Giles was in research mode.
Or, that's what the children would call it. Not that they really were children. Children weren't driven by hormones. Children would be more worried about strange deaths in a museum (even if strange deaths were rather ordinary in Sunnydale) than about not having a date to a costume party. Children were not driven by hormones the way vampires were driven by demons, Giles thought sourly.
He took a gulp of tea from a formerly white mug now stained a dusky brown from years of constant use. Giles still wished to maintain a certain calm. Time would come later for battle ready tenseness and coffee.
Surprisingly little had been written about Meso-American curses. It seemed an almost entirely unresearched topic. Odd, considering the sheer amount of blood magic practiced by the local peoples. Even though traditional witchcraft was really brought by the Spaniards. Every civilization has their dark magics, so why has no one looked into these places? An entire continent skipped? Shoddy work, really. Perhaps I should write a trifling monograph on the subject, voicing this question and possible avenues of approach, for the Council. His pulse sped up at the idea of adding something substantial to the published annals of demonology and dark magic. That is, if I ever had the time, he tacked on ruefully. That is a benefit other watchers have. Watchers with slayers who Listen. Aware that his inner monologue was about to turn into wallowing in self pity, Giles mercilessly slaughtered that train of thought.
Instead he returned to his last ditch research effort. Paging through decades, then centuries, of Watcher's diaries. Hoping to find any reference to curses originating in early American cultures. He had initially limited his search to Incan culture, then slowly expanded to include all South and Central American cultures until about the time of the arrival of the Spanish.
A body with modern dentistry mummified in the museum's Inca exhibit, a broken stone disk, a strange man threatening people. It was a headache. Except for the strange man, Giles was privately sure Buffy could clean the floor with him, not that he would tell her that.
He unceremoniously plunked one last diary on his desk. Not that he would ever admit to treating a book less than gently, but some days even librarians got more than their fill of books.
Protesting at it's misuse, the book tossed up a miniature mushroom cloud of dust.
Giles coughed, took off his glasses, polished them with all due ceremony, and began to read.
The leather cover of the volume was heavily stained with a whitish crystalline wash. It looked like salt, the sort of pattern that shoes get when taken off at the beech and forgotten at low tide. Giles hoped it was something as mundane as salt. He read a few pages, scratching his grey head uncertainly, almost unconsciously. It was, by far, the most boring and pompous volume he had ever read. A fact which was at serious odds by the slovenly nature of the pages, which were well thumbed and covered in brown stains. Evidently this man was watching a well-born young lady, a potential, from a distance.
In the middle of the seventeenth page, the handwriting suddenly changed. Giles let out a half snorting, half clucking sound that ended in a sigh. This particular watcher must have gotten into an accident or else a slovenly and nearly illiterate watcher had taken his place. The mottled and torn vellum pages were covered with crabbed writing which contained some of the most atrocious spelling and grammatical errors her had ever seen.
Giles was forced to half translate as he read.
May 1, 17—
Left port today. Took over Andrew's duties. 'Od's blood, 'e was supposed to carry out this duty, but the man can't handle a pond, let alone the sea. M' mother must a' found him on the street or some such. He can't be blood 'o mine.
Not only am I obliged to dress clean cause o' the bigwig future gov'nor, but I have to watch 'is girl for anything unusual. Unusual! It's bloody unusual to have a woman on board. Bad luck, it is. Bad luck.
--J. Gibbs