Giles leaned back on his sofa, covering his face with his hands. Christ, what a week. It had always bothered him that the students at Sunnydale High never entered his library; didn't any of them read? After a day like this yesterday, however, he wouldn't have minded finding out that the entire student body was illiterate. For the second year in a row, the first day of school turned his quiet little haven into a madhouse. He had loved the buzzing excitement of it all last year; this year, he felt enervated instead of energized. Of course, a year ago he had been anxious for school to start because it would give him an opportunity to see Jenny and Buffy again. This year, there was nothing to look forward to.

Giles sternly told himself to forget about those two losses for the evening, knowing full well that he would do no such thing. They were like toothaches; they hurt like hell, and yet he kept probing at them, unable to leave them alone. But these aches were in his soul rather than in his body, and no amount of Novocaine was ever going to ease the hurt. No amount of scotch, either, for that matter. He had tried more than once.

The last stray thought was enough for his liquor cabinet to begin exercising its siren call upon him. He ignored it. Xander, the child of two alcoholics, hated it when Giles drank, and so the Watcher had stopped. He never would have survived the summer had it not been for Xander, Willow, and Oz, and Giles had no intention of endangering those friendships. If he lost them, he would lose his last tangible link to Buffy, and then he would be truly desolate.

Of course, there was more than one way to lose the friendship of those remarkable young people. Even if he avoided driving them away, he couldn't protect them from vampires. Lord, but he hated it when they went patrolling. He understood the need, he admired them for doing it, but he wished that they wouldn't. He had forbidden them to go out back in June, and they had laughed at him. Xander had childishly told Giles that he couldn't stop them. Willow was gentler, pointing out that most of Giles' injuries were still unhealed, thus making the younger Scoobies more effective on patrol. It was Oz who had convinced him, however. He had shrugged and succinctly observed, "Slayer's gone, man; somebody's gotta do it." Yes, somebody did need to patrol, and in Buffy's absence, it looked like the burden fell to her friends. As in every other aspect of his life, his own preferences had to bow down to that most demanding of gods: Expediency.

And now he had another young person to worry about. When he had returned to his flat from the airport, he had found a gleeful message from Xander on his machine. Apparently the gang had developed a new strategy, one involving Cordelia as "bait." Jesus wept; he was now reduced to sending out human beings as "bait." The fact that they hadn't consulted him when formulating this strategy (or that he never would have agreed to it if they had) was irrelevant. They were doing the work that *his* Slayer would not do, so therefore they were his responsibility. The responsibility was strangling him. Leaving aside his own grief should anything happen to any of those brave children, he didn't feel strong enough to face another parent blaming him for the loss of his or her child. He simply couldn't listen to that particular accusation again and know it for the truth. His conscience was heavy enough as it was.

Thoughts of this afternoon's conversation with Joyce were enough to break through his earlier resolution. He rose off the sofa and began to pour himself a glass of scotch. He did this mechanically, seemingly without conscious volition, although he did listen to the voice in his head screaming at him to water the drink down. It simply wouldn't do for him to become too intoxicated to drive should the others call him.

As if the thought created the reality, his phone suddenly sprang to life. The shrill tones of the phone broke into his silent flat like an explosion, causing his heart to hammer violently. Some instinct, a gut feeling tied to his magic, told him that this was no telemarketer or wrong number; this call would change everything. Instantly, his mind produced a terrifyingly vivid image of Cordelia with puncture wounds on her lovely neck. Damnit, I knew that it was too dangerous to use someone as bait. I should have gone straight to the cemetery and put a stop to this. The next moment, his heart constricted even tighter. What if it's Xander? Or, God forbid, poor sweet Willow? Giles tried to make his hand stop shaking as he reached for the telephone. "Hello," he grunted.

A high-pitched feminine voice answered him. "Um, hi. Are you Giles?"

