"Is he always like that?" Dawn asked, sitting across from Wesley in the latter's office.
Wesley paused, seeming to consider his words carefully. "He's been . . . different ever since Cordelia's death," he finally answered.
Dawn nodded. Was this why Cordelia wanted to make sure that Angel didn't know she had incarnated? Because she was afraid of what he would do if he found out? "Buffy and Giles don't trust him anymore," she said.
Wesley nodded. "They don't trust any of us. We work for Wolfram & Hart, after all. That means we're corrupted. We've made our deal with the devil and he's stolen our souls. There isn't a moment which goes by in which I don't wonder if they're not right."
Dawn paused. She didn't expect Wesley to be so honest. "So what do you do about it?"
"Keep on working," he answered. "Try to do some good. Help somebody. Give pretty young girls crucial information to stop apocalypses when I should be there fighting myself." He passed over to his bookshelf, pulled a book out and held it in front of his mouth. "Tradescan Codex, original text," he said. He opened up the book, and Dawn watched as blank pages slowly began to morph into the familiar characters of the Tradescan Codex. "How have you been interpreting this passage?" he asked, pointing to one that had given Dawn a great deal of trouble.
"Well, 'channeler of the sands and the winds' is an old Egyptian phrase meaning 'witch.' The bivalent diacriticals mean that it has to stand for Willow; nothing else makes sense. And here, this set of characters seems to refer to the Rite of Isis."
"But then it's not the Rite of Isis which make Willow's diacriticals lose their bivalence," Wesley pointed out. "It's something else going on at the same time. We're talking about synchronic phenomena."
"But she still could go dark."
Wesley nodded, his face grim. "Yes, the Codex certainly seems to allow for that interpretation. We can't be sure, of course, but—"
"Wesley," Dawn said, cutting him off, "you didn't see Willow when she went dark. She has access to the type of power that you and I can't even comprehend. If she loses her sense of control—well, last time, she almost ended the world. And it wasn't lack of power that stopped her."
Wesley shut the book which for the moment was acting as the Codex and looked Dawn in the eyes. "I'm well aware of the gravity of the situation, Dawn. The question is: what are you going to do about it?"
She paused. This was the question Dawn had been doing her best not to ask herself. "I don't know, Wesley. I really don't know. Go to Brazil. Bring Amy and her Wicca group and other people I can't tell you about but who might be able to help. Just go and see what I can do." She took a breath, trying her best to choke back the tears she had been holding within for the last few days. "I'm lost, Wesley. I don't know what to do."
Wesley reached across his desk and placed his hand on hers. "It's been several years since I've been a Watcher, Dawn, and we both remember that I was never perfectly good at it. But I can remember the hardest part of the job: to send your Slayer into battle and not know if she will live or die, to not being able to do anything to protect her. One learns to recognize that there are things in this world which are simply outside of our control. It's not an easy lesson to learn. You'll do the best that you can. Whatever happens beyond that, happens. No one can ask more than that from any Watcher."
"And if the world ends?"
The look on Wes' face was cold and sorrowful at the same time. "Then it ends," he answered softly. "The question is whether you can live with yourself afterwards."
He took his hand off hers and picked the book in front of him back up. "Rite of Isis, Egyptian," he whispered into the binding.
Dawn just stared at him. "You have access to the Rite itself?"
Wesley nodded and handed her the book. "You'll forgive me if I choose not to read it aloud."
She nodded, intent on the Egyptian text. Mother of the Nile, she translated silently to herself, grace us with the magnitude of your power, with the magnanimity of your soul—
She flipped to the next page. So that you, Goddess Isis, will bless your children with—
"It's all invocation," she said, in shock. "There's no hint as to what the ritual actually does."
Wesley nodded. "The only way to find out what it does is to perform it. Which, presumably, we very much do not want to do, at least not without knowing what it does. Which leaves us at an impasse."
Dawn looked from the ritual to Wesley and back again. "Could I get a copy of this?" she asked.
Wesley nodded, then picked up a phone on his desk. "Jennifer, I'm going to need a reproduction of the Rite of Isis on my desk in a half-hour for Miss Summers."
Rack meditated in the corner, sitting in a half-lotus position, hovering about six inches off the ground. Alexia, on the other hand, didn't have anywhere near that type of focus. She was glad she was able to focus at all as she anxiously paced back and forth along the temple sanctuary.
The Wiccans had gone to find Willow Rosenberg. Alexia was sure of it; she could feel their power receding. They posed little threat—except for their leader, who had held surprising mastery over both black and white magicks—but any obstacle between herself and the destruction of the witch was an inconvenience she could do without. And there was the Higher Power, who had incarnated herself to fight alongside the Wiccans. That posed an unsolvable enigma for Alexia—who would sacrifice that type of power, just to try and protect a mortal's life?
