Nina takes an interest in Dawn. Riley visits Buffy, and tells them about his encounter with Darla. Meanwhile, Angel addresses the new arrivals, and Wolfram & Hart try to pick up where Mal left off.
"Did the Mayor send you to tell me this?"
"Right. The Mayor. She's probably with Giles. You have to find them. They're not safe. No one is."
"Dawn, what are you talking about?"
"I had a vision. Of a flood. Everything covered with water. We need to get back inside."
"A vision? Aren't those supposed to be about LA?"
"I guess. I don't know. I'm new at this. But I know what I see. Something else is going to happen. I don't know when. Maybe in an hour. Maybe in five minutes. But if we're here when it happens, we're dead. Buffy, you have to believe me."
Buffy ponders this for a few seconds. No harm in being careful. After all, they're not doing much more than sightseeing. Nothing essential. "Go straight back. Run," she tells the Potentials. "You too, Dawn."
"But I have tell the others."
"I'll take care of that. Just go." Dawn stares at Buffy, trying to figure out whether to help or do what she's told. She's also trying to ascertain if this moment means Buffy trusts her and sees her as someone who's responsible and useful, or if she's merely playing it safe. Then Dawn walks back. She's a little too tired to run. Buffy races after Willow, then Xander, then Giles, then Faith.
"Taking orders from your kid sis," Faith comments. "Maybe the Hellmouth really has frozen over." Buffy was in no mood for jokes. She ran down Giles once again, because he was heading away from the shelter.
"You walk back, or I'm carrying you back," she promises.
"Stella's trying to find Vince. He's surveying the damage in his truck. I'm going to help her find him."
"I'll help her."
"I'm at least as effective in my car as you are on foot. Return to the others. I'll be joining you soon."
"I don't know if soon' is enough time."
"You mean Dawn doesn't know."
"She says the vision thingy told her nothing about when this would happen. Only that it would."
"A flood. That would seem to imply a tsunami. Which results from earthquakes well offshore. What we experienced was most definitely onshore."
"What was that you told me once? There's not to reason why.' Something something do or die.'"
"As much as I seek to NOT model our humble outfit on the Light Brigade, I suppose you have a point. Which is precisely why I need to find Vince and Stella. Let's face facts: if the deluge comes, better me than you."
Buffy can tell he's serious. Which worries her. She's really big on the "Leave No Man Behind" rule, especially when the man is someone she cares about as much as Giles. "Find them. But hurry." Buffy heads back to the shelter. Giles drives off. He thinks Vincent went towards the southwest sector. Buffy returns at 3:40, thirty five minutes after Dawn had her vision.
"Just when I was finally getting used to some peace and quiet around here," Spike complains, half in jest, about everyone returning. "So the First's not done playing demolition?"
"Looked pretty done to me," Faith responds, reflecting the opinion of most of them. Dawn sits off in a corner, feeling very self-conscious. The Potentials hadn't been aware of her visions. Everyone else viewed them as an abstraction, something that had no connection to their lives. Now things were different. And it doesn't help that she can't answer all the pressing questions about how and when this final blow would be dealt to Sunnydale. As the clock struck four, Buffy grew increasingly worried about Giles.
Watching the in-gathering from a safe distance was Nina. What she saw confused her. So she summoned her boss to provide answers. "Who gave them are our plan?," she asks Darla.
"That politician seems to have an inside source."
"It's not her. Not this time."
"You're right," Darla says as she watches Buffy race from person to person. "Buffy's playing Paul Revere."
"She's just the courier. The message came to her from the girl."
"You'll have to be a little more specific."
"The one we don't need to kill."
"You mean the leftover," Darla says with a wicked smile. "The ward Buffy's been saddled with." Darla morphs into Glory. "Thanks to me. And you."
"Your unconsummated lover," Nina replies with a smirk. "Your long-lost better half."
"We both know the story," an annoyed Glory replies. "Skip the flashbacks."
"Gladly. Her power is inert. All of it."
"Don't I know it," Glory tells Nina with an angry snarl.
"So how can she be the one who knows?" Glory turns back into Darla. Nina stares intently at her for a long while. "You're hiding something. You've never told me who you are."
Darla laughs. "I'm your boss. And your best friend. You know everything about me."
"Not you. Her. Who was she?"
