Fic: Call me Conrad (9/16)
Title: Call Me Conrad (part 9 of 16)
Fandoms: Buffy/Hollyoaks/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Amy's been poisoned.
Justin shifted in his seat slightly so his shoulder was more level with Jake's and set his blandest smile on his face. Warren carried on ignoring them both.
That, Justin reflected, was probably half the reason why Warren insisted on being there in the Dog, still going through the books even though it was well past midnight. Jake and Justin weren't important, that was the message Warren's continuing dismissal of them sent. Justin wasn't entirely sure he believed that, not after the way Warren had cornered him that morning, but it was still annoying as all hell.
Jack, on the other hand, got all the false smiles and pleasantries that Justin assumed meant Warren wanted something off him. Jack didn't seem very impressed, but Jake had decided that the pair of them needed to stick around to make sure that Warren didn't wear Jack down. Or drive him into another heart attack for that matter, which frankly looked more likely. Justin had been doing some reading up between druidic crises in the hope of understanding what had happened to Jack. Mostly it had left him painfully aware of how little he knew about biology and medicine, but at least he now knew the warning signs.
There weren't, mercifully, any signs of an imminent heart attack. Justin wasn't happy about how tired Jack looked, though, and debated prodding Jake into forcing the man up to bed. Or more likely going and fetching Frankie to do it, since she was one of the few people who could get away with throwing Warren out on his ear at the same time.
Justin's amusement at that mental image was cut short by a thunderous knocking at the door. "Justin! Jake!"
Jake looked just as surprised as Justin felt, but he levered himself off his chair all the same. Warren looked interested. That couldn't be good, Justin thought as he followed Jake to the door.
It opened on a terrified-looking Conrad. "It's Amy," he said rapidly. "She's been poisoned. Josh said to fetch you. Please, help her."
"Poisoned?" Jake asked. "What happened?"
"My Aunt Bella." Conrad looked at his feet as if he was taking the blame. Justin remembered something about one of Conrad's relatives being a psychopath and immediately decided that he didn't want to know any more.
"We'll be right there," Jake said. When Conrad looked up thankfully, he added, "And you aren't responsible for what your relatives do, especially when they're barking mad." Conrad flushed and fidgeted, but Jake ploughed on. "Seriously, Conrad, this is your aunt's fault, not yours. I know you, and I know you would have stopped her if it was possible. It's not like Amy's defenceless either."
Conrad sagged a little. "She caught the knife," he said quietly, "but we were too far away. It cut her hand."
"See?" Jake said. "Not your fault."
"Please?" Conrad asked. Justin could see the effort it was costing him to hold back the tears.
"Of course," he said with complete sincerity. Jake beamed at him, then turned back to the interior of the Dog.
It was too much to hope that Warren had ignored all this. Indeed he was standing right behind them, a very interested look on his face. Jack, by contrast, looked appalled.
"Go on, lads," Jack said. "I'll lock up here." He looked significantly at Warren, who ignored him.
"I'll come with you," Warren decided.
"You'll only slow us down," Justin said instantly. There was no way he was letting Warren anywhere near the wizards, or Amy for that matter.
Warren looked frankly sceptical. "I can-" he began.
Jake cut him off. "We haven't got time to argue about this, we're going to be doing a lot of improvising as it is. There's nothing you can do to help, so just leave us be."
"You might as well go home, Warren," Jack said. "This is a fight you'd regret winning."
Warren looked like he had more to say to that, but Jake didn't give him a chance. He bundled himself, Justin and Conrad out of the door and shut it firmly before Warren could follow. "There'll be hell to pay for that," Justin observed mildly.
"We'll survive," Jake replied. "Conrad, get us out of here."
Being apparated, Justin decided, was unpleasantly like being drunk. Through a straw. Still, it got them to Amy's flat quickly, and when he saw what she looked like, Justin regretted wasting any time at all getting there.
Amy was laid out on the sofa, unconscious and feverish. Her right arm up to the elbow was encased in a white glow that Willow seemed to be concentrating on; probably something to stop or slow down the poison. Josh and Ste were hovering near Amy's head, trying not to look scared to death, and Kennedy had Willow's back. That didn't leave a lot of room for Justin, Jake and Conrad, especially when Conrad rushed over to kneel beside Amy and gently stroke her hair. "Kitchen?" Jake suggested. Josh nodded readily, then shared a look with Ste.
"I'll stay here," Ste said unsteadily.
Josh kissed him. "Keep an eye on her?" he asked. The crack in his voice gave away his own fear. Ste gave him a weak smile, then turned his attention back to Amy. Josh closed his eyes for a moment, then turned and lead the way.
Hermione appeared to have taken over half of the kitchen. Several of the work surfaces were covered in chopping boards, knives and bits of ingredients Justin didn't even try to identify. She looked around from an honest-to-God cauldron on the stove as Kennedy shut the door behind them. "Any change?" she asked.
Kennedy shook her head. "Willow's stasis spell is holding for now. Where are the boys?"
"I sent them off to deal with the people we rescued before they ruined any more silverroot."
Kennedy snorted. "I know exactly what you mean."
"Do you know what the poison is yet?" Josh asked.
"I think so," Hermione said grimly. "This test should prove it."
