He didn't want to let go of her. She was all warm, feminine curves and sweet-smelling hair, and it seemed like ages since he'd had a woman – and he'd never known a woman like Maggie. When she hugged him back, it felt like he'd died and gone to heaven. God, you're beautiful, he wanted to tell her. He wanted to hold her closer and beg her to stay with him. Kiss her. Run his fingers through her hair. Whisk her back to that gloomy little motel and make love to her, and wrap her in his arms forever.

Instead, Malcolm forced himself to let go of the woman he cherished. He smiled awkwardly at her and turned to get her suitcase out of the trunk. "I wish you –" 'All the best' was sharply cut off as an impossibly strong arm slammed into his gut. He gasped in pain and collided with the asphalt.

"Malcolm!" Maggie came rushing to his side with a panicked look that made his heart skip a beat. Or maybe that was from the impact. Things were a little fuzzy. She halted and stared beyond him with what he termed her 'panther look,' eyes fierce and muscles taut.

He followed her gaze to the creatures closing in on them – glowing eyes, long teeth, and the ugliest faces he'd ever seen – and immediately felt sick to his stomach. Ignoring it, he forced himself to sit up and try to orient himself. "Maggie," he grunted urgently. "We… we have to…"

She stopped him with a firm hand. "Stay down," she ordered. She stepped between him and the creatures, then spoke in a cold tone he'd never heard before. "You will not touch him."

The creatures paused for a moment, snarling back at her in what might have been another language, but they didn't exactly sound peaceful. "Maggie," he whispered, "get back! Get away!" If she got hurt for his sake, he'd never forgive himself.

Maggie looked back him and flashed a regretful smile. Then she turned back to the hideous creatures, drawing a silver pendant from under her shirt. "Incendo!" she commanded, like some ancient warrior queen. Before his startled eyes, bursts of fire shot from her hands, engulfing the creatures. They burst into inhuman shrieks of agony and rushed her, still burning. Maggie showed no sign of fear, continuing to bark out Latin orders. Malcolm wasn't clear on what was happening; he just saw the things hit an invisible wall and began to seriously question his sanity.

I have a concussion, he realized after a second. He forced himself to get to his feet, clutching someone else's car for support. While Maggie stood there in the chaos, yelling things that resulted in a hailstorm, he limped over to the car, unlocked it, and started the engine. Maggie… have to get her out of here… He tried to pull the car alongside her, but something came through the windshield and his world went black.

o-o-o-o

When she'd laid her shield against the oncoming ghouls, Maggie had expected Malcolm to remain where he was. He'd taken a serious impact, then faced the shock of seeing ghouls for the first time. The burnt ghouls were retreating against her onslaught of ice shards when she heard the sound of an engine starting.

Malcolm! He must have been stronger than she realized, because he'd gotten to his feet and into the marginally safer car. If he floored it right out of the parking lot, he could probably escape the ghouls… but she knew as soon as she thought it that he'd never do that. He would never run away and leave someone else in danger. It wouldn't matter that she was able to protect herself far better than he could; he'd never leave her behind.

Margaret felt a sweet warmth in her chest when Malcolm came charging to her aid, followed by immediate worry when she saw his course. He's outside the shield! Empty night, he's headed right into the thick of it! She let her rain of ice come to an end; if the shards could pierce a ghoul, they could go right through the car and hit Malcolm. She cursed under her breath and ran to meet him. "Percutio!" she snarled, willing that raw force toward the ghoul nearest the car. Its chest shattered and the thing stayed down. One of them closed in on her, only to meet the same fate. She caught the next one as it went for the driver's window, crushing its head before it could attack Malcolm. As she hit the final ghoul, which was clutching the hood, Malcolm swerved in exactly the wrong way. The force of her strike propelled the dead ghoul through the windshield, slamming right into him. The car stopped.

"Malcolm!" she called, finally reaching the car. She pushed the shattered ghoul off of Malcolm, kicking it onto the pavement. She took her companion's head in her hands. "Malcolm, can you hear me?" He didn't respond, but he was breathing and he had a pulse. I have to get him back to the motel. She felt carefully around his neck and skull, searching for any sign of injury, but it seemed the seat's headrest had stopped the worst of the whiplash. As carefully as she could, Maggie eased him from the driver's seat to the passenger side and buckled him in securely.

If I'd left a little sooner, he would never have been in harm's way! she berated herself, looking at his pale, bloodied face. Of course, it was also possible that those ghouls would have found him anyway, and devoured him while he was alone, but it was almost certainly her scent that drew them. She carefully steadied his head with her jacket. "Don't you dare die," she whispered fiercely.