It wasn't a voice he recognized, but that didn't automatically relieve him. From the day he had graduated from public school until the day he met his Slayer, he had been known as Rupert, or Ripper, or Mr. Giles. At this time in his life, only Buffy and her friends called him "Giles." The stranger on the other end of the line was connected to his blonde charge in one way or another. Still, he felt the need to be cautious. "I am. May I ask your name?"

"Lily. My name is Lily. Anne asked me to call you and—"

"Anne, did you say?" Giles was confused; Buffy didn't have any friends called Anne. "I'm afraid that—"

"Buffy," the girl asked hesitantly. "Maybe ... maybe you used to call her Buffy?"

"Buffy," Giles breathed, wondering whether the name was a prayer or a curse for him these days. He took a steadying breath and then asked with deceptive calmness, "Is she there with you? May I speak with her, please?"

The girl made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a sob. "She isn't here; she's still down there. She told me that I had to leave, that I had to get a message to you. She made me memorize it."

Giles only heard the first sentence and then blanked out on the rest. She's still down there. What did that mean, other than another dead end? Almost afraid to find out, Giles asked, "Where, exactly, is there?"

"Hell," the girl whispered. "Anne's still in hell."

"Hell?" She went after Angel. After everything that bastard did, she went after him. The knowledge twisted in his gut like a knife, it ached just as much as broken fingers, stung as badly as slashes upon a back, and burnt as fiercely as candles upon... Giles abruptly jerked his mind away from those memories, knowing that they would only hinder him in his search for Buffy. He tried to gather his thoughts together and failed abysmally. "What do you— I mean, why would she—"

The girl interrupted him. Giles was grateful; he wasn't sure that he was capable of formulating a coherent thought at the moment. "Anne, I mean Buffy, said that she needs your help and that there isn't a lot of time. Maybe I should just give you the message and you can ask her stuff when you see her."

Buffy needed his help? Needed *him*? God, how long had he longed to hear those words? "Yes. Please, give me her message."

"Okay." Lily took a deep breath. "Here goes. Giles, get your British butt to LA as quickly as you can. Like yesterday. I need you to do a binding spell, and every second counts. Time moves differently down here, so you've gotta get here *fast*. It might be dangerous, so don't bring my mom, but ask her if you can borrow her car; yours is too slow.' I, I think that was all of it..." The girl trailed off in confusion, but Giles didn't need to hear anything else. He had a purpose once more, and he suddenly felt strong and capable again for the first time in months. The Watcher quickly got directions to a mission of some sort and then hung up.

Moving with a new sense of direction, Giles stalked through his apartment, collecting materials for every binding spell he knew and stuffing them into a battered knapsack. He wished that he had some idea of what it was he needed to bind, but surely one of the old standards would do the trick. As soon as he had gathered all the materials he could think of, he pulled out the faculty directory for Sunnydale High School and made a quick call. Having received a satisfactory answer, he grabbed the bag and his motorcycle helmet from the front closet, and then ran out the door.

~*~*~

Giles pulled up to the mission almost exactly two hours later. He had made excellent time, and felt a little smug about it. Maneuvering a motorcycle through bumper to bumper traffic without ever falling below seventy miles an hour was no small accomplishment. Not that Giles would ever be able to brag about it; Stanley would almost certainly have a heart attack if he knew that Giles had abused his baby so. The orchestra teacher was an excellent bloke–as witnessed by his willingness to lend Giles his bike, without question or hesitation–but he was an absolute nutter when it came to safety issues. He drove the librarian insane during faculty meetings.

As Giles parked the bike and grabbed his bag, his heart was in danger of beating out of his chest. In a few seconds, he would be face to face with his Slayer again. Despite his apprehension, Giles couldn't keep a goofy grin off of his face; he wasn't a failure after all.

Quickly striding into the mission and yelling out a "hello," Giles scanned the room for Buffy. The only person he saw was a tall girl, very thin, with pale hair and heavy mascara smeared from sleep. She looked like a frightened doe, and the fact that he had obviously just awoken her did not help matters. Giles pitched his voice low and asked, "Lily?"

