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Author's Chapter Notes:
I wrote this chapter in Scotland, so nods to Stanley, Des and Christian for the inspiration. You guys were unforgettable.
Harmony Kendall had done of lot of skeazy things in her time at Wolfram & Hart. A lot.

But the last one – not so bad. He bordered on cute, in the hollowed-out heroin chic kind of way. Hooded eyes. Bruised bones of a ribcage. And a mouth on him like a lawnmower. Of course, with the accent, she barely understood half of what he said.

And it wasn’t like Glasgow was Paris or even LA, but she and Des did know how to have a good time. He was (had been) an activist against the evil capitalist regime by day, and a rock star crackhead by night. Now he had a new job and a new addiction. And, he belonged to her.

The only pitfall in her paradiso was his friends. They made pigs look like Nobel Prize winning scholars. They were like ADHD kids hyped on espresso, even before the bonus vamp strength and speed. She was beginning to feel like that lady whose house was made of so many shoes. Or was it house made of children? Anyway, keeping track of them was no trip to the mall.

Point of fact, Harmony was observing from her bench in Glasgow Green as three of Desmond’s mates tore down the wrought iron fence that stood between the park and the street.

“Um, Des,” Harmony said. “Not that ripping stuff apart isn’t riveting but... I’m kinda bored.”

Desmond put his fists to his temples. “Hit the shops, Harm. Nick something pretty. Boys and me got some barney to cause.”

“The shops all close at 7,” Harmony said.

“Open ’em up!” Des yelled.

Stan tore a fence post from concrete. “Open ’em up!” Stan roared, hoisting the post like a javelin over his head. “Open ’em all up, yeah!” The other two started jumping up and down, screaming to the sky.

“Whatever,” Harmony said. She got up from the bench. When she did, she spotted three familiar bald, fat men - all shirtless and wearing belted tweed slacks that billowed in bulky folds under their bellies. They were drunk and oncoming.

“Uck,” Harmony said. “You were supposed to vamp those guys, Des. Are you my minion or not? ’Cause Thellian was pretty clear about his objectives and his timeline and...”

Des’ hand shot out to grip Harmony’s throat. She grinned at him, lashes fluttering.

“Baby,” he said. “You’re my goddess.”

She shoved him away. “Then do your job,” she said. Then added, “Slave.”

Des eyed the approaching sots. He sneered. “If I sire them, I’d just have to stake them. You do it.”

“No. Way. I am not touching them. They have... flab. I have issues with flab,” she said. “Besides, you can’t kill them. Thellian said.”

“Thellian said,” Des mocked.

Stan and Jamie were fencing with the fence posts. Christian had moved on to the Glasgowegian’s fave fab past time: spray painting anything that didn’t move, and some things that did. He chose as his canvas the backside a wide vinyl promotional banner. Harmony watched as he patiently sprayed out capital letters in sky blue paint: A-N-O-T-H.

The three belly boys bellowed to Stan and Jamie. There was much carousing and too much physical jiggling for Harmony’s liking.

“Des,” she said. “Dessie. Please vamp the sweaty beefy men for me,” she said. She ran her tongue down his cheek, “I’m wearing pink cashmere tonight. Wouldn’t wanna get it... dirty.”

Desmond growled deep in his throat. “I’ll take care of it, luv,” he said. He went over to join his mates, and the Loathsome Threesome. Meanwhile, Christian painted away.

– E-R S-W-E-E-T-E-R W-O-R –

Harmony watched the words taking form, spellbound. Christian was a little weird. Even as a vampire, he did prissy things like using a handkerchief to dab his mouth after feeding. Oh, and he wrote things. Poems and stuff.

Stan and Jamie were screaming again. The three oafs started screaming back. They all bent forward in a semi-circle, mouths open wide and tongues lolling out like stupid, red-faced monkeys. Then they were jumping, totally spazzing out.

Stan yelled, “Hey! Let’s go burn stuff.”

“Oh,” Harmony said, rolling her eyes. “Not again... Des!”

Harmony’s cell phone rang. The ringtone -'Pachelbel’s Canon in D - meant the Big Guy himself.

“Oh thank God,” she said. She fished her phone from her shell pink Hello Kitty handbag. “Here, Boss,” she said, raising her voice.

All of the Rugby Rowdies fell silent, including the tubby brothers, as Harmony took the call. Only Christian kept his focus on his paints.

- L-D I-S P-O-S-S-I-B-L-

“Sure,” she said, brightly. “You bet. Absolutely, Boss. We’re on it.”

When Harmony ended the call, her whole body quivered with excitement.

“Good news, boys,” she said. “We’re needed in Amsterdam.”

Des and his crew did the whole hooligan twist and shout again. Harmony felt a headache coming on, but it was nothing a little blood at 98.6 wouldn’t fix.

