Addendum to the disclaimer: The Montgomery County Historical Society, the portrait of Foresta, and yes, even the dress exhibit are real. Foresta herself, however, is completely fictional. There IS a ghost story connected to the Foresta portrait, but since my sister (who works for the MCHS) and I are pretty sure that it was made up on the spot by one of her coworkers, and since I don't actually know that ghost story, nor a way to find it, since that woman is on maternity leave, I've gone ahead and created my own.
The Beall-Dawson House and the Dr. Stonestreet exhibit are both also real. The one time I went into the doctor's exhibit, many years ago, I nearly threw up. This is actually a common reaction to the exhibit. Xander and friends may end up in there at some point, but I'd prefer to get a chance to see the exhibit in person again, first, so don't hold your breath....
Addendum to the author's note: Does anyone in the DC area know of any decent job openings for a recent graduate? Just kidding. But since it is my search for employment that's keeping me from updating as frequently as I'd like, cross your fingers so the economy can improve.
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 7: Foresta
Part One
The next day found Xander and Dawn once again northwest of Washington DC, only a few exits further out from the beltway. They were sitting in a booth at the back of the Broadway Diner in Rockville, MD, across from Foresta Dawson-McKinley, a 23 year old slayer they had met that morning. She'd arranged quickly for the time off work, which Xander appreciated, since it was obvious when they'd met up with her in her office at the Montgomery County Historical Society that she had a lot she needed to get done. Something about an exhibit, he wasn't entirely sure what. But her boss had let her off for an hour and a half, and they had to make the most of the time.
Dawn had just finished her usual spiel about slayers, vampires, and the forces of darkness, and surprisingly, Foresta hadn't even blinked.
She did, however, give them a narrow-eyed suspicious look.
"Did Mother Jude send you?"
"What?" Xander leaned back in the booth.
"No, obviously not." Foresta smiled at him. "You're a guy."
"So glad you noticed."
Foresta shrugged. "She didn't seem too keen on men as a whole."
Xander blinked. 'Who is Mother Jude?"
"I'm not sure." Foresta spent a moment attacking her salad. "But a couple of girls about your age," she nodded to Dawn, "came by last week, told m the same thing about being chosen by God to rid the world of evil. Only, instead of wanting me to go to Cleveland, they wanted me to join them under the tutelage of a 'Mother Jude'. I think they were nuns, they introduced themselves as 'sisters of the order'. It sounded like some kind of wacko cult, so I told them I'd think about it, and 'lost' their number."
Xander and Dawn stared at her for a long moment, while she went back to eating her salad. They exchanged a look.
"Um, as far as we know," Dawn leaned forward, elbows on the table. "We're the only ones looking for slayers. My sister was the only one, like we said, but a friend of ours awakened the rest of you."
Foresta nodded without looking up. "I know I'm different than I was a year ago, that part all makes sense." She glanced at Xander, then back to her plate. "How do I know that your 'Helsing Institute' isn't another cult?"
"You don't, I guess." Xander frowned. "Though I don't think Buffy's charismatic enough as a leader to start one." He grinned at that, remembering how much trouble his friend had had, convincing the potentials to follow her instructions, even before the near massacre at the vineyard. He didn't notice the way Foresta's eyes brightened when he smiled, but Dawn did, and filed the information away for further reference. "How about we stick around, tell you more about the Institute, and you can decide for yourself?"
Foresta's arched, sandy eyebrows rose, then lowered and scrunched together. "I don't think I have time for that right now." Her eyebrows rose again. "Unless you want to help me out with the exhibit. You could tell me about it while we hang dresses?"
Xander's eyebrows drew together. "Ooookay."
"Of course, I'd have to clear it with my boss, first. We're always keen on volunteers, but she likes to meet them, know they won't try to steal anything, or hurt the exhibits." Foresta pulled out a Palm Pilot, and began marking things off. "Can you come by the Historical Society tomorrow morning? Say, 9:30?"
