The magic shop is heavy with rapt silence for a while as all members watch the phantom-Tara breathing in deeply and breathing out. Her muted lips mumble parts of a spell every so often.

"Sooo…," Xander's eyes slide from the apparition-of-Tara to the real thing. "Is it you that's doing it?" he asks cautiously.

Tara's head whips up to face him, shocked out of her self-study. "No, I've… no, I…" she glances down at her lap to try and reign the stammering back under control, before taking another look at the ghost of herself. "I-I think it's Willow."

"But she's in England," Dawn pipes up.

"Thanks for the recap, Newsweek," Buffy says sarcastically.

After Dawn sticks her tongue out and Buffy shoots her an unimpressed look in return she angles towards Tara who's still a sickly shade of white.

"What makes you think it's Willow?" Buffy asks gently, instinctively lowering her tone as if she'd uttered a curse word in church. They'd carefully been skirting Willow's name in the house. Something she probably wouldn't have done if it was just a simple breakup.

Nothing's simple in Sunnydale.

Tara flicks her gaze to the empty side of the table. "We were doing a… a healing spell," she says, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. "She had a bruise on her arm from walking into a door handle and we were going to see if we could heal it away. She sat there and-" her voice wobbles before she starts again. "She's not there now. I think because you don't… you don't picture yourself in a memory? Maybe?"

"Maybe someone's framing Willow?" Xander shrugs in an attempt to console the look of torment on Tara's face. "You know… like… some evil-bad-doer?"

"That could be plausible," Anya nods, but not all that convincingly. Another verbal pat on Xander's back.

"Or maybe-," Dawn mumbles bitterly, sliding down in her seat like she's bored of the conversation, "-it's Willow."


"She's causing it?" Spike asks into the phone. He turns every so often, glancing up the stairs in case another Tara makes an appearance and walks through him. The sensation of phantom organs brushing against his hand is an experience he isn't keen to revisit.

"I'd say almost definitely," Giles replies from his end of the crackling phone call. "She's been in a somewhat catatonic state for the last few days now." Spike just manages to hear to swallow in his throat over the white noise. "The withdrawal isn't progressing as I'd expected."

"In what way?"

Spike stiffens. A Tara-apparition materializes on the sofa, leaning awkwardly as if her head was propped up on a shoulder that's not there, watching the blank TV. Her eyes move as though following motion. Her mouth mumbles something, and she brings her legs up to her chest, settling into a deeper cuddle against a not-there Willow.

The loving domesticity of it makes his chest hurt.

"...-her memories," Giles finishes, and Spike jerks his head, realizing he wasn't listening.

"Sorry, Watcher, repeat that last bit?"

"I said she's been hallucinating, having conversations with people that aren't there, and from what I can piece together, most of what is manifesting is her memories."

"She's what, bringing them to life then?"

"It appears so. And somehow they're resonating in the memory's origin."

The image of Tara writhing on Willow's bed makes him feel sick anew. Break-ups were hard. Not-quite-break-ups with neither party resolving anything were even harder. Was the witch torturing herself intentionally? Picking happy memories as blunt tools of self-flagellation?

Been there…

Despite it all—the lingering resentment over the amnesia spell, the bitterness at having that warm smoky kiss in Buffy's bed interrupted, the anger on Buffy's behalf at being dragged kicking and screaming out of some well-deserved eternal peace—he can't help feel just a molecule, just a tiny atom, of sympathy.

Bint's giving up something that makes her feel special. Powerful. Hard to do in a town like this…

And afterward, she'd have to take her place next to her high school friend who's the literal embodiment of power, and chosen-one specialness…

Bet that stings.

He'd been witness to more than some of the witch's weak moments before magic had really got its claws in deep and dragged those insecurities into its gaping maw. The kid had grit, and something nasty had sunk its teeth into that determination. Not a lot of magic users could've pulled off what she did. Not only pulled it off but walked away with her mind intact.

Spike bit into his cheek in thought.

Then again maybe she hadn't. Maybe she wasn't as intact as they all assumed she was.

The magic probably didn't want to let go. It had a nice cozy home in a real receptive mind and was likely clinging on to it like a rabid possum being dragged from a dumpster.

"So what's the battle plan here?" he mumbles, eyes still fixed on happy-TV-watching-Tara.

"Well… the mind is an… erratic place at best," Giles sighed. Rustling on his end of the line signifies the moment when he succumbs to glasses-polishing as a grounding technique. "As she works through whatever trauma is causing this flux of apparitions they could peter out. If she stabilizes, they'll likely stop."

"You sound very convincing," Spike mutters. "And if she doesn't?"

