She's pretty sure school doesn't prepare you for boys. Although, really, if there was a class on how to deal with your semi-boyfriend not being able to actually boyfriend because he thinks he's too old for you, she's probably missed it. Because slayage. At least it's been quiet enough lately that she can, actually, do homework and go to the Bronze like a normal teenager. A part of her mind wonders if Principal Wood has anything to do with it, if he knows about the Hellmouth too and can glare monsters into submission. (That'd be a useful power to have. He sure can do it to teenage boys!)

Cordelia tells her — or rather, Cordelia tells everyone in earshot repeatedly — about her new boyfriend from UC Sunnydale. He's at UC Sunnydale because, you see, he's in college. He's older than her. He's charming. He's rich. He's in college. Has she mentioned that? She's going to a college party with her rich college boyfriend. Who's in college. And rich. Buffy wants to wring her neck, just a little. She wants to wring the rich college boyfriend's neck when he shows up with his creep buddies who insist she come to the party too a fair bit more, because Cordelia is just being Cordelia but college boys are supposed to be mature, aren't they?

But she goes to the party anyway, because no boys are mature including Angel. She knows what she wants, and Angel can shove his arrogant… what't the word? Patronizing? Patronizing attitude about her being too young for him. She'll show him. She'll show Giles and his stupid Watcher-y-ness too. (She tells Willow she's going, though. Willow's her best friend here. It's different.)

And then it turns out to be the Sunnydale version of the worst kind of parent-nightmare party ever, which means people got drugged but also almost sacrificed to a giant snake. She kills the giant snake and breaks some noses, and Chuxi stabs a guy with a fork while Xander is in drag which would be hilarious under any other circumstances, but this time she's just upset. All she wanted was one party. Can she have one party that doesn't involve demons? (She's the Slayer. Of course she can't.)

Giles's promise to go easy on her hasn't really translated into action. It's translated into somewhat less rigorous training, okay, but that's come with a side of weirdly overprotective. She's not sure how to deal with that. She can break most guys with a well-aimed kick, and what remains is enemies and Angel. Angel takes her out to coffee and flirts awkwardly, but still gets Giles-threats when they both think she's not around. It's … sort of nice? But it's mostly really weird. She's pretty sure it's not a Watcher's Duty to give boyfriends the dad talk.

The thought makes her freeze up. He is giving Angel the dad talk, adjusted for circumstance, and it's all kinds of weird because she has a dad. Her dad should… Her dad's in LA and won't give anyone the dad talk, because he's out of the loop and out of her life most of the time. And sort of in his place, now, is Giles with a bottle of holy water and a buttload of Watcher-y snark.

Halloween is coming up, and Cordelia crashes an Angel-date while Buffy's out slaying. It sucks. Being the only girl in the Bronze who looks like she fell through a hay stack sucks more. Angel's nice about it, of course, but he's always the same sort of nice to her. She has no idea what makes him tick or what he's into. She wants something that could impress Angel, or at least make up for Watcher-holy-water-dad-talks, but more than that she wants to spend the one night where all things demonic lay low being a girl.

So she and Willow do the girly thing and break into Giles's office after school. There's no Giles there but there are Watcher-notes and books and things in languages neither of them can read, and a convenient notebook of all things Angel-related. Willow finds that one, while Buffy flips through incomprehensible books and finds an old photograph.

It's a silly sort of photo, and sort of old. A group of six kids around her age, maybe a bit older, she thinks, only from way back whenever. One boy with a pierced nose and is grinning viciously, his arms slung around two of his friends. Another is trying to light a cigarette with the one he's already got in his mouth. One's playing the guitar, fingers blurred, while another seems to have been caught mid-gesture at the camera. The only girl in the photo is stealing a a flask from a boy who's sticking his tongue out at the camera.

"Who're they?" Willow asks. There's no writing on the photo, so Buffy just shrugs.

"No idea," she says. They look happy, fashion disasters aside, whoever they are. Willow giggles.