"Sure!" Dawn shoved her last french fry into her mouth. "Sounds like fun."
"Yeah," Xander's voice was slightly more hesitant. He was briefly worried what spending his time hanging dresses would do to his status as a heterosexual male, but figured it couldn't be any worse than seven years without a male best friend. He grabbed the check before Foresta could reach for her wallet, and Dawn smirked. She had a few plans of her own in the making.
"Soooo," Dawn drew out the single syllable while XAnder unlocked the car. "Foresta seems . . . nice,"
"Yeah." Xander shot Dawn a look over the car. "She's definitely taking the slayer thing well."
"And she's pretty cute."
Xander grinned. "True. Which means that your mind is off and running, thinking of ways to set us up."
Dawn tried for an innocent expression, then gave up quickly. "She likes you."
"She's suspicious of me."
"No way! Did you notice the way she melted when you payed the check?" Dawn smirked. "Of course you didn't. You're an oblivious male."
Xander nodded. "Of course, if she's interested in ME, then she must be evil."
"Well, that is your track record." Dawn sighed theatrically. "I guess we'd better call Buffy, we'll need her for slaying duties, soon,"
Xander snorted. "Oh, like your record is any better? I seem to remember you dating a vampire or two in your time."
"Please, I have impeccable taste."
"You crushed on SPIKE."
"I crushed on YOU, too."
Xander's grin took on a rather dopey quality as he navigated the heavy lunch time traffic on Rockville Pike. "That's right, I was your first crush, wasn't I?"
"Well, if we're going on the 'I was created by monks at age 14' time line, yes." Dawn grinned. "But in my mind, that honor belongs to another."
"Who?"
"That kid from 'The Adventures of Pete and Pete'."
"Which one?"
"Pete."
Xander rolled his eyes. "I always liked Pete's friend."
Dawn blushed. "Really?"
"Hell yeah, Ellen was a total hottie."
"Oh, her. I was talking about Little Pete. His friend was cute."
"Artie?" Xander made a face. Even HE had a better fashion sense than Artie. "Or do you mean the weird chick with the broken arm?"
Dawn shuddered. "I told you, I have impeccable taste. Of course the weird chick with the cast. She rocked."
Xander grinned. "That was a great show."
"Yeah it was. Or how about 'Clarissa Explains It All'?"
Xander nodded. "Ah, the heyday of Saturday Night Nickelodeon. I remember it well." He was glad he'd gotten Dawn's mind off of Foresta for the moment. With his record when it came to slayers, he didn't need her playing cupid.
Even if Foresta WAS cute.
Foresta's boss was more than thrilled to meet Dawn and Xander, once she learned that they were interested in volunteering. As Foresta had joked, the MCHS was always looking for more "young blood". She then immediately started backpedaling when she realized how much that made the Society ladies sound like vampires.
Xander had smiled at her, reassuring her that he and Dawn knew what she meant, which made Foresta blush and Dawn smirk.
"Your face is going to freeze like that, you know," Xander muttered to her as they followed Foresta out the back door of the administration building and they headed toward the Beall-Dawson house.
Dawn stuck her tongue out at him.
Their first job, it seemed, was as pack horses. It took an hour to set up several dressing dummies in one of the bedroom-turned-exhibit-rooms. Dawn took advantage of the time to give Foresta a cliffs notes version of the past seven years, making certain to highlight all of Xander's exploits. She and Foresta leaned back against the large display table in the center of the room, Foresta scanning through pages upon pages of notes and pictures, while Dawn mostly smirked and urged Xander to move the dummy "a little to the left". It was difficult to tell if Foresta was buying everything that Xander was telling her. She'd obviously noticed her increased strength and stamina, having carried two of the heavy, antique dummies up the stairs by herself, while Xander and Dawn had struggled to maneuver a third, but it was still rather a bit of a logic leap to make it from "hey, look, I'm strong!" to "oh my god, vampires, demons, mummies, and giant bugs really exist."
