June 14, 1:30am

Dear Diary,

Oh, God, what are we gonna do?

 This has been the longest week of my life. Today was the last day of school and we still aren't any closer to finding the right victim of evil. When you live on a Hell Mouth you have lots of victims. I hate Jezebel. From what I saw she's as crazy as the first Vampire was and even crueler. What she did to Buffy, and taking Grandma- but I can't talk abut that or I'll start crying again. She was just playing with us at the cemetery that time.

 I need to sleep or I will never be ready for tomorrow. Oh, I wish I could talk to Tara.

She was still thinking about Tara as she turned off the light and crawled under the covers.

 She was sitting on lush, manicured grass that spread as far as she could see In all directions. The sky was a flawless blue, the air was warm and scented. Birds were singing.

 "I'm so glad you could come," Tara said

 "Oh-yes," said Dawn. "Well, naturally, so am I. Of course." She looked around again, then hastily back at Tara.

 "More tea?"

 There was a teacup in Dawn's hand, thin fragile as eggshell. "Oh-sure. Thanks."

 Tara was wearing an eighteenth-century dress of gauzy white muslin, which clung to her, showing how slender she was. She poured the tea precisely, without spilling a drop.

 "Would you like a mouse?"

 "A what?"

 "I said, would you like a sandwich with you tea?"

 "Oh. A sandwich. Yeah. Great." It was thinly sliced cucumber with mayonnaise on dainty square of white bread. Without the crust.

 The whole scene was as sparkly and beautiful as a picture by Seurar. Warm Springs, that's where we are. The old picnic place, Dawn thought. But surely we've got more important things to discuss than tea.

 "Who does your hair these days?" she asked. Tara never had been able to do it herself.

 "Do you like it?" Tara put a hand up to the silky, pale gold mass piled at the back of her neck.

 "It's perfect," said Dawn, sounding for all the world like a mother at a Daughters of the American Revolution dinner party.

 "Well, hair is important you know," Tara said. Her eyes glowed a deeper blue than the sky, lapis lazuli blue. Dawn touched her own straight hair self-consciously.

 "Dawnie listen to me, you are looking the wrong way for a victim of evil." Tara said.

 "Oh yes, of course," said Dawn, flustered She had no idea was Tara was talking about, and she felt as if she were walking on a tightrope over alligators.

 "Another sandwich?"

 "thanks." It was cheese and tomato. Tara selected one for herself and bit into it delicately. Dawn watched her, feeling uneasiness grow by the minute inside her, and then-

 And then she saw the mud oozing out of the edges of the sandwich.

 "What-what's that?" Terror made her voice shrill. For the first time, the dream seemed like a dream, and she found that she couldn't move, could only gasp and stare. A thick glob of the brown stuff fell off Tara's sandwich onto the checkered tablecloth. IT was mud, all right.

"Tara . . . Tara, what-"

 "Oh, we all eat this down here." Tara smiled at her with brown stained teeth. Except that the voice wasn't Tara's; it was ugly and distorted and it wasn't Tara's voice. "You will too."

 The air was no longer warm and scented; it was hot and sickly sweet with the odor of rotting garbage. There was black pits in the green grass, which wasn't manicured after all but wild and overgrown. This wasn't Warm Springs. She was In the Restfield cemetery; how could she not have realized that? Only these graves were fresh.

 "Another mouse?" Tara said, and giggled obscenely.

 Dawn looked down at the half-eaten sandwich she was holding and screamed. Dangling from one end was a ropy brown tail. She threw it as hard as she could against a headstone, stomach heaving, scrubbing her fingers frantically against her jeans.

 "You can't leave yet. The company is just arriving." Tara's face was changing; to that of a vampires. Things were moving in the plate of sandwiches and the freshly dug pits. Dawn didn't want to see any of them; she thought she would go mad if she did.

 "You're not Tara!" she screamed and ran.

 The wind blew her hair into her eyes and she couldn't see. Her pursuer was behind her; she could feel it right behind her. Get to the bridge, she thought, and then she ran into something.

