her thighs, making bread with his claws. Buffy didn't seem to notice the claws.

"You're here. Good. Did you have any trouble finding me?"

"A bit. I started at first light. The house - it's different, isn't it? From yesterday, I mean. It's gone all shadowy and...I don't know. Indistinct." She met my eyes. "Ms. Lisle, what is this house?"

So, she had seen. Le Perdu had moved, its outlines shifting and blurring. Something was getting ready to happen, something huge, and the consciousness of Le Perdu was shifting to accommodate itself. The Beast was close.

"Le Perdu? It's just a house, Buffy. It's the space within the walls that's something different." I saw her tension, and smiled to reassure her. "I'm not being deliberately mysterious, you know. There honestly isn't a name for what I've made here. The best way to describe it would be kind of ship."

"A ship." She mulled this over for a few moments. "Ships go places."

"So does Le Perdu. It moves through time, a bit; it moves through dimensional walls, rather a lot. I can steer it, mostly. Sometimes, I simply have to follow where it leads. And that's why I wanted you to come." I moved quickly, standing over her. I'm a tall woman, and she was quite small. "But first I want to know something. You said Rupert told you about me. That was a lie, wasn't it? He thought I was dead, and in fact he was right; for a few moments, I was dead. It may be hard to believe, but the very fact that you exist at all proves it."

"It's not hard to believe." There was the glimmer of a smile. "I was dead too, once. Drowned. Heart stopped, no breath, blah blah, the whole deal."

"Then how did you know about me, and where to find me?"

"He did tell me about you; he just didn't know he was doing it." She cleared her throat, and finished the dregs of her tea. "It was Tara. She was tossing and moaning, the way she's done ever since Glory got to her. Giles was there, we were helping Willow sedate her. And Tara said something - a spell or something, I guess. Something in French, anyway. And then she made a noise and looked at Giles. I remember what she said - she said, you should have trusted me, beloved, and instead you left me to burn."

I stared at her, frozen. "That's impossible. I said that to him nearly thirty years ago. It was after I woke up in that burning room, after I died, after I came back. And he couldn't have heard me; he was already gone. Impossible!"

"Well, Tara said it. If you think I'm a liar, why am I here?"

Our eyes locked. I saw the truth of what she was saying. "All right. I'm sorry, I wasn't calling you a liar. I'm just - never mind. I still want to know how you found me."

"Oh, that was Willow. Giles freaked, and he said some things, and Willow did a finding spell when he went back to the Magic Box, and she said to look for this house. So here I am, I mean, was. I'm here now because you told me to come, didn't you?"

"Yes. This will take awhile, and you won't like any of it and possibly you won't believe a word of it, but I can help you. I can help you save your sister, and I can possibly help you save yourself. But I need coffee. I - had a long night." I limped to the door; unaccustomed muscles were aching. "Hilde! Espresso for me, please. Black, strong. And some bread. What are you grinning at, Buffy?"

"An interdimensional witch's ship with an espresso machine. I like this place." The smile was short-lived. "You said you could help me save Dawn. How do I keep Glory from getting to her?"

"You don't. You can't. I saw that, when I went in to get Willow. She was in the chaos dimension that leads to Glory's world, and one of its functions is as a mirror to past and future. Glory's going to take your sister. You can't stop that. No - don't waste time protesting. I didn't say you couldn't save her, I said you couldn't prevent the capture. Now listen to me. Are you ready to listen?"

Her lips were trembling. "Tell me what I have to do."

"The portal is going to open, Slayer. Either you or the Key must die to reverse it. It won't be the Key; you'll give her back her life, as a love-gift." My mouth twisted into wryness. "A thing I perfectly understand, I assure you. But there's death, and then there's death. Ah - thank you, Hilde. It smells wonderful."

"More than one kind of death?" Her face was stony, but her eyes held hope. "Well - I've seen a couple of kinds myself. Could you be a bit more specific?"

"I intend to. In fact, I'm going to be very specific indeed, and I warned you, you won't like it." I took a breath. "You're going to jump from the top of the altar to which Glory's wretched little trolls have tied Dawn. Your body, the body they know as Buffy Summers, is going to land at the bottom, with the effects of the portal over and done. They're going to bury that body; they're going to believe they're burying Buffy Summers. They're going to mourn you. You won't be dead. It won't be you that hits the earth."

I had jolted her. "What - what-"

"Listen to me, Slayer. I know more about what goes on in the cold windy spaces between dimensions than most anyone or anything living, anywhere. You won't be falling through air. You'll be falling through layers of dimensional reality. And that strips the essential you away, leaving the shell." I see bewilderment on her face. "There are demons in the spaces, Buffy. They take your soul and leave your shell. But I can put Le Perdu into those spaces as well. I can steer it there. And I can catch you - not your shell, but you, the essential you, the part of you that remains you - while you fall. Do you want that?"

She said nothing. Her eyes were blind. I laid my hand on her cheek and spoke gently.

"You may have to stay with me awhile, you know, until you regenerate. It sounds rather reptillian, and it is. But I can catch you. You'll be shadow for awhile, I don't know how long, but you'll be you. You can come back again. Your - sister, your friends, everyone you love. They won't know you're alive."

"You could tell them," She had come suddenly alive; I could feel it under my touch. "Dawn will be grieving. I hate that, her not knowing I'm okay. Couldn't you tell them?"

"We might not be here; once I take my hand off the tiller, so to speak, Le Perdu will drift. And I need to take my hands off to do the spell that catches you safe. It may take a bit of time to get back here, to this place. But we will get back. Le Perdu is anchored to this spot, even if the anchoring chain is a few dimensions long."

"What do I do?" She was on her feet. "Tell me what I have to do!"