"Does it matter?"
"I think it does."
"I take this form only because it pleases you."
"Nice try." Nina walks towards Darla, who nervously backs up. "You have a personality. Feelings. Desires. There's too much there for it not to matter."
"Funny. You're usually the ravish first, ask questions later kind of girl."
" Let's just say that's because you give really good chatter," Nina jokes back. "And once I get you loosened up, you slip up and let out a useful nugget of info every now and then. You were a vampire. One who lived a very long time. You died in this town. You loved a man. You still do. But he left you."
"Has someone been passing you Cliff Notes after class, Nina? Because most of what you're saying involves things we've never even talked about."
"I can pick up clues. You're full of passion. And caring. With a big gaping need to be loved. It's all there on the surface. Oozing out your pores. You have a stake in this fight. I want to know what it is."
"You should spend less time thinking about me and more time thinking about your enemies."
"Because you're so much more fascinating than them." Nina puts her right arm around Darla's waist and pulls her close. Darla giggles. Nina runs her left hand through Darla's hair, then pushes back her head to expose Darla's neck. She's expecting one of Nina's licks. Nina's been giving them away to Willow and Anya, so the First figures it's definitely due. "I can make you happy. I can also make you hurt. Make you feel pain." Nina stares down menacingly at Darla. Her left hand pulls hard on the back of Darla head as if Nina's preparing snap Darla's neck, or do something else punitive. "One way or another, you are going to answer my questions."
"Hurt me, and you're only hurting yourself."
"So you've always said. And I've always wanted to put that to the test." She pushes Darla fifteen feet backwards.
"Doesn't make sense to bite the hand that feeds you. Unless that's what floats your boat these days."
"You're right," Nina concedes. "Focus on our enemies. Which brings me back to the girl who's cracked our code."
"It's obviously borrowed power," Darla concludes.
"Then the question becomes, Who is she borrowing it from?"
Five minutes after four, Giles enters the bunker. Buffy runs up and hugs him, taking Giles by surprise. "I just went halfway across town. Not halfway around the globe."
"I was worried about you."
"That's readily apparent."
"Where's your a, umm, the Mayor?" Buffy doesn't want to say "girlfriend."
"Stella's tracking down her brother. She told me to return."
"Smart woman," Buffy comments, glad that she and Stella are on the same wavelength.
Estella finds Vincente looking over what is left of the high school. "Remember what you said to me at the dedication?," he asks her. "Why build a new high school? It's just going to get knocked down like the last one."
"It was a joke."
"Good jokes always contain a morsel of truth. More than a morsel in this case. Fifty million dollars, and it doesn't even last the first school year."
"I'm sure the tax payers will demand an explanation," she kids.
"Didn't cost them that much. Debt financing. Hopefully, the bond holders will be understanding."
"Wasn't it ensured?"
"Couldn't afford insurance. Premiums were too high. Actuarial tables pinpointed the exact location of the Hellmouth decades ago."
"Remember when we went to school here, and we always wondered why they built it on such an awful spot?"
"We knew we were tempting fate by rebuilding here. Then again, where else were we going to put it?"
"Where else were we going to put it? That's always been our town motto."
"Do you feel relieved?"
"You mean because no one died?"
"Yes. But also because it's over. We did our job. Mom and Dad would be proud."
"It's not over."
"For us it is."
"I meant the destruction. Rupert's sure there's a second act. We need to get back inside."
Stella and her brother are back in their shelter at 4:20. At that point, the waterline at the beach has receded by over a half-mile. Nina looks down, eagerly anticipating what's to come the way a child looks forward to demolishing the building another kid has painstakingly constructed with his wooden blocks. To her, the sea looks like a giant spring that is contracting and tensing up, poised to burst out. At 4:21, just after Vince and Stella have sealed the door, and before they've had a chance to sit down and turn on the tele, they detect a faint rumbling. A plastic cup on a table starts to vibrate. Everyone at the main bunker goes quiet and listens to the vibrations as they slowly get louder. Nina sees the two hundred foot-high tidal wave rise up majestically into the air. The people underground can hear the thunderous roar as it approaches. The wave pulverizes the sandy bluffs at the edge of the beach and quickly devours the town behind them, sweeping up into the hills to the east, felling trees like matchsticks and extinguishing the growing fires. The foamy water passes less than ten feet below where Nina is standing, stripping much of the soil away, but not dislodging the rock she stands on, though many of smaller rocks a few feet in front of her tumble down into the surf.
