Still, there was no particular reason anyone would be suspicious at this point (yes, I know Ted tends towards the deeply suspicious and highly moralistic), so I decided to do my damnedest not to act suspicious.

I mouthed the word "Sorry" and tried to look embarrassed while turning my head. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ted whispering through the doorway, and about five seconds later heard Joyce say my name, distantly.

Thirty seconds after that, while I was looking at a painting that made "Dogs Playing Poker" look like the work of Da Vinci, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned around Joyce and Ted were both standing there. Joyce looked kind of sheepish, and I couldn't read Ted, not that that surprised me.

"You shouldn't be eavesdropping like that, little lady," he said. Ah, Moralistic Ted, who apparently got his dialogue if not his diction from John Wayne: enter, stage left.

I shrugged. "Who was eavesdropping? It was pure luck."

"Ted!" Joyce said reproachfully. "Veronica wouldn't eavesdrop on me." Boy, howdy. To quote the great philosopher: She don't know me vewy well, do she? "Veronica," she said. "This is Ted. My boyfriend. Ted, this is Veronica Mars. She's a friend of my daughter's."

"The daughter you haven't told about me yet?" Ted said lightly. Okay, now Jovial Ted was in the house. If I had to deal with him, I much preferred Jovial Ted; he was less likely to slap me around or try to kill me.

And back to looking sheepish for Joyce, who said, "Yeah. About that. Veronica, Buffy doesn't know about me and Ted."

"And you want me not to tell her," I said.

"Yes," she said. "Please?"

"She won't hear about it from me," I said.

Ted and Joyce both smiled. "Good to know," Ted said, while Joyce said, "Thank you."

I made my exit as soon as I graciously could after that and walked back to my car as fast as I could.

X X X X X

Okay, I hadn't been planning to have Ted see me- - that killed any chance of me being the one to sneak into his office, like Buffy had the first time around -- but that wasn't really a crippling difficulty.

No, the problem came from what I'd promised Joyce. And you know damn well I'm willing to lie my ass off if I think it's for a good cause, but breaking a promise to Joyce Summers seemed kind of like kicking a puppy.

And, of course, Ted had been there, and given his Ozzie-and-Harriet-as-psychopath ethics he might decide to take it out on me personally. Not that that would stop me, but I'd still like to avoid him knowing about it; there's a difference between being willing to face danger and throwing oneself stupidly in its path, and I like to think I've learned to distinguish between the two. (I would not be doing the equivalent of wandering into the Fitzpatricks' bar, like I did back in Neptune.)

So I was going to have to find some other way of cluing Buffy in.

As I drove home, my mind was racing over elaborate schemes involving conning Buffy into coming to gallery and seeing for herself. It wasn't until I got home that I started kicking myself.

Back when I was still trying to figure out the terms of my forced wager with the Adversary, I figured out on my own that his prohibition from me telling anyone about the future didn't stop me from trying to change it without telling anyone. With Dad's help, I figured out that I could tell people about the past, even the secret one.

I also learned, and need to keep reminding myself, that I have this tendency to overanalyze some things. Admittedly, with my life? Overanalysis not always a problem.

But in this case it definitely was. Joyce had asked me not to tell Buffy.

She hadn't asked me not to tell anyone else.

And now, you may be wondering, why did I want to tell anyone? Why didn't I want to let the episode get started on cue and take it from there?

Honestly? It's not that I wanted Buffy even more upset, early on, and no, this wasn't gratuitously inflicting pain, because given Buffy's attitude when she did find out she would have been upset no matter when and how her mother's dating was presented. (Or who she was dating, for that matter.)

No, I was simply trying to give her, and myself, more lead time. And besides, I already knew how things went in the original timeline, and I knew that there was nothing but misery there, for anyone.

I knew about the dead bodies in Ted's fantasy '50s room, but right now any call I made to the Sunnydale Sheriff's office would have been laughed at. And that was before they recognized who I was. No, for that, I needed evidence, and while Xander and company had felt safe breaking into Ted's house when they thought he was dead, me, not so much, not yet, anyway. I needed a time when I knew he wasn't there, and wasn't going to be there for a while, and that time wasn't now.