She resisted the urge to speed on the way to the motel. Margaret Le Fay couldn't care less for the law, but the last thing she wanted to do with an injured man was bounce him around. She maintained a smooth pace to the grim little motel, then borrowed a baggage cart to get him safely inside. She laid him gently on his bed, retrieved a first aid kit from the car, and set to work. Head wounds first, since nothing else was bleeding too much, then carefully cutting away his clothes so she could tend the rest. It went by in a methodical blur: clean, dry, antiseptic, bandage, repeat.

It was only when she finished that she looked back at his face and saw how pale he still was. And cold. He's going into shock. Maggie bit her lip. She knew exactly what she had to do, but it would only make things harder in the end. Can't be helped. Kicking off her shoes, she carefully made her way onto the bed beside him, pulled up the covers, and willed her warmth into him. There was nothing to do but watch now, and that was exactly what she did.

o-o-o-o

When he came to, Malcolm was lying on one of the motel beds, dressed only in his boxers. There were bandages around his head, thighs, arms, and midsection, but it didn't feel like he'd broken anything. He was warm; there was a solid heat source pressed up against his left side – a yielding, pleasant smelling, femininely curved heat source... A very nice heat source, one that he felt was more significant than his stunned brain could process…

"Malcolm?"

Voice. Voice was definitely important. He mumbled an unintelligible answer and struggled to open his eyes.

"Malcolm?" the voice said again, while a gentle hand brushed over his forehead. "Can you hear me?"

His eyelids finally remembered how to do their job, and after a few blinks, his vision cleared a little. He saw a pale, fascinating face peering down at him, dark eyes intent and black hair tumbling around her. Maggie, he registered, falling back into reality. She smiled a little when she saw the recognition dawn and stroked his forehead again. "Hey," he managed.

"Hey," she replied, smiling a little wider. "How's your head?"

"Still attached." She snorted with laughter and he grinned as well as he could. "Oh good," he murmured, "I'm still funny."

"As much as you ever were," she teased. "Does it hurt much?"

The Man Code clearly stated how he should respond: make light of it and tough it out. Then again, the Man Code was written by guys who died young. "Yeah," he admitted, grimacing. "I feel like a lost a fight with a bear."

Maggie stopped smiling and sat up fully. "You sound parched," she commented tensely, "I'll get you some water."

Tense Maggie bad, but water good. She brought him a cup of cold water and two capsules. "Tylenol," he croaked gratefully. "You're an angel."

Her mouth tilted in something that looked like a smile, but really wasn't. "Hardly." She helped him raise his head, adding another pillow for support, then held the cup to his lips. "Get some water in you first, then you can have the pills." Malcolm obeyed, and she looked relieved when he kept the fluids down. "Hungry?" she asked. "I've got some granola bars in my…" she glanced around the room. "Um. Out in the car."

He started to sit up. "Here, I'll…"

"You'll stay right where you are," Maggie ordered sternly. "I can go get it myself."

"Yeah, but…" He grimaced, sure that he'd forgotten something important. "It's not safe to be out alone at night," he finally pointed out. That was true, but he felt like it wasn't the whole story.

She smiled that mysterious smile of hers. "I can handle myself, Malcolm. Stay down."

Stay down. He blinked rapidly against the headache as the pieces started coming back to him. Being hit by an inhumanly strong and inhumanly ugly guy. Maggie telling him to stay down, and him telling her to run. And then… Fire. Ice shards. An invisible wall. And Maggie standing in front of him, ordering all of it to appear. Maggie, who didn't know how to palm a coin, pulling the impossible out of thin air. No magician on earth could do what she'd done – not in a parking lot full of angry thugs, not even on stage. "Maggie," he asked, before she got to the door. "Where did all that stuff come from?"

She stilled at once, hand on the door and face hidden from him. "What stuff?" she asked, her tone soft.

Malcolm struggled to sit up fully. "The stuff in the parking lot – the fire, that invisible wall…" He gestured to Seymour, the only parcel that had been brought in. "I can make some seemingly impossible things happen, Maggie, but nothing like that. Not the way you did it. That wasn't illusion, it was…" He trailed off, wondering if he should say what was on his mind.

"Magic," she finished for him. She turned to face him with an air of resignation. "Sorcery, witchcraft, or a hundred other names, but it's all the same thing."

"Magic," he agreed. At least she didn't think he was crazy. "And it's… real?"

She laughed softly, drawing a chair over to sit next to his bed. "You know what you saw, Malcolm. Is it real or isn't it?"

"I have a concussion," Malcolm pointed out. "I'm pretty sure I also saw some goons straight out of a horror flick who punched right through my windshield." She grew still again, and he blinked. "Wait. They really did that?"

