Chapter Twenty-Three

She’d found it after school.

For a long time, she’d just stared at it. Because it just didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem like it could possibly real. It was like the hand of god had just reached down and dropped the answer right in her hands. It was like something way too good to have ever happened on the Hellmouth.

It was Angel’s curse.

And it had just been lying there, for who knows how long, between the desk and the wall. If she hadn’t dropped her pencil, she never would have found it.

Then, numb, she’d printed it out, and carried it back to the library.

“What, Will? You have something?”

She’d nodded.

“Well?”

She’d held it out towards Buffy, still silent, still shocked. Still half-believing that it would just disappear. That it wasn’t real. Ethan had drifted over towards them. He’d read over Buffy’s shoulder.

“Oh my god, “ Buffy had said. “This... this is...”

“Angelus’s curse,” Ethan had said. “It was believed to be lost.”

“Well. It was. And... and now it’s back. Ms. Calendar must have... have been translating it. That must be why...”

Buffy’d looked up.

“We can do this. Right? We can... fix him.”

But would it be him?

“I- I don’t know, Buffy... I mean... I don’t know if... if it’d even be... him...”

Ethan had taken the print-out from Buffy’s hands. Willow had recognized the eagerness that he’d read it with.

“I have all of this out in my car. We could do this. *She* could do this.”

Willow’d realized suddenly that Ethan was looking at her.

“Me? Wait, wait, why... why me?”

“You’re the witch. I’m a sorceror. There’s a difference.”

And that was when they’d gotten the phone call. Buffy had picked up the phone in Giles’s office, and Willow had continued to look over the print-out with Ethan. When Buffy had come back out, she’d been pale. Willow wasn’t sure she’d be able to take whatever Buffy was about to tell them, but she asked anyway.

“What? What happened?”

“Giles has Xander. He said he’ll kill him in an hour if I don’t come. Alone.”

Oh yeah. She couldn’t take that. It just... didn’t really process. All she could feel was a deep, empahatic “no!”

“I don’t know if I can fight him, Will. I’ll hold him off as long as I can. Do the spell.”

So, here she was, sitting in the library with Oz and an unpredictable chaos sorceror, preparing to perform a spell she had no idea if she was actually capable of performing. And if she couldn’t do it, hey, two of her friends were going to die. No pressure.

She drew a deep breath, and began to speak.

“Not dead, nor not of the living... spirits of the interregnum, I call...”

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