The Door in the Hedge
by Lynn K. Hollander
All feedback and comments should be sent to flieg@socrates.Berkeley.EDU and they will be passed on to the author.
Chapter 2 - A Second Opinion (Go to Chapter 3)
"Ann," Claire said. "Did they do it right?"
"Yes. You can view the playback, but I think she passes."
"Angel, why do you think you're cursed?"
"The curse gives me my soul. Uncursed, I'm just a vampire."
"A quasi-demon-human hybrid with vast amounts of integral magic, but no soul?"
"Sounds like us."
"Right. Ann, I need the table."
The tea tray disappeared, leaving the table bare save for the blue sphere and Ann's wine glass. The wine was now a deep red, although she had not refilled the glass; and anyway, there was only the one bottle of wine.
Claire put a large case on the table, opened it and removed two plastic bags and a tool roll. Opening one of the bags, she removed a glass ball and handed it to Angel, who automatically took it in his right hand. Claire opened the tool roll to reveal about a dozen wands of different colors and materials. Taking a clear blue rod, she tapped the ball. It turned blue.
"No curse, and if you want, I'll put that opinion in writing."
"We're going to go shopping," Ann Grove said, letting go of her glass in mid air. It disappeared.
"What about Willow?" Tara asked.
"If there's no curse, she didn't cast one, did she? If she didn't cast one, there's nothing wrong with her soul, is there? If Angel wants to continue a consultation with Claire, he should be allowed privacy. We have imposed on him for more than three hours already and we're going shopping. Shoes, I think."
"I have shoes, " Tara sulked.
"You do not have the only feet in the world, " Ann said tartly.
"I will need to get home later," Claire said.
"I'll drive you, after dark," Angel said.
"I just came from Seattle, but I didn't bring my phone with me." That last was directed to Ann.
Ann turned one hand over. In her palm was a solid crystal ball. She gave it to Claire. "Call me." She and the girls left. Rather prosaically, they used the door.
"Are you and Ms. Grove professional witches?" Angel asked.
"I am. She's not. I don't know exactly what she is. Her geas is a real work of art, though--multi-leveled, subtle, and complex. Hold this, left hand."
'This' was another hollow ball. Claire struck it with red, green and yellow wands in succession. It not only changed color, it changed shapes. Claire watched it silently, then looked at Angel. "You've had a very interesting life."
"Not always pleasant."
"Not the same thing at all," Claire agreed. She arranged the wands she had used on the table, blue, red, green and yellow, in a column with the ends aligned, and laid a clear wand over them at right angles. She clapped her hands over the arrangement and picked up the crystal rod. "Linear read out. Point-to-point match. Enhance."
Colored bands of light appeared horizontally in the air in front of her. She looked them over, put down the clear rod, and said, "And you're somewhere between two and four hundred years old. But that's tricky, because your soul is older than your body. That's true of every one, of course, but usually with this spell I get just this life's read-out. Is your age between those limits?"
"Yes."
Claire picked up the rod: "Elongate base, elongate base, elongate base. Stop. Enhance." She put down the rod. "Move around beside me and tell me what I'm seeing here. Down here, on my left, that's you from birth to first death. How old were you when you became a vampire?"
"Twenty-four."
"OK. Oh, you can put the sensors down now. Sorry."
Angel put the blue ball down on the table and set the other object next to it. It kept cycling through its various shapes and colors as he watched.
Claire balanced the clear rod upright at the top of the other wands. She took a laser yardstick and some small mirrors out of her kit and walked over to the left end of the display. At that end, there were only three colors: red, blue and green. She stuck a mirror into the bands of light at the point where those colors were joined by yellow, then more mirrors at other points along the whole length of the read-out. They hung there, suspended. She returned to the left end and measured the first
section, then the rest of the bands. "Your soul, the way it's configured now, is approximately 350 years old, maybe a little less. And your body is about a hundred years younger than that."
"I'm 246 years old."
"You seem to have died three times, the last time just last fall."
"That's right."
"And why your soul is about a hundred years older than your body?"
"I spent some time in hell recently. Uh, what am I seeing here?"
