I "stood guard" exactly like you would have expected me to stand guard: with one ear to the door. Not on the door, but damn right was I listening in.
For about ten minutes or so, I heard nothing except some muttering -- probably Kate Gardner. I think I would have recognized Tara's voice even through the locked door.
Then there were some heated words, and I heard Tara yell for assistance.
I reared back to kick down the door -- and bounced off it.
I heard the other voice yell, "Nice try."
I didn't waste time. I sprinted to the top of the stairs. "Everyone!" I yelled.
Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at me. I've always had a knack for drawing attention to myself.
Okay, I'm loud. Potato, potahto.
I didn't waste time. "The witch wasn't who she said she was. Tara needs help now."
"How do you know?" Giles said.
"She said so. I heard her through the door. Whoever that Gardner chick is, she's got some kind of shield set up."
Everyone came running up the stairs. Just then, I had an idea, and headed down, grabbing Buffy's. "What?" she said.
"I have an idea," I told her. "Follow me." She hesitated. "Please?"
I don't know if it was the please or if she just had to swallow the idea of following my lead, but she nodded her head. We ran out the front door of the Hyperion into the courtyard. The room Tara and "Kate Gardner" had ended up in
"What's your idea?"
I looked up. "Damn."
"Damn?"
"I thought it was a rule. All hotels had to have ledges. This is going to make this harder." Harder, but not impossible. I was still walking, and Buffy was following me.
Buffy, not being stupid, caught on right away. "You want to go in through the window," she said. "You're right. Without a ledge this is going to require a precision toss."
I stopped under Tara's window. "Yeah, it is," I said. "But if she's in trouble --"
"I'm with you there" she said. "Okay. Give me a boost." My confusion must have showed on my face, because she said, "Not a large target and I'm a bit smaller than you are." She was being businesslike, not insulting.
Still, she was wrong, and holding things up while we fought might give whoever the hell that was inside time to try to hurt Tara. "So you're saying you trust me to throw you?"
After a second, she said. "Happy landings." I would have taken that as an insult if I hadn't been mostly concerned about Tara. She bent down and clasped her hands together. I stepped slightly backwards, heard her quickly say, "One, two, three," and was quickly rocketed upwards.
Whatever else you can say about Buffy Summers, and I can say a lot, she could hit her targets. I stretched out my hands, closed my eyes, and crashed through the window.
Quickly, I rolled to my feet.
Sometimes speed helps. In this case, though, I could have been moving like a snail and it wouldn't have mattered. Neither occupant in the room noticed my entrance.
They were apparently involved in some kind of psychic battle. "Kate Gardner" was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a reddish-haired skinny woman about Tara's age.
Whatever had happened three minutes ago to get Tara to yell for help was over.
I walked towards the door -- and was knocked backwards. Apparently you couldn't get through the door from either direction.
So, what did I do now?
This is why Willow wanted me to learn about magic. If I knew more about it, maybe I'd feel confident about what to do right now. If I knocked out this redhead while she was fighting Tara, I didn't know what would happen. Maybe Tara would be okay, and maybe she'd be knocked out with the redhead.
I went back to look out the window, but Buffy was nowhere to be seen. I could have used someone to talk to about this, but I couldn't really blame her for not sticking around. She probably felt she'd be better off trying to get through the front.
Still. What to do?
Hmmm. Well, if I didn't want to knock the redhead out -- or kill her, though I actually wanted to do both to her for attacking Tara -- that didn't mean there weren't other things I could do. I walked up to her, grabbed her right arm, and forced it up behind her back as hard as I could -- any harder and I'd break it, not that I'd weep over that. But I was trying to cause her pain, not permanent bodily harm.
Not yet, anyway.
I forced the arm up one more inch
Finally, I heard the redhead yell. Tara staggered, took a slight step backwards, and said, "Hand over her mouth!"
She didn't need to tell me twice. As one hand forced her right arm upwards, I clasped the other one over her mouth. She began to struggle, and I said, "Stop it or I'll break your arm." I looked over at Tara. "You okay?"
"Yeah. She was, was trying to make me dark."
"So do you have any idea who this is?"
"Amy Madison."
I blinked. I'd heard about Amy the rat – how she'd led Willow Rosenberg down the garden path into magic addiction, how she tried to lure her back after she'd sworn off witchery for a while – but the last anyone had heard of her, she'd gone to Cleveland.
And now I finally had the displeasure of actually meeting her.
Right then, Faith came into the room through the window. So that's where Buffy had gotten to. "Need any help?" she asked.
I said, "Can you take control for a second?"
Faith shrugged, said, "Sure," and came over and punched Amy Madison in the base of the skull.
She went down in a heap. "Not what I meant," I said without real anger. I should have thought of it myself. Now that there wasn't any chance of it hurting Tara, knocking Amy out only made sense.
Before Faith could answer, the door crashed open. Vi led the way, followed by Giles Everyone looked like they could easily kill the next person they saw, until they figured out that we had the situation under control. "Good Lord." Giles said as he walked in. "Is that --?"