Justin watched as Hermione gingerly picked up a wicked-looking dagger with tongs, then passed her wand over it repeatedly until a tiny black drop formed at the tip. The little bead of poison was allowed to fall into the cauldron, which promptly belched out a burst of neon orange flame.
"I thought as much," Hermione muttered as she turned off the gas and stepped away from the stove. "It's an old-fashioned poison called Night's Tears. Professor Snape made us study it two years ago. It attacks everything but the nervous system, so the victim is conscious and aware as their body stops working. It's supposed to be the most painful thing short of the cruciatus curse."
"Lovely," Josh said. "Do you have an antidote for it?"
Hermione hesitated. "There is a cure, and thanks to Ms Rosenberg's prompt spell we can make it in time, but it does have severe side-effects. I'm afraid Amy will suffer irreversible nerve damage, perhaps even lose the use of that hand."
"Not acceptable," Josh said flatly. He looked at Justin.
"What?" Justin asked defensively.
"This is your area," Josh said with an alarming level of conviction. "What do we do?"
"Josh, I've read one book on heart conditions, and I didn't understand most of that. I'm not an expert."
"But you have a knack for healing," Josh insisted. "You were the one who understood how to heal Harry's wand."
"That's not the same! People are complicated, I don't know where to start even."
"You didn't know how to mend a stick before we tried that," Jake pointed out. "You can do this, Justin, I know you can."
Justin looked at his other half and felt a familiar sinking feeling. He didn't want to let Jake down by refusing to do this, not when Jake was the first person to really believe in him, but this scared him. He genuinely didn't know what he was doing, and if he got anything wrong he would kill Amy.
Josh put a hand on Justin's shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. "Amy will die if we don't do something," he said.
Justin sighed. Amy wouldn't die if they used Hermione's cure, but being crippled would be nearly as bad for someone as active as she had become. He had to at least try to find an alternative.
"OK," he said, "we might as well get the ingredients together for the magic-seeing spell. That should help us figure something out." Josh nodded and moved to the cupboard where one of the group's many stashes of incense was now kept. "Oh, and get lots of sage too. I reckon we're going to need a lot of cleansing. Unless something like that is going to make things worse?" he asked.
Hermione looked thoughtful. "It might," she said. "The poison is sensitive to destructive magics as a deliberate intrinsic enchantment. Attempting to destroy it sets up a feedback loop that reflects the harm back at the caster. It's really very elegant... in a horrifying way," she finished quickly.
"Sounds nasty," Jake agreed, "but as long as we don't try the cleansing on the actual poison we should be OK."
Several minutes later, after a few drops of blood and an awful lot of sage smoke, they had cobbled together a ritual to let them see what was going on inside a human body. Justin expected it to be something like staring down a microscope in science class, a load of mysterious blobs doing inexplicable things to other blobs. Looking at Kennedy, what he saw was nothing like that. Instead, it was like looking at buildings and towns instead of cells and organs, connected together by gleaming roads (the blood stream) and shining power cables (nerves). Justin watched in fascination as a swarm of white blood cells his mind couldn't help but see as police cars laid down the law to some unwelcome bacteria.
"Hey, I know I'm irresistible," Kennedy said, "but you're so not my type, kiddo."
Justin had to blink a few times before he could see her as a person rather than a living city, and he and Jake needed help to make it into the living room without bumping into anything. Once he was there, the difference in Amy's hand was obvious. Even through the fog Willow's spell imposed he could see that the buildings were damaged, often to the point of ruin. The invading poison looked like some kind of B-movie monsters rampaging through the city, and Amy's defenders were being overwhelmed at every turn. Justin watched as, slowed to a crawl by the stasis spell, a Godzilla-like monster casually stepped on what must have been a while blood cell before it knocked a chunk out of a building.
The more Justin focused down, the more he could understand what the invaders were doing. He watched them turn away from the power line nerves, even retracing their steps if they had to, and doing complicated dances to avoid each other. That gave Justin an idea so obvious he couldn't believe it hadn't been tried. With difficulty he hauled his attention back to the real world and asked, "Is there any way we can get the poison to attack itself?"
"That's basically what the antidote does," Hermione explained. "Unfortunately one of the breakdown products is extremely damaging to the nervous system, and the counter-agents for that tend to destroy the antidote."
Sort of a scissors-paper-stone situation, Justin translated for himself. Every attack had a weakness. "How about fooling it that everything is nerves or poison?" he tried.
Hermione shook her head. "Trying to modify the intrinsic enchantments is as bad as trying to modify the substance. The only wizard to try it became allergic to himself for a while, and nearly died."
"Ew!" Right at the moment Justin found it easy to imagine how that would happen. The cell-buildings would be at war with each other, with the 'emergency services' attacking what they were supposed to protect.
"How about faking what it sees?" Josh suggested. "That wouldn't be doing anything to the poison."
"But that's impossible," Hermione protested. "Illusions are really hard, and making one convincing on that fine a scale and replicating it across an entire body... Nothing of that level of detail has ever been attempted."
"But..." Justin could imagine arming all those white blood cells with mirrors, fooling the monsters with reflections of themselves. If only he could figure out what the mirrors actually were, and how to keep them from attacking. No, it was crazy.
