Hi. Thanks for the reviews for the last chapter. Reviews make me happy. Here's the last section of Act 1

Kennedy was in the training barn. She'd already been for a run with Vi, and then spent some time working with the newer Slayers. Eventually though, all their whining about if it was their night off shouldn't it be their day off too, had driven her mad and she'd given them what they wanted. She'd skipped for half an hour, and then wailed on a punch bag for another, but it wasn't as distracting as something that could hit back.

Now she was working with the weights, which also didn't do anything to redirect her thoughts, but she stayed with it, morosely wondering what Willow might be doing at just that moment.

She gave a half-hearted smile as Rona wandered in. "Morning."

Rona grunted to the affirmative and came to sit on the bench press bench. "You do realise you're a Slayer, right?"

"Huh?" Kennedy looked over, but didn't stop curling the two large dumbbells into her shoulders.

"We're already about as strong as we're gonna get," Rona clarified.

"Show me the proof," Kennedy said simply, putting down her weights. "Spot me?"

Shrugging, Rona moved to let Kennedy lie down and picked the barbell up from the rest with one hand. She held it steady for Kennedy to take.

"Proof? How about: I never see Buffy lifting weights, but I have seen her wipe the floor with your ass every day this week," Rona smirked.

Kennedy shook her head as she began her exercise. "Two days ago I managed to knock her to the mat with a single punch."

"What happened then?"

"I'm not sure exactly," Kennedy admitted, "but my shoulder makes this strange clicking sound when I stretch now."

Rona smirked, "How come you're getting the special treatment anyway? Buffy doesn't train one-on-one with the rest of us."

"You have a Watcher," Kennedy pointed out as she pumped the large weight up and down with too much ease. It wasn't taking the edge from her anxiety at all. "Do we have anything bigger?"

Rona took the weight from her hands and checked out what was already on the bar. "I don't have a Watcher, I have a stuck up white boy from England who doesn't know which end of a Vampire to stake, but still keeps trying to tell me what to do."

"That's what a Watcher is!" Kennedy laughed, "And six months ago you didn't know which end of a Vampire to stake either. Besides, Reece might be a creep, but he does know what he's doing; and at least he's invested."

"Yeah, in looking at my boobs," Rona shook her head as she looked through the stack and picked out a couple of 25 kilogram disks. "I have no idea what Dawn sees in him."

"Me neither, but then I'm not about to be entranced by his rock hard abs and broad manly chest."

"I'll take the rock hard abs and manly chest any day of the week," Rona smirked. "It's his personality I can't stand. That guy thinks he's God's gift. I swear I heard him putting the moves on Cici the other day."

Kennedy took the heavier bar in her outstretched hands and tested the weight. It was definitely better; she could actually feel some tension in her muscles. "You should tell Dawn."

"And say what: 'I heard your boyfriend talking to a Slayer'? That's his job! I'll look like an idiot; and besides Giles keeps saying how we have to forge this relationship together based on trust and respect," Rona sneered a little, "and I don't think ratting him out to his girlfriend comes under either of those categories. Maybe you should tell her; you guys hang more."

"Not since she and Reece got together," Kennedy muttered the truth. And it sucked, because she really could have done with her closest friend right now.

She'd almost tried talking to Buffy a few times, but she stalled every time on the first word. She knew the older Slayer was getting there was a problem, but she was Willow's bestest ever and Kennedy couldn't be sure Buffy wouldn't pass on information she'd rather keep to herself.

"Anyway, if I said something it would be even less viable. If someone came to me with 'I heard that someone heard…' I'd tell them to go to hell for stirring shit up." Kennedy was feeling a little burn in her muscles from pumping the bar now, but it still wasn't helping. She needed a diversion, something to take her mind of her own woes. "But if we could catch him out…"

"You mean like set him up?" Rona asked, interested.