"It, it is," Tara said. "Either that, or a clone."
"Who is that?" Vi asked.
Running up behind everyone, Buffy said, "Amy Madison. Good going," in Faith's and my general direction.
"Don't look at me," Faith said. "Tara and Kenny here had the situation under control by the time I got here. All they needed me for was mop-up."
"What happened?" Xander asked.
"We can save that for a bit later," Buffy said firmly, and for once I agreed with her. "Right now, we need to make sure Tara's okay –"
"I am," Tara said.
"Under the circumstances," Giles said, "I assume you'll forgive us if we don't take your word for it. Vi: Take Miss Madison into one of the other rooms and bind and gag her. Try not to hurt her too much along the way.'
"Are bumps and bruises okay?" Vi asked
"I'm not a medical examiner," Giles said. "But don't break any bones." Vi moved forward and picked up Amy in a fireman's carry, not being particularly careful whether she hit the door, the walls, or pretty much anything else.
Amy should be glad it wasn't me carrying her. She might have slipped as I carried her past the lobby.
"And there's something else we need to look out for," I said as we all started to leave the room.
"What would that be?" Giles asked.
"The real Kate Gardner," I said. "You said yourself that she was the witch who was coming. Sounds like maybe Amy Madison ran into her on the way."
Giles nodded. "Quite right. I'll see if I can contact her, and if I can't, we should probably send out a search party or two." He headed to his room.
Angel and Cordelia were downstairs when we got there. "What happened?" he asked as Xander and Anya herded Tara to a nearby sofa.
"Where were you?" Buffy asked. I moved to stand behind Tara on the sofa.
"This is actually still a business," Angel said. "Cordy and I have been underground trying to track down some leads on a case. You didn't notice we weren't here?"
"Not until the big fight broke out and you didn't show," she said.
"There was a big fight?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "And we ended up trashing one of your rooms. Sorry about that, but we had to stop the bitch who was trying to kill Tara."
"Not kill me," Tara said. "Turn, turn me dark."
"Same thing," I said fiercely. "A dark Tara is no Tara at all." She smiled.
"It was Amy Madison," Buffy said.
"You're kidding," Cordelia said.
"I wish to hell I was," Buffy said. "We have her bound and gagged in one of the rooms upstairs."
"I'll pay for the damages," I said.
"That's not important," Angel said. "What's important is everyone's okay and you stopped the bad guy." He looked at Buffy. "You really didn't notice we weren't here?"
Buffy chuckled. "Nope."
Giles walked down the stairs. "Vi informs me that Amy Madison is safely bound, head to toe, and couldn't utter a sound if her life depended on it. Slayers are going to take turns guarding her until we figure out what to do with her."
"I think the lobby of this place could use a few heads," I said.
"Hear hear," Xander said. Angel nodded as well. So did Faith.
Cordelia, for her part, said, "I get the sentiment, but ewww!"
"No," Tara said firmly "Not in cold blood."
Xander said, "Easy, Tara. I wasn't being serious. I doubt Kennedy was, either."
I was -- half, anyway -- but Tara clearly didn't want to hear that right now. I knew she wasn't hot-blooded in that way, like I was -- but I also knew that if Amy had died while they were in the middle of their magic fight, she wouldn't have mourned.
She would have wished things could have gone otherwise. But she wouldn't have mourned.
"Just blowing off steam," I said, hoping she wasn't reading me. "She could have hurt you --"
"She didn't," Tara said. "That's the important thing." Then a slight smile. "But thanks for being concerned."
Amazing how a slight smile can make you warm and tingly all the way down.
I love this woman. Have I said that recently?
"The other important thing," Xander said, "Is how we make her stop trying."
"That too," Tara said firmly. Proof, as if I needed more, that Tara not being inclined to violence didn't mean that she was the least bit soft.
"In any event," Giles said, "That was only one of the two things I had to tell you. The other concerns Kate Gardner. And in this case, at least, the news is good."
"She's not dead?" Anya asked.
"Sweetie, do we need to read the dictionary for the definition of 'good' again?" Xander said.
"Dead could be good news in some cases," Anya said. "Maybe she was experiencing indescribable agonies from being shuttled to a torture dimension. Or maybe she'd just seen an Adam Sandler movie." She paused, then said, "But I can see how that wouldn't be seen as good by most people. Please. Go on."
"She isn't dead," Giles confirmed. "She isn't even injured. She says she got a call from Althenea this morning telling her we'd decided we didn't need her services, and was most put out to find out that someone had been impersonating her. She offered to come over now, but I told her that tomorrow is probably better." Then, to Tara, "Still, next time, read her aura to see who she really is. I doubt, under the circumstances, that she'll complain."
Tara nodded.
"Are you ready to talk about what happened?" Giles said.
"It's not, not a matter of ready," Tara said. "Just of trying to sort it out in my head. Maybe, maybe talking it out will help." She took a deep breath. "Okay. Here's what happened."