Josh of course didn't let it rest, and once he had got Justin to confess what he'd thought of he came up with five ideas for what to do next in as many minutes. Justin was able to shoot three of them down straight away; he wasn't sure exactly why, but he just knew somehow that the resulting mirrors would be too dull to work. A phone call to Andrew disposed of one more that just wouldn't hang together as a ritual. That left one option that might produce a good enough illusion if they were extremely careful about their timing and positioning. And that still left the problem of stopping Amy's defences from going on a futile attack.
While Josh hashed out the details of the ritual, Justin let his sight drift back into that weird cityscape view of Amy. There had to be some way to control Amy's defences, he thought; some equivalent to a police station to issue them orders.
He was surprised to get a completely different, much more abstract view this time. Everything appeared as blobs, coloured according to their different types. Justin had no trouble making out the white blobs of white blood cells, the electric blue of nerves, and so on. The strange thing, the thing that impressed itself on Justin as just plain wrong, was the glow that surrounded everything except the jet black particles of poison. It was like everything in Amy had this connection that went out in some weird way... Oh.
"Willow, Xander said something about you having a connection to all the Slayers?" Justin asked.
"Kinda," Willow said distractedly. "I mean, I cast the activation spell."
"Could you influence how Amy's immune system works?"
Willow blinked. The stasis spell wavered for a moment, making Justin's heart skip a beat. "At the level of detail you're talking about? I don't know. I mean, I kind of supercharged Ken's healing once, but that was just letting it go do its thing."
"It's still a link," Justin mused. If Willow couldn't do it directly, maybe someone could piggyback on her connection and order the defences around that way. It would be tricky, though. Willow's brand of magic didn't work like theirs, as Andrew kept proving. Whoever lead that part of the ritual would have to be really in tune with her, would have to know her so well that they didn't need to think about what she was doing. "Xander," he said. "We need Xander and Andrew."
"Oh, yes," Willow said excitedly. "He's Amy's Watcher, plus he's got that whole soldier thing going on-"
"Hon, your spell," Kennedy interrupted as the glow around Amy's hand flickered alarmingly.
As Willow buckled down to concentrating again, Justin turned to Conrad. He hated to ask anything of the man who had raped Jake, even if Conrad hadn't had any choice in the matter. Still, they needed Xander, and apparation was the fastest way to get him here, so since Hermione was busy carefully removing all the remaining poison from the knife, that just left Conrad. And gave Justin an idea he needed to talk through with Hermione. First things first; "Conrad," he began, "could you-"
The door opened abruptly and Xander hurried in, closely followed by Andrew, Craig and John Paul. "The gang's all here," he said with strained cheeriness, and tossed a set of car keys to Kennedy.
"Never mind," Justin told Conrad. "Hermione, can I have a word?"
Filling Xander in on what he was needed for took time, as did hammering out the details of what exactly that meant. By the time they were done and Josh and Andrew had scared up everything they would need, Willow was beginning to look tired. Their time was nearly up, Justin reckoned; Willow didn't really have to do anything to be their link with Amy, but she did need to be awake and preferably alert.
"We'll need to do this outside," Jake observed.
Josh nodded. "It would be easiest in the Grove."
"Too far," Justin said, thinking of how long Willow would be able to hold up. They were right, though; magic did work better for them out of doors, or at least in natural surroundings. "We'll have to use the garden."
"I'll get the tent out of the way," Hermione said and headed for the back door.
"Good," Josh said decisively. He turned to Conrad and asked, "Do you have any good ways of carrying her gently out there?"
"Yes," Conrad squeaked. The poor kid looked terrified still, Justin thought, and somehow that helped banish some of his own fear. He watched as Conrad pulled out his wand and waved it ever so gently over Amy. Slowly and carefully, Amy was levitated up off the sofa.
"Right, let's get to it then," Ste said brusquely. Justin wasn't fooled for a moment; Ste just wanted to do something to stop himself panicking.
"OK," he said. "Xander, Andrew, can you guide Willow? You take the lead. Conrad, I want Amy following them head first, and you three follow behind. Let's make this a proper procession."
And they did. It was amazing how much simply walking in line calmed down Ste, Josh and Conrad. Hell, it was amazing how much calmer Justin felt himself now they were officially starting, even if they hadn't yet chanted a word.
Out in the garden, it was immediately obvious to Justin that lowering Amy to the ground wasn't going to be much better than doing the whole thing indoors. Apparently fences screwed up their kind of magic nearly as badly as walls. At least fences weren't so high; Justin quickly directed Conrad to line Amy up about four feet off the ground in what seemed to be the right direction. "That's good enough," he said eventually. "Hold her there." Conrad gave him a short nod and squared his shoulders. Justin couldn't help but smile at his determination; Amy wasn't going to budge an inch if Conrad could help it.
Taking an already smouldering bowl of incense from Jake, Justin began the ritual proper. It was simple enough to start with, pretty much the magical equivalent of washing down the area so that it was clean, then setting John Paul and Craig off walking around the edge of the garden to make sure it stayed that way. It was a bit cramped, and Justin wasn't sure anyway just how much good the cleansing would do, but it couldn't hurt.
The next step was much trickier. While the others kept the flow of magic smooth and steady, Justin and Jake carefully wove their spell into Amy's body. Bit by bit, painfully slowly, Justin watched as Amy's nerves and cells started to mimic what was around them. It wasn't a perfect illusion by any means, but they kept working until Justin was convinced that it was good enough. The acid test would be when it came up against the poison, but that couldn't happen until Willow took her stasis spell down. Justin didn't dare extend his spell into Willow's for fear of destabilising both of them; all he could do was try his hardest and hope for the best.
