Chapter Text
Buffy waltzed into the Magic Boxas the sun set, humming under her breath. Giles looked up from the book he was examining and asked, “What put you in such a good mood, Buffy?”
“Angel’s going to profess his love!” she exclaimed, giddy with pleasure.
“And how do you know this?” Giles asked cautiously.
“The spell’ll make him do it!”
“Spell?” Giles asked, worried about Anglelus being losed on Sunnydale again.
“Yeah, I cast a spell on him that’ll return him to his instincts. It said he’d go after his lover, and that’s me!” Buffy said happily.
“You put a vampire into their instictual mating state and you expect him to come to you? Are you insane? You’re the slayer – no vampire would ever come near you normally unless they wanted to kill you – and in the state you induced – a mating state based on vampire instincts – Angel won’t come near you with a 40 foot pole,” Giles said agitatedly as he pulled off his glasses and began to clean them.
“But he loves me! Angel loves me! He told me so!” Buffy yelled stridently.
“It doesn’t matter; in trying to make him have sex with you, you virtually guaranteed that he won’t come near you,” Giles declared, his annoyance with the single-minded actions of his charge clear in his voice.
“But the book says that he’ll go towards whoever he likes the most! And he loves me! So he’ll come to me! It says so right here!” Buffy said as she pointed out a passage in the book she picked up from the table.
“You idiot! That book’s out on the table because it is the most ill-informed book I have ever run across in my entire life. It says right here that vampires can’t stop drinking human blood when they taste it, but everyone who knows anything about vampires knows that any vampire can stop drinking the blood of a human whenver they feel like it – it’s why it is so easy for vampires to create minions, all they have to do is bite someone, drink their fill, and then feed them some of their own blood before they die,” Giles said, exasperated with the clear, out-right stupidity of his charge.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever Giles. So Angel should be here soon, right?”
“Wrong, Buffy. Vampires in a mating state go for whats powerful and smells good – you may be powerful, but you definitely don’t smell good to a vampire,” Giles replied annoyed.
“So I’ll wear some perfume! Big deal!”
“You still won’t be able to disguise your natural scent; you never really can.”
“But power overrides scent and I’m the most powerful one here! “
“You may be the physically strongest, yes, but not magically, not mentally, and certainly not emotionally. Besides, power doesn’t override scent and for vampires scent indicates compatibility. Therefore vampires look for strong mates, but if their scent isn’t pleasing to them, then they’ll ignore the person. It is much more common for a vampire to smell a pleasing scent and chase that scent down to see if the person it belongs to is powerful engough to be accepted as a mate. A mate lives as long as a vampire does, after they have been properly clamied. The problem is that once a vampire finds an acceptable mate, they keep them in seclusion until they accept the vampire. Even after that, it is common for the vampire to keep the mate close and afirm their bond several times a night,” Giles tried to explain.
“So I’ll do a spell to make sure he choses me. Problem solved!”
“Buffy, that’s really not going to work.” Giles tried speaking softly this time, urging his words to reach his stubborn Slayer.
“Why not?” Buffy questioned belligerently. “Magic can do everything.”
“No, it can’t, Buffy, it really can’t. You should know that by now,” Giles replied, taking off his glasses to clean them again, exasperated by Buffy’s obstinacy. “Magic only makes things worse. If you can’t understand that, after all that’s happened over the years, then I give up.”
“So you’ll help me find a spell that will make Angel love me?”
Giles’ eyebrows drew together and just as he was about to yell at Buffy for her stupidity, the phone rang. Buffy reached the phone first, hoping that it was Angel calling to tell her where he was or that he was on his way to find her.
“You’ve reached the Magic Box, what can we do for you?” Buffy said when she picked up the phone, her voice perky and expectant as she hit the speaker button.
“Buffy! Giles!” Xander’s voice rang out from the telephone.
“Xander, have you seen Angel?” Buffy cut in callously; clearly upset it wasn’t Angel on the line.
“Buffy, what did you do?!?! You must have said something to Angel because he’s gone crazy! He showed up at my house last night and knocked me out. When I woke up we were somewhere random and –” Xander’s frantic words were cut off and all Buffy could hear was a harsh “Mine!” before the sounds of a scuffle, some feral growls, and a series of muffled moans came across the line. There were scratchy noises before a voice came on the line again, sounding breathless.
“You have to come save me Buffy! Angel’s been fuh –” they heard Xander gasp into the phone before the phone line devolved into a blank dial tone.
Buffy looked at the phone crossly before setting it back down.
“Buffy, when did you cast that spell on Angel?” Giles asked slowly.
“Last night, why?” she answered carelessly.
“Because that spell goes into action immediately. If Angel had wanted you, then he would have come after you within the hour. Instead he went to Xander and knocked him out. That’s classic vampire behavior when they’re running on their instincts; they find what they want and take it back to their lair. And Angel’s had his hands on Xander since last night. That’s not very good for Xander – ” Giles tried to explain before the Slayer cut him off.
“Angel’s trying to get rid of the competition! How sweet! Unnecessary, but sweet. He knows I’m not interested in Xander,” Buffy thought aloud, ignoring everything Giles had just said.
“So where do you think they are?” Buffy continued on, heedless of Giles’ growing exasperation.
“We have no clue; they got cut off before Xander could say. I’ll try a quick scrying spell, so go grab a candle for me,” Giles informed his charge.
Giles and Buffy were shocked when the spell came up blank. Evidently the vampire had some way of blocking the effects of magic, so using magic to locate the two was no longer an option and it would take too long to search Sunnydale by hand.
“Why don’t you go find Willow and she can help us research the effects of the spell while we wait for Xander and Angel to resurface. It’s the only thing we can do now,” Giles spoke.
Buffy darted out the door to find Willow as Giles began to pull books down from the shelves to begin research.