"I… I'll know more once I have my resources," Giles stammers, and not at all confidently before his voice drops. "But I think it's likely that things will worsen. At the moment it appears to just be Tara she's focusing on. She's obviously at the forefront of Willow's mind. If her psyche darkens… I wouldn't like to take a guess at what might surface. Or whom."

Spike bites his cheek, holding the phone tight to his ear as Tara turns and smiles up at an invisible Willow. One eye half-closes as she receives a kiss on her cheek. "Not just Taras?" he asks, his throat tight with all that could encompass.

"Indeed," confirms Giles, sounding just as tense.


Eventually, the second Tara fades, flickering out like a fluorescent light.

The gang shuffles awkwardly, all pointedly not looking at the tears shining in real-Tara's eyes.

"Okay," Xander says, adjusting his red and black sweater. "So, opinions? Decisions? Second coffee run? What's to be done here?"

There's a moment of shuffling awkwardness as they all keenly feel Giles' absence; the researcher, the guide, the first point of call.

Tara sniffs wetly and turns to Anya.

"Did you- did you get the address of the people you sold the ghost charms to?"

"Sure did!" She brings out a hefty red ledger from underneath the counter. "I do it with all the real magic stuff now after the whole Glory catastrophe." She opens the book out flat, her finger pinning the address on the page. "Room 14, Bell Hall, UC Sunnydale."

"That's your old dorm, isn't it?" Buffy asks and Tara nods wearily.

"Should have guessed," she sighs.

Buffy bites her lip, feeling helpless.

We need Giles. And a second Willow… craporama…

"Maybe we can figure out more about why this is happening," she tries, aiming to console and sounding too chipper for it to land. Tara offers her a numb half-nod.

"So college-town next stop on the Ghoul express?" Xander confirms, dumping his empty coffee cup in the trash and adjusting the collar of his sweater one more time before resigning to its wonky charms.

"She's not a ghoul," Dawn bites out defensively.

Xander raises his hands in a placating surrender. "Sorry, sorry. All aboard the Taras-memory train then."

"Talk about voyage of the damned," Buffy snorts.

Tara moves to stack her chair in the corner, avoiding the eyes of everyone else and Buffy's stomach drops at the injured, hunched look to Tara's shoulders

Buffy quietly swears at herself.

She's watching her memories splayed out in front of all of us. And worse, in front of strangers.

Waita be sensitive…

She catches up to her and almost lays a hand on her back but pulls away, sensing that would be stepping over yet another boundary and Tara has so few left.

"I'm sorry," Buffy says. "That was a crappy thing to… I didn't…" she sighs, fussing with her empty coffee cup before throwing it in a wastepaper basket. "This must be like… mundo invasive, huh?"

Tara shrugs and doesn't meet her eye. "No more so than having my memories stolen last week. Or Glory turning my brain to soup. Or my dad taking my bedroom door away," she swallows and wipes underneath her eyes to brush away the tears that nearly spill.

Buffy nods, worries her lip with her teeth, feeling small in the face of traumas as big as her own.

"It sucks though," she whispers.

"Yeah," Tara agrees, acknowledging that the biggest things sometimes have to be spoken of in the smallest words. "It does." She huffs, sniffs bravely, and straightens her back.

"I still have an old key at the house we can grab," she says. "P-probably easier than convincing campus security we're ghost hunters."

Buffy smirks obligingly, and stacks her own chair, wrapping an arm around Tara as they head out the door.

The walk back to Revelo passes in uncomfortable small talk and even more uncomfortable silence. The group breathes a collective sigh of relief when they reach the house.

"I'm gonna get a soda," Dawn calls as they troop in through the door. "Call me when we're ready to go."

"Yeah me too." Buffy starts, moving to follow her.

"Buffy-" Xander stops her with a hand on her arm as Tara heads upstairs. "Can I… can we…" he gestures helplessly to try and summon words as though they could be conducted into his mouth. "This whole thing with you and Spike. Don't you think—"

"Uh-uh, let's not go there," Buffy cuts him off before he can fully attempt to put his foot in his mouth.

Unfortunately, he's already ankle-deep. "But he's a killer! And it's… it's not you, you know? You… you and Spike… it's just Ooksville," he ends with a less persuasive debate than he was hoping for.

"He's a killer? That's actually going to be your main argument?" Buffy asks, unimpressed, and then leans around him to address Anya where she's slumped cross-legged on the sofa, nose in a magazine she seemed to pull out of thin air. "Hey Anya, what was your total body count when you were a demon? Just out of like, morbid curiosity."

Anya glances up. "Seven-thousand-nine-hundred-and-forty-seven. I mean technically those last two-hundred-and-twelve were joint with Halfrek but you know body counts go all over the place when you sack a city. And don't think I wasn't plenty peeved not to get that last fifty-three for an even eight. I hate sloppy numbers-" she rambles on as Buffy stares dead-eyed at Xander.