Finally he ran out of excuses. The spell was stable, he and Jake were braced, and there was no more that could be done before the next phase. Justin allowed just enough of his attention to come back to reality to say, "OK, Willow, drop it now." Then he dived back in to take his share of the load.
Amy's hand became a battleground the moment Willow's spell lifted. Their own spell was keeping the poison from spreading, Justin was pleased to see, but he didn't dare spread it through the fighting until they had enough control to stop Amy's immune system making things worse by attacking the invaders.
Then the magic bucked under him, and suddenly Justin found himself working like mad to stop the whole ritual from falling apart. Xander and Andrew had made the link to Willow and forged the path they needed for control, but the extra flow of magic was too much. Willow's connection to the Slayers was a much deeper, more personal thing than Justin had realised, and simply using it built up the power flows in ways he hadn't bargained on. Willow herself anchored the power as it entered the ritual, and Justin and Jake could just about keep control of the centre, but even with Craig and John Paul rushing in to help, Josh and Ste were fighting a losing battle. Their end of the spell was thrashing around like a high pressure hose determined to get free. They needed another anchor, Justin thought wildly, something solid with a connection to Amy that they could use to hold down the power flows leaving the spell, something that like Willow wasn't part of the ritual proper.
"Conrad! Use Conrad!" Justin wasn't sure he actually said the words aloud, but Josh seemed to hear him all the same. Justin was too busy trying to hold things together to tell exactly what Josh and Ste did, but a few seconds later things calmed down to the point where Justin could do more than just cling on and hope.
There was no time to rest, though. The moment he could, Justin picked up the thread of control Xander and Andrew had introduced and wove it quickly into the ritual. As he gave the orders for Amy's defences to pull back he could feel Jake racing behind him, pushing their illusion through the poisoned area until finally, suddenly, it was complete.
As he and Jake came back together, Justin paused to take stock. It was beautiful, he decided. Their spell seemed to have overlaid Amy's cells with silver and white, like one of those gleaming old SciFi films. The black blobs of poison reflected off everything, strangely distorted but apparently good enough to fool them into not attacking. It was bizarre, but beautiful.
Herding the poison back to the wound site was a slow business, not made any easier by the way the magic flow still twisted and bucked despite all the efforts of the other druids. Justin fretted about how tired the others must be getting, but they were still hanging in there when he and Jake finished. Once again Justin carefully passed the weight of the spell over to Jake and let himself surface. "Your turn," he told Hermione. "Draw it out."
Hermione must have waited for him to take his burden back off Jake, because it wasn't until he was good and settled that he felt her magic at work. Despite the fact that it was a very light, low-powered summoning charm, something Hermione had been at pains to point out earlier, Justin still felt it brush harshly across the spell he was maintaining. It felt like being attacked with a cheese grater. Justin was incredibly glad to be able to lean on Jake for support, and support him in turn. It made the friction so much easier to bear.
Eventually, after much careful manoeuvring to make sure every molecule of poison was gone, Justin called a halt. He and Jake braced one final time as first Xander and Andrew released the connection to Willow, then Josh and Ste let go of Conrad. They watched as their spells unwove and blew away on the wind, and Amy's body began to repair itself with the startling speed of Slayer healing. Then they turned as one to face into the flow of magic, gave silent thanks that it had worked, and opened their eyes.
Justin nearly stumbled when the weight of the ritual lifted off him. In front of him, Xander and Andrew did slump against Willow, who was looking pretty exhausted herself. He looked at Jake across Amy's still-floating body and broke into a big, weary grin. They had really done it; they had concocted a spell to deal with a nasty magical poison, and pulled it off on a wing and a prayer. It would have been easier if he knew more about how bodies worked, Justin understood that much. That was a problem he could fix, though; the library was bound to have more books on basic biology, and Justin found himself eager to find out more about the things he had glimpsed as they worked. If school had been this hands-on, he thought, he would have done a hell of a lot better at his exams.
Behind him, he heard John Paul say, "We're all done, Conrad. You can put her down now." He turned to watch as Conrad gently lowered Amy onto the grass and hurried to her side. His face was streaked with tears, and just for once Justin had to sympathise with him. That had been one hell of a scary experience.
"Conrad?" Amy said weakly, struggling to sit up.
"I'm here," Conrad sniffled, helping to support her. "Oh Amy, I was so scared that I'd lost you. I didn't know what I'd do if... Amy, I... I..." Apparently lost for words, Conrad took Amy's face in his hands and kissed her.
"About time," Jake murmured.
Justin looked askance at his other half. He would never understand how Jake could stand to be anywhere near Conrad, but here he was practically cheering him on. "You are such a soft-hearted git," he said.
"Lucky for you," Jake replied. Justin returned the grin ruefully. He was incredibly lucky that Jake allowed him anywhere near after the damage they had done to each other. After what Justin had done to Becca. He should learn from that, Justin realised; he might not understand how Jake could forgive Conrad, but Jake had, and for Justin to carry on hating the kid was just plain hypocritical.
"OK, I give in," he sighed. Jake's grin got even wider, and he leant over to kiss Justin on the forehead.