Christian was shaking the spray paint can, adding on the final letter of his sweeping epitaph. Harmony read it aloud, but not so as anyone else but her could hear it.

“Another, sweeter world is possible,” she read. Harmony gave Christian a lopsided smile. “The boy’s got the big idea,” she said.

~*~

Thellian snapped his phone closed with a click. He said:

“She must stop killing them, Lalaine.”

Lalaine trailed her gloved fingertip around the edge of her wine glass. “I know it,” she said.

“They are no good to us if they are dead,” Thellian reminded her.

Lalaine eased her shoulders against the smooth fabric of her chaise. “Thellian,” she purred. “She’s only following your example. You killed nine of them...”

“They were priests. In opposition,” he said.

“She doesn’t understand the distinction...”

“She should,” Thellian said. His green eyes glinted. He glimpsed around the dining room that once belonged to the Bali Tropik Resort and Spa. Stacked bodies lay like cordwood against the walls. Bodies Morna had mangled.

Lalaine followed to the end of Thellian’s line of thinking. “It is a small loss for the big cause,” she soothed.

Thellian pushed back from the table. He stalked to the edge of the room, peered out into the hallway where Morna played hopscotch between the patches of light and dark.

“It’s the spell,” Lalaine said. She sipped from her glass. “Morna didn’t understand what was happening. We should have guessed that added power might make her jumpy.”

“Jumpy,” Thellian said, not smiling. “Lalaine, I need you to keep her from being jumpy. I am counting on you.”

Lalaine watched him through her spiky black lashes. “I love it when you talk this way. So focused,” she said.
Thellian crouched beside her. “We are focused. Our plan, Lalaine. It is working. My life’s work.”

Lalaine brushed blond sweeps of hair from Thellian’s face. “Balance and restoration and a brave new world for us,” she said. She cupped his face in her hand.

“I need you in Japan,” he said, quickly.

“Japan?” she clicked her tongue. “Exciting.”

“I have business in Moscow. We can reunite in London with Luxe and the others in a fortnight. Do you want Morna with me, or with you?”

Lalaine paused, considering. “She has such fondness for the little girls in their Prussian school clothes,” she said. “Makes her nostalgic for the old days. The Judas Cradle. The gibbet. Remember?”

“Remove your glove,” Thellian whispered.

“You do it,” Lalaine said.

With his teeth, Thellian tugged the glove down from her wrist. He pressed his lips to the blue traceries of veins that laced beneath her skin. “Watch her,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Lalaine said, listening to the sound of her sister turning clumsy cartwheels in the hall. “We’re family.”

~*~

When Amy was a rat, Willow bought one of those round plastic globe-y things for her. She did this under the misconception that, as a rat, Amy would like to get out of her rodentia confines once in a while to stretch her ratly legs. Amy, however, seemed to detest the thing. She rolled it to the nearest wall where she cowered until Willow returned her to her cage. Willow wound up giving the ball to Xander, who filled it with pennies which he later traded for comics.

Walking through the astral plane invariably reminded Willow of Amy’s rat ball. It was like pushing through the umbra in a membranous bubble propelled by the force of her willpower. It was tricky work, getting from place to place while leaving your body parked in physical storage. But with the constant contact of the Coven to keep her focused, Willow usually got to where she needed to be.

Except for this morning. She had been all around in her In Between Bubble, but not to the place she really needed to go. She wanted to find her way to the Deeper Well, but her path kept going all wonky and veery. No matter how hard she pushed, Willow kept returning to the same address in the Twilight Zone.

Frustrated, she put on a pot of tea and went through her progressive relaxation routine again. Without much success. She decided it was time to try something more soothing. She took a jar of Nutella from the cupboard, and dipped out a big-honking spoonful.

It was just... she kept thinking about Kennedy. About how upset Kennedy had been that they were losing Rita. And how upset she’d been about being sent off to France. Then, the big unexpected spell kablooey. It left Willow’s mind amiss, what with the upsetness of Kennedy.

Thing was, the Westbury house was really Kennedy’s house. Willow wasn’t used to being in it without her.
So there was this Kennedy shaped hole there that Willow didn’t know how to fill.

Willow sighed. “This is just stupid,” she said. She had a few minutes while the teapot went from simmer to boil. She brushed the round tabletop with a sprig of sage and sat down to find her center.

“Right,” Willow said. She inhaled. Exhaled, slowly.
“Here comes me, In Between,” she sang. She closed her eyes and pushed.

And there she was again, tooling through the ethereal plane like a little white astrally-projecting mouse.
Blackness at first, followed by a windswept moor. Willow envisioned the Cotswolds. Never having actually been there, she had to draw on photos and descriptions from a travel web site. Which, now that she thought of it, may be at the heart of her umbra tumbling trouble.

