Chapter 14: Working the case

A/N: I realized I missed another ghostly interaction from the show so I squeezed it into this chapter. Some dialogue and content from . The characters aren't mine, even if I wish they were haha. On to the next chapter!

Two nights ago:

George, the janitor, was doing his usual mopping. Behind him a classroom door opened, and a teacher came out to go home. "Working late Ms. Frank?" He asked, stopping for a moment.

"My fault, let myself get behind." She noticed the wet floor and stopped, "Is it okay to walk here George? It is George, right?"

"Oh, yes ma'am. You go ahead."

"Thanks." She continued on her way. "You have a nice evening."

"You too. Drive safe." George looked up at her, "Oh, Ms. Frank?

"Yes?" She looked back at him.

George dropped his mop and approached her, "You can't make me disappear just because you say it's over."

Ms. Frank shook her head at him, "There's no way we can be together." She stepped closer, "No way people will ever understand. Accept it."

"Is that what this is about? What other people think?"

"No! I just want you to be able to have some kind of a normal life. We can never have that. Don't you see?"

"I don't give a damn about a normal life! I'm going crazy not seeing you. I think about you every minute." George insisted, and she stepped closer, putting her hand on his cheek. He looked down sadly.

"I know. But it's over. It has to be." She turned around and started to leave. He looked up again and started to chase after her.

George jerked back and yelled angrily, "Come back here! We're not finished yet!" He grabbed her by the arm and turned her around to face him. "You don't care anymore? Is that it?"

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what I feel." Ms. Frank sobbed, trying futilely to break away.

"Then tell me you don't love me." George shook her, "Say it!"

"Will that help? Is that what you have to hear? I don't. I don't. Now let me go." She resumed her efforts to get away.

"No. A person doesn't just wake up one day and stop loving somebody." A gun materialized in his hand. He took a step back, raised the revolver, pulled the hammer back and aimed it at her. She looked at the gun, frightened. "Love is forever."

Giles was in his office at the library, still working. The group had already gone home for the night and he was on his way as well. He didn't even pay attention to the faint voices of George and Ms. Frank as they continued their quarrel.

"I'm not afraid to use it. I swear. If I can't be with you..." George said.

"Oh, my God." Ms. Frank turned to run down the hallway and away from the gun and George.

"DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME, BITCH!"

Giles finally noticed George's loud yelling and looked up from his desk. He got up, took off his glasses, and walked out of his office to the area behind the checkout counter. There he heard a faint female voice. "I need you." He looked around for a moment, and then jumped to a conclusion. "Jenny." He went out into the hallways and arrived at the hall intersection.

"Don't!"

Giles looked in the direction of George's voice and saw him out on the balcony holding a gun up to Ms. Frank.

"Don't do that, damn it! Don't talk to me like I'm some dumb..." The gun went off; Giles rushed to the other side of the intersection and hid behind the corner, watching the events as they unfolded. Outside Ms. Frank went into shock from the bullet wound and began to fall backward. She tumbled over the balcony railing down to the base of the stairs below. There George saw her lying dead with her eyes closed.

He panicked and ran into the hall. As he reached the intersection Giles rushed out, grabbed him, and tackled him to the floor. George lost his grip on the gun and it slid away. As it did so, it dissolved and disappeared in a whiff of black vapor. George raised his head as Giles got to his knees behind him and held him down.

"What's going on?" George asked him, confused.

"What's going on? You just shot a woman." Giles told the stunned man.

They were in the library the next day, huddled around the small table. Willow and Xander next to each other, Buffy was in a chair, and Dean was leaning over on the back of it, listening. He'd told Sam to stay behind at the hotel, not wanting to chance that he might get hurt should they be attacked again.

"It was just as with the, the couple you encountered the other night, Buffy. The, the janitor remembered everything. He knew he'd killed this poor woman, but he had no idea why. Well, they had no intimate relationship." Giles told them all.

"What about the gun? Did you find it?" Dean asked him.

"No, no. The police, everybody, we searched high and low. I think it's very clear what's happening here." Giles went into the cage to put some books away.

"Fill me in then, 'cause I've read the book, seen the movie, and I'm still fuzzy about what's going on." Xander answered, and they all nodded.

"It's Jenny."

"What?" Buffy asked him, surprised.

"It's who now?" Asked Dean, but they all ignored his question. Xander instead asking Giles, "You think she's the ghost?"

"Well, don't you see? Well, she-she-she died here under tragic circumstances, a-a-and now she's trapped."

"But what about the gun? I mean, Angelus didn't shoot Ms. Calendar." At Willow's hesitant statement, Dean glanced sharply at Buffy, who avoided his gaze.

"The gun is insignificant. It's the violence of the thing that matters." Giles answered her, oblivious to the doubtful looks the others exchanged, and the way that Dean took a step back from her chair, crossing his arms. Giles went back into his office.

"I don't know. These fights these couples keep having, it's sort of... specific." Buffy told him, aware that Dean was no longer behind her. He'd known that Angel was killing people, so that wasn't why he was angry, no, it had to do with the fact that she hadn't told him again. She really needed to stop doing that...

"She's right. It's a pattern that doesn't fit with the way Ms. Calendar died." Willow agreed, looking at Dean with sympathy and then towards Giles' office as he emerged.