Buffy and her friends hear the wave crashing above them. Now that Dawn's been proven right, the Potentials, Andrew, Faith, and the others look at her with even more bewilderment, as well with a tinge of frightened awe. Dawn decides to head off to her new room and be alone. Buffy goes up to her door, planning to enter and talk to her sister, but decides against it. She doesn't quite know what to say. Her feelings about the Dawn having visions are mixed, to say the least. A few minutes later, Giles heads over to the other shelter in order to make sure Stella and Vince made it back. To his surprise, he meets up with Stella in the tunnel as she walks the other way.
"Hey there, Rupert. I just wanted you to know I'm fine."
"I assume you found your brother."
"And made it back just in time. How did you know something else would happen?"
"It's a long, complicated story."
"Isn't it always?"
"At least for us."
"I'm going to make a few calls and try to get your phones up and running."
"Thank you. That would be a great help."
Estella laughs and shakes her head. "A flood. Wasn't expecting that."
"I know what you mean. Sunnydale is perched one hundred feet about sea level. And any earthquake close enough to destroy the town could never set off a tidal wave."
"Look on the bright side, Rupert. The fires must be out by now."
"And the soggy ground could slow down our demon enemies."
"Like the showers before the Battle of Waterloo."
Giles grins. Beautiful, intelligent, a hereditary sacred duty. AND she uses English references. Things would be perfect, if only everyone he cared about wasn't in imminent danger of being killed by a seemingly invincible Titan. There was always something.
"Paris was nothing like this," Angel complains to Lorne. "Why are they singing rock songs? It's ludicrous."
"Willing suspension of disbelief, Sugarplum."
"Don't get me wrong. I love musicals. But this is a music video. And Toulouse-Lautrec was nothing like that!"
"It's not meant to be a documentary."
"I know. It's supposed to be entertainment. But this is not entertaining me."
"Can't we just shut up and watch the movie?," Connor pleads.
"What do you think?," Angel asks his son.
"Just wondering if the musical spell Dawn and her friends were under was anything like this."
"I hope it wasn't," Angel responds. "I hate to think of Buffy expressing her feelings by belting out songs she heard on top-40 radio."
"From what I was told, the demon supplied them with original music and choreography, while they provided the original lyrics," Lorne explains. "And the book, naturally."
"How am I supposed to believe Nicole Kidman's dying of consumption?," Angel asks. "She looks strong enough to throw Ewan MacGregor halfway across the room."
"He probably wouldn't mind that," Lorne quips. "I know I wouldn't." Gunn, Fred, Wes and Cordy stagger into the room and plop down on the nearest chairs and couches. "Rough day?," Lorne asks. Fred and Cordy glare at him.
"You're lucky to be green and horny," Fred tells him, since he's the only able-bodied one among them who could take it easy today.
"I did so much walking, the bandage on my foot broke twice," Wesley reports. "I'm very much looking forward to wearing a sneakers that aren't filled with blood." Angel realizes he can smell the blood, which is never good, since it instinctively tempts him.
"By the way, I'm hungry," Angel reports. His weary human friends shake their heads. "I meant Lorne. He could take the elevator down to the basement and back without getting spotted. You know where my blood fridge is."
Connor can hear talking in the room behind him, as well as across the hall. "How many people are here?"
"We stopped counting after five hundred," Gunn replies.
"Very funny," Angel responds, assuming he can't be serious.
"No. Very tiring," Fred tells him.
Cordy gives Angel the numbers. "One hundred sixty out of one hundred sixty rooms filled. I saved the rest for us."
"We're sold out!," Lorne exclaims. "And to think, this morning we weren't even in business."
"We still aren't in business," Angel maintains.
"Wrong," Cordy dissents. "We charge, we're a hotel. We don't, we're a shelter. Either way, this is completely new territory for us."
"How did this happen?," Angel wonders.
"Let me think," Cordy responds with mock seriousness. "You go evil. Your son decides to pay a visit to your old stomping ground."
"I didn't know he lived there. I knew you lived there. That's why I went."
"So now this is my fault?"
