Sherlock waited until the door closed behind Buffy before he started following her.

"Sherlock—" John said from behind him. "Sherlock! Wait."

"Do keep up, John," Sherlock said. Outside, he strode toward the main road.

Of course he'd already Googled cemeteries in Sunnydale – there was only one. And since he memorized a map of Sunnydale on the plane ride over, he knew exactly where it was. A cab rounded the corner and Sherlock whistled for it.

"Sherlock," John said, finally catching up to him. "You can't be serious. These people are insane. That blond woman thinks she's a vampire slayer."

"Do you like her?" Sherlock asked as they got into the cab. He relayed the cemetery's address to the cabbie along with strict instructions not to take the scenic route.

John shut the door behind them. "Well, yes, I suppose. She seems perfectly nice, if a bit violently insane."

"No, John, I mean are you attracted to her? There was no reason to use her hair color as an identifier just now; you could've simply said 'that woman,' or called her by her name, which I am confident you remember."

"She's an attractive woman!"

"I can't have your judgment compromised on a case," Sherlock said. His concern was purely professional, of course.

"It won't be, you know it won't be. It never is."

"Even so."

"Fine, fine. I get it."

John's smile was soft and a little incredulous. Distracting. Sherlock turned up his jacket collar against it.

The cab ride was six minutes long, which was two minutes longer than it should've been. Sherlock paid the cab tersely and swung the door open, scanning the landscape. Too many mausoleums; they obstructed his view. He and John would have to walk the grounds.

"Should we split up?" John asked.

"Don't be stupid."

Sherlock observed the cemetery. About a twenty percent of the graves were over a hundred years old, twenty percent were fifty to a hundred years old, and sixty percent were very new. He counted six graves that had been dug in the last week. More mausoleums than were usually seen in American cemeteries. Flowers were sparse.

"A lot death for a town this small, wouldn't you say, John?"

"How big is the town?" John asked. Sherlock ignored him.

He wiped a gloved finger over the top of a headstone that was only one year old. His glove came away grimy. "And they don't seem to care very much for their dead, do they?"

"Sherlock, weren't we supposed to be looking for Spike and, ah, Buffy?"

"I doubt we'll need to."

"What do you mean?"

"I'd wager slaying is a noisy business. Stay quiet."

"No," John said, raising his voice exactly two octaves and leaning in close. His breath was cool on Sherlock's face. Smelled like Bourbon and honey. "We can't just wait around here for them to start slaying things. What if they're slaying people?"

Sherlock sighed.

Spike said he'd found a "new nest." He and Buffy believed they were hunting vampires in this cemetery; it seemed logical to Sherlock that for them, a new nest of vampires would mean a new grave. A big one. Perhaps a mausoleum.

Sherlock climbed on top of a large, square headstone and scanned the graveyard for a freshly constructed monument. Sniffed for wet cement or plaster, looked for telltale crushed grass and the tire tracks of heavy machinery.

So easy.

He found the mausoleum in twenty-nine seconds and it would've been faster if the place wasn't so damned big. Sunnydale couldn't be more than 35,000 in population; did they really need acres and acres of graves? Waste. Sentiment.

"This way," he said to John, jumping off the headstone.

It was about fifty meters away, the only building in the cemetery new and large enough to shine like a moon in the darkness. As they grew closer, Sherlock heard shouting.

John stopped him with a hand on his arm; Sherlock pretended it annoyed him.

"Shouldn't we call the police?" John asked. "This isn't London, Sherlock. The rules are different here."

"The rules are the same everywhere. In any case, you said it yourself: we don't know exactly who it is that Buffy is slaying."

John pulled out his handgun. Sherlock smiled a little and turned away before John could see it.

Screams from inside, sounds like bodies being thrown through air, crashing into concrete. Deduction: fighting. A softer sound, like a whisper or the ocean. Deduction: unsure. Insufficient data.

Sherlock kicked the door open. The scene laid before him was this: Buffy, hair askew and clothes slightly torn, bloody scratch across one cheek, fighting a man almost twice her height and breadth. Spike and two other men, punching, ducking, punching again. A thick layer of dust coating the floor.

Something was wrong with the men's faces.

Buffy looked up at them, threw a particularly vicious punch and even though the man she was fighting was three times her size, he fell to one knee. She pulled a sharpened wooden stake from her jacket. Her arm lifted in an arc before bring the stake down, piercing the man's chest.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. Time slowed.

For a second, the man seemed lit from within. Then he began to brown, skin turning into something that looked like sand; Sherlock could see his skeleton. A sound like the ocean or a scream underwater. And then the man was nothing but a pile of dirt at Buffy's feet.

Sherlock collected the data. Memorized it. Catalogued it. But his brain refused to examine it. Refused to do anything except make him stare at the thick layer of dust on the floor of this brand new mausoleum.

"Jesus," John said.

"Jesus isn't here," Spike said. Two piles of dust were at his feet, each one smaller than the one Buffy had — created. "Can I take a message?"

"Jesus," John said again.

Don't repeat yourself, Sherlock wanted to tell him. It's boring.

Instead Sherlock stared at the coating of dust on John's shoes.

"Ah," he stuttered. Normally endearing. Sherlock couldn't look at his face. "What—" John licked his lips—"was that?"

"A nest of newborns," Buffy said, stepping over the largest pile of dust, the one that was a man three times her size, but was still relatively small. Sherlock tried to imagine how the man's mass could possibly be compressed to such a size in the space of a second.

It wasn't possible. Sherlock slapped himself in the face. Not dreaming.

"You don't belong here," Spike said, sneering at them. "Go home to England and fight for Queen and country. Or play detective. Whatever gets you off."

Sherlock looked at him. Pale. Aristocratic features, something dated about them. Slightly hunched under his long leather coat, as if he didn't expect the fight to be over. Hair carefully gelled.

Spike had just fought two men, killed them perhaps, and yet he wasn't winded.

Didn't look to be breathing at all.

Sherlock pulled his glove off and stepped forward. Slipped his hand under the sleeve of Spike's leather jacket and rested two fingers against his wrist. Cold skin. Poor circulation? High blood pressure? Holding his breath? No.

One of Spike's eyebrows rose before he stepped out of Sherlock's reach.

"Thanks mate," Spike said. "But you're not my type. Hands off the merchandise."

Sherlock's fingers were still extended, as if he could feel Spike's nonexistent pulse in the air, through sheer force of will.

"Sherlock," John said, "are you—"

Sherlock gripped John's shoulder for balance and silence. The laws of their universe were being rewritten; John needed to be quiet for this. Show some respect.

Buffy backed away, staring at them the whole time. Spike followed her.

"I hope I don't see you again," she said.

"You will," Sherlock whispered.