"Not exactly," Kennedy chuckled. "I wouldn't want to put anyone in the position where they had to actually be nice to him, plus if one of us… well one of you, because I'm obviously disqualified, were to try and lure him out, Dawn is not going to be happy with the poor shmuck who gets the job."

Rona suddenly smiled, "Put him at a party with a lot of high school girls, how do you think he's gonna react?"

"Like a bitch in heat," Kennedy laughed. "But Dawn's birthday isn't for a few months yet."

"No, but there's a party tonight. Some McKinley High thing for Halloween, except, not exactly school sanctioned from the way Dawn was describing it. Reece is goin' with her and she invited all the Slayers." Rona was still smiling. "All we need is a camera and for nature to take its course and we have a snapshot of Reece doing the dirty with some poor unsuspecting Junior."

"She never asked me," Kennedy frowned and let the barbell clunk into its stand behind her head.

"She probably thought you'd be busy with Willow."

Kennedy lay on the bench, looking up at the dark, dusty roof of the barn.

Spending the evening with Willow would be her first choice… if it was a few weeks ago. She still could, she knew that. Willow would be home around six. They hadn't spent an evening together in two weeks and Kennedy was missing her like crazy.

But then there was the matter of where Willow had been all day. And who she was with almost every day just recently. And she didn't mean Buffy. It wasn't that Willow shoved her ex's name down her throat all the time, Kennedy did that just fine by herself, but when Willow spoke about her day, it was hard for his name not to come up.

"No, we haven't planned anything," Kennedy said eventually, sitting up and swinging her feet to the floor. "And Will'll probably just want to do her exercises when she gets home and go to bed. She had a really early start this morning. I'll come to the party."

"Sweet! Now we just need a camera."

Kennedy chuckled at how obviously bored Rona was here and gave a slight shrug, "Easy, just raid Andrew's bedroom."

The shower block was silent apart from the soft scrape of the spatula applying tile cement to the bricks. There was a radio in the corner, but Faith hadn't been able to find any station that didn't irritate her, so it was off.

Xander had been absent all morning. After popping in soon after she'd started, just to give her his standard tool maintenance speech like he did every morning, he'd left to do who knew what, leaving her to just get on with it.

It was her third day on this particular job – Xander had helped for most of the first day – and she was nearly finished, just a half a wall to go. She was finding the tiling strangely therapeutic; having this boring-ass task to do was taking her mind off her dilemma.

Setting the spatula aside, she fitted in a couple of dozen spacers just like Xander had shown her and then went to the corner for the next stack of tiles. They were white and boring too, with just a tiny blue rain drop in the top left hand corner as decoration. Yesterday she'd almost gone stark-raving mad just staring at them, but today she was happy for the blankness; happy for the white-out in her brain.

It was better than thinking about Buffy.

Not that thinking about Buffy was ever bad these days, frustrating sometimes, but not bad – but thinking about Buffy this morning would just put her in panic mode.

What kind of dumbfuck asks a woman like Buffy out on a date without planning something first?

She'd racked her brains for the first hour on the job and had just managed to get herself more and more stressed about it. Buffy would be expecting something amazing; she deserved something amazing, and Faith had… nothing…at…all.

But she wasn't thinking about that, she was thinking about hanging these boring tiles on the wall. One after another, smoosh 'em down like Xander showed her, wiggle 'em a little, make sure they're pushed up tight against the spacers.

Secretly, Faith was hoping if she didn't think about the problem, an answer would just materialise in her head. It worked that way sometimes. True, the answer she came up with wasn't always the wisest one, but it wasn't like she was having a lot luck with going at it head on.

What did people even do on dates?

"I'm not thinking about it," Faith muttered to herself as she stuck another tile to the bricks with the sludgy cement. "I'm focusing on my job."

Which, surprising to her, wasn't going so badly. It beat the hell out of laundering a hundred sheets a day, and even the tedious stuff like this was kind of interesting in a way.