"It's nobody's fault," Angel assures Connor and Cordy. "Except for that Eli kid. He's the one who put out the word that this was a good place to crash."
"So now you don't like my friends?," Connor asks.
"Friends? He's the only one I've met."
"And you don't like him. What's Eli ever done to you?"
"Can we end this disturbingly normal father-son spat and get back to our little crisis?," Lorne suggests.
"You're wrong, Angel," Cordy tells him. "Connor knew I was from Sunnydale because he saw my yearbook when I lived with him. After I came back here with amnesia."
"You're blaming The Powers That Be for our current overcrowding?," Wesley asks.
"Why not? After everything else they've done to me."
"It doesn't matter whose fault it is," Angel declares.
"Then why did you blame my friend?," Connor asks.
"Can we forget about him for a moment? These people don't have homes. In a couple days, they'll find somewhere else to stay. Until then, we'll have to adjust."
"What happens if we get a case?," Fred wonders.
"We work on it, just like always," Angel responds. "We tend to do our killing off the premises. We do our research behind closed doors. And remember, the demons can't hurt anyone in here."
"People can't hurt anyone in here, either" Gunn reminds him. "Wonder what's gonna happen the first time someone tries to knock around their little brother."
Wesley tries to punch Gunn's right shoulder. There's a flash of green light, and he can't connect. "That could raise a few eyebrows," Wesley notes.
"As might all those sharp, shiny weapons in the lobby," Lorne adds.
"Good point," Angel responds. "Tonight, once everyone's up their rooms, you guys take the weapons out of public view. Just put them in the office for now. And lock the door." Angel sits up on the bed and tries to rise to his feet, but quickly sits down again. "Get me another pitcher of blood. It speeds the healing. Tell our guests' to assemble in the lobby at ten tonight. I'm going to welcome them."
"Are you sure you're up to that?," Cordy asks.
"I can manage. These people know I own the place. I need to make an appearance."
"Never one to let down your public," Lorne comments.
It's after seven in the evening, and shortly before sunset. The Scoobies have just finished dinner. Estella Santos walks into their living room. "Stella. What brings you to our side of the hole?," Giles asks.
"Saying goodbye." Naturally, Rupert looks disappointed. "Don't worry. I'll still be around. Right now I'm heading out to see all the displaced townsfolk."
"It's dry outside?"
"Must be. At least at this altitude. Vince left half an hour ago. Is your phone working?"
"No."
"I'll check into that. By the way, perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but several members of the military who claim to know you people are coming by to visit."
"You mean Riley's here?," Buffy asks.
"Disaster seems to follow that bloke wherever he goes," Spike jokes. He's not exactly eager about seeing soldier boy.
"I'm not sure about all their names," Stella responds. "The Major vouched for them. I'm assuming you won't mind the visit." By the Major, she means Kelly.
"I suppose we could handle a few houseguests," Xander comments. He's always liked Riley. "When are they stopping by?"
"Right now. As I said before, perhaps I should have told you earlier. Bye."
"You've done a really fine job of furnishing the place, but could you get some blood?," Spike requests. "There's none in here, and if I can't have my animal blood, pretty soon I'll have to start eating my housemates."
"I knew there was something I forgot," Stella replies dismissively. With Giles as her main source on Buffy and her friends, Stella can't help but have a low opinion of Spike. But Giles takes Spike a bit more seriously. He wonders how long Spike could subsist on Andrew's corpse. She gives Giles a quick kiss on the cheek and opens the door to the stairs.
"I'm not joking," Spike assures her. When Stella gets to the surface, Kelly, Riley, Sam and Graham are there to meet her. She swipes her card to open the door for them.
"Who's Riley?," Rona whispers to Amanda.
"I'm not sure." She walks over to Kennedy and asks her. Kennedy gets an answer from Willow and passes it on to Amanda, who walks back to the other four Potentials. "Buffy's ex-boyfriend."
"Is he human?," Rona asks.
"I guess. I don't think they'd let a vampire into the army."
"Buffy dated humans?," Madari whispers in astonishment. "There's the surprise of the day."
"I thought the town getting leveled would be the surprise of the day," Fadila points out.
"Not around here," Ariella adds. The five Potentials giggle.