"Red is your physical health. Green is your soul. Yellow is that integral magic I mentioned. And the blue is normal, it indicates the absence of a curse. The colors are totally arbitrary. Here, where the red is half as thick as it was when you were born, is when you became a vampire. The yellow wasn't present when you were born and it picks up here, right when the green disappears and the red is halved. That's you, pure vampire, uncursed. This is you, cursed: blue line gone, indicating presence of curse; green line back, just like when you were born, indicating the presence of soul; and still the vampire magic and the very thin red, indicating still dead. And you stay like that for quite a while. Now, two-thirds of the way out on this end, the present, everything's choppy. Lots of changes, real fast. I need more
room." Claire walked back to the table and picked up the crystal rod. "Elongate base, elongate base. Stop. From zero, spiral configuration. Elongate base, elongate base, elongate base. Stop. Enhance. Stop. Rotate. Stop." She put the rod back upright on the table. The bands of colors were now wrapped into a cylinder with the last few feet of the right end on the outside.
"Here the curse stops and your soul's gone. You're pure vampire again, not for very long, I think."
"About half a year."
"And here, your soul is back again, and right after that, like later in the same day, maybe, you're dead-dead, no red at all. Still no curse. No magic, either. And your soul spends all this time in hell you said. Never seen that before. And then you're back--soul, vampire magic and simply dead, instead of dead-dead, uncursed. The only other interesting thing is this part, this overlap, where you live one day alive and that same day dead, about a year ago."
"Yes."
"You know about that?"
"It's OK. Nothing after that?"
"No. Why?"
"A couple of months after I was dead again, I seemed to have lost my soul again. Tried to kill some human friends of mine. I was drugged and when it wore off, I was back, but if my friends weren't smart, foolish and brave, I might have killed them."
"Don't take any more drugs," Claire said. "What freed you from the curse the second time you lost your soul?"
"Giving me my soul back was a punishment. I was supposed to suffer, not to have pleasure or happiness in anything."
"And?"
"I loved a girl. I experienced pleasure in our physical relationship and that was it."
"Have you made love to anyone you don't love recently? For comparison."
"I haven't made love to anyone recently."
"Was being drugged pleasant?"
"It was weird. I was happy. I didn't hurt at all."
"Happiness is not pleasure. Cessation of pain is not pleasure. I think you had a abnormal drug reaction, or possibly a conditioned reflex--either one is more probable than that Willow, who is so soft hearted she won't let anyone kill Spike just because he can't harm humans physically, casting a curse like the one you all describe."
"You know Spike?"
"I've sort of met him, and Ann's complained about him. Now, of course, he's a really ugly floor lamp in Ann's front hall, but that's not a real solution, is it? Someone always knows the release word. I'll take some blood and run a sensitivity panel. What drug?"
"Doxymal."
"Roll up your sleeve. I meant it about avoiding drugs. Alcohol is no safer." Claire produced a rubber band, cotton and a needle. She tied, swabbed and stuck.
Angel watched as she slipped a tube over the needle. It began to fill with blood. He was feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
Claire removed the tube from the needle, pressed a cotton ball over the spot and removed the needle.
Angel watched the needle emerge from his arm, then started to fall sideways out of his chair.
"Oops," Claire said. She tossed the needle on the table and tried to catch him. "Ann, help," she yelled, as she collapsed beneath Angel's weight.
Ann reached around Angel and lifted him off Claire.
"Put him on the couch," Claire said.
"So what happened?" Ann asked, carrying Angel over to the couch..
"I think he saw the needle. No, sit him up."
Ann sat him on the couch and sat on the arm next to him, keeping Angel more or less upright.
"Keep a hand on him," Claire said, opening her kit wider.
"You think this is entirely magical?" Ann asked, putting one hand on Angel's forehead and taking one of his hands in her other hand.
Angel opened his eyes and looked over at her. Ann was looking at Claire.
"There's no way there's a physical cause of his faint--his blood pressure is zero already. Therefore, it's the magical bits imitating life."
"Like art?" Ann smiled.