"I'm sure," Buffy says, her attitude fully loaded into those two syllables.

"But that's all very very much in the past, right Ahn?" Xander prompts, interrupting his fiancee's flow.

"Yep!" Anya beams proudly "Three whole years!"

"Impressive," Buffy nods, still not taking her eyes off Xander. "Anyway…"

"Yeah, but my point is—" Xander persists but is cut short again.

"I don't care what the point is, Xander. I just don't care. He's been there for me, and that's enough. If you don't have anything nice to say just do the whole not-saying-anything thing. We all manage to," she adds—casting a pointed glance at Anya who's back in her magazine—before she turns and nearly barrels straight into Spike as he rounds the corner from the dining room.

"You lot are back then," he says, clearing his throat.

"Not for long," Buffy sighs with an exhausted huff, blocking the cold look she can feel Xander throwing over her shoulder. "Just stopping to get an old dorm room key for more ghost hunting."

"Yeah, 'bout that, there's been some developments here too," Spike nods then glances over her shoulder. "Where's the witch?"

"Upstairs getting the key-" Buffy barely has time to finish her sentence before Spike swears and bolts up the stairs.

"Shit- shitshit- Tara- don't-!" he shouts, hoping to preempt her opening her bedroom door, praying if he's too late that the apparition of her has vanished by now. But as he reaches the landing he sees her standing horror-struck in the middle of her bedroom floor. The bed is—thankfully—out of sight, but he knows just the show she's viewing.

"Oh, God," she hisses, unable to look away even as revulsion floods her face, blood draining from her cheeks.

"S'alright," Spike says from the hallway, deliberately not entering the room. He holds out a hand. "Just walk away. Come on."

"I'm… I-," Tara shakes her head, her eyes shining with shock.

"Look away," Spike says gently, reaching in to take her by the wrist and tug her out, carefully keeping himself at the edge of the room's threshold. "Come on, you don't need to see that."

She numbly lets him pull her out, shivering as he closes the door after her.

"Think you're gonna need to find some new digs—" he starts, before being interrupted by a shriek from Anya downstairs.

"EW! EW-EW! OH MY GOD!"

"WHAT!?" Spike bellows—already sure of the answer—as he heads down the stairs with Tara trailing weakly behind him.

"An unpleasant tactile sensation!" Anya shouts as a second Tara wafts up from the sofa and heads towards the kitchen. "I put my hand straight through her!"

"Clear a path, clear a path!" Xander dodges the phantom and presses himself into the front door.

"Jeez, it's getting crowded in here," Buffy mumbles as Tara's image flickers at the doorway of the living room, only to materialize again coming through the front door and straight through Xander, all love-sick giggling, her hand swaying as if held in another.

Xander gags, falling to the floor as he turns green. "Oh, that-ugh... oh man—" he groans as Anya nods vigorously.

"An unpleasant tactile sensation?"

"And some." He swallows thickly, crouched over his knees.

"AHH!" Another scream preempts Dawn running through from the kitchen and ducking behind Buffy like a bodyguard. "Tara's in the kitchen making ghost waffles. She's everywhere."

"Okay, let's all just move this party somewhere else," Buffy huffs. "I think we can skip the whole campus trip for now, seems like overkill."

"Move it where?" Anya asks, crouched on top of the sofa as if the multi-Taras were a mouse infestation.

Bunny infestation, Buffy mentally corrects herself.

"Magic Box is probably out," Spike grumbles, leaning on the banister, alert and watchful for any more phantoms passing by from upstairs. "Probably a dozen of them milling about in there—Christ-MOVE!"

He grabs Tara to the side, pressing them both into the wallpaper with an arm across her chest as a second Tara wearing a nightdress materializes on the stairs, glaring down at the space just shy of the coffee table. Her muted lips hissing something before she barrels down.

Dawn and Buffy lurch out of the way and watch wide-eyed as Tara wrestles something out of the air, still berating the not-there-Willow before waving her arms in a panic as if trying to clear smoke—

And vanishes as if switched off abruptly.

"Well… not all bouncy-fun-having apparitions it seems," Spike grumbles, releasing Tara from behind his arm.

Things are getting worse…

"Okay so… where's a safe Tara free-zone?" Xander asks, getting up from the floor. He still looks an unpleasant pre-vomit color.

All heads turn to Tara, shaking like a leaf. "I…," she tremors, wets her lip but can't stop it trembling. "I—"

"You two lovebirds never broke into my place, did you?" Spike asks and Tara looks momentarily relieved.

"N-no."

"Great," Buffy nods, wrapping a protective arm around Dawn. "Let's go."