Waking up in Tara's bed was something Willow knew she was quickly coming to enjoy despite only doing it this one time and yet she can't seem to will her limbs to move from under Tara's scent coated sheets.

"Rosenburg Lets. Go." Anya's voice called again while Willow pulls the comforter over her head for just a few more stolen moments of breathing in the unique flavor of her undead lady love.

Earthy yet at the same time something interestingly floral with hints of a more modern blend if spiced vanilla.

A trilled mew sounds from the direction of the bedroom door At the same time Willow catches the front door slamming loudly signaling at last Anya's departure from the house before the light added weight of tabby Gaea Maclay joined her on the bed.

Reluctantly Willow flipped the comforter from over her head. The pulse behind her eyes worsening at the change seeing as someone (she guessed Anya) had thrown open the blackout curtains covering the windows.

"Seeing as I don't speak cat and you're still recharging and can't change back to human you, yet I guess I have to make do with only yes or no questions, huh?"

Gaea's ears twitch as her paws kneed the heavy cloth beside Willow's hand still curled around a hand full of Tara's comforter. Weighted Willow realizes now. Curious for a vampire to keep something like this but at the same time it also felt like something Tara would do.

"When we actually started talking. The first time they had us she told me her sire who I'm now assuming was somehow me-" the tabby gives a trilled mew resting her chin on her paws that Willow took to be a kind of a node in agreement "okay circling back to that one, but Tara told me that her sire compelled her to kill you and that's the only time since she became a vampire that she drank from a human."

Gaea's ears flattened against her head at the reminder.

"But that- that whatever it was—a dream or a memory-."

The tabby's tail thrashed against her knee a clear sign of Gaea's anxiety aside from the steady stream of upset trills and mews Willow had no real way of translating.

"Okay, okay." Willow says more for Gaea's sake than her own pressing her hands against the pulse in her temples in a vain attempt to push away from the start of a migraine.

"Huh I've been called many things in my time, but 'migraine' is a first."

Gaea's surprised mew matched Willow's gasp of shock at the sounds of a voice much like her own joining into the conversation.

"Honestly, you live on the actual Hellmouth and this surprises you?"

Something shimmers in the darker corner of the room drawing their attention. Like an image being projected onto a waterfall as it shimmered into being. "Are we sure she's a new version of me? Fairly sure I'm much more intuitive than this." That earns a cat-worthy chuckle from Gaea as the spectral image takes on a slightly more solid state of being.

The first things Willow notices is the outfit.

Tight, leather, and too low cut around the chest area for Willow's taste and comfort levels.

The second thing was that this new Willow's face was morphed into the ominous form of a vampire.

The phantom-like vampire yet to move from the corner gives a rather smug grin at that before answering the thought in the human's head with a soft "Well you might not like it, but Tara didn't seem to mind us dressed like this." But the vampire's true face slipped away letting the more human Willow breathe just a little easier as she sits up now with her back resting against the headboard of the bed.

As if she could hear them Gaea pulled her paws over her ears with a rather 'I don't need to know the details of my daughter's sex life, thank you.' kind of mew that had both Willow's chuckling to witness.

"Apologies Gaea." Tara's sire whispered dropping her head in some semblance of shame before her chin lifts and golden eyes find more solid green.

"You think Tara lied to you? I'm here to tell you she didn't."

"She said you had her kill…" Willow argues far too upset to even finish saying the words aloud "and from what I just saw-"

"I did order her to drain her Mother." The vampire says as if the admission was nothing more than a passing comment on the weather.

"Why?"

"Tara was the daughter of the light. A woman that even now after countless years as a vampire possesses the purest of souls I've ever encountered. The proverbial right hand of the Goddess herself among her Coven in her human life and she asked me, pleaded with me, in fact, to change her into one of the darkest of creatures the night can produce just so she could spend more than a single lifetime with me." The vampire's 'true face' was back in all its shimmering glory as the ghost-like woman finally left her corner to slide her hand into a shaft of sunlight as she talks.

The light beam doing nothing to the ghost-like hand. Not even breaking to prove there was anything attempting to block its path into the room as it continues stabbing through the phantom hand. "And a trade like that demands a high cost. A cost even newly turned and begging for blood Tara didn't want to pay once she found out what it would be, but it was either she drain the second closest soul of equal purity to the one she thought she'd lost to complete the change or we lose her completely."

Human Willow's hand slides even deeper into the tabby's scruff at the vampire's words. Gaea's paws once again kneading the blanket at her side.

"Alright but then what's Riley's role in this?" Willow questions still feeling like there was something more they were still keeping from her on that point but choosing to overlook it in favor of getting a little more information from her shimmering vampire double.

"Riley?"

The questioning stumble in the vampire's voice in the name puzzles her more human counterpart but Gaea intervenes with a helpful mew as she stretches out amid the sun-warmed blankets purring contently as she drunk in the warmth but whatever she says has the vampire in Willow's mind hissing out several curses.

"Coven less idiot. Does he not understand the meaning of she's taken?" If it hadn't been the cause of the pulsing ache behind her eyes Willow might have found herself laughing at seeing this strange apparition of another version of herself so upset.

Gaea gives a trilled mew at the question still twisting about on top of the sheets to catch the best angle to catch the sunlight against her fur.

Willow was more than pleased at the sounds of the front door once again banging open and Anya's loud "Mom she's done it again." sounds from the other side of the separating wall into the living room.