"Buff, what's happening?"
She was confronted the minute she opened the door by her concerned best friends. Friends who, at the moment, were concerned with the two missing members of their inner circle. She demurred, trying to actually get into their shared apartment and close the door behind her. Everything that had just happened was still swirling around her head, distracting her from nearly any other thoughts. What was worst was the knot in her stomach that refused to go away telling her that Faith was still in terrible danger and there was nothing she could do until she solved the riddles of what had Giles in its grip.
"Your spell worked." She told the redhead, making her way to the couch. She flung herself into it, immediately drawing her knees up to her chest and holding them. "We could talk when we were together. It was good you thought of it. There were these guys, guards, dressed all in black. They were watching us, close enough to hear probably."
The other two sat next to her, Willow drawing her down to rest against her body. "That's good. What did she say?"
"She's in trouble, Will. I never heard that kind of tone in her voice before. She was scared. He scares her. It's like...I don't know. I saw bruises. Cuts. He's hurting her."
"So we get her out." Xander got up, fists balled, uncharacteristically brave.
"He's a demon, Xander!" She shook her head and felt bad for how it had just spilled out that way. She let the words settle for a moment and then clarified. "Whatever spell he cast let a demon possess him. Unless we know who it is and where it comes from we can't save him."
"A," Willow looked at her, "A demon?"
"Yeah, a bad one. I don't know what he wants but it's not good. He'll hurt whoever he has to unless we stop him first."
"That's a better reason for getting Faith out now!" The boy insisted, having sat back down but was no less adamant about what he wanted to do.
"So we get her back, then what? He'll still be a demon. He's gathering an army. He has bodyguards! He'll use them to get what he wants and I don't like our odds."
She shook her head and remained silent, feeling frustrated and afraid herself. She was never good at waiting, never good at pacing and frowning until they had a battle plan. Giles was forever going on about how she couldn't afford to be rash and what had he done? What had he left her with now? She needed a plan and it hurt to think her friend was in danger while they were waiting, digging for any thread.
"Will, do we still have all those papers and stuff from when it happened?"
"Yeah, I cleaned everything up but I kept it. I was studying it, a little. It's some advanced spellwork; like a patchwork of other spells, intentions. I've never seen anything like it before."
The blond nodded and moved to get up, unsure of what she was going to do. Going past his parent's house she knew the thing masquerading as Giles had taken it over, so whatever was there was off limits. So far, though, no one had seemed interested in the flat he shared with Faith. There was a little hope in that, because maybe that meant there was a weakness there that could be used, exploited.
"I think we need to take a trip to his apartment. All his magic stuff is there, right? The sooner we get a handle on the magics the sooner we can drag that demon out of Giles."
She let them in with her spare key, given to her by her Watcher sometime before the proposal with caution only to use it after she'd called first, unless it was an emergency. She had tried not to wig at the "just in case" he added to it because they both knew what that meant. What Faith saw in him, on that level, she would never understand and it was best most of the time not to think about it. Hell, right now she was ready to watch them make out on the couch while everyone pretended not to notice if it meant that everything could just be normal again - or as normal as they could get.
The apartment was mostly untouched. Willow had cleaned up after the spell and a few things had been knocked over and broken in the chaos, but otherwise it was untouched. Willow made her way into the den where the spell had been cast, shuddering as she crossed the threshold.
"What's wrong?"
"The magic. It's still lingering. It's like it never went away." She shuddered again. "It's so dark."
The blond nodded and made her way inside. She couldn't feel the magic, persay, but she definitely felt the heaviness of vibes in the room. She ignored them, going to the bookshelf to find the best things to look through. Reading the titles, she realized that she was probably the least qualified person to do that and stepped aside for her friend. There wasn't much Willow couldn't do - magic, research, smarts. It made her feel useless by comparison sometimes and she couldn't imagine how Xander was made to feel by it, though he had longer to get used to it than she did.
"I hate this!" she admitted bitterly, fighting back tears.
"We all do," he answered, drawing her into a hug.
"You didn't hear her voice, Xander. You didn't hear how small she sounded. It was like she wasn't her anymore."
"We'll figure this out."
Once everyone was sorted with their own book to read, corresponding to a part of the spell that Giles used, things fell into a familiar lull. It grated on the Slayer, but there was nothing much to be done about it. When she found something interesting she showed it to the witch who either wrote it down or told her that it probably wasn't going to help. The back and forth was excruciating and she began to understand her possessed Watcher a little more as she spent sleepless days and nights as this, unable to rest while both of them hung in the balance: his soul and Faith's body. She was half dozing when she heard words that made her blood freeze.
"I think I found something."
"What did you find? Tell me!"
She was out of her chair before she could register that she'd moved, rounding the table to where the redhead sat. Impossible notes sat in front of her - pages and pages of them on the legal tablets that Giles kept handy at all times. She didn't understand many of the words, some of them having no translation to the English tongue or really any human language. Failing comprehension of that sort she had to lean on the redhead to fill in the cracks. She stared intently at the other girl, arms crossed in front of her.
"I think this is the part of the spell that has to do with the demon. I'm not sure he knew that's what it was, the books are pretty vague about it. I had to look around on my laptop to figure it out. I can't find a lot of information on it. This might be something we have to, um, go to the source for."
"What do you mean?"
She quickly detailed her thinking, pointing to a few things in her notes and a few more in the booked they were reading. No little of it sounded suspect and when she was finished the blond closed her eyes and sighed. Her mind was still trying to process it all. She looked back down at the copious notes and Giles' spell scattered around in neat script. Trying to trap a demon from the world the original came from in order to get answers sounded like crazy with a side of crazy.
"This is insane."
"Maybe, but it's all we've got."
"It's dangerous."
"Yeah but I really think I can do it."
"You're talking about trying to summon and trap a demon."
"I know."
Silence fell over the trio, thick and heavy. No one said a word as they looked at each other. Buffy's eyes drifted out the window to night falling again, unable to stop herself from wondering where Faith was and what she'd endured that day. She recalled the demon's words coming from Giles' mouth - he wanted to break her. He was succeeding at it, too. The longer they waited the worse it was going to get. Would they even have a friend to rescue if they waited too long? She wasn't sure and wasn't willing to take the chance.
"Ok, so we try." She decided. "We prepare a ton and then we try."
So it was decided.