 "I've been waiting for you," said the thing in Tara's dress, the vampire face with long sharp teeth. "Listen to me, Dawn." It held her with terrible strength.

 "You're not Tara! You're not Tara!"

 "Listen to me, Dawn!"

 It was Tara's voice, Tara's real voice, not obscenely amused nor thick and ugly, but urgent. It came from somewhere behind Dawn and it swept through the dream like a fresh, cold wind.

 "Dawn, listen quickly-"

 Things were melting. The clawed hands on Dawn's arms, the crawling graveyard, the rancid hot air. For a moment Tara's voice was clear, but it was broken up like a bad long distance conversation.

 ". . .  She's twisting things, changing them. I'm not as strong as she is . . ." Dawn missed some words. ". . . but this is important. You have to find . . . right now." Her voice was fading.

 "Tara, I can't hear you! Tara!"

 ". . . No one can fight her and survive."

 "Tara!"

 Dawn was still shouting as she sat bolt upright in bed.

 The next morning they were sitting around the table listening to Dawn tell about her dream. Buffy just shook her head. "You're sure it was Tara?"

"Yes, and she was trying to tell me something at the end. About us not looking the right way for a victim. Then she said nothing can fight her and survive."

 Buffy looked down at the table and at her and Xander's joined hands. "We'll have to find out where she's hiding, herself and Grandma," Buffy said, looking around the table. "That's the first thing. If we rush this, we could warn her off."

 Dawn was close to hysterics. "Buffy are you listening nothing can face this thing and walk away from it."  The others nodded. They were all on the ragged edge, Dawn thought, as if they'd been gulping uppers all night. Their nerves were frayed so thin that anything could happen.

 She had a sense, too of impending cataclysm. As if everything were coming to a head, all the events since Tara's death gathering to a conclusion.

 Tonight, she thought. Tonight it all happens. It seemed strangely appropriate that is should be the eve of the solstice.

 "The eve of what? Conner said

 She hadn't even realized she's spoken aloud. "The eve of the solstice," she said. "That's what today is. The day before the summer solstice."

 "Don't tell me. Druids, right?"

 "They celebrated it," Dawn confirmed. "It's a day of magic, for marking the change of the seasons. And . . ." she hesitated. "Well, it's like all other feast days, like Halloween or the winter solstice. A day when the line between the visible world and the invisible world is thin. When you can see ghosts, they used to say. When things happen."

 "Things," Buffy said, turning to address them all, "are going to happen."

 None realized how soon.

Buffy was down in the basement training with Giles, while Dawn was upstairs convincing the others what would happen if Buffy faced Jezebel. So they all trooped down the stairs, Dawn was carrying a letter that had come for Buffy today.

Buffy looked up at them all and took the letter from Dawn and opened it. It was blank paper, Buffy glanced up at them and then back down at the paper. On the blank paper, held tautly between Buffy's two hands, letters were appearing. They were black with long downstrokes, as if each were being slashed by an invisible knife while Dawn watched. As she read them, the dread inside her grew.

 Buffy-

 Shall we try to solve this like ladies? I have your grandmother. Come to the old farmhouse in the woods after dark and we'll talk, just the two of us. Come alone and I'll let her go. Bring anyone else and she dies.

  There was no signature, but at the bottom the words appeared This is between you and me.

 "What are we going to do?" she said softly.

 "I know what we're not going to do, and that's listen to her," Conner said. "'Try to solve it like ladies'-she's scum, not a lady. It's a trap."

"Of course it's a trap," Spike said impatiently. "She waited until we found out how to hurt her and now she's trying to separate us. But it won't work!"

Dawn had been watching Buffy's face with growing dismay. Because while Conner and Spike were indignantly talking, she had been quietly folding up the letter and putting it back in its envelope. Now she understood gazing down at it, her face still, untouched by anything that was going on around her. And the look in her green eyes scared Dawn.

 "We can make it backfire on her," Xander was saying. "Right, Buffy? Don't you think?"

 "I think," said Buffy carefully, concentrating on each word, "That I am going out to the woods after dark."