Well, it was a start.
Fandoms: Buffy/Hollyoaks/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Amy's been poisoned.
Justin shifted in his seat slightly so his shoulder was more level with Jake's and set his blandest smile on his face. Warren carried on ignoring them both.
That, Justin reflected, was probably half the reason why Warren insisted on being there in the Dog, still going through the books even though it was well past midnight. Jake and Justin weren't important, that was the message Warren's continuing dismissal of them sent. Justin wasn't entirely sure he believed that, not after the way Warren had cornered him that morning, but it was still annoying as all hell.
Jack, on the other hand, got all the false smiles and pleasantries that Justin assumed meant Warren wanted something off him. Jack didn't seem very impressed, but Jake had decided that the pair of them needed to stick around to make sure that Warren didn't wear Jack down. Or drive him into another heart attack for that matter, which frankly looked more likely. Justin had been doing some reading up between druidic crises in the hope of understanding what had happened to Jack. Mostly it had left him painfully aware of how little he knew about biology and medicine, but at least he now knew the warning signs.
There weren't, mercifully, any signs of an imminent heart attack. Justin wasn't happy about how tired Jack looked, though, and debated prodding Jake into forcing the man up to bed. Or more likely going and fetching Frankie to do it, since she was one of the few people who could get away with throwing Warren out on his ear at the same time.
Justin's amusement at that mental image was cut short by a thunderous knocking at the door. "Justin! Jake!"
Jake looked just as surprised as Justin felt, but he levered himself off his chair all the same. Warren looked interested. That couldn't be good, Justin thought as he followed Jake to the door.
It opened on a terrified-looking Conrad. "It's Amy," he said rapidly. "She's been poisoned. Josh said to fetch you. Please, help her."
"Poisoned?" Jake asked. "What happened?"
"My Aunt Bella." Conrad looked at his feet as if he was taking the blame. Justin remembered something about one of Conrad's relatives being a psychopath and immediately decided that he didn't want to know any more.
"We'll be right there," Jake said. When Conrad looked up thankfully, he added, "And you aren't responsible for what your relatives do, especially when they're barking mad." Conrad flushed and fidgeted, but Jake ploughed on. "Seriously, Conrad, this is your aunt's fault, not yours. I know you, and I know you would have stopped her if it was possible. It's not like Amy's defenceless either."
Conrad sagged a little. "She caught the knife," he said quietly, "but we were too far away. It cut her hand."
"See?" Jake said. "Not your fault."
"Please?" Conrad asked. Justin could see the effort it was costing him to hold back the tears.
"Of course," he said with complete sincerity. Jake beamed at him, then turned back to the interior of the Dog.
It was too much to hope that Warren had ignored all this. Indeed he was standing right behind them, a very interested look on his face. Jack, by contrast, looked appalled.
"Go on, lads," Jack said. "I'll lock up here." He looked significantly at Warren, who ignored him.
"I'll come with you," Warren decided.
"You'll only slow us down," Justin said instantly. There was no way he was letting Warren anywhere near the wizards, or Amy for that matter.
Warren looked frankly sceptical. "I can-" he began.
Jake cut him off. "We haven't got time to argue about this, we're going to be doing a lot of improvising as it is. There's nothing you can do to help, so just leave us be."
"You might as well go home, Warren," Jack said. "This is a fight you'd regret winning."
Warren looked like he had more to say to that, but Jake didn't give him a chance. He bundled himself, Justin and Conrad out of the door and shut it firmly before Warren could follow. "There'll be hell to pay for that," Justin observed mildly.
"We'll survive," Jake replied. "Conrad, get us out of here."
Being apparated, Justin decided, was unpleasantly like being drunk. Through a straw. Still, it got them to Amy's flat quickly, and when he saw what she looked like, Justin regretted wasting any time at all getting there.
Amy was laid out on the sofa, unconscious and feverish. Her right arm up to the elbow was encased in a white glow that Willow seemed to be concentrating on; probably something to stop or slow down the poison. Josh and Ste were hovering near Amy's head, trying not to look scared to death, and Kennedy had Willow's back. That didn't leave a lot of room for Justin, Jake and Conrad, especially when Conrad rushed over to kneel beside Amy and gently stroke her hair. "Kitchen?" Jake suggested. Josh nodded readily, then shared a look with Ste.
"I'll stay here," Ste said unsteadily.
Josh kissed him. "Keep an eye on her?" he asked. The crack in his voice gave away his own fear. Ste gave him a weak smile, then turned his attention back to Amy. Josh closed his eyes for a moment, then turned and lead the way.
Hermione appeared to have taken over half of the kitchen. Several of the work surfaces were covered in chopping boards, knives and bits of ingredients Justin didn't even try to identify. She looked around from an honest-to-God cauldron on the stove as Kennedy shut the door behind them. "Any change?" she asked.
Kennedy shook her head. "Willow's stasis spell is holding for now. Where are the boys?"
"I sent them off to deal with the people we rescued before they ruined any more silverroot."
Kennedy snorted. "I know exactly what you mean."
"Do you know what the poison is yet?" Josh asked.
"I think so," Hermione said grimly. "This test should prove it."
Justin watched as Hermione gingerly picked up a wicked-looking dagger with tongs, then passed her wand over it repeatedly until a tiny black drop formed at the tip. The little bead of poison was allowed to fall into the cauldron, which promptly belched out a burst of neon orange flame.