When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, Riley knocks, Giles presses the button, and the door slides open. Buffy, Xander, Giles and Dawn are standing up. Spike's sitting down, facing the other way. "Things have definitely changed since my last visit," Riley says as he enters. This makes Spike realize why he's glad to see Riley. Spike stands up and walks towards them.
"Mayor Santos really went all out for you guys," Graham mentions as he looks around. "Hey Faith."
"Hey G-man." Faith stands up and walks over to him. "How ya been?"
"Not too bad. And you?"
"I've been worse." Faith looks at Riley and smiles. Sam turns her head. Riley appears to be very uncomfortable. "Hey you. It's been a while. Haven't seen you since, well -"
"It's good that you're, better, and, umm, on good terms with Buffy."
"What can I say? We all move on."
"Riley. Sam. Good to see you two," Xander tells them, trying to end the Faith-based pins-and-needles phase of the conversation.
"Same goes for us," Riley replies. Earlier, Kelly had mentioned that Xander and Anya didn't act like they were married when she visited. Sam and Riley notice the absence of a wedding band. So they avoid asking the uncomfortable "How did the wedding go?" question. The Potentials walk over to check out the new guy. They stand to the left of and slightly behind the Scoobies, staring curiously at him. Riley looks to his right and notices. "These must be the Potential Slayers Kelly told me about."
"And you must be the boyfriend Buffy didn't tell us about," Amanda responds. "Not that we ever asked. So there really was never a chance for her to mention you." Kelly only counts six girls. That's four fewer than two weeks ago. She looks depressed as the meaning of this sinks in. Kelly can only imagine how the girls themselves feel about the high rate of attrition.
"I didn't know the army killed demons," Rona mentions.
"That's kind of how we like it," Graham responds.
"Of course you knew," Fadila says to Rona. "We knew about Kelly."
"I meant that I didn't know guys in the army killed demons. Men killing demons. It's a strange concept."
"That's true," Madari adds.
"Good to know some things haven't changed in Sunnydale," Riley jokes about the preservation of gender roles in the post-apocalyptic setting.
"Well, well, well," Spike says with a smile as he swaggers to within a step of Riley. "If it isn't my favorite doughboy."
"If it isn't my favorite vampire," Riley replies. "I hope you know that's really not saying much."
"I take it the chip-removal was your doing."
"Just a phone call to help a girl I care about."
"Never got to thank you."
"Don't bother."
"Sorry. I think I will." Spike slugs Riley in the face with a right hook, knocking him down. Spike laughs and jumps back as Sam and Graham rush towards him. Kelly steps forward and tries to hold the two of them back.
"Stand down. Sargent. Corporal." They can't believe she's pulling rank on Spike's behalf. The way Kelly sees it, she's also doing the two of them a favor by preventing Spike from hitting them. Since she vastly outranks them, they have no choice but to cool their heels and seethe. Giles and Xander are outraged. Buffy is furious at Spike. He points at Riley as he rises to his feet.
"You've had that coming for a long time, and you bloody well know it." Spike believes he deserves at least one good shot for all the times Riley hit him when he was chipped. He's happy to see he left a bruise on Finn's left cheek.
"Relax Finny," Kelly tells him. Riley's upset at what looks to him like Kelly coming to Spike's defense. "I know from experience that he doesn't hit that hard." She's trying to spin the situation to make holding back appear to be the manly thing to do.
"Don't remember hitting you, love," Spike says to Kelly. "I do recall some grabbing, and a few choice holds," he adds with a grin. Sam and Graham are confused. Kelly told them she tried to kill Spike. They can't understand why he'd act as if he liked it. Riley can.
"The Major's right," Riley responds to Spike. "You're just not worth it. You never were."
"It's the strangest thing," Anya comments. "Bring together men who've dated Buffy, and they turn into six year-olds." Buffy's relieved that someone's finally pricked the testosterone bubble.
"Would you four like to sit down?," Giles asks, playing host and realizing that people who are seated are far less likely to be drawn into brawls by truculent vampires. "I'm sure you've all had a very tiring day. I can get you some coffee if you'd like."
Kelly looks at Sam. "And the amazing thing is, I've also seen seen him drive an ax into a heavily-armed demon's chest."
"Andrew, if you don't mind," Giles suggests.
"We don't have any coffee."
"Then go make some."
"From scratch?"