 Conner nodded, and like the champion he was, began to plan. "Okay, you go distract her, And meanwhile, the rest of us-"

'The rest of you," Buffy continued just as deliberately, looking right at him, "are not going."

 There was a pause that seemed endless to Dawn's taut nerves. The others just stared at Buffy.

 At last Willow said lightly, "Well, it's going to be hard to catch her while we're here unless she's kind enough to come visiting."

That broke the tension and Xander said, drawling a long-suffering breath, "All right, Buffy, I understand how you feel about this-" But Buffy interrupted.

 "I'm dead serious, Xander. Jezebel is right; this is between her and me. And she says to come alone or she'll hurt my grandmother. So I'm going alone. It's my decision."

 "It's your funeral," Dawn blurted out, almost hysterically, "Buffy, you're crazy. You can't."

 "Watch me."

 "We won't let you-"

 'Do you think," Buffy said, looking at her, "that you could stop me if you tried?"

 This silence was acutely uncomfortable. Staring at her, Dawn felt as if Buffy had changed somehow before her eyes. Her face seemed sharper, her posture different, as if to remind her of the lithe, hard predator's muscles under her clothes. All at once she seemed distant, alien. Frightening.

 Dawn looked away.

 "Let's be reasonable about this," Giles was saying, changing tactics. "Let's just stay calm and talk this over."

 "There's nothing to talk over. I'm going. You're not. Giles you stay here with them and my mother."

 "You owe us more than that, Buffy," Willow said, and Dawn felt grateful for her cool voice. "Okay, so you can tear us all limb from limb; fine, no argument. We get the point. But after all we've been through together, we deserve more of a thorough discussion before you go running off."

 "You said we were an Army," Spike added. "When did you decide we weren't?"

"When I found out what the killer was!" Buffy said.

 "You just want to believe that," Dawn almost yelled. "Jezebel hates all of us! Do you really think she's going to you walk out of there? Do you think She plans to leave the rest of us alone? What about Rose?"

 "No," Buffy said.

 "Oh, great, you're going of for single combat!" Xander said, furious. "Don't you see how stupid that is? You're walking right into her trap!" He advanced a step on his wife. "You may not think that we can stop you-"

 "No, Xander." Willow's low, level voice cut across the room. "It won't do any good." Buffy looked at her, the muscles around her eyes hardening, but she just looked back, her face set and calm. "So you're determined to meet Jezebel face to face, Buffy. The same way you did Angel, all by yourself and all most got us all killed. Think!"
 "NO."

 Don't be a jerk Buffy," Conner snapped.

 "I said, no! This is my fight, just as Angel was my fight. I thought you would understand that." Buffy's look at Conner was bitter.

 "I understand that you're going to die out there!" Conner shouted.

 "He's right!" Dawn pressed her knuckles against her lips, "Don't you remember what Tara said. No one can fight her and live. And it's true. I feel it, Buffy. No one can fight her and live!"

 For a moment, just a moment, she thought Buffy might listen to her. Then her face went hard again and she spoke coldly.

 "It isn't your problem. Let me worry about it."

 "But if there's no way to win-" Spike began

 "That isn't what Tara said!" Buffy replied tersely.

 "Yes, it is! What the hell are you talking about? Xander shouted. IT was hard to make Xander lose his temper, but once lost it wasn't easily gotten back. "Buffy, I've had enough-"

"And so have I!" Buffy shot back in a roar. In a tone Dawn had never heard her use before. "I'm sick of you all, sick of your bickering and spinelessness-and your dreams too! This is my problem."

 "I thought we were a team-" Xander cried

 "We are not a team. You are a bunch of stupid humans! Even with everything that's happened to you, deep down you just want to live your safe little lives in your safe little houses until you go to your safe little graves! I'm nothing like you and I don't want to be! I've put up with you this long because I had to, but this is the end." She looked at each of them and spoke deliberately, emphasizing each word. "I don't need any of you. I don't want you with me, and I don't want you following me. You'll only spoil my strategy. Anyone who does follow me, I'll kill."

 And with one last smoldering glance, she turned on her heel and walked out.