"They're kind of cool, aren't they? N-not that I could ever…" she trails off. Buffy eyes the girl with the flask with a new curiosity. They probably can't get Willow's hair like that, but she'd bet she could get her hands on that kind of outfit… And, well, Halloween's only once a year. Still, she makes sure to put the photo back and clean up the office as best she can. She doesn't want Giles to know they're in there.

Once everything's back in place, they make for the door, only to hear footsteps in the library proper. Willow squeaks, Buffy prepares a dozen excuses, and suddenly Principal Wood emerges from the supernatural-monsters-and-magic section with a thick text on vampires. They make eye contact. Willow squeaks again.

"Hello, sir!" Buffy chirps. Wood stares blankly at her.

"Good evening," he says calmly. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Oh, uh… I'm sure you were busy in the uh, the…" She points lamely. Wood tucks the book under his arm.

"The historical fiction section," he says. "A true weakness of mine, I'm afraid."

"Totally," says Buffy. "We were just, uh, leaving now very fast." And she grabs Willow's arm and gets out of there.

The next day, Giles is absolutely furious. For a moment she thinks he knows he's been robbed, or maybe that he knows Wood's been in his public viewing Watcher books, but no, apparently he's just this mad about something else. At least the night before Halloween is almost as quiet as Halloween.

"Mischief Night," says Giles, when asked. "But I can assure you we'll have none of that." She wonders who else got the holy-water-dad-talk to make that possible. Still, the patrol that night is quiet, and she spends most of it complaining to Willow about her disaster of a love life or trying to convince her to dress like a punk on Halloween.

"I think I'm going to be a sheet ghost. Again," says Willow. Buffy rolls her eyes.

"Come on. You have to–" A twig snaps, and she whirls, stake in hand only to come face to face (and stake to neck) with creepy Ethan, who looks a bit worse for wear.

"Evening," he manages weakly. She keeps the stake where it is.

"What are you doing here?" Okay, so she's not supposed to stake humans, but creepy Ethan really should know better than to sneak up on her. He raises his hands quickly.

"Not up to anything, promise," he says. "Dear old Rupert would flay me if I were. Apparently I'm a corrupting influence." He doesn't seem particularly insulted by that. "Regardless, I couldn't help but overhear your little chat…"

"See, that's why you're a corrupting influence. Because you spy on teenage girls," says Buffy, folding her arms. He's probably not worth the stabbies. Probably.

"I was–" Ethan begins, then grins sheepishly. "I had an excuse, but it's possibly even worse. Anyway, I've got something you may like, Slayer."

"Is it a virgin sacrifice? Because I don't want one of those."

"A virgin sacrifice?" Willow asks, wide-eyed, while creepy Ethan stifles laughter.

"Well, I'm sure one could be arranged if you wanted it," he says. "No, it's nothing dead, don't worry." With a flourish, he offers her a box from his bag. It's got a bow on it and everything, so she takes it without thinking. He's turned his attention to Willow now.

"I've got something for you too, Little Red," he adds lightly, and holds out something small and wrapped in glittery paper.. Buffy opens her present, feeling a bit dubious. It's a dress.

More aptly, it's The Dress, an almost perfect replica of what she saw in the Watcher diary, only deep red where the drawing had been colorless. It's almost exactly what she'd been dreaming of, with little pink roses and lace and bows and all. She runs her fingers over it, wondering if it's cursed.

"They're just objects now, of course," says Ethan lightly. "Meant to be part of an event, but clearly that's not in the stars this year." Willow's present is a necklace of some sort, a locket maybe. (She doesn't get a good look.)

"What do you want?" she asks, before Willow can babble and before, hopefully, a spell can be cast.

"Why am I always assumed to have an ulterior motive?" Ethan asks theatrically. "Maybe I just wanted to do something nice for you girls." She glares. He wilts. "Alright, fine. I'd like you to point out to Rupert bloody Giles that if I wanted to rain disaster down on his head and his precious little town, I'd have done it already. I'm not here to sow chaos—I mean, not primarily, anyway. I promise."

"So you're stalking us so that you can bribe us into telling Giles that you're only a little bit up to chaos and destruction?" she asks. Ethan runs a hand through his hair in exasperation.