"I thought as much," Hermione muttered as she turned off the gas and stepped away from the stove. "It's an old-fashioned poison called Night's Tears. Professor Snape made us study it two years ago. It attacks everything but the nervous system, so the victim is conscious and aware as their body stops working. It's supposed to be the most painful thing short of the cruciatus curse."
"Lovely," Josh said. "Do you have an antidote for it?"
Hermione hesitated. "There is a cure, and thanks to Ms Rosenberg's prompt spell we can make it in time, but it does have severe side-effects. I'm afraid Amy will suffer irreversible nerve damage, perhaps even lose the use of that hand."
"Not acceptable," Josh said flatly. He looked at Justin.
"What?" Justin asked defensively.
"This is your area," Josh said with an alarming level of conviction. "What do we do?"
"Josh, I've read one book on heart conditions, and I didn't understand most of that. I'm not an expert."
"But you have a knack for healing," Josh insisted. "You were the one who understood how to heal Harry's wand."
"That's not the same! People are complicated, I don't know where to start even."
"You didn't know how to mend a stick before we tried that," Jake pointed out. "You can do this, Justin, I know you can."
Justin looked at his other half and felt a familiar sinking feeling. He didn't want to let Jake down by refusing to do this, not when Jake was the first person to really believe in him, but this scared him. He genuinely didn't know what he was doing, and if he got anything wrong he would kill Amy.
Josh put a hand on Justin's shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. "Amy will die if we don't do something," he said.
Justin sighed. Amy wouldn't die if they used Hermione's cure, but being crippled would be nearly as bad for someone as active as she had become. He had to at least try to find an alternative.
"OK," he said, "we might as well get the ingredients together for the magic-seeing spell. That should help us figure something out." Josh nodded and moved to the cupboard where one of the group's many stashes of incense was now kept. "Oh, and get lots of sage too. I reckon we're going to need a lot of cleansing. Unless something like that is going to make things worse?" he asked.
Hermione looked thoughtful. "It might," she said. "The poison is sensitive to destructive magics as a deliberate intrinsic enchantment. Attempting to destroy it sets up a feedback loop that reflects the harm back at the caster. It's really very elegant... in a horrifying way," she finished quickly.
"Sounds nasty," Jake agreed, "but as long as we don't try the cleansing on the actual poison we should be OK."
Several minutes later, after a few drops of blood and an awful lot of sage smoke, they had cobbled together a ritual to let them see what was going on inside a human body. Justin expected it to be something like staring down a microscope in science class, a load of mysterious blobs doing inexplicable things to other blobs. Looking at Kennedy, what he saw was nothing like that. Instead, it was like looking at buildings and towns instead of cells and organs, connected together by gleaming roads (the blood stream) and shining power cables (nerves). Justin watched in fascination as a swarm of white blood cells his mind couldn't help but see as police cars laid down the law to some unwelcome bacteria.
"Hey, I know I'm irresistible," Kennedy said, "but you're so not my type, kiddo."
Justin had to blink a few times before he could see her as a person rather than a living city, and he and Jake needed help to make it into the living room without bumping into anything. Once he was there, the difference in Amy's hand was obvious. Even through the fog Willow's spell imposed he could see that the buildings were damaged, often to the point of ruin. The invading poison looked like some kind of B-movie monsters rampaging through the city, and Amy's defenders were being overwhelmed at every turn. Justin watched as, slowed to a crawl by the stasis spell, a Godzilla-like monster casually stepped on what must have been a while blood cell before it knocked a chunk out of a building.
The more Justin focused down, the more he could understand what the invaders were doing. He watched them turn away from the power line nerves, even retracing their steps if they had to, and doing complicated dances to avoid each other. That gave Justin an idea so obvious he couldn't believe it hadn't been tried. With difficulty he hauled his attention back to the real world and asked, "Is there any way we can get the poison to attack itself?"
"That's basically what the antidote does," Hermione explained. "Unfortunately one of the breakdown products is extremely damaging to the nervous system, and the counter-agents for that tend to destroy the antidote."
Sort of a scissors-paper-stone situation, Justin translated for himself. Every attack had a weakness. "How about fooling it that everything is nerves or poison?" he tried.
Hermione shook her head. "Trying to modify the intrinsic enchantments is as bad as trying to modify the substance. The only wizard to try it became allergic to himself for a while, and nearly died."
"Ew!" Right at the moment Justin found it easy to imagine how that would happen. The cell-buildings would be at war with each other, with the 'emergency services' attacking what they were supposed to protect.
"How about faking what it sees?" Josh suggested. "That wouldn't be doing anything to the poison."
"But that's impossible," Hermione protested. "Illusions are really hard, and making one convincing on that fine a scale and replicating it across an entire body... Nothing of that level of detail has ever been attempted."
"But..." Justin could imagine arming all those white blood cells with mirrors, fooling the monsters with reflections of themselves. If only he could figure out what the mirrors actually were, and how to keep them from attacking. No, it was crazy.