"Art who? Never mind. How's he doing?"
"Better. But this will take a while, this way. He's very resistant to healing. You want him awake anytime soon?"
Angel thought about telling Claire he was all right, but it was too much trouble. He shut his eyes again.
"What do you have in mind? I'm really not comfortable giving him anything orally while he's unconscious, even if he's not breathing."
"Something simple," Ann said calmly, shifting around and kissing Angel leisurely on the mouth.
When Angel's free hand moved up to rest in the center of her back, Ann pulled back. He opened his eyes. Ann smiled at him and stroked his cheek. "This works better if you kiss me too, Angel."
"OK." He shut his eyes.
Ann kissed him again. His hand moved up to the back of her head and he kissed her. After a while, he sat up a little straighter, and she broke the kiss, rising to her feet and releasing his hand.
"Works?" he asked.
"How are you feeling?" Claire asked Angel.
"Strange," he said. "Good, but strange."
"Well, your color's better--you're still pale, but you're not green."
"I'm gone, then," Ann said, and disappeared.
"I'm always pale."
"Have you ever had blood drawn before?" Claire asked Angel.
"We don't go to doctors much," Angel said. "We either heal or we're dust. Besides, what are they going to do with us, listen to our hearts not beat?"
"I can do better than that, although I have never treated a vampire before. Have one of these," she said, handing him a lemon drop. "A restorative, sort of like a sport drink, but for magical beings."
Angel unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. It disappeared as soon as he shut his mouth. "That's startling."
"Fast acting," Claire said. "Now how do you feel?"
"Good, really good."
"Have some samples. Try one if you think you're slipping back into an unsouled state. If you don't have any and Ann is present, try holding hands with her. Ann is very restorative. Not that any such state should occur."
"You really don't think I'm cursed, do you?"
"Nope, I think you're fine. The thing is, at some level you--everybody--knows if you're cursed. It's like rubbing sandpaper over your aura, you can't ignore it."
"You can sandpaper an aura?"
"Figure of speech; but my observation of your aura and the curse titer reaction both tell me you are not now cursed. However, your curse not only lasted a long time, both parts--what we might term the initial whammy and the follow up kicker--seem to have kicked in with excessive force. I read a lot of trauma at those times.
I think you got in the habit of not examining yourself or the curse, simply because it was so painful then. It should not be so painful now, if you care to try. In any case, avoid drugs and I'll get back to you about the sensitivity results. Let me tidy up here and we'll get out of your hair."
Claire pulled a cloth and a large envelope out of her kit. She wiped the wands and replaced them in the roll, then stuffed the cloth in the envelope. She gathered up all three spheres Angel had touched and put them in the envelope. Sealing it, she pressed it flat between her two palms. Holding it by one corner, she raised the envelope about a foot above the table. "Burn," she told it, releasing it to hang in mid-air. It went up like flash paper and left no ash. The bands of colored light flared
and disappeared.
Claire closed up her kit and picked up the crystal ball: "Ann, we're done here."
Ann and the girls appeared in the room. "And we're done there," she said.
"I'd like a secure line for me and Angel, if he has any more questions," Claire said.
"Sure," Ann agreed. She put down two large shopping bags, took Claire's crystal and turned her other palm up, revealing another ball. She touched the two together, then she handed one to Angel and the other back to Claire. "Speak her name, and after that it's just like a plastic phone, but more secure," she said to
Angel.
"Thanks," Angel said, examining the ball. It seemed clear, but he could not see through it. Strange, like the rest of the day.
"Any time," Ann said, and picked up her shopping bags.
"Wait, please," Willow said. "Angel, thanks. Tara and I appreciate your patience. I owe you."
"Don't worry about it, Willow."
"No, really, we mean it," Tara said.
"Ann," Claire asked. "Are you taller this afternoon?"
"Yes, I am. I'm my usual height, again. When you called, I came in a hurry, and now I'm stuck."
"You look nice tall," Willow said.
She was taller, Angel realized. Very nearly his own height. How had he missed that?
"Done?" Ann asked, then she and the other women vanished.
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(Go to Chapter 3)
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