Xander had a strong philosophy when it came to work; he went at it like a good Watcher went at a Slayer. Every little thing was important, right down to carefully putting the little spacers between the tiles and getting the right amount of cement on the little spatula – too much it squishes out the sides, not enough and the tile falls right off – the extreme attention to detail paid off every single time and by following it, Faith was actually experiencing some pride in her work for maybe the first time ever outside of Slaying.

It made Xander feel good to build things or repair things, he took joy in seeing other people take pleasure in the things he built and repaired – Faith still couldn't believe he'd renovated and kitted out the fantastic training barn all on his own – and now his lust for this stuff was starting to rub off on her. It was wicked weird, but it was making Faith feel good too.

Kennedy and Willow's faces when they'd first walked into their bedroom – the one that she had helped repair and then painted mostly on her own – had made her feel good.

And when all the newbie Slayers and the Cadets started using this shower block instead of making her have to queue for the bathroom upstairs, well that was gonna feel frickin' great.

She realised she was humming now, and stopped abruptly. Taking a little pride in her work was one thing, humming was not. If anyone heard her…

There a quiet chuckle from behind. Busted.

"You're really getting the hang of those tiles, Faith." Xander chuckled again at his lame joke. "Nice to see you happy in your work."

"Thanks," she muttered, choosing to fit another tile than look at him.

"It almost makes me not want to point out that they're all upside down."

"What?" Faith took a step back to check out her work. "Damn!"

They weren't all upside down, but a good portion of the ones she'd hung that morning were. The tiny rain drops in the bottom right corner instead of the top left like the ones on the other three walls.

She obviously hadn't been concentrating as hard as she thought she was. So caught up in the routine of spacer, cement, tile that she'd forgotten to look for the tiny blue motif.

"Do I have to do them all over?" she groaned, facing him.

Xander was chewing gum thoughtfully as he looked at the tiles.

Eventually, with a sly look in his eye and a hint of mischief in his voice, he said, "I guess not… if you tell me where you're taking Buffy tonight?"

"You tell me, dude?" Faith looked at the tiles again.

There were at least thirty that were upside down.

"Oh, come on," Xander grinned. "You can't tell me you haven't been thinking about it. Your mind obviously has been elsewhere this morning. The closest I'm ever gonna come to dating Buffy is vicariously through you, so give me a little info."

"I'm not kidding, Xan. I have no idea." Faith admitted. "I don't know why I even asked her."

Xander frowned, "What?"

"Don't get me wrong, I wanted to ask her out. I wanna go on a date with her, but I'm kidding myself if I think I know how."

"Well you already did the hard bit, now you just go."

"But where?" Faith couldn't do eye-contact right now; this conversation was hard enough to have without that. So she set up another tile – the right way up this time.

"Well, you could always go for coffee."

"Coffee's lame."

"I'll have you know coffee makes for a very good first date. And at least you don't have to worry about Buffy tying you to a big wheel and stabbing you at the end."

Faith cocked an eyebrow at that, but let it go without asking for answers.

"Buffy's going to be expecting something big. It's our first date, man, it should be something frickin' mind-blowing and I'm coming up empty."

"Well, I don't know if it counts as mind-blowing, but there's a Halloween party at Barnies tonight." Xander told her as he pulled a tape measure out of his dark blue work pants. "I was gonna go, but it turns out nearly everyone's gonna be out of the house tonight and that is so not an opportunity I'm prepared to miss."

"Gonna watch TV in your boxers?" Faith smirked over her shoulder at him.

"Yep," Xander nodded as he measured the gap up by the ceiling not quite big enough for a whole tile. "There's a Simpson's' Tree-house of Horrors marathon for starters and then Halloween, Freddie versus Jason, the list goes on; and they'll be no kids around trying to switch the channel to Sabrina the Teenage Witch – its gonna be sweet, sweet and gory."

"Sounds fun," Faith murmured, fiddling with the spatula. "Maybe me and B should just stay in after all."