Josh of course didn't let it rest, and once he had got Justin to confess what he'd thought of he came up with five ideas for what to do next in as many minutes. Justin was able to shoot three of them down straight away; he wasn't sure exactly why, but he just knew somehow that the resulting mirrors would be too dull to work. A phone call to Andrew disposed of one more that just wouldn't hang together as a ritual. That left one option that might produce a good enough illusion if they were extremely careful about their timing and positioning. And that still left the problem of stopping Amy's defences from going on a futile attack.
While Josh hashed out the details of the ritual, Justin let his sight drift back into that weird cityscape view of Amy. There had to be some way to control Amy's defences, he thought; some equivalent to a police station to issue them orders.
He was surprised to get a completely different, much more abstract view this time. Everything appeared as blobs, coloured according to their different types. Justin had no trouble making out the white blobs of white blood cells, the electric blue of nerves, and so on. The strange thing, the thing that impressed itself on Justin as just plain wrong, was the glow that surrounded everything except the jet black particles of poison. It was like everything in Amy had this connection that went out in some weird way... Oh.
"Willow, Xander said something about you having a connection to all the Slayers?" Justin asked.
"Kinda," Willow said distractedly. "I mean, I cast the activation spell."
"Could you influence how Amy's immune system works?"
Willow blinked. The stasis spell wavered for a moment, making Justin's heart skip a beat. "At the level of detail you're talking about? I don't know. I mean, I kind of supercharged Ken's healing once, but that was just letting it go do its thing."
"It's still a link," Justin mused. If Willow couldn't do it directly, maybe someone could piggyback on her connection and order the defences around that way. It would be tricky, though. Willow's brand of magic didn't work like theirs, as Andrew kept proving. Whoever lead that part of the ritual would have to be really in tune with her, would have to know her so well that they didn't need to think about what she was doing. "Xander," he said. "We need Xander and Andrew."
"Oh, yes," Willow said excitedly. "He's Amy's Watcher, plus he's got that whole soldier thing going on-"
"Hon, your spell," Kennedy interrupted as the glow around Amy's hand flickered alarmingly.
As Willow buckled down to concentrating again, Justin turned to Conrad. He hated to ask anything of the man who had raped Jake, even if Conrad hadn't had any choice in the matter. Still, they needed Xander, and apparation was the fastest way to get him here, so since Hermione was busy carefully removing all the remaining poison from the knife, that just left Conrad. And gave Justin an idea he needed to talk through with Hermione. First things first; "Conrad," he began, "could you-"
The door opened abruptly and Xander hurried in, closely followed by Andrew, Craig and John Paul. "The gang's all here," he said with strained cheeriness, and tossed a set of car keys to Kennedy.
"Never mind," Justin told Conrad. "Hermione, can I have a word?"
Filling Xander in on what he was needed for took time, as did hammering out the details of what exactly that meant. By the time they were done and Josh and Andrew had scared up everything they would need, Willow was beginning to look tired. Their time was nearly up, Justin reckoned; Willow didn't really have to do anything to be their link with Amy, but she did need to be awake and preferably alert.
"We'll need to do this outside," Jake observed.
Josh nodded. "It would be easiest in the Grove."
"Too far," Justin said, thinking of how long Willow would be able to hold up. They were right, though; magic did work better for them out of doors, or at least in natural surroundings. "We'll have to use the garden."
"I'll get the tent out of the way," Hermione said and headed for the back door.
"Good," Josh said decisively. He turned to Conrad and asked, "Do you have any good ways of carrying her gently out there?"
"Yes," Conrad squeaked. The poor kid looked terrified still, Justin thought, and somehow that helped banish some of his own fear. He watched as Conrad pulled out his wand and waved it ever so gently over Amy. Slowly and carefully, Amy was levitated up off the sofa.
"Right, let's get to it then," Ste said brusquely. Justin wasn't fooled for a moment; Ste just wanted to do something to stop himself panicking.
"OK," he said. "Xander, Andrew, can you guide Willow? You take the lead. Conrad, I want Amy following them head first, and you three follow behind. Let's make this a proper procession."
And they did. It was amazing how much simply walking in line calmed down Ste, Josh and Conrad. Hell, it was amazing how much calmer Justin felt himself now they were officially starting, even if they hadn't yet chanted a word.
Out in the garden, it was immediately obvious to Justin that lowering Amy to the ground wasn't going to be much better than doing the whole thing indoors. Apparently fences screwed up their kind of magic nearly as badly as walls. At least fences weren't so high; Justin quickly directed Conrad to line Amy up about four feet off the ground in what seemed to be the right direction. "That's good enough," he said eventually. "Hold her there." Conrad gave him a short nod and squared his shoulders. Justin couldn't help but smile at his determination; Amy wasn't going to budge an inch if Conrad could help it.
Taking an already smouldering bowl of incense from Jake, Justin began the ritual proper. It was simple enough to start with, pretty much the magical equivalent of washing down the area so that it was clean, then setting John Paul and Craig off walking around the edge of the garden to make sure it stayed that way. It was a bit cramped, and Justin wasn't sure anyway just how much good the cleansing would do, but it couldn't hurt.
The next step was much trickier. While the others kept the flow of magic smooth and steady, Justin and Jake carefully wove their spell into Amy's body. Bit by bit, painfully slowly, Justin watched as Amy's nerves and cells started to mimic what was around them. It wasn't a perfect illusion by any means, but they kept working until Justin was convinced that it was good enough. The acid test would be when it came up against the poison, but that couldn't happen until Willow took her stasis spell down. Justin didn't dare extend his spell into Willow's for fear of destabilising both of them; all he could do was try his hardest and hope for the best.