"Well," he says defensively, "I have to cause a little bit of chaos and destruction. It wouldn't be any fun otherwise. But I'll make it up to him, I promise."

"In a nice way?" Willow asks, and for a moment Buffy wonders if they're even the same age. Willow looks like a little kid standing there, watching Ethan like he's going to transform into an actual authority figure right before her eyes. He pauses, smiles crookedly.

"Well, I'm not going to bake the man cookies," he says. "But yes, in a nice way. I promise. And a completely proper nice way at that. Alright?"

"Alright," says Willow uncertainly. Ethan's smile widens.

"Good girl," he says. "I hope you both have a wonderful Halloween." And he vanishes into the dark, even though Buffy's trying very hard to keep an eye on him.

She wears the dress. Willow, after much needling, wears the fake nose ring and fake eyebrow ring and the whole set, and Giles almost chokes at the sight of her. Jesse and his girlfriend are dressed up like comic book characters.

"I'm the Invisible Girl!" Jesse's girlfriend announces happily. "Only. Not invisible."

"I still say you could've been The Thing, Xander," Jesse tells him. Xander rolls his eyes and shoulders his toy gun.

"Xander's not a thing," says Chuxi, who's dressed like a ballerina and manages to look the part. "Oh, no— wait, you showed me those. He's not orange!"

"Thanks for that," says Xander sincerely.

(Apparently sticking up for a guy's not-orange-ness can be the key to his heart, because once the kiddies are dropped off she catches Xander and Chuxi kissing behind someone's garage.)

"That really was a lovely outfit," Giles tells her a few days later, after Angel's promised he likes her as she is and after she's tripped down half a flight of stairs on the hem of the stupid dress. "I almost didn't recognize you and Willow at first."

"That's the point of Halloween, right?" she says. "I'm glad nothing went wrong. I feel like presents from creepy Ethan don't normally go over well…" Giles chokes on his tea for real this time.

She missed Ford, which blinds her to his bullshit for a very short period of time. It's still long enough for him to get a group of people no one would miss into a building with concrete walls and no doorknobs on the inside, and she's trying frantically to plan a way out for people who don't understand they need one, when there's a crash and a crunch of metal and someone takes down the door with a car. Spike, on the stage, manages a flat "What?" before crossbow bolt start flying and the sacrifices flee for the exits. Spike and the woman he calls Dru make a break for it while Buffy and the newcomer take out the minions, but they almost had him. Almost.

As the dust settles, she turns to see who she's been fighting back to back with, and almost jumps. It's Principal Wood, only not dressed like a principal at all and armed to the teeth. He jogs out in vain pursuit of Spike and Dru, but they're long gone.

"Sorry about your car, sir," Buffy says lamely. The principal, who is apparently well versed in vampire hunting and has multiple! stakes! and a crossbow! with extra ammo! frowns over the damage.

"I'm sure I'll have hit a deer or something," he says. "Almost had him in there."

"Spike?"

"Yes. He's tough to pin down, even for a Slayer." She stares. He smiles blandly back at her. They compare notes as they deliver an unconscious Ford to his parents.

It's jarring to think of a Slayer with a kid, but Giles says his story checks out, right down to Nikki Wood's murder and where her watcher moved afterwards. They strike a deal in the library that night.

"Is it really common?" she asks abruptly, as Principal Wood drives her home.

"What?"

"Brain– brain cancer. Morgan's got it, and now Ford, and Morgan said there's a lot of people in the hospital in LA…" she trails off, feeling stupid. Vampires she know how to deal with. Cancer, that's way outside her area of expertise.

"No," says Principal Wood slowly. "No, it is not all that common at all." They finish the drive in silence.

Giles is out again, and there's a voicemail on the library phone from some slay-ful hour of the morning that he must've forgotten to delete. Chuxi presses play, because she's nosy, and they all listen in. Buffy sort of wishes they hadn't. At least it's short.

"Ripper?" It's a woman's voice, low and rushed and terrified. "Ripper, please, I don't have time. You have to help— you have to believe me—It's coming. For all of–" And then it cuts out.