"I'm not asking you to pick the beans." Andrew pouts and heads off into the kitchen. He wanted to spend more time learning about Buffy's ex.
"You got yourself an orderly," Graham comments. "With a force this large, I can see how that would come in handy."
"Actually, Andrew's a - ," Buffy begins to say. "Never mind."
Sam keeps staring at Xander's left hand. She notices that he notices her noticing. "I'm sorry. I just - "
"It's okay," Xander assures her before knocking the wooden hand twice against the metal coffee table. Riley's completely shocked by this.
"Oh my God. When did this happen?" Kelly hadn't mention anything about anyone losing a hand, since Xander hadn't yet lost it when she visited.
"Last week. Bad guy with a sword."
"I'm sorry."
"These things happen, I guess. Worse things certainly happen."
"I guess," a shaken Riley replies. "Still, no matter how often they happen, you never quite get used to them."
"Have you talked to Lindsey?," Graham asks. "I'm just wondering, since Faith knows him well and, you know, he had the same thing happen to him."
"Actually, yeah. I talked to him last weekend. He was helpful. Seemed like a really nice guy."
"Yeah. He certainly is," Kelly adds. Buffy can't understand how a visit with her ex-boyfriend led to a conversation about Faith's boyfriend, and a fawning one at that.
"Have you seen him sing?," Amanda asks.
"No," Graham responds. Kelly also shakes her head.
"But I hear he's really good," Kelly mentions.
"Oh, he definitely is," Ariella reports. "And I'm not even a fan of the kind of music he plays."
"LIndsey transcends genres," Andrew says as he walks back into the living room and puts a tray with four cups down on the table. Kelly picks up one of them and sips.
"Not bad."
"Thank you. It's freeze-dried, but I do the best I can. Would you like to see the tape I made of Lindsey MacDonald's performance? There's also some footage of Buffy and the Potential Slayers training, as well as Buffy slaying a few vampyres."
Riley, Sam and Graham look with confusion at Andrew. "Long story," Riley comments, remembering what Buffy said. "I suppose it had to be."
Sam notices that Willow isn't quite looking at them. Or anything else. "Willow?," she asks.
"Oh. Yeah. What?"
"Is, is something wrong?"
"I can't see. Bad guys put a blinding spell on me. I'll figure out a way to undo it pretty soon." Xander's missing a hand. Willow's missing her sight. Riley can tell that they really are in trouble. And he really doesn't know where to take the conversation from there. What's left? Asking Buffy about Spike, or Dawn about Connor? It was hard for him to find a topic that he wanted to talk about.
"Dawn," he says to break finally the silence. "It's been a while."
"A year and a couple months."
"You, you've grown. Or, at least, you look taller than I remember."
"Or maybe you're shrinking," she jokes. Riley laughs awkwardly. There are a couple more seconds of dead silence. "By the way, how did you get that scar on your face?" She had wondered about that the last time he came by.
"A vampire scratched me."
"You're lucky that's all she did to you," Graham comments.
"She," Kelly notes. "Pick up the wrong girl in a bar, Finney?"
"Actually, I turned her down. Then she got a little angry."
"When was this?," Buffy asks, worrying that Riley was still getting suck jobs after rejoining the military.
"About two months after I left for Central America. We were in Costa Rica. There was this blonde American vampire posing as a prostitute to lure in victims. She had already killed four of my men. When she went after me, I turned her down, and she got violent. Scratched my face. Tried to bite me. But I fought her off."
"That's not how I remember it," Sam tells her husband.
"You mean he didn't turn her down?," Spike guesses with a smile.
"No. He did. But by the time I got there, she had thrown him through a window and slammed his face into the wall. I ran up and tasered her in the back just as she stuck her fangs into Ry's neck. That got her away from him."
"But before you came, honey, I had gotten in a couple good blows. Almost staked her. You saw her bloody nose, and that bruise under her eye."
"Which reminds me, would you like some ice for your face?," Andrew asks Riley.
"No. I'm fine," he responds, annoyed by the question.
"Because it looks like it's starting to swell."
"I said I'm fine."
"After she backed away and returned to her human face, she did the strangest thing," Sam continues. "She looked me in the eye, pointed at Ry and said He'll leave you in the end. They always do.' And then she fled. We weren't even going out then. We hadn't even thought of going out." Spike's running through some dates in his head. The vampire's modus operandi sounds quite familiar to him.