And, unfortunately, when he was at work, I was at school. I could always sneak out, but getting on Snyder's radar? Not on my list of things to do.

The thing is, what I knew about Ted at this point could get him arrested, under the right circumstances; it would not get him stopped, wrecked, put "on the scrap heap of life." He was a killer robot, not simply a human murderer. An arrest probably wouldn't stop him for more than a few days, if that, and that was only if being shot would be a problem for him. (I saw no convenient way of arranging this, so I was going to treat him as though a few bullets wouldn't do more than make him angry. Better to assume in that direction than the other. The other way could get me in trouble, injured, or killed.)

So simply breaking into his house and providing irrefutable proof that he was a mass murderer was only half the battle. (The drugged pastries and pizza wouldn't do me much good, here, because again that spoke to killer, not killer robot.)

He needed to be gone.

Hmm. That plan would be more complicated.

But first things first. This was Friday night, so simply spreading gossip from the girls' room at Sunnydale High Monday morning wouldn't get the results I needed fast enough. (For all I knew, Monday night was when Buffy found out. I was fairly sure it was a weekday, for some reason.)

That left calling people – and I didn't have the social network for that, not anymore – or going to the Bronze.

Hello, Bronze.

The place was crowded when I got there, but not packed. Looking around, I didn't see Buffy or her friends, or Cordelia, but I did see the Cordettes, and, oddly, Oz.

Or maybe not so oddly; Dingoes Ate My Baby appeared to be the evening's live entertainment, though right now they were still in setup mode. Oz noted my arrival and gave me a quick half-grin, which for him, of course, was the equivalent of yelling my name, running up to me, and kissing both cheeks.

I grinned back and looked around. Oz was the only person here who would talk to me for more than about five seconds; reputation meant nothing to him. (Well, Devon would talk to me as well, but Devon would talk to anything female over the age of puberty whose face wasn't actually a dead ringer for Thomas Merrick's. The only thing that saved him from being just another asshole is that he was capable of taking no for an answer. Anyway, Devon wasn't an option, because he wouldn't be paying attention to anything I said; not that he would have been capable of remember ninety percent of it five minutes later even if he did.)

Oz, of course, wasn't an option either; gossiping wasn't in his character, and I wasn't talking about his taciturnity. Gossiping required maliciousness, and at this point Oz was probably the least malicious person in Sunnydale.

So that meant I was going to have to get creative. Fortunately, I was creative. I wandered around the room for a few minutes, danced for half of one song, and then made my way to the women's room.

No, I'm not going to tell you about me toilet habits; I believe in being detailed, but there are some details I'm convinced no one wants to hear about. (And if you do want to hear about it, never ever tell me.)

There was no one in there. There would be. So I went into a stall, locked it, and sat.

And sat.

And sat.

People were coming in and out, but no one noticed, really, that I wasn't leaving; or if they did, they weren't saying anything. It wasn't crowded enough for people to be pounding on the door.

Unfortunately, not the right people. Sunnydale High students gossiped, like students everywhere do; but I needed to know this would get back to Buffy, and soon, and random student A wasn't necessarily guaranteed to spread the information in the right direction.

Something no one bothers telling you about the life of a private detective is the intense boredom that you occasionally experience. The difference between a competent one and an excellent one is how well you deal with the boredom. You can't deal with it in any manner that's likely to distract you. I usually bring a mindless book – a cheap romance, a Star Trek novel, something of that order.

After about fifteen minutes, right around the time I was wishing I'd brought that book with me, the right people came in:

The Cordettes. And, as a special added bonus, they were joined by Cordelia herself. They were doing their usual mix of saying how great each other looked and saying how horrible everyone else looked, and did you notice Veronica Mars was here, by herself, of course, what would you expect, just because she's been done by every member of the football team doesn't mean any of them would want to be seen with her in public, and on, and on.

It didn't bother me. The only insults that bother me are those that come from people I respect, and I respected Jake Kane more than I did the Cordettes. (Cordelia wasn't saying anything about me, although I wasn't reading much into that.)

