When Buffy and William arrived home, they found that Willow had already returned from her visit with the Wizard. They explained what had happened in the park. Just as Buffy expected, Willow had something in mind to try out.
They gathered around the carved altar in the basement. Willow arranged some milky blue crystals and sprinkled powdered pink coral dust on the floor around the altar.
Afterward, she read an incantation:
“Coradis, vendi, septulis mouri. Elafem, radres. Courdis.”
Willow sat back on her pillow and drew in a deep breath.
“Okay,” she said. “You fell down, got scabby, then got better?”
“As in, rapidly,” Buffy said.
“That’s about the size of it, yeah,” William said.
“Hmmm,” Willow said, looking over at Buffy. “Not get the ‘why this is bad.’”
“We need to know more about it. Is it permanent? How’d he get it? And why?” Buffy said.
Willow placed her hands on the corners of the altar. “It would help a little if Sp...” Willow looked up, then corrected, “William. It would help if William could tell a little more about where he was before he was here.”
“He doesn’t remember,” Buffy began.
“Rain,” he said.
“A rain dimension?” Willow offered.
“Not a dimension. A place,” he said.
“A place?” Buffy said.
“Dark alley,” William said.
“You know, I hear those places aren’t safe,” Willow put in.
“Well, what else?” Buffy said.
“Demons. Legions of the buggers. And a...” he strained to recall. “A dragon? Complete with fire. Something’s not right.”
William swallowed hard. He tried to hide the fact that his hands were shaking.
Willow saw, though. She said, “I have an idea. Something we can try.” She stood up and crossed to the stack of books in the corner. She selected a thin volume with a green cover and returned to the altar.
“Here,” she said, flipping through the book to a specific, pre-dog-eared page. “This won’t tell us where you’ve been, but it might help in telling what you are.”
“What am I?” William asked, hollowly.
“Clearly... not human,” she said.
“What?” Buffy said, both looking and feeling sold out.
“Guys, super healing action? Not even Slayers heal right before your eyes. Point is, I can read your aura,” Willow said.
William and Buffy exchanged questioning glances. Willow went on.
“It’s simple. Really. All creatures have auras. Good auras are like clear, wavery energy. Sometimes even regular people can see them.”
“Like a heat mirage?” William said.
Willow grinned. “Yeah. Good. Exactly. But evil auras are...”
“Black?” Buffy said.
Willow looked over the book proudly. “Good students both. I’m so proud. Anyway, auras also sometimes show streaks, or um, blips, kinda like an electromagnetic pulse recording of a charged event. For instance, a close brush with an uber-evil. Or, like a trip to another dimension.”
“Like heaven?” Buffy asked.
“Yeah,” Willow said, nodding. “Like that. Also, vampires, werewolves, demons – all creatures great and supernatural – they have distinctly separate auras. Which this spell should show us.”
Buffy looked to William. He nodded. “It could be an interesting read, all I’ve been through.”
Willow said, “You don’t have to. It’s just a spell. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
They all paused, as if waiting for the other to say something.
Buffy said, “Will it... hurt?”
“Not at all,” Willow said. Then, she amended, “It’s supposed to tingle.”
William sat forward. “Good then. Let’s have it,” he said.
“Just give me a sec and I’ll be set,” Willow said. She closed her eyes to center herself in preparation for the spell.
Buffy took William by the arm and pulled him to recline against the pillows they had arranged around the altar.
“You okay with this?” she asked.
“Need to know,” he said. He was distant now. Determined.
“Know what?” Buffy said.
He shrugged.
Buffy said, “If your aura comes out all hot pink with yellow spots, it won’t change a thing.”
“I need to know if there’s a reason for me being here,” he said.
“Other than me wishing it?”
“Does my heart good, lamb. Can’t deny it. But...” he gave a weak smile.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I get it.”
“Do you?”
Willow lighted candles on the four corners of the altar. “Okay, you two. If you’re going to make with the kissing, I can make a hasty exit.”
William sat up, all business. “No. We’re ready,” he said.
“Right,” Buffy said, taking her place between them. “Ready.”
Willow began to invoke the spell, muttering a series of lyrical chants beneath her breath. Seconds later, the candle flames flickered. The powder around the altar sparkled like embers stirred from a fire. The embers shimmered, turning to vapor in the air. As it coalesced, the spindrifts turned to feathery curls in the air above the table.
“Good,” Willow said, breathlessly. “It’s working. And, for the record: I don’t need a spell to know. Your energy... it’s like butter.”
William gave her a good-natured sneer. Willow took his hands in her own across the altar.
“Hold tight,” she said.
The wisps of vapor converged in a pattern above the candles. A deep red-gold color spread up through the smoke, like sunlight through red wine. A shape emerged – a deep crimson rose with velvety petals.
“Is that supposed to happen?” Buffy asked.
“Wait,” Willow said, concentrating.
The rose spiraled inward and upward like a galaxy of tiny stars. A mist gathered then into small glowing spheres like miniature suns. A wind gusted, guttering the candles and rattling the basement door. It rose to a gale, and a deafening keening sound filled the room.
“Willow!” Buffy yelled.
Willow held tight to William’s hands. She began an incantation in Latin, but the words were ripped away by the wind. The shining mist floated up between them. It gathered into larger, brighter pulses of radiant light that settled over him, setting his skin aglow.
“Oh,” Willow mouthed.
William clenched his teeth, but mostly to guard against the sound. He closed his eyes as the pulses of light bore into his shoulders, his neck, his chest and his arms. Traces of light moved through his veins, still visible beneath his skin.