"Don't even think it," Xander shook his head. "This is a private party; just me, the TV and a crate of beer in the fridge. A man has to have his time and I am a man, therefore I must have my time. Unless, you know, you and Buffy plan to watch the TV in your underwear too."

Faith rolled her eyes, "Dude, she won't even give me a look at her underwear in the bedroom." She shook her head and went back to work. "So, you really think taking her to this party is a good idea?"

"It's not like you have anything else planned. And it's a costume party so you'll get points for fun-having, 'cause who doesn't have fun at a Halloween costume party. All those Witches and Werewolves and Vampires – not like it's something you see every day… Oh wait…"

Faith rolled her eyes. "Well that's out, I don't do costume parties."

"You didn't do sane-living and relationships until just recently either, but you seem to be enjoying those."

"True, but dressing up? Man, that's lamer than coffee. I wanna take her, I don't know, hang-gliding or scuba-diving or something, ya know, a proper Slayer date."

"If it makes it better, I know Buffy likes dressing up."

"She would," Faith sighed deeply before setting to cleaning the spatula as quickly as possible.

"Hey, what are you doing? It's not knocking off time yet. You still have four more rows to do and then there's the grouting!"

"Later, Xan, I gotta call B and let her know she needs a costume."

As Faith left the shower block to a background of Xander's sarcastic mutterings, she realised she had no idea what to dress up as. She only had about six hours to come up with something that was gonna blow Buffy's mind.

This dating shit just never got any easier, did it?

"You didn't tell me we'd be cutting class!" Dawn whispered to Fen as she kept her head below the windows of Aaron Pritchard's red Chevy Lumina.

"Like you'd have come if I did," Fen grinned, poking her head up a little to see if they were clear of the school drive yet. "Besides, its only history – it's not like you're gonna learn anything new in there, right?"

Dawn chuckled, pushing herself up in the back seat as Fen did. "I would still too have come; I just would have maybe faked Buffy's sig on a note or something."

"Sunny D, you have to start appreciating the finer things in life a little more. Didn't you say Buffy wanted you to have at least one good year of high school? Well, this is what she meant!" Fen waved her arms around, indicating everything within and around the car.

"I'm pretty sure its not."

"Oh come on! Cutting class is one of the chief high school experiences. All the cool kids are doing it," Fen winked at her. "Besides, tonight is gonna rock so hard it's gonna be history in the frakkin' making!"

As Fen shouted her enthusiasm, Aaron high-fived with the guy riding shotgun, Charlie someone or other, and they both gave a loud, heartfelt "Yeah!"

Dawn giggled, caught up in their gusto and as Aaron put his foot down, tearing around the next bend on the two-lane blacktop country road, she squealed with Fen, their hands clutching each other in an exaggerated manner.

Thirty minutes later, Aaron pulled onto an unkempt dirt drive and Fen sat forward to see through the windscreen.

"We're here."

Dawn sat forward too. "Where's here exactly?"

"Only the coolest location for a Halloween party ever!" Fen grinned. "No one's ever dared before, as far as I know. Every little kid round here gets told: 'Don't go near it, you'll get eaten by a monster.' And then as you get older its: 'Don't go near it, you'll get rabies from the rats and fall through a rotten floor board.' It's stupid how much that kid-crap can affect you, but I've lived in the area my whole seventeen years and this is the closest I've ever been to it."

"Where?" Fen's words were sending a shiver up Dawn's spine.

As the car began to crunch over weed choked gravel, Fen pointed out the windshield as she whispered, "Mage Manor."

Dawn looked up at it fearfully, but relaxed as soon as she realised what she was looking at. "It's just a house."

"This isn't just a house," Fen opened her door and jumped out onto the gravel as the two guys did the same. "But I'll forgive you're naivety seeing as you're a Greenhorn."

"I'm a what?" Dawn asked, climbing from the car.