Giles misses her training. Giles misses a stakeout. Giles misses taking down six vamps in lab coats. Okay, now she's worried. She marches back to the library and wonders where Giles even lives, because surely he'd be home at this point, right? But no, he's at the library, sitting by the phone and drinking. Drinking alcohol, not tea.

"Giles?" she calls out, quietly as she can. He jumps anyway.

"Buffy! I– oh, the blood bank." He looks her up and down, takes in a slightly torn jacket and dusty leggings. "Well, good work."

The phone must not have rung that night, because Giles looks dead on his feet in the morning. She shows up when she's supposed to have computer class (Ms. Calendar would understand, right?) with every intention of interrogating him, only to find him glued to the phone and mumbling "please pick up" under his breath. She's never seen him like this. She's never seen him not being a Watcher.

Finally he sets down the phone, runs his hand over his face.

"Buffy, don't you have class?" he asks. He almost sounds like normal. Almost. It's not close enough.

"I was worried," she starts, but doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence.

There's a frantic hammering at the library's back door, and Giles almost jumps out of his skin. Okay, she's going to deal with this. Now. Before he can say anything (like "Buffy, be reasonable" or "don't do that") she marches to the door and yanks it open. There's two people standing there.

"Hello love," says the woman. She looks exhausted, with bags under her eyes and slightly frizzy brown hair that looks like it hasn't been brushed in few days, and she doesn't quite manage to keep the shiver from her voice. "Does Rupert Giles work here?" The man behind her looks just as wiped out, and they both sag with relief when she nods.

"Yeah," she says. "He's in there– hang on." Giles rushes over when she yells for him, and she sees another first—Giles goes from wound up and skittish to throwing his arms around the woman in a second flat.

"Diedre!" he gasps out. "Philip– you two—I was worried about you!" And he drags them both into the library. The man, Philip, grimaces.

"Didn't really want to hang around, all given," he says. "Sorry if we missed a call or two, old man." Diedre clings to Giles like he's some sort of walking tweed security blanket.

"Are Tom and Ethan lurking somewhere in here?" she asks. Giles freezes.

"You haven't heard from them?" he asks. Diedre shakes her head.

"Figured they'd already come," says Philip, pale face going even paler. "Last I talked to Ethan, he was on his way." Giles swears under his breath, and suddenly he doesn't look very Giles anymore.

"Can someone tell me what's going on?" Buffy asks. Philip looks at her like she has two heads. Diedre exhales slowly.

"Are you his student?" she asks.

"I'm the Slayer." The situation desperately needs perkiness. "Pleased to meetcha!"

"Likewise," says Diedre. "Short version, there's a demon out to kill all of us and your Watcher, and I'm pretty sure it killed two of our friends already." Buffy's blood runs cold.

"Can I stab it?" she asks. Because when isn't stabbing the answer?

"Not really," Giles says, snapping back to Watcher mode. "It – ah, it would only damage the host, not the demon itself. I have yet to discern a way to do the opposite. It can be forced out of the host, of course, but that is barely a temporary solution."

"Oh. That sounds bad."

"It is," says Diedre, and rubs her hands over her arms. She's wearing a pink cardigan and a neat pearl necklace, and looks entirely not like the sort of person who gets chased by a demon. Then again, neither does Giles. Philip scores a little higher on the chased-by-demons scale by virtue of the creepy facial hair.

"So how–" Buffy starts, and then the door bursts open again. This time it's Ethan, winded and injured, stumbling over the threshold. Diedre makes a strangled noise and reaches out to him.

"Tom," he says between gasps. "He's got Tom. I– I've got a plan, just—" Another crash. Ethan winces, and something monstrous and spiny appears in the doorway behind him. "Just distract him!" Ethan snaps, and ducks under Giles's outstretched arm to flee into the stacks.

"Running and hiding," Giles yells after him. "Typical plan for you!"

The demon walks slowly, almost lazily. In library-light, it's hideous. She's seen some ugly monsters already, but this one looks like its skin is coming off, like its rotting, and it's smiling like it's having a great time. Philip whimpers and leans away from it, looking like he'd be following Ethan into the stacks if he could get his legs to move. Diedre sets her jaw and takes a step forward.