Yet she persevered. Trees now, then rocky hills flecked with of moss and patches of heather. Pretty. Dark clouds coalesced, as they always did. She felt with her keen witch’s intuition that this meant she was getting close.

A loose ring of trees loomed ahead. Old trees, by the looks. Getting really close.

Willow tuned in the focus. Back in the kitchen, her fingers knotted into the embroidered table runner. She mentally muscled ahead. Into the woods. Into the trees. Into the... corridor?

“Not again,” she muttered. Willow found herself in a crumbling hallway looking out into a dust-choked plaza. In its center, on a mound of green sod, stood a single rose under a glass globe.

Willow glided down the hallway toward the plaza. A drift of dry leaves scattered along beneath her seemingly buffeted by her passage. Which was impossible, she knew. She wasn’t really bodily there. It was interesting, though, the concessions her mind made...

As Willow drew closer, the corridor opened up to the sky, which shed only starlight onto the rose and its tiny thatch of earth.

“How very Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” Willow said. “But, so not what I’m looking for. Not that roses aren’t swell but...”

A figure appeared in the opposite corridor, the shape of which stopped Willow cold.

She wore blue. Her hair flowed over bare white shoulders. She kinda glowed, like she might have been superimposed over the scene. At any rate, Tara was the last person Willow expected to see.
Willow moved into the room.

“Tara?”

“Sweetie,” Tara said. “The thing you’re looking for. It’s not here.”

Willow blinked. “What?”

Tara stared at her. There was a kind of serenity that instantly soothed Willow, and simultaneously made her achy inside.

“The thing you seek...” Tara began.

“Wait. I know. I’m not seeking it here. I don’t even know where here is. Somehow I keep coming back to this place. Are you the reason? Are you... leading me?” Willow asked.

Tara said, “The Deeper Well is dry. Its purpose fulfilled. You seek the rose.”

“Apparently,” Willow said. “But, what is it? And, where is it, really? Am I supposed to use it for something?”

“The rose is the missing piece, Willow,” Tara answered. “The completion of a Circle.”

“A Circle?” Willow asked. She moved forward, hovering close now to the globe and its blossoming ward within.

“I wish I could tell you more. But I can only share what I know,” Tara said.

“You always were mysterious. Oh, but in the cute, approachable sense. Not in the dark, menace-y sinister sense,” Willow said. She felt the familiar flutter of enchantment that always came with the nearness of Tara.

“You have grown so strong, Willow,” Tara said. “I am so proud of you.”

Willow suddenly felt the need for the kind of reassurance only Tara could give.

“Is it...? I mean, will it be enough?” Willow asked. “Will I be strong enough?”

Tara turned serious. “Draw on the strength of your friends. You will need each other now more than ever. But Giles and Xander will need you most. And Andrew, Willow. He will need you, too.”

“Andrew?”

“Yes. There is more, so much more. But you have to go now, Willow,” Tara said. The light in the corridor grew overbright. Things behind her began to shift and elongate like images in a funhouse mirror.

“But,” Willow said. Slipping. Willow struggled to hang on. “But I don’t wanna.”

Tara reached for her. Her fingers were starting to fade. “I’m sorry, Sweetie. Someone is calling...”

Willow snapped back to attention at her kitchen table. She had torn the table runner to ribbons. The teakettle wailed like a freakishly pissed off old crone. Somewhere, a phone was ringing. Someone was calling. Willow pushed the chair back, but couldn’t find the strength to stand. She managed to stumble to the stove, where she lifted the teakettle to the back burner. The answering machine clicked on.

Minutes later, Willow had regained her legs enough to wobble into the parlor. The message light on the answering machine flashed twice in succession. She had two messages. Two missed calls.

Willow pushed play.

The first message was from Kennedy.

She said, “Hey. Willow. It’s me. Look, um. Naomi needs me here, in Paris. So I’m thinking I’m gonna stay awhile. I’ll call again, okay. Take care.”

Willow felt like emotional cocktail – all mixy, no moxie. Mainly, she felt relieved. Which made her feel ten plus on the guilty scale.

The second message was from Dawn.

“Willow,” she said. “It’s Dawn. Strange things afoot here. Which is, pretty much the usual. Giles wants you to come home. Well, we all do. See, there were these vampires, only they were the super variety. And now, turns out, Andrew’s dating a demon. Giant-sized surprise there. Anyway, Nighna – demon Nighna – Dorkus Rex Andrew led her right to us. She knows where we live so we need renewed protection to unlist the house. Can you give us a call back? Oh, and, hope you’re okay. Bye.”

Willow was reaching for the phone before the message ended. What she didn’t see was a postcard in the little brass mail tray by the phone. If she had noticed the little picture of Buckingham Palace, she would have found a simple yet cryptic note written in careful blocky print on it that read:

Angel has the blade
- Connor





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