The next couple days went quietly, if full of stress and tension. Faith and Mort went patrolling each night, but failed to have another run in with the hat wearing vampire, the scary evil June Cleaver-like Mistress, or any additional mutant-vampires. There was what Faith described as a walking wrinkly dog-man, with a pizza box, but as he didn't seem to be causing trouble, Faith was content to just let him be. Binky darted across the road, nearly causing Mort to spill the bike, but neither of them suspected Binky of intentionally trying to harm them. No more vampire search parties at the cemeteries, and nobody rising and needing to be staked. Thankfully, they didn't run into over-sized turtle, which was a mutant and not a demon.
Just lots and lots of research with old books on magic devices, portals, bridging dimensions, and controlling the dead. Lots of research on the Schwannstein family.
Wesley and Lorrie had returned from the library on the second evening, with armloads of photocopies. Wesley was beaming, the look of someone who's managed to track down some errant and evasive bit of information. "I've found a few things that could be of use."
There were still some Thackerys living in the area, though the last person carrying the Schwannstein name had died almost twenty years ago. He'd found some bits of geneology, and a collection of photographs of Schwannsteins, Thackerys, and Millers, which made more sense when he explained that he'd traced the ownership of what was now Tanya's home.
As it turned out, Greta Schwannstein had married Jacob Thackery, who had expanded his family house for his new bride. Jacob had been described as a scholarly recluse, who had been educated in Europe, and considered quite the catch in the area. The home had stayed in the family, though in the fourth generation from Greta and Jacob, only one child had remained in the area, a daughter named Margaret Thackery. The home and surrounding lands had been her dower when she had married Alexander Miller. Their grandson, Timothy, had been rather wild, and part of the house had burned down after one of his parties, killing twenty people, including Timothy. Timothy's son, Donald, had repaired part of the house, converting it from grand manor to large farmhouse, and had led a far quieter life than his father. From Donald, the farm had passed down a few more generations, right to Eli Miller, and then to Tanya.
"So, I'm related to the Schwannsteins? The same ones that were in the mausoleum that Faith and Mort said someone cleaned?" Tanya blinked, considering the history of the building. "It is awfully big, even for an old farmhouse."
"Timothy must have thrown some wild parties," Pyro murmured, staring at the copy of the newspaper article. "His last one had a bodycount."
Faith was staring at the older pictures, looking at the Schwannsteins. "I can see a resemblance through the eyes. Not a bad looking family, Tanya."
"Look at this one," Mort commented, tugging one copy of a picture further from the others. "Greta and Erwin Schwannstein."
"She was cute," Pyro offered.
Lorrie gave an exaggerated glare, and a push, which caused Pyro to drop his lighter onto the pages. Thankfully, it hadn't been lit.
Faith stared at the lighter, which had landed partly over the head of Erwin. "Mort? Take a look – do you see what I do?"
"Made in China? Pyro, everyone knows the stuff made in China is junk," Mort frowned, and looked closer at the picture. "Hey, is that… the vampire in the hat? The one that said the idiots couldn't read a map. Erwin Schwannstein?"
"No wonder he stopped using his name," Faith whispered. "Guys, we've found the vamp in the hat."
The others crowded in to look at the picture, with Pyro wondering," Is a vamp in a hat anything like the cat in the hat? And can I get the lighter back?"
"My almost three centuries worth of greats uncle is a vampire," Tanya sighed. "Does this help, or is it just an odd little coincidence?"
"That might explain the clean-up of the mausoleum. It was supposed to be his place of burial," Wesley mused. "And it is not entirely unheard of for vampires to keep track of their mortal relatives. Often unpleasant for those relatives, and more than occasionally they have a habit of killing them or those who bother them, but…"
"So our vamp in the hat may not be that bad of a guy in this situation," Pyro questioned. "Other than the eats people part of being a vampire."
"I think it'd help a lot to know what was in that letter that Greta left for him. To know if he's been lurking around this whole time, or what," Faith was still staring at the picture. "Not to mention knowing just what it is that he thinks she deserves to get."
"That could be a very good question," Tanya agreed.
"Wait a minute – was there a Watcher in this area back when Erwin, our vamp in the hat, died?" Faith looked at Wesley. "D'you think you can get copies of any Watcher journals from around that time?"
"How close is that to the Witch Trials?" Pyro asked.
Wesley and Tanya both sighed.
"Low C in History," Pyro countered.
"No, he might be on to something," Faith insisted. "The whole witch trial craze would have pushed anybody who was really studying magic or anything like that to hide their stuff. Lots of people got into trouble with that, and a lot of people died while being held for questioning. It would be awful easy for some of them to have been vamped instead of just croaking. And our scary vampire woman is looking for a magic door. How long's she been looking for it, what's her connection to the Schwannsteins, and how's it taken her this long to figure out that the door's here? Or was she trying to get into the house for your uncle Eli's books?"
"Those are some very good questions. I will have to contact the Council to see if there was a Watcher posted here near the time of the American witch trials. If so, then they might have observed something that could be of use to us now," Wesley paused before sighing. "I suspect that the vampire in the hat, our presumed Erwin Schwannstein, could answer several of those questions for us. Though we have no way to be certain that he would be willing to do so without attempting to kill us. There is also the possibility that he might chose to be deceitful…"
"Right, a probably knowledgeable source of questionable honesty and cooperation, who might want us dead," Mort translated.