"Yes, well, I, uh, I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, I, in fact I... well, I encourage you to, to always, uh, challenge me, uh, when you feel it's appropriate. You should never be cowed by authority." He told them, then starts back in, but comes back out to look at them again. "Except, of course, in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong." He went back into his office, leaving them looking at each other sadly.

"Well that's just swanky, anyone want to tell me who Jenny is?"

"This is freaky. I don't ever remember ever seeing Giles be this weird." Willow said from one of the desks. They were all in the computer lab in the deserted school; she at the desk, typing at her laptop. Xander was leaning on a table behind her, Dean next to him. Buffy walked to the other side of the desk.

"I know. He's usually Investigate-things-from-every-boring-angle guy. Now he's I-Cling-Onto-my-one-lame-idea guy. What gives?" Xander mused aloud.

"He misses her. He can't think. Just a little more fallout from my love life." Buffy said, and Dean watched her, his expression unreadable.

"Okay, but this ghost stuff is something else. Let me see if I can pull up that shooting we found the other day." Willow said, and then smiled triumphantly when it came up again.

"Yahtzee." Dean said, and she smiled at him.

Buffy set the 1955 Sunnydale High yearbook on the desk and opened it to a picture of Ms. Newman. "Okay, here's the new strangeness. These were the two I dreamt about the other day in class." She pointed to Grace and James, and they all leaned closer to see.

"Jim Stanley? He's the one. He did it." Willow nodded.

"Your dreams are getting wicked accurate, Buff. You wouldn't happen to see me coming across some big cash? Or possibly knowing the love of a woman? In a full body sense?" Xander joked, then blushed when Dean snickered at him.

Buffy ignored them, "He couldn't make her love him, so he killed her; sicko." She stepped away.

"He looks so normal on this picture. He was smart, too. He made the honor roll." Willow said, still looking at the yearbook picture and at her computer screen.

"Smart?" Buffy said, looking at Willow incredulously.

"He wasn't smart when he did it, was he?" Dean seconded.

"He killed a person and killed himself. Those are pretty much two of the dumbest things you could do." Xander commented, to which Dean nodded in agreement.

"I know, but... Well, don't you feel kind of bad for them?"

"Sure I feel lousy. For her. He's a murderer and he should pay for it." Buffy answered vehemently.

"With his life?"

"No, he should be doing sixty years in a prison, breaking rocks and making special friends with Roscoe the Weightlifter." Dean snorted but continued to watch her, silently agreeing.

"Yikes. The quality of mercy is not Buffy," Xander stated.

"I gotta say, I agree with her." Dean replied, his gaze meeting hers for a moment, before she looked away once more.

"Whose ghost do you think we're dealing with? His or hers?" Willow asked finally, breaking the awkward moment.

"Well, considering how violent it is, I'm gonna say his," Dean answered, and Buffy nodded.

"That tracks," Xander agreed.

"Well, I've been browsing on some of Ms. Calendar's pagan sites. Maybe I can find a way to communicate with them and... we can find out what he wants." Willow said, turning to face them.

"Who cares what he wants? We need to shut him down before some other innocent guy goes and kills some poor nice girl and then blows his brains out all over the music room wall." Buffy commented, ignoring the glances between them.

"Right. Well, who wants pie?" Dean joked to break the tense air, rubbing his hands together.

Buffy's house that night, in her room:

Buffy was on her bed, Xander in her wicker chair, Cordelia was kneeling and leaning against the bed, Willow was standing, and Dean leaned against her dresser, looking down at the floor.

"Remember the plan to contact the spirit and talk to it? Scrap that plan. Buffy, you were right. The time for touchy-feely communication is passed. I've done some homework and found the only solution is the final solution." Willow stated to the quiet group.

"Nuke the school?" Xander smiled, "I like that."

"Hell yeah!" Dean agreed, and they exchanged high fives, the girls rolled their eyes.

"Not quite; exorcism."

"Are you crazy? I saw that movie! Even the priest died." Cordelia protested, and Dean laughed.

"What's the deal?" Buffy asked Willow, ignoring both the guys and Cordelia.

Willow laid down a map of the school building, and they all leaned in to look. "Okay, see here, the balcony? That's where the original teacher died back in 1955 and that teacher last night. That's the hot spot where all the bad mojo is coming from. We need to create a Mangus-tripod."

"A what?" Dean and Cordelia asked at the same time.

"One person chants here on the hot spot. And the other three chant in other places around the school forming a triangle. It's supposed to bind the bad spirit and keep it from doing any more harm." Willow answered, pointing to each spot as she explained.

"Well, I'll take the hot spot." Buffy said, picking up the map, "If there's trouble, that's where it'll be."

"I'm with Buffy, no way am I missing any action," Dean said quickly; Willow nodded, having expected that he'd choose to back her up.

"This ghost, this James guy, is fixating on you, Buffy. The dreams, the yearbook... You sure you can handle it?" Xander asked her, and they all looked at her, waiting for her response.

"Well, I'm hoping he'll show. I truly am." Buffy answered him darkly, seeming to see something none of the rest could.

"Alright then, let's get this show on the road!" Dean stated, anxious for some action finally.