"Hey," she says, her voice dropping a full octave and swapping out Giles-accent for something thicker. "You look like shit."

"You look positively normal," the demon rumbles. "I'd never guess you were one of us once upon a time."

"You'd be surprised what you can hide under a frumpy dress," she says coldly. The demon's advancing toward her, that same lazy walk. It doesn't seem like it's hunting. It seems like it's playing. Behind her, Buffy hears the telltale creak of someone going into the library the real-people way.

"…Giles?" That's Willow. Oh no, that's Willow. And Willow's never alone at this time of day. The demon looks over Diedre's head, past Buffy, and grins broader.

"Aw, you guys always liked an audience, didn't you? Maybe Ripper can sing for his supper before I rip you apart." It takes a step their way, and Buffy lunges, but Giles somehow gets there first.

"Like hell you will," he says. "You want Ripper? I'll show you Ripper!" Something red glows around his raised hand, and the demon's attention is on him–

"–Don't! He said to distract it!" Diedre yells, and it turns to her instead.

"What, scared Tommy'll end up like poor little Randall? You were so terribly fond of Randall."

"Damn right I was," says Diedre. "He was my friend. So's Tom." The demon laughs. Then it lunges. Diedre crumples to her knees with her hands over her ears, Buffy runs at it, Giles shouts raises his hands – there's a flash of red, and the demon rounds on the nearest person, which ends up being Buffy. It lashes out at her with an unexpectedly clawed hand, and when she jumps out o the way she smells smoke.

"Over here!" Philip shouts. He's next to the book cage, she realizes, but it looks like the demon is too smart for that because it charges him at an odd angle that avoids the cage altogether. Someone lobs a math textbook at it, and it whirls around again.

"Jenny, for heaven's sake get the students out!" Giles yells, which only serves to draw the demon's attention back to him as Ms. Calendar shoves Willow behind her. Jesse runs left. Xander runs right. Flanking it would be a good idea, but…

"Jenny, is it?" the demon asks. "You're not one of mine…" It leers at Ms. Calendar. "Oh, but you could be—such a pretty little thing." Giles breaks a chair on its back, to no real effect, as Buffy drags Ms. Calendar out of harm's way. Chuxi has a fire extinguisher, and aims that at the demon while Cordelia hides behind her and Marcie climbs a bookshelf. Willow has a book on practical magic in her hands and is trying to read aloud and watch the demon at the same time.

They keep passing the demon around for maybe five, ten minutes. The library is small, and the demon is quicker than most of them. (More importantly, she'll think later, it's not afraid. Everyone else is afraid.) Soon, too soon, Philip is injured on the floor, bleeding from a cut on his head, Diedre is crouched beside him trying frantically to keep him awake, and Giles is trying bluster through an obviously twisted ankle. The demon's stopped paying attention to anyone else entirely. Suddenly –

"Oh dear, did I miss the party?" Ethan is standing between two of the taller shelves, sleeves rolled up to reveal a weirdly-shaped tattoo. And he's smiling.

"The glass," Willow mumbles. She's taken a book to the head, and is gripping the back of Buffy's jacket for dear life. "Why's there so much glass?"

"There isn't glass!" Cordelia says hysterically. "Where's there glass? I don't see any glass—you're seeing things!"

"So much glass…"

"Will, come on," Xander pleads, but she doesn't seem like she can hear him.

"Come to join your dear old friends?" the demon almost purrs, turning towards him.

"You know me, just can't stay away." His tone is far too light for the situation. "Besides, I'm here to show this sad lot how a real sorcerer does it!"

"Does what?" asks the demon. "Dies?" And it leaps for him, all teeth and claws and rotting. "You can show them how a sorcerer dies, you cowardly, useless—" And there's an odd sound, like fingernails on–

"Glass," Willow whispers, and for a moment everything is silent, and then the sound of shattering glass fills the air. The demon seems frozen in place, then it warps, something twists, something screams, and then a man's limp body hits the ground with a dull thud and everything is silent again. The man on the ground is thin and blond and bleeding. There's no sign of the demon – or of Ethan.

