I didn't bother to call ahead, scrying for him with the pen to confirm that he was, in fact, on campus. Working late, I suppose. The shitty rental car is annoying, taking a huge chunk of the money I had procured, but it'll have to do in the meantime.

Bonnie didn't change her mind, and I didn't know any of the others well enough to try to get them to come along. Perhaps if I'd gotten here earlier, I could have had Elena or Stefan come along to help. Would have been good bonding time, quick road trip, and all that. Ingratiating myself with the people who are stupidly effective at remaining alive, despite only one hundred and fifty odd years of experience, seems like my best bet. I know the show justifies it with plot armor, but maybe something like that applies here too.

I get out of the old Impala and head for his secluded, tiny office in a building on the outskirts of campus. They don't really admire their occult studies program well enough to justify a prime campus location. Or maybe they are just keeping up appearances: the board of directors at the school totally know all about what goes bump in the night, don't they?

The portly man at the front desk, who totally has a runic tattoo on his left wrist, points me to Shane's door but greets me with suspicion. Yeah… these guys totally know things.

When I push the door open, the professor has his head in his hands, clearly fighting to stay awake. "Excuse me." I grin as he looks up, jolted somewhat to see a strange face. "Hello, there. I'm Logan." I reach out to shake his hand.

He takes it carefully, staring at his watch. "Atticus Shane. Though you probably know that." Frowning, he meets my eyes. "Can I help you?"

I shake my head. "Not exactly. You see, I'm thinking that I can help you."

He raises an eyebrow. "With what?"

"I heard that your wife was in the hospital," I explain. Hospitals aren't going to be able to anything to improve her condition, the magic eating away at her. "I don't know how it happened, exactly, but I do recognize the symptoms. She… tapped into a magic called expression, and it's killing her."

He clearly doesn't know how to process what I'm saying.

"I can remove the taint of expression from her body. Can't promise that it will totally cure her, but I think it might help the doctors do their job, since her system will no longer be fighting itself."

This is a massive risk. I don't know how expression will actually interact with my own body, though I don't intend to let it sit within my system, wasting away as the siphoned energy dissipates. Ideally, this will hopefully prevent Shane from interacting with anyone later to try to rise Silas, to try to resurrect their son, Sam.

If Shane weren't already sitting down, I suspect that he might have slumped into his chair, unable to respond. "Listen, kid, if this is some kind of pathetic freshman jok-"

I shake my head. Currently, I don't have any magic in my system, though I did manage to siphon a little from the practice sessions last night and shove it back within the watch on my wrist. So I pull it into my system, red glow emanating from underneath the banded watch, and then raise my palm. Sparks flicker across my fingertips, a small flame swirling over the skin, and then vanishing in a shower of embers.

"This isn't a joke, professor. I have an ability that is extremely rare, even among witches, which allows me to siphon purposed magic and turn it into unpurposed magic that I can later use." I sit down across from him, the desk separating us. He's testing me, unsure, probably thinking that this is all too good to be true. "I have reason to believe that my abilities can uniquely remove the effects of your wife's expression and prolong her life."

"I don't even know who you are, or how you came to find me or my wife."

I smirk. "A little talent for precognition runs in my family. Me, my mother, my brothers. These visions guide us forward, and they led me to you. If you and your wife are important enough for my visions to trigger, then I feel obligated to attempt to help you." And get rid of the threat for Silas in the first place. "I know it's a lot to take in, a strange man coming up to you promising something outrageous. But if there's a chance that I can actually help your wife, shouldn't you take it? For her?"

He hesitates for a moment before finally nodding. "Fine. Let's go. I can give you a shot; what have I got left to lose?"

.:O:.

Her heartbeat is weak, her brain activity minimal. I imagine if I were more medically inclined, I'd wonder more about the physiological component to magic. The ability is inherited, so it seems likely to be genetic, but does that mean there are organs within the body that somehow produce magic? Or organelles? Or is it something else entirely that just appears somewhat biological?

She's currently unconscious, breathing through a tube. Shane walks over to the other side of the bed and holds her unresponsive hand tightly, staring at her with so much affection that I can almost tangibly feel it. I totally see why he was so willing to go to the ends of the earth and make a deal with the immortal to try to get his wife and son back.

"May I?" I gesture to her hand, and Shane holds up a finger.

"Wait just a second." He closes the blinds to the room and shuts the door. "All right."

I carefully and gently splay one hand on her forehead and hold her right hand tightly. It takes several seconds before I finally gather to courage to begin siphoning, and as I do, I close my eyes.

She convulses under the effects as I pull on that power within her, trying to remove it from her system, and pull it into my own. It... the rush, the impossible potency… I can feel it traverse through me, invigorating every cell, arousing my every desire. I throw my head back, gasp in exhilaration, as the neutral power fills the core of my being and mystically empowers me beyond any normal bit of magic that I've ever felt.

I can hear Shane calling out to me, can feel his wife twisting and writhing under the siphoning, but I don't care.

I just want power.

The sudden alarming machines alert me to something going on, and when something shoves into my shoulder, I'm forced to let go, tumbling to the ground.

Scowling, I rise quickly to see that Shane shoulder-checked me away from her, and my hands already twitch to continue the absorption.

Doctors and nurses rush into the room now, pulling in objects and ushering the two of us out.

"What the fuck did you do to her?!"

Shane is in my face, a hilarious notion; in seconds, I could send him twisting, writhing across the ground. Maybe that would be a good thing, removing him from the picture. Ultimately, Silas would still remain a non-factor after Shane's death, would he not?

The earnestness in his face, the emotional intensity, shocks me from my enraged stupor, and I frown. The nurse at the desk a few feet away is staring carefully at us, phone at the ready to call security. I step back from Shane and hold up my hands, itching to surge power through this entire wing of the hospital, my will made manifest.

"I… didn't expect that to happen," I say after a moment of conviction. "I… I think touching that power unleashed some of my inner instincts." Is this what Willow Rosenberg dealt with? "I didn't want it to stop."

Shane sets his jaw, eyes glistening. "This was a mistake. Get the fuck out of my sight before I contact hospital security."

I roll my eyes. I'd like to see them tr-

… Take a deep breath.

He's right. I turn and walk away. Later, I'll worry about whether or not she survives this. I… have a feeling that I did not remove all of the taint, but if the doctors can get her back to a stable condition, undoubtedly I stripped from her of some of that power. Perhaps she'll live longer.

On the way out of the room, I mutter the practiced spell to transfer the magic within my system into my watch, but the face of the watch suddenly shatters, the band tearing apart as the entire timepiece falls to the ground in dozens of pieces. Everyone in earshot has turned toward me.

"Fuck."