"You'll see the car tomorrow," Maggie answered in a tone that suggested it was worse than he remembered. "What else do you recall?"

"Not a lot," he admitted. "Just… being smacked across the parking lot. You standing over me, calling out Latin words that made impossible things happen." He thought for a second. "It was beautiful. The fire coming out of nowhere, things bouncing off an invisible wall, that ice flying around…"

That made her smile. "It is beautiful," she agreed quietly. "But it's dangerous."

"Like you." He grimaced as soon as the words came out of his mouth. "Sometimes a little dangerous is a good thing, I guess. I don't think I'd be sitting here now if you hadn't… I don't know what you did, Maggie, but I'm pretty sure you saved my life."

She snorted. "Yes, after I put it in danger to begin with."

Malcolm blinked. "Those goons in the parking lot were looking for you?"

"Ghouls," she corrected him. Apparently there was a difference. "And yes, they most likely were." She bit her lower lip. "I… have a lot of enemies, Malcolm. Not just Thomas's father." Her expression was tight, but there was something vulnerable in her eyes. "I've put you in danger by staying so long, and for that…"

"Don't!" he cut in quickly. "Don't apologize. I knew you were in trouble, I knew there were a lot of things you hadn't told me, and I still wanted you to stay with me." He gingerly touched his head. "Plus, there's the part where you saved me. I think that takes the place of an apology."

Maggie smiled a little, but the tension was still there. "Are you going to ask why they were looking for me?"

"Hm." The world was still a little wobbly; he blinked until things came back into focus. "I don't know. Do you want to tell me?"

A flash of irritation crossed her face. "You were nearly killed because of me, Malcolm, by monsters out of dark legends. I've told you they're not the only enemies I have, enemies who might come looking for you because you were kind to me. Aren't you at all worried about what I've done to make those enemies?"

"Um. Should I be?"

"Yes!" she snapped. She clutched his hand, and he wondered if she knew she'd done so. "You're always like this, Malcolm. You never stop to think about what people are really like or what they might try to do to you. You're so… so trusting, and you never care that it puts you in danger! You could have died tonight, Malcolm, because you spent the past couple months trusting me and letting me into your life without knowing the first thing about me!"

"Hey," he murmured soothingly as she started to tear up. He squeezed her hand tightly and brought it up to his lips. She hurriedly brushed the tears away. "It's not… I'm not…" Malcolm looked for a way to reassure her, but it looked like he was stuck with his caveman brain again. "I want to know, Maggie. I want to know who you are, and what you've done, and why you have enemies. I just… I'm not going to make you tell me. It's your story; you don't have to tell me things you don't want to."

"My story." She laughed softly. "You might not like it."

"I still want to know." He shrugged, then winced at the pain the motion caused. "Whatever you're willing to tell me, I'd like to know."

"Hm." She stroked her fingers across his. "I want to tell you everything… but not this moment. You're hurt, and you need to rest."

"Yeah." He didn't bother to disagree about that. "Well, no rush. Scheherazade can take all the time she needs to tell her story. A thousand and one nights… maybe more…" This wasn't even his caveman brain. This was his 'special brownies' brain.

"You're still forgetting the part about your safety," Maggie reminded him.

He yawned. "I already got attacked by ghouls, remember? I'm doomed even if you leave, so there's no hurry to part ways, right?"

"I realized that," she commented drily. She looked ever so slightly happy, and he flattered himself she was glad they could stay together. "I meant your safety inviting a scary witch to stick around."

"Hm." Malcolm thought for a minute. "If you were me and you wanted to know if you could trust you, what would you do?" She gave him a weird look. "Did that only make sense in concussion-land?"

"It's one of the most sensible things to come out of concussion-land," she reassured him, delicious lips curving with humor. "There is one sure way for you to get a sense of who I am."

"Which is?"

"Look deep into my eyes," Maggie intoned with a teasing grin.

Malcolm raised an eyebrow. "Hypnotism?"

She laughed. "Your hypnotists got the idea from somewhere." For the first time, she looked directly into his eyes. For a brief moment, he got to appreciate the beautiful intensity of her stare, then he stepped from concussion land to LSD land.

Malcolm found himself standing in a garden – not a little city garden, the sort of rambling garden that was probably bigger than the motel lot. He was standing on a black cobblestone path, just wide enough to walk on. Everywhere he looked, there were roses, magnificent crimson flowers and wickedly sharp thorns. Vines of roses wrapped themselves around trees, while great bushes of roses shadowed smaller plants on the ground. Ash trees, elm trees, acacia trees, oak trees, manchineels, and, marking the perimeter, the dark peaks of cypress trees. Under the roses, he saw basil and peppermint, but also hemlock and belladonna. Looking in between the rose bushes, he spotted the pale pink flowers and long green leaves of oleander. The garden was quiet – eerily quiet – and his eyes widened when he realized there were shadows in the garden, shadows with nothing there to cast them.