Oh well. It was not her job to identify the motives of renegade Powers. It was just her job to make sure that whatever this Power wanted, Osiris' will would be done. That was her purpose in life, to serve the Dark God.
Willow Rosenberg would die. She had sworn the oath over the blood of an innocent. The only question was exactly how Alexia would accomplish the feat.
"I have a suggestion."
Alexia jumped at the sound of Rack's smooth voice, thrust out of her reverie. She turned to him, expectantly. "When I taste someone," he explained, "it's not just their magic. It's more like a part of who they are, a piece of their soul. Their dreams, their loves, their hopes and frustrations, and, most relevant to the issue at hand, their memories."
"You have something we can use against her?"
"Taste for yourself." He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek, and as he touched her, she could feel it flowing through her, the images flashing through her mind.
"Oh, yes," she said, smiling. "That is delicious."
Dawn didn't know what she expected to find at the address for Willow and Kennedy given to her by the Watcher's Council. A penthouse apartment, maybe, in the heart of Sao Paulo? Instead, she found herself (along with a Higher Power, a blind seer, a chaos mage, and a coven of Wiccans) in front of a brick-paved house sitting in the city's suburbs.
Willow wasn't home when they arrived—seeing a contact, Kennedy informed them, about using astral relays to power a series of crystal-based detectors—but the Slayer welcomed the entourage in without a word, although she did shoot a rather angry look in Amy's direction. What Dawn found inside was even more surprising. With the exception of a few reminders of the lives both Willow and Kennedy led, such as variety of weapons hanging on the walls and the Brazier of A't sitting in the corner, their house was a study in happy domesticity. Kennedy even put on a pot of coffee for her guests, extolling the virtues of fresh Latin American coffee beans.
Somehow, in the midst of casting spells and slaying vampires, the two had become Stepford Wives for each other. Which was a good thing, she guessed, if the two of them were happy, but . . . Kennedy. And Willow. The mind boggled.
They gave Kennedy an abbreviated explanation of why they were there and what they were doing. Truth was, Kennedy had always been a Slay-now-and-ask-questions-later sort of girl, and Dawn could see that while the Slayer tried to act politely interested, she had in truth grown tired of lengthy descriptions of arcane rituals after about the first five minutes. Still, the Slayer confirmed that vampiric activity in Brazil had been increasing steadily over the last few days.
"Used to be I could go a whole night and only see maybe two or three vamps," Kennedy explained. "Now it's a good night if I only see two or three full gangs. I don't slay alone anymore—I always take either Willow or a couple of the newbies. It's just too dangerous otherwise." She paused. "Soon I won't even be able to take out the newbies. They're not ready for this type of action."
"Neither were you," Dawn pointed out. "Maybe no one is."
"And how many of us died needlessly because Buffy threw us into battle after battle before we were ready?" asked Kennedy.
Dawn didn't answer.
Willow returned home about an hour later; Kennedy quickly rose to give her lover a welcoming kiss, and then Willow looked at the guests settled around her, quizzically. "Dawn. Cordy. Amy. Ethan. The UC Sunnydale Wicca group." She paused and looked at Beth. "And I don't even know who you are."
"His name's Beth," Dawn offered.
Willow nodded. "Right. If this is supposed to be some type of 'This is Your Life,' there are a few people missing. Otherwise . . . why are you here?"
"They're here about the vampire spike," Kennedy offered, then paused. "Not Spike the vampire. The spike in vampires. There being more vamp activity than before."
"I knew what you meant, Ken," Willow said, sending a loving look her girlfriend's way. "But . . . okay. Cordy, you're dead. Ethan's evil. Amy, you sort of hate me. Dawn, you're supposed to be in Italy with your sister. And I hardly know the rest of you."
"We all have our stories," Cordelia answered. "Mostly long ones."
"I busted Ethan and Beth out of an Initiative detention facility," Dawn interjected. "Cordelia incarnated, and Hecate commanded the Wiccans to help out."
"Okay, not so long," admitted Cordelia. "The point is, whatever is happening here is a big deal. Kennedy's been telling us about the increased vamp activity, and Dawn's convinced the portents point towards things getting worse before they get better."
"Much, much worse," Dawn agreed. "Have you tried asking for reinforcements?"
It was Kennedy who answered. "We keep on getting denied. 'The Slayers are needed elsewhere.' How can they be needed elsewhere if all the vamps are here?"
Willow nodded. "Typical Council bureaucracy."
Dawn glanced at her companions, then spoke again. "Willow, we think it's Osiris behind this."
Willow turned, startled. "The god? What would He want in Brazil?"
It was Cordelia who finally answered: "You, Willow. He wants you."