"Sometimes, when you're evil, you can see things about people that they can't see about themselves," Anya tells them. "That, or she had just had a really bad break up."
"Why did you let her get away?," Buffy asks.
"We didn't," Riley responds. "I rounded up my men and gave chase. She was fast. And hungry. We followed the dead bodies through the villages. I think I counted almost twenty dead. Never seen a vampire eat that much in one night."
"I have," Spike responds cryptically.
"She disappeared into the jungle. Stole some guy's boat and headed down the river to the sea. By morning, we had lost her. After that, the killings stopped. We figured she left the country."
"Would you have rejected this bird if she wus human?," Spike asks Riley.
"Probably."
"She wusn't good enough for you?"
"I wasn't interested. Why do you care?"
"No reason. Just sounded familiar. Blonde. American. Relationship troubles."
Riley laughs. "It wasn't Harmony, of that's what you're thinking."
"It wasn't."
"She was pretty," Sam concedes. "Otherwise, of course, her whole little ploy wouldn't have worked." Spike starts laughing under his breath. No one else can figure out why. Then again, no one else is assuming that maybe this vampire fed so much because she was eating for two. After ten seconds, Spike stops laughing. While it's hilarious to imagine Darla tossing Riley through a window, and ironic to consider that Riley nearly killed Dawn's boyfriend when he was just an embryo, it's depressing to imagine Darla getting turned down by someone as common as Riley. A real violation of the natural order. If anything, she should be turning him down.
It's ten o'clock. Hundreds of guests are crowded into the lobby. Angel sits in a chair in a room on the second floor. "We should have gotten you crutches," Lorne tells him.
"It's only a minute or two. I'll be fine."
"I doubt they'd think any less of you. Just say you had a skiing accident at Aspen. These people don't want you to be their champion. Just their innkeeper."
"What will they think a day or two, when suddenly I'm no longer crippled?"
"And what will they think if you collapse before their eyes? Or, is that why you're doing this? The challenge, the danger, the struggle to overcome pain and adversity. It's your nature, Angel food." Lorne and Angel can hear the loud murmuring downstairs. "Curtain's coming up. I'd tell you to go break a leg, but it already is," Lorne jokes. He helps Angel to his feet and supports him as he moves to the door. Lorne pushes it open, and Angel steps out onto the balcony. Everyone looks up and sees him. He takes four small, painful, but normal-looking, steps before resting his hands on the balcony to help prop himself up. The crowd goes quiet.
"Good evening. I'm Angel, the owner of this building. As you may have noticed, the Hyperion is not exactly the Hilton. We don't have maid service. There are no mints on the pillows. In fact, this has not been a working hotel for quite a while. I purchased it a few years back when it was up for demolition. Since then, I've worked to restore this place to its former glory. I was planning on opening it for business in six weeks. Obviously, fate had other plans. I know that none of you want to be here. I'm sorry for your losses. What's more, I'm willing to help. To let so much real estate go to waste at a time like this would be obscene. So you are welcome to stay for as long as you need to. In the basement, there are laundry rooms and kitchens that you are welcome to use, free of charge. I know a lot of you have been asking about our rates. That depends on how long you stay. If you're gone by Monday, it won't charge you a cent. After that, it's fifty dollars-a-night through Friday, and a hundred dollars-a-night after that. I would offer you my sympathy, tell you that while it's awful to lose your possessions, you're lucky no harm came to the people you love, but I know I couldn't say anything you haven't already thought. Good night, good luck, and God bless." He was happy to explain the situation while using only one blatant lie. The pricing is designed as an inducement to make the people leave as soon as possible. Angel turns around and walks back through the door. Lorne closes it, and Angel collapses in agony on the bed.
"Should I go out and tell them that Angel has left the building'?," Lorne jokes.
"No, but if you're going for an Elvis thing, how bout some painkillers? But hold off on the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches."
"And your white rhinestone jumpsuit?"
"I thought that was at the cleaners," Angel jokes before getting serious. "Any more news from Sunnydale? Has Buffy called?"
NEXT: Lindsay arrives in Sunnydale to see Faith. But first he'll have to talk his way past a very skeptical Kate.