"No time; pay attention and I'll give you the skinny." Fen laid her arms on the sun-warmed roof of the Lumina.

Dawn watched Aaron and Charlie go to a partially open window half way along the house and climb through before she gave her full attention to her friend.

"Okay, to start with, there is something you need to understand: This place came first."

Dawn shrugged a little. "Give me a point of reference here?"

"Before Boudenver was here. Before Pleasant Creek was ever settled. For all the records show, it could have been here before Christopher Columbus was even old enough to say the word boat! It's been here forever."

"And?"

"It's never been occupied!"

Fen said it with enough dramatic effect that the sun slipped behind the only cloud in the sky.

"Never?" Dawn frowned.

Fen shook her head slowly, "Never, ever."

"That's not possible."

"I agree," Fen nodded now. "But I'm just telling you what everyone around here already knows is fact."

"So if no one's ever lived in it, why doesn't someone just knock it down instead of leaving it to rot on this hill?"

"It's been tried; more than once. Did you ever see a wrecking ball swing on its chain like a Tetherball around a pole?"

"I've only ever seen one wrecking ball and I didn't actually see it do anything."

Xander had stopped the machinery by the time Dawn had made it back down from the tower, but apparently it had hit Glory good and hard – she wished she'd seen that, she still had nightmares too often about Ben showing up out of the blue.

Dawn gave a little shrug, "So no."

"Yeah, me neither, but my dad said it was something to see… something real nasty to see. Nobody knows quite what happened, even those who were there, but people died and the house is still standing. That was before I was born. Then, ten years ago, they decided to try explosives. Used loads of it, wanting rid of the place once and for all, fed a detonation line all the way back down the hill this time so no one would get hurt accidentally."

"What happened?" Dawn was hooked on the tale now despite herself. At first she thought Fen was just messing with her, but the look in her friend's eyes was starting to convince her otherwise. "Did the explosives not go off?"

"No, they went off, with a big, loud bang. But the house was still standing afterwards, not a scratch on it, not even the dirt and gravel was disturbed."

"How's that possible?"

"It's not," Fen shrugged, "but there ya go." She left the car and walked towards the window the boys had climbed through. Dawn walked with her. "There's furniture and stuff, all real old, so we figure someone did live here at some point, but no ones ever seen anyone coming or going. I've heard rumours that it was a recluse, some old foreign hermit man, but as no one ever saw him, who knows?"

Fen took a deep breath and boosted herself up onto the window sill. It took her two tries before she could get a leg in the window and she sat there for a minute getting her breath back.

"People just tried moving in too. I mean, look at this place; it's huge, talk about your quality real estate. But no one ever seems too last long."

"Do they die?" Dawn asked, a little quiver in her voice.

"Nah," Fen laughed and jumped down into the mansion. "They just move out real quick. They say it has an unwelcoming vibe. Too draughty, the pipes creak too loud, doesn't matter how hard they try to rid the place of dust its still an allergy sufferer's worse nightmare."

Dawn boosted herself up and as she rested with her stomach on the window sill and her legs still dangling in the open air, she thought, Ghosts!

That had to be the answer to the mansion's mysteries. None of it made a lick of sense unless you factored the supernatural in to your reasoning, and ghosts, or spirits or whatever they preferred to be called, was the most obvious conclusion.

Dawn hadn't personally had anything to do that side of the paranormal, but she knew Buffy had had a few unfun encounters. She looked around warily now as she half-fell, half jumped into the room with Fen.

It didn't seem spooky, just abandoned.

There was a layer of dust at least two inches thick over everything, including the worn carpet. The sun streamed in from three large windows, making the place bright if not particularly cheery.

The furniture was old, as Fen had predicted. It had probably been old a century or two ago. It looked expensive and finely crafted. There was a chaise-lounge like the kind in Titanic and the red cushion was threadbare in places and the gilt on the arms and legs had long since peeled off, only traces left to give a sparse indication of its one-time beauty.