So, after about thirty seconds of this, I took out my cell phone and said, "Really? Well, guess what I saw. Yeah, I was down on Onion Boulevard and had to dodge into Joyce Summers' art gallery – and I wish I hadn't. Yeah, Buffy's mom. No, it wasn't the art, though that sucked. She was frenching some guy. I don't know; looked like John Ritter. (Okay, I winced when I said it, but I'd seen Three's Company reruns, so I knew he existed here.) No, they caught me, made me promise not to tell Buffy. I know. It'd kill her if she found out. Okay. Talk to you later. I have to get back to my case." I audibly closed my cell phone and stuck it back in my purse.

The chatter in the room had slowed down as I was talking, stopping right around "frenching some guy." I stood up, flushed the toilet, and left the stall, to find a half-dozen women looking at me, and then quickly looking elsewhere and giggling.

"What?" I said, faking obliviousness. "TP on my shoe?" I made a production of looking down, saw nothing, shrugged, and left, with them giggling behind me.

I had a soda and danced a couple of times over the next half hour; only once with someone:

Logan.

He didn't make a move of any sort; it was more of an excuse to talk privately, which we hadn't had much of a chance to do in a while.

"Logan," I said. "Aren't you afraid you'll damage your reputation?" The Cordettes were giggling and pointing.

"Like I care what most of these people think, Mars," he said. "Consider this my latest of charity towards the less privileged. Gotta keep up that Echolls reputation while Daddy Dearest is away."

"Movie?"

"Interview with Esquire. Mom's with him. Unfortunately." Right. Lynn Echolls. Add that to my list of things to improve. She wasn't going to kill herself this time around, if I had anything to do with it.

"Ah," I said.

"I also wanted to check in on the status of our weekend meeting."

Hmmm. I hadn't had a chance to come up with anything, but I could probably get something together.

I had a thought. "If the people at the magic shop are up for it, we'll meet there and take a tour."

"I've been there. It won't take that long," he said.

"I was thinking of asking the owner to tell us what certain things were," I said. "Admittedly, we're now heading into advanced territory. We've covered most of what I know about the common supernatural beasties, so it's either this or discussing which demons kill people with poison, which with mucus, and which with their claws."

"A tour it is," he said. The music ended, and he bowed. "Always a pleasure," he said. "Have a good evening."

A few minutes later, having thrown off anyone who might have thought I was trying some scheme or other, I left. Buffy hadn't shown up, but Xander and Willow had. Buffy was probably busy with an early patrol. I nodded to Xander and Willow before I took off.

No vampires in the area; at least, no obvious ones. The ones who attacked tended to move down the alley, because even the notorious deliberate ignorance of Sunnydale denizens stopped short of watching someone get murdered in front of you.

I kept my hand on my water pistol until I made it back to my car.

Now, home.

We'd see whether my plan had had the results I was hoping for, tomorrow morning.

X X X X X

An uneventful night; neither the Adversary nor Lilly had made any significant appearances in my dreams recently, though they did both cameo in another one.

(As did the Cheese Man. I don't care what Joss said. That guy meant something. Maybe he was just a really, really minor deity.)

Since neither Lilly nor the Adversary bothered talking to me, I couldn't tell if it was actually them reminding me of their existence, or just my own overworked subconscious. The dream itself involved me, on stage, doing one of those plate spinning routines, running from stick to stick to stop them from falling.

I wonder what that means. (And by that I mean, I know damn well what that means.)

Dad wasn't here. I fed Backup, walked him, told him how very very glad I was to have his doggie presence here in Sunnydale, accepted some kisses, and started making my own breakfast.

My pouring of cereal into bowl was interrupted by the ringing of my cell phone.

It was Buffy. "Hello," I said. "What's up?"

"Business," she said angrily.

"Whose?" I asked. "And why does it have you sounding like you want go punch your way through a few walls?"

"Yours. And I do," she said. "Mind if I come in?"

I was about to answer when I heard a knock at the door. "If that's you, the door is open. If that's not you, it was a hell of a coincidence."

The door opened and Buffy walked through it.

"Okay, then. Not a coincidence." I hung up my phone. "What's the problem?"

"My mom," she said, shuddering, "Is dating someone." The way she said it, it was like Joyce had committed mass murder.

"Not good?"

"Not good. I want you find out everything you can about him."

I love it when a plan --

Naaah. To really pull that line off, I need a cigar.

But you get the gist.