One of the shadows moved, stretching toward him over the bushes. Malcolm ran down the twisting path, instinctively heading for the center of the garden. As the garden flashed by, he noticed huge gouges in the earth, as if a giant cat had torn the place up. Nightshade was already growing in those places, and he was happy to see the roses returning, too. There were statues in the garden, mostly shiny black stone, but he didn't get more of a sense of it than that.

Finally, he saw a gate. The shadows were closing in fast – there was no time to unlock it – so he gulped in a breath and jumped the gate. Apparently you still felt pain in LSD land. This part of the garden was darker and hotter than where he'd come from, but it wasn't the predatory darkness of the shadows. This was a lonely, thoughtful darkness, enlivened by the sound of birds and the tinkle of water. There were no flowers here in the center, only a circle of trees draped with ivy and mistletoe. In the very center was a pool of water, perfectly clear in his hand, but so dark that it must go down for miles. The stone under his feet had changed to volcanic glass. It showed the scratches of something trying to get in, but nothing had passed the circle of trees. Nothing but him.

"Will you drink the water?"

Malcolm started at the voice. It rustled through the leaves, too soft and indistinct to identify. It might have been laughing, but it could just as easily be crying. "Who's there?" he asked.

The rustling voice laughed again, a sound that merged into the cooing of the birds. "I am," it said. "I'm all around you, mortal man, in everything you see. I am the rose and its thorn, I am the cypress and acacia, I am the wholesome and the poison. And I am the well in the center of the garden, the well that feeds the lotus and the monkshood alike, and gathers their dew back into my depths." A curious rumble passed through the garden. "Will you drink?"

He stared down into the pool. "Is it poisonous?"

"Sometimes." The voice took a tone of cruel amusement. "Many have died when the water touched them."

Malcolm thought about it. "People die in normal water, too."

The voice laughed again, now sweet and wistful. "True."

He could see Maggie's face in the depths of the water, as if she were standing behind him, but when he turned she wasn't there. "Is the water always poisonous?"

"No." A sadder, more urgent tone entered the voice. "It is water. Sometimes it heals."

He looked at the tense reflection of the woman he loved. "Are you Maggie?" he asked the voice. "Margaret le Fay?"

"What if I am?" it asked in a whisper.

Malcolm just smiled and took a drink.

And suddenly he was back on the bed, staring into Maggie's dark eyes. She was smiling gently at him, their hands still linked, and the whole place looked exactly as it had before. "What was that?"

"A soulgaze." She tapped one finger just below her right eye. "The eye is the window to the soul. Whenever a witch or wizard looks into someone's eyes directly, we see them for who they really are – and they see us."

"So that garden was really you?"

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "You saw a garden?"

"Mmhm," he grunted drowsily. "It was beautiful – roses everywhere. I mean, there were a lot of shadows, and half the plants were poisonous, but it still… it felt like a good place." Malcolm thought for a moment. "Can I see it again?"

She shook her head, finally looking relaxed. "Soulgaze is a one time thing. After this, when we lock eyes, nothing abnormal will happen."

He grinned mischievously and caught her gaze. "Are you sure about that?" he teased softly. He certainly felt something out of the ordinary.

Maggie laughed and looked away, cheeks slightly rosy. "You're incorrigible, you know that?" She pushed him back down to the bed. "Get some rest."

Malcolm grunted softly when his head hit the pillow. "Are you going to be here when I wake up?"

To his surprise, she lay down beside him again. "I'll wake you up throughout the night. You've had a concussion and need to be watched over." Her tone was flat and clinical, but there was mischief in her eyes. "Yes, Malcolm." She laughed softly and kissed his forehead. "I will be here in the morning. And the mornings after that, too."

He grinned and slipped his arm around her shoulders, tipping his head so that it brushed against hers. "So… are we moving to just the one bed now?" In the back of his mind, he wished he'd said it more romantically, but the back of his mind was a very fuzzy place.

Maggie broke into one of her beautiful warm laughs and shoved him lightly. "Pig," she teased. "Go to sleep." But something in her smile looked an awful lot like 'yes.'

Malcolm slept.

o-o-o-o

AN: I'm sorry this chapter is so short! I meant to wait until I had more before posting, but I've had writer's block on the same scene for 6 months, so I'm just giving you what I have for now.