A large fireplace took up most of the wall to the right of her. The fire pit was filled with thick black soot and the soot was all over the hearth and the carpet too. An elaborate mantelpiece extended from the floor to the top of the fireplace and then up still further, making a beautifully extravagant focal point for the room. It put their tiny but serviceable fireplace back home to shame. And Dawn wasn't known for her skills in geology, but she was pretty sure the mantel was made of white marble too.

She was wandering closer for a better look, when Fen called her over. "Come on, let's go find the guys."

They left the room behind them and Fen called out for some clue as to where the other two had gone. Following Aaron's shouts they finally found a… well, Ballroom was really the only way Dawn could think to describe it.

It was big, much bigger than the gym at McKinley High, maybe even bigger than the school's football field! Again dust covered everything, but the intricate blue-green pattern of the smooth floor was still discernable and the gold trimmings around the walls were still gold.

Dawn felt her eyes drawn upwards by the expanse of the room. "Holy cow!"

"What?" Fen looked up in confusion. "Jeez."

The entire ceiling was a painted mural. It was impossible to make out the whole picture standing in this one spot by the door, and the cobwebs didn't help, but Dawn could make out swirling clouds of purple-green smoke, flying dragons the same blue-green as the floor and figures…

Dawn walked into the centre of the room – it took her a minute to get there – and looked up again.

One figure was quite obviously a man. He wore a blue robe and his hair and beard were long and blonde. He was pointing a big stick at the other figure and a stream of something swirly and black was coming from the end of it. The other figure was obviously not a man. He was big and muscle-bound and red paint had been used for his flesh. He had a vaguely human looking face, but was suffering from a severe case of horns – all over his head and shoulders. He was also breathing fire at the robed man.

All in all, it was impressive, but not a particularly nice scene.

"Bet who ever painted that died of neck ache, huh?" Fen grinned.

Dawn figured the painter might have met a worse fate actually, but said nothing as she joined the boys with Fen.

"Did we not tell you this place was the bomb?" Charlie hooted, slapping Aaron on the back as the other boy laid out speaker wire around the edge of the room.

"It's awesome," Dawn agreed, shaking off her worries. Her fears were probably groundless anyway and it wasn't like she could share them with these guys even if they weren't. "So do you even know what you're doing?"

She smirked at Aaron, who'd run out of wire near another doorway and seemed at a loss as to how to handle it. It was funny how she found it a lot easier to talk to the boys at school now she was with Reece. She'd always felt so self-conscious talking to them before, but now, not so much.

"No," Aaron admitted smiling at her. He had a sweet smile; all of him was sweet actually. He wasn't particularly good looking, but he was friendly looking. "But that's not my problem. The dorks from Bou Academy are setting it all up, we just offered to do the heavy lifting," he explained.

"Bou Academy?"

For the first time she noticed there were three other guys in the room. They were up at the far end, all leaning over some shiny hi-tech equipment that looked nothing like a stereo. They were spinning dials, checking clipboards and finely adjusting the instrument they were hovering over.

"The party is their baby," Charlie explained. "And I know, who'da a thought those geeks could have an idea this damn good?"

Dawn shrugged. She didn't know a lot about the Boudenver Academy, except that it was a private school for gifted children, whatever that meant. She gave the boys a wave, but they all ignored her.

"What are they doing over there?" she asked.

"Don't know, don't care," Fen grinned. "Just as long as this place is monsterific tonight."

As Dawn looked around the room again – there was a grand piano in another corner – she felt her skin prickle at her friend's words. She didn't know why. It was Halloween, after all, that meant the ghouls stayed at home.

A sharp kwa-zzing sound filled the air and the smell of burnt dust burst through the room. Dawn felt dizzy and off balance. The room blurred before her eyes and grew warm – she hadn't realised how cold it had been. She staggered a step, strangely disorientated, her eyes on the sparkling blue and green tiles of the shiny, polished floor…

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