"And here I thought being a Slayer would be simple. See vampire or demon, kill vampire or demon. No fuss, no headaches, no big mysteries. I feel so disillusioned," Lorrie gave a melodramatic sigh. "Seriously, is it like this all the time?"
"Nah, lots of times it is just see vamp or demon, kill vamp or demon," Faith leaned back in her chair. "This just isn't one of them."
End part 59.
"Right, I think I'll go look in the library. Maybe I can find something about magic doorways in the books on the west wall," Lorrie shook her head, and lurched to her feet. "Vampires keeping track of generations… creepy."
"I can help," Pyro scrambled to his feet, snatching up his lighter.
As the youngest two left the room, Tanya sighed. "They're almost panicking about this. I'm not sure that I blame them; it is a bit creepy. Maybe… maybe tomorrow, we should start looking into how the various Schwannsteins, Thackerys, and Millers have died."
"Considering the time difference, perhaps now would be a good time to call England. If there was a Watcher in the area during the American witch trials, or during the time when Erwin Schwannstein died, their journals should be in the main archives." He paused, glancing at Faith, and murmured, "It might also be a good time to look into that other question."
"I know that some of the stuffed suits back in England were pretty ticked about me. If there's another Slayer, they'll figure that I'm dead and I won't have to watch my back for them," Faith insisted.
"But if there is another Slayer, then it means that…" Wesley faltered. "Well, it takes quite a bit to Call a Slayer."
"Go make your calls. 'M five by five," Faith waved Wesley towards the other room.
Wesley gathered up some of his pages, glancing at Faith as he did. Still a bit hesitant, he left the room.
"Another Slayer would mean…" Tanya clasped her hands together so tightly that her knuckles went white. "That sounds almost as creepy as a vampire watching the family for three hundred years."
Leaning back against Mort, Faith admitted, "Maybe I'm not quite five by five about it. I never thought about how much it must bug B to think of it like that. Another Slayer meaning that you died an' all. But I need to know. Some of those guys don't believe in second chances, they believe in permanent solutions for any problem."
"So you need to know, even if the answers are disturbing," Tanya nodded. "That makes sense. Ugly sense, but it does make sense."
"Lots of things about being a Slayer are ugly," Faith ran her finger along the edge of one of the pictures. "Lots of things about life in general, for that matter."
"As if I didn't have enough reasons to dislike the Watchers' Council as a whole. At least they won't be able to slip someone in without them being noticed – new people stand out a bit in a town this size," Tanya tried to smile.
"But will they even bother to send someone else? Or will they just shrug and dismiss the whole thing? What if they figure Lorrie's old enough that she won't be Called, and there isn't any… do they know about the Door? If they don't, they might just figure there's nothing worth watching," Mort wondered.
"With everything that they've already done, I think it might be best not to count on any help from them at all. We can hope that Wesley's friends can learn if there was a Watcher here before, three hundred years back, maybe see if they had any useful journals. We can hope that they might be able to answer Faith's disturbing question. But I'm done with counting on help from them," Tanya shook her head, brows furrowed with remembered slights and her uncle's abandonment.
"So we're pretty much on our own." Mort summed up.
"Yeah, but this time we're not on our own alone, we're together in this mess," Faith gave a weak smile, even as she slipped her arm around Mort. "We can count on each other."
Meanwhile, Wesley tried to call his friends in the Council. To some of them, he mentioned that the Slayer Called upon the death of Council-Trained Slayer Kendra had been hospitalized in critical condition before he'd left Sunnydale, and he didn't know what had happened. He followed that up with the question of where would the Slayer be now? Michael, Thomas, Bernadine, and Blevins hadn't known anything about a new Slayer. Jason had heard rumors about Taiwan and Asian demons. Constance had heard rumors about major problems with French shape-shifters, and thought that it might be a likely place for a Slayer to be Called. They'd promised to see if they could find anything out, with Thomas mentioning 'a few little tricks' that he could try.
When he talked to Monty, he said that he'd been travelling about the States to see the sights, and had found a bit of an interesting old story, and had wondered if there was any truth to it. The story was about somebody's ancestor who'd been afraid of ghosts, and tried to do something to prevent his home from being haunted. The sort of thing that a Watcher would find quite droll and might have noted down to share the joke with future Watchers. By chance were there any records from South Carolina, dating somewhere around three hundred years ago?
Monty had sounded a little too curious, asking if Wesley'd seen whatever it was that this 'mad ancestor' had attempted.
Much as Wesley wanted to think the best of his school friends, he'd learned some harsh lessons about the Council, and the darker side of human nature. With a weak chuckle, he'd answered, "I didn't, but for his family's sake, it would be nice if it worked. The place caught fire a few generations later. Fire is a very ugly way to die."
Agreeing on the ugliness of death by fire, Monty had sounded a bit disappointed. But if whatever the mad great-grandpa had tried was wild enough to still be talked about this long after, it must have been quite amusing. He'd promised to look and see if he could find anything, and to send copies if he did.
End part 60.