Giles swears again, a bit more quietly.

"I'm calling the hospital now," says Ms. Calendar, sounding strained, then walks stiffly to the phone and does just that. It's a very normal thing to do, and Buffy feels Willow sag.

"Glass's gone," Willow mumbles. "S'okay."

"How about the monster? Is that gone?" Marcie asks. And maybe that a cue for everyone to start talking at once, yelling over each other as if they can make up for the blind fear with anger, and it's like a spell's been broken.

Ethan limps out from between bookshelves, clutching what looks for all intents and purposes like a disco ball in his arms. He shoves the thing at Giles without a moment's hesitation.

"Get rid of it. Get rid of it. I don't want it and I don't want to be holding it when I keel over."

Giles feeds the EMTs some nonsense story about drugs and knives, and no one really questions it. The disco ball of evil – it's actually some kind of fancy crystal, but the details sort of go over her head – gets locked in a lead box that Giles just point-blank refuses to let go of even as they're trying to load him onto a stretcher. Diedre sits in a library chair with her face buried in her hands and her whole body shaking. Ms. Calendar puts a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"You'll all be alright," she promises. Diedre raises her head, looks at her, and starts to laugh instead of crying.

"It's just so– so bloody stupid. All of it is so bloody stupid, no matter how much—" She yanks her necklace off throws it down the table. "No matter what, it comes back, doesn't it?

"It's a gateway labyrinth," Ethan says, a few days later, perched in a rickety plastic chair in a hospital room. "Demon goes in, and then goes around in circles forever, because each door leads to three more. It's a bit like fractals!" He looks very proud of himself.

"And you even have such a thing because…?" Giles prompts. Ethan's grin fades.

"Because Eyghon was bound to come back," he says. "And I don't know about you lot but I don't fancy dying."

"Why was it after you, though?" Buffy asks, because so far no one's told her that. Giles looks profoundly uncomfortable.

Diedre's the one who ends up telling her the story, because Giles stammers when he tries and Tom goes deadly pale and quiet and Philip keeps coming back to the fact that Randall was their friend and Ethan probably can't be trusted to tell anyone anything without embellishments.

"And Randall.." she trails off at the end. Randall isn't with them, so Buffy can put the pieces together. He's dead. They're silent for a long moment.

"We killed him," says Ethan, conversationally.

"Stop it!" Philip snaps.

"Or rather, I killed him," Ethan continues. "We couldn't think of another way to contain Eyghon, you see, so I killed him. It forced the demon out, at least. We'd have all died otherwise." He leans back in his rickety plastic chair, watching his friends, and Buffy very suddenly realizes he's lying. He's lying. Someone else in the room had dealt a killing blow twenty years ago, and creepy Ethan with his blank smile and crystal demon trap was taking the fall. She really wants to call him on it.

"Took you long enough to say it. You killed him," says Philip. "I don't know how you sleep."

"Better than some of us," mutters Tom.

"There was nothing else we could've done," says Diedre, frowning. "You know that."

"Not at the time, no," says Ethan. "And this time we all lived, didn't we?" Silent nods all around. "That's the spirit!" He swipes a silver flask from the pocket of Diedre's cardigan and takes a drink. "Now, Ripper—tell us all about that nice lady who almost got murdered visiting you at half-past-demon!" And Giles spends the next five minutes trying to articulate a sentence about Ms. Calendar.

And that's probably fine, because the crystal disco demon trap is in a lead box full of cement and stuffed somewhere mostly unreachable by one or another of Giles's less sketchy friends, but the whole scene feels wrong. Forced. They all know Ethan is lying, she thinks, but none of them are going to say it. Why would they, though? They're grown-ups now, proper adults who wear pearl earrings and tell lies. (But if Ethan didn't kill Randall, which of them did?)

Giles makes his escape soon enough, dragging Buffy by the arm and talking loudly about homework, though he does pause to tell a nurse that someone's been sneaking in contraband alcohol. It's an aggressively Giles thing to do, and she's a bit relieved to hear it. No matter what, he's still Giles.

Author's note: I hope you aren't sick of Ethan yet, because you're getting a lot more of him.