“Wil!” Buffy called out. “Stop this!”
William tightened his grip on Willow’s hands.
Through clenched jaws, Willow said, “Not yet. Power...”
William groaned. His head snapped forward to his chest. The pulses converged on William’s heart. The sound of its beating drowned out the wail of the wind. William tried to restrain. He tried to hold on, tried not to scream, but he slid right over the edge into realm of blistering pain.
“No,” Buffy yelled. She touched William’s arm, but the voltage of the contract threw her back. She hit the wall then scrambled to her knees. So she didn’t see as Xander rushed onto the landing of the basement stairs. He called out to Buffy and Willow, but they couldn’t hear him. Then he tried to run in to the rescue, but he boinked off of some unseen force that barred him from entering.
William struggled. Willow’s hands glowed white, but she fought to keep her contact.
William threw his head back. His eyes were rimmed with light. A wave of energy erupted from him, smashing all of the crystals and flattening the candle flames.
“Oh God,” he panted. “I see...”
The violent winds abated. The storm passed. William sat within a sphere of pale light that emanated from him in waves. It enveloped him, then spread outward like pond ripples to encompass Willow and Buffy.
“Wow,” Willow breathed.
The light that fell around them appeared like the evening sky following a storm. A faint hum replaced the keening, and the air seemed to shimmer and vibrate around them.
William sat up straighter, relaxing his grip on Willow’s hands.
Buffy ran her fingers through the palpable energy that flowed from William. “Wow,” she said, echoing Willow.
The three of them looked up at once to see even blue-white stars swirling in the dark ceiling of the room like a constellation. As they watched, the stars faded gradually then finally disappeared.
Willow drew a deep breath, then released William’s hands.
“Good,” she said.
William, still breathless, could only nod.
“Great!” Xander shouted from the landing. “Broken stuff. Thought we left all that back in Sunnydale. But look! I get to be useful after all.”
He came down the stairs toward them.
Willow got to her feet quickly. “Xander! How was your day?”
Xander ignored the question. He pointed at William.
“You,” Xander said. “You come back. Things get broken. Wanna try explaining what just happened?”
Buffy got up too, dusting her hands on her jeans. She looked down at her watch. “Yes,” she said. “But no. I’ve gotta go.”
“Go?” Willow said.
“Meeting Dawn at the shops after school. I can just catch the train if I go right now,” Buffy said.
Xander sputtered. “Shopping?”
“Yep,” Buffy said. “William, you okay?”
William made no effort to stand. But he nodded that he was fine.
“Do you wanna come with?” Buffy asked. “Our sight-seeing, skating fun was cut short, but...”
“No,” William said, dismissing her with a wave. “You go. I’ll hang here with Glinnda and the Scarecrow.”
Xander glared at him.
Buffy took William’s hand, squeezed it.
“There’s no place like home?” she said, lamely.
“Indeed not,” William said.
As Buffy passed Willow, she said, in a hushed voice, “We’ll talk later, okay?”
Willow gave a curt nod, and Buffy left.
As far as uncomfortable silences go, this one rated at least an eight. Xander eyed William. William eyed Xander. Willow made an effort to break up the macho stare-down, without much success.
Finally, Xander said, “What’s with the spellage, Wil? Learn anything... of use?
Willow shrugged, uneasy. She cut her eyes to William.
“No worries,” William said. He stood up. “I’m beat. Think I’ll go for a nap.” He managed, despite utter exhaustion, to swagger past Willow to the base of the stairs. From there, he started to say something to Xander.
“Don’t even start,” Xander said.
William climbed toward him, slowly, deliberately. When they stood shoulder to shoulder, he said, loud enough for Willow to hear, “Don’t worry, Harris. You and I don’t have the answers. But they do.”
And then he left the room.
~*~
Willow continued to clean the basement, righting her candles, picking up pillows. She kept up her purposeful performance under Xander’s disbelieving eyes.
“Okay, Willow,” he said, finally. “Tell me what just went on, cause it looks like you were meddling with unseen forces of the breaking kind.”
Willow looked over her shoulder. “It was an aura detection spell,” she said.
Xander descended to the bottom of the stairs “Aura?” he said “Detection?”
Willow made a makeshift dust pan out of a scrap of paper, then started sweeping up bits of shattered crystal. She talked as she swept. “We read William’s aura. Very basic spell, basically. Tells you if a person’s a person, or a demon, or good or evil.”
“Am I off in guessing some touch of evil with all the abundant destruction?”
Willow whirled on him. “I know what you’re thinking, Xander. I know you don’t like having William here...”
“For God’s sake, Wil. It’s Spike,” he said. “And something is up. Something you aren’t telling me. Should I head for a bladed something and take it on upstairs, or what?”
“No,” Willow said, urgently. “And, no. Nothing’s up. I just don’t...”
“Don’t what?”
“I don’t know how to read the reaction we got. His aura’s like nothing I’ve seen or read about. It was primal, and pure, and the power...”
“None of these things I’m liking,” Xander said.
“Buffy wants to wait to talk about it, so I think we should,” Willow told him.
“Again, not liking,” Xander said.
Willow crawled along the floor, sweeping up. “Xander, I don’t know what we’re dealing with. Something just happened. Something big... I need to dive into some texts to figure it out.”
She found an unbroken clay vase in the corner. Willow poured her collected crystal shards into it.
Then, she looked up at him, puzzled.
Xander took her by the elbow, helping her to her feet. “Willow, what is it?”
She stared at Xander for a second. She said, “William’s not human.”
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