OK, there will be the epilogue after this, but here's the kick in the nuts:

"Thanks, Mrs. G, for the cake, and for being so kind. What's the time - half past six! I'd better run."

A light wind was lifting dust from the town's streets. It clung to my bicycle tyres and puffed into small, insignificant whirlwinds as I made my way north. Outside, I saw a dark bookshop, but I thought I saw a dance of light coming from the flatlet in the back, and the "Closed" notice no longer hung in the doorway. I locked my bicycle and tried the front door of the shop. It opened, and I let myself in. The shop itself was in fact dark, but there was a light coming from the back, not the overheads, but something else, something strange, something....

"Rupert?" My skin was crawling, my spine jerking with whatever this was. The noise level in my system, the jungle drums, thump pound bang thump pound bang, shot up through me. Something was wrong. Whatever was wrong, it was here. It had come here. "Rupert!"

Out of the dark, words came.

In the moments before I fell, bound with ice and pain, I recognised the language, although I had never learned it formally. It was erse, old Scots, the words straight out of the mouths of the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, a curse, a binding, words of incredible power.

A malison. I had been brought down in agony by a malison, oldest of curses used to bind a witch or a sorcerer. It could not kill me, but it would render me helpless, leave me writhing in agony for my enemy to finish off at their leisure.

"Who...why...?" The words twisted halfway out of my clenched jaw. I felt the malison begin to bite into bowel and spine. "Rupert..."

"Rupert's not here, I'm afraid." Richard Giles stepped into the uncanny glow from the kitchen of the flatlet behind. The light, dancing and green, slid through the partially opened door like a sea creature hunting for dinner. "I sent him off the Cambridge to go bring down a harmless little demon. The Council provided me with the thing, along with this curse. It's just you and me. Happy birthday, witch."

"Why?" Something had come into me, and was fighting, walling off bits of the malison. I couldn't defeat it; I couldn't reverse it. Only the man who was supposed to watch me, cover my back, defend me, could do that. I doubted he would, not of his own free will. I had to make him, force him, and I was running out of time. "Why?"

"Because you're no Slayer. You've never been a Slayer. Your contempt for the Council, for the training, for the self-discipline - we've watched it grow. Your seduction of my son put the tin cupola on it. A Slayer dies, a new one is chosen. So, tonight you die."

He took off his glasses, and I felt my heart stutter, even as the malison moved towards the chambers, slowing its beat. His eyes were full of light, sorcerer's light, fire.

No. Not fire. The fire, that is for you to do. You must make a needfire, created from the friction of your power, pulled hard against his malice. Drive him back; the malison is not yet cast. He only spoke it once, petite. Break his concentration, the malison will be lost. He has no power of his own, it's all on loan. Hurry now, Amadee.

Richard Giles took a step towards me. "Shall I share a secret with you, Amanda?" The unnatural light flickered and changed colour in his eyes. "I've been wanting to do this for years."

"Flamme de mon couer." I whispered it once, thought it twice. Everything was impossibly slow. I needed time, time to build the needfire that would break the malison and get me safe away from here. There could be no shortcuts, no abbreviation; the full incantation was needed. But everything was slow, too slow....

He kicked me, just under the heart. I felt a rib break, the crack of it echoing internally. It was a mistake, a stupid thing to do: the malison slowed a second, finding a pain it hadn't inflicted, searching, seeing. And there was something, a new light, coming from somewhere else - a jangle, overheads, lamplight, a voice I knew, confusion. I had pulled myself to my feet, somehow. I must be ready to run.

"Flamme de mon oeil." Once said, twice thought. Richard Giles was swaying a bit, as if the venom he was expending against me was somehow taking bits of him with it. "Repoussement mon enemi! Venez entre nous!"

Once said, twice thought. The malison had gone deep, the broken rib a hundredfold more painful that it would have been without the sorcerer's curse. A bit more to this spell and then I could go, be free of this, and hope that I would retain the Slayer's gift of fast healing.

A wall of flame, the needfire hot and cold and ten feet tall, now stood between us. It was made of friction, the friction that came of the rub between Richard Giles' need to destroy and my will to repel. You cannot simply summon a needfire - there must be cause, or else there's no friction.

"Couvre-moi! Couvre moi! Couv-"

"No! Amanda, don't!" Rupert's voice - what was he doing? I jerked my head as he stared, his face distorted, as he opened his mouth and words poured out of him.