The girl spun around, and Giles silently willed her not to run. She gave him a brief smile that didn't reach her eyes and asked, "Are you Giles?"

"Yes, I am," he said with a gentle smile. "Where's Buffy?"

To his horror, Lily burst into tears. "She's still down there!"

His heart, which had been hammering in his chest moments before, suddenly came to a screeching halt. Time stood still while he tried to remember how to breathe. And then he was grabbing Lily by her skinny arms, shaking her slender body, and demanding to know where Buffy was. This made Lily cry harder, and Giles had to sternly tell himself that none of this was helping. He took a steadying gulp of air and then released the girl. "Please, Lily, I don't understand."

Sniffling a bit, the girl turned to him with teary eyes. "I thought Anne would be here when I got back, but she wasn't. The dirty pool we went through was gone too." Her voice dropped to a whisper, and Giles barely heard the last part. "She's probably dead now."

She's probably dead now. No, that couldn't be right. It wasn't right. "Show me this portal," Lily stared at him in confusion, and he realized that she didn't understand. "Um, the dirty pool.' Show me the dirty pool, and tell me why you believe that Buffy is no longer alive."

Lily wiped her eyes and nose on her arm and stared at him trustingly. "Okay. It's this way."

Lily led Giles into a back room. There was a shallow pool, empty of water, with tiles on the bottom of it. It reeked of residual magic. When Giles bent down to study it, he discovered that the portal spell had been cast so many times that it would be trivial for him to reset it. As Giles rummaged in his bag for the necessary ingredients he asked, "Now, tell me about the time differential." The girl gave him a blank look, and he stifled a curse. "Usually, time moves differently in demon dimensions than it does in our own. Do you know how fast time moves in the place where Buffy is?"

"Well," Lily said slowly, "the meanest monster, Ken, said that a hundred years would pass in his world in the amount of time it takes for a single day here. Is that what you mean?"

Shit, Giles swore to himself. A distant demon dimension then. Very distant. This was going to be a tricky spell. Hoping that the girl was mistaken, Giles asked, "And are you sure that he was telling you the truth?"

Lily shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, Rickie left before I woke up this morning, and I didn't see him for a full day, well, almost a day, and Anne said that he was, like, eighty when she found him. That was, like, hours ago... He should have been nineteen, but Anne said that he was eighty. I didn't see him..." Lily trailed off in confusion, and Giles did some mental calculations. From morning to evening, that was somewhere between twelve and sixteen hours, depending upon when the boy went into the portal and when Buffy found him afterwards. Roughly sixty years in that amount of time: three and a half to five years per hour. One year might last as long as twenty minutes in our world or as little as twelve. The dimension in question was closer than he thought initially, but still hellaciously far away. It should be within the range of his capabilities, but the spell would exhaust him. Still, he *could* do it. Since the spells to open and close mystical portals were so similar, he had all the ingredients that he needed. Now, the tricky part was discovering whether he had enough strength to do both...

It took almost an hour to set the spell up. Giles hated the fact that Buffy was losing years of her life because of his slowness, but she would lose much more if he had to start over due to carelessness. Using the spell that he could still sense on the portal, Giles cautiously summoned his power and began chanting. For an endless, horrifying moment, Giles feared that the spell wasn't going to work. Then, all of a sudden, the tiles vanished; in their place was a thick, viscous black sludge. Giles could understand why Lily called it "the dirty pool." In addition to being black, the portal radiated evil and malevolence; it had a roynish quality that made his skin crawl. But, if that was where his Slayer was to be found, then that is where he would go. Once he was certain that the portal was secure, he handed Lily a small bag and gave her a stern glance. "Stay here and keep an eye on the clock. If I'm not back in five minutes, spread this herb over the pool and get out of here as quickly as possible. Do you understand?" The girl gave him an uncertain nod, and he took a deep breath. "If it were when tis done, then twere well it were done quickly." With that, he jumped.