Finally he ran out of excuses. The spell was stable, he and Jake were braced, and there was no more that could be done before the next phase. Justin allowed just enough of his attention to come back to reality to say, "OK, Willow, drop it now." Then he dived back in to take his share of the load.
Amy's hand became a battleground the moment Willow's spell lifted. Their own spell was keeping the poison from spreading, Justin was pleased to see, but he didn't dare spread it through the fighting until they had enough control to stop Amy's immune system making things worse by attacking the invaders.
Then the magic bucked under him, and suddenly Justin found himself working like mad to stop the whole ritual from falling apart. Xander and Andrew had made the link to Willow and forged the path they needed for control, but the extra flow of magic was too much. Willow's connection to the Slayers was a much deeper, more personal thing than Justin had realised, and simply using it built up the power flows in ways he hadn't bargained on. Willow herself anchored the power as it entered the ritual, and Justin and Jake could just about keep control of the centre, but even with Craig and John Paul rushing in to help, Josh and Ste were fighting a losing battle. Their end of the spell was thrashing around like a high pressure hose determined to get free. They needed another anchor, Justin thought wildly, something solid with a connection to Amy that they could use to hold down the power flows leaving the spell, something that like Willow wasn't part of the ritual proper.
"Conrad! Use Conrad!" Justin wasn't sure he actually said the words aloud, but Josh seemed to hear him all the same. Justin was too busy trying to hold things together to tell exactly what Josh and Ste did, but a few seconds later things calmed down to the point where Justin could do more than just cling on and hope.
There was no time to rest, though. The moment he could, Justin picked up the thread of control Xander and Andrew had introduced and wove it quickly into the ritual. As he gave the orders for Amy's defences to pull back he could feel Jake racing behind him, pushing their illusion through the poisoned area until finally, suddenly, it was complete.
As he and Jake came back together, Justin paused to take stock. It was beautiful, he decided. Their spell seemed to have overlaid Amy's cells with silver and white, like one of those gleaming old SciFi films. The black blobs of poison reflected off everything, strangely distorted but apparently good enough to fool them into not attacking. It was bizarre, but beautiful.
Herding the poison back to the wound site was a slow business, not made any easier by the way the magic flow still twisted and bucked despite all the efforts of the other druids. Justin fretted about how tired the others must be getting, but they were still hanging in there when he and Jake finished. Once again Justin carefully passed the weight of the spell over to Jake and let himself surface. "Your turn," he told Hermione. "Draw it out."
Hermione must have waited for him to take his burden back off Jake, because it wasn't until he was good and settled that he felt her magic at work. Despite the fact that it was a very light, low-powered summoning charm, something Hermione had been at pains to point out earlier, Justin still felt it brush harshly across the spell he was maintaining. It felt like being attacked with a cheese grater. Justin was incredibly glad to be able to lean on Jake for support, and support him in turn. It made the friction so much easier to bear.
Eventually, after much careful manoeuvring to make sure every molecule of poison was gone, Justin called a halt. He and Jake braced one final time as first Xander and Andrew released the connection to Willow, then Josh and Ste let go of Conrad. They watched as their spells unwove and blew away on the wind, and Amy's body began to repair itself with the startling speed of Slayer healing. Then they turned as one to face into the flow of magic, gave silent thanks that it had worked, and opened their eyes.
Justin nearly stumbled when the weight of the ritual lifted off him. In front of him, Xander and Andrew did slump against Willow, who was looking pretty exhausted herself. He looked at Jake across Amy's still-floating body and broke into a big, weary grin. They had really done it; they had concocted a spell to deal with a nasty magical poison, and pulled it off on a wing and a prayer. It would have been easier if he knew more about how bodies worked, Justin understood that much. That was a problem he could fix, though; the library was bound to have more books on basic biology, and Justin found himself eager to find out more about the things he had glimpsed as they worked. If school had been this hands-on, he thought, he would have done a hell of a lot better at his exams.
Behind him, he heard John Paul say, "We're all done, Conrad. You can put her down now." He turned to watch as Conrad gently lowered Amy onto the grass and hurried to her side. His face was streaked with tears, and just for once Justin had to sympathise with him. That had been one hell of a scary experience.
"Conrad?" Amy said weakly, struggling to sit up.
"I'm here," Conrad sniffled, helping to support her. "Oh Amy, I was so scared that I'd lost you. I didn't know what I'd do if... Amy, I... I..." Apparently lost for words, Conrad took Amy's face in his hands and kissed her.
"About time," Jake murmured.
Justin looked askance at his other half. He would never understand how Jake could stand to be anywhere near Conrad, but here he was practically cheering him on. "You are such a soft-hearted git," he said.
"Lucky for you," Jake replied. Justin returned the grin ruefully. He was incredibly lucky that Jake allowed him anywhere near after the damage they had done to each other. After what Justin had done to Becca. He should learn from that, Justin realised; he might not understand how Jake could forgive Conrad, but Jake had, and for Justin to carry on hating the kid was just plain hypocritical.
"OK, I give in," he sighed. Jake's grin got even wider, and he leant over to kiss Justin on the forehead.
Well, it was a start.