"Flamme de la sorciere, retours!"

The needfire broke. It became a huge surging pyroclasm of psychic lava. Incomplete, the protecting order never given its triad of voice, it heard Rupert's command to return to the sorcerer. It obeyed.

A mushroom cloud of flame belled out at supernatural speed. I heard Richard Giles scream, a hideous bubbling noise of death and frustration and hate, as he was engulfed. The fire would have burned him hard, since he had initiated the friction to feed it.

Rupert had told the needfire to return to the sorcerer. But he hadn't specified which sorcerer. It came for us both.

Whoops. End:

Rupert had told the needfire to return to the sorcerer. But he hadn't specified which sorcerer. It came for us both.

The malison was broken, but I was on fire. I could feel it, see it, watching without comprehension as my right arm, my right hand, all the right side of my body began to shrivel, to scorch, to turn black. I felt no pain; there was no pain left in me, after the malison. I pulled myself back and away.

"Rupert..." It was garbled. Something was wrong with the right side of my face; I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't form words properly, I needed help. "Rupert..."

The flames had caught now, going from spectral to physical. The place was on fire; there was smoke half a metre deep along the floor. Fire licked at the hardwood; the smoke became laced with the individual scents of the fire's fuel. Books, leather, varnish, burning meat.

"Rupert?"

My right eye wasn't working; I turned my head and saw him, with my left. He had Richard's body in his arms. At least, I assumed it was Richard's body; I could think of nothing else this blackened, unrecognisable thing could be, that Rupert would want to save it while he left me in the fire. My father's voice, from the night of the first fire, came back to me: Do you feel protected?

"No," I whispered. I saw Rupert go, saw him abandon me, saw him turn his back to save the man who had brought this upon us all. "No. You should have trusted me, beloved, and instead? You left me here to burn..."

Get out, petite. You are strong, you can pull youself out along the floor, there is no real fire in the flat, and the doors are open. Go. Show me your strength. Trust only yourself. Go.

"No." Rupert had left me to die. I wanted no more it this; I wanted no more of anything. "No."

I closed my eyes, and felt my heart stop. Going into darkness, I gave myself a moment to watch myself die.

• * *

holy cow, Deb. Are you trying to kill me? Yes, absolutely to the doorway. Amazing to everything else.

buzz, first of the shop phone and then of the personal line, shrilling through my head

I'm wondering about the use of Buzz and then shrilling, here.

Also, isn't the word spelled inchoate? or am I on crack?

And did I say amazing? Damned amazing. I've told Greg he must find all your books for me in the library system, and if he can't, he has to somehow buy them for me. I did it with the narrowed, evil eye. I think he'll come through.

Deena, yup - you spelled inchoate just that way. And I haven't really done any editing on this, but buzz needs to go byebye, I think.

The first four books are indeed out of print. I think my website has links to the "lemme know if one of these four titles shows up" places, like abe and powells and whatnot.

Still have the epilogue to write, though.

edit: spelling fixed. Re Buzzing, howsabout

I rang up, risking that Richard was in fact elsewhere and not at home, and listened to the double tone, first on the shop phone and then on their personal line, shrilling through my head, bringing to my inner eye the uncomfortably clear picture of an empty shop, an empty flat, an empty world.

YES!

or, you know, I like that much better.

(gribbling)

That was a lot of work, for one morning.

Mopping floors now. Waaaaay easier.

but I did begin the epilogue....

Does it help knowing more people will see this and love it than will see your sparkling clean floors?

Oh, the sparkling clean floors (and they are, now) are for writers group tonight: one pregnant lady, so clean is good.

Deb, that was not only visual, it was audible. As Deena said, amazing. I'm going to have to read The Pensioner again now.

connie. Of all the scoobs, I could see any of them, all of them, turned and staked before Giles. My sweet, precious Giles. Can't even think of him...

...but now you've done it, and there he is. You've got all the voices, all the mannerisms just right. And now I'm not sure what's canon and what's connie's.

Plei, do you ever wonder if they give AD lines, or just tell him what Wes needs to say and turn him loose. Or could he play the phone book with that weary, bitter but not beaten twist to his voice and his face? You've got him, dearie. To the life.

And now I'm not sure what's canon and what's connie's.

Beam!!