It seemed to Xander that Dawn was focusing entirely too much on her occasional conversations with Ampata about Xander's charms, and not nearly enough on the important facts of life on a hellmouth. He was too out of breath from dummy maneuvering to complain, however.
"So we all decided that since we were the ones to call all the potential slayers, it was up to us to find and train them. Or at the very least, let them know what they're up against." Dawn twirled a pencil between her fingers. "The first girl we found, Joanna, was actually from this area, too. Well, Bethesda. She got a real good look at the demonic night life, when we went up against a demon that had been terrorizing Cabin John for the last several centuries. . . ."
Foresta blinked. "The old marble steps story?"
"You know it?"
"Mr. Beall, the guy who tells all the ghost stories for our Halloween History Day, loves that one. I always assumed he'd made it up."
"Never assume." Xander rolled back his sleeve, showing the faint pink lines of scars across his forearm. "You might get bit for it."
Foresta's eyes widened. "You go bit by that thing?"
"Well, to be fair, I was shoving a pocket knife through its jaw, at the time."
Dawn's smirk returned full force as she watched Foresta's eyes go wide. Oh yeah, the new slayer had it BAD.
"Does. . . . Does that happen a lot?"
"Which part, the jaw-knifing, or the biting?"
"Being injured."
"Not as often as you'd think." Xander shrugged. "I've been fighting demons since tenth grade, and managed to get out with a couple broken bones, but mostly just scratches and bruises. Maybe a concussion or two, though Giles–you'll meet Giles at the institute, if you decide to go–wins the prize for that one."
Foresta blinked. "That's it? But I thought you were just a guy. Not the one with all the powers and the like."
Xander raised a hand to the yellowed bruises on his left cheek. "Well, that's not ENTIRELY it."
Dawn grimaced. Neither she nor Xander really liked to dwell on what had happened to his eye. With Willow's enchanted prosthetic, it was pretty easy, usually, to pretend that it had never happened. For her, at least.
Xander still tended to wake her up occasionally, with his nightmares.
Foresta seemed to sense the increased tension and backed off the topic. She studied her notes again.
"Okay, these dummies should do for a couple of the larger dresses, but we've got a lot of really little ones." She grinned. "Seems that American obesity is entirely a late twentieth century fad. Most of these women were tiny."
Xander straightened, rolling his shoulders. "Are the smaller ones any lighter?"
"A bit."
"Right then." He gestured toward the door. "Lay on, Macduff."
Dawn adjusted her grip on her end of the dummy. "I thought you said these things were lighter?"
"They are." Foresta, standing on the back porch of one of the Society's storage buildings, had four of the dummies balanced perfectly across her arms and shoulders. Xander and Dawn were once again struggling with one. "Your witch couldn't make you guys stronger, too?"
"It doesn't really work like that." Dawn readjusted her grip again, grunting. "Please tell me these are the last of them." Her shoulders were really starting to ache.
"For now. I can get the rest later." Foresta jumped down the steps from the porch as though she was carrying nothing more than a light backpack. "I want to get some of the dresses on the dummies, so I can take pictures. We don't have enough dummies or display cases to go around, so a lot of it will be photographs hanging on the display boards." She grinned. "When we get these set up, we can start moving the panels. Thank you guys SO much for helping, I couldn't do this without you."
Xander grinned, and hoisted his end of the dummy higher, inadvertently forcing Dawn to crouch down on her end. "No problem, ma'am."
Foresta giggled, and for once, Dawn decided to roll her eyes instead of smirking. Hanging dresses she could do. She didn't like being a pack horse.
"Come on, my fingers are going numb."
Foresta nodded and danced lightly down the path back to the Beall-Dawson house. Xander lowered his end of the dummy again, so Dawn could walk more easily. They stumbled slowly down the steps from the porch.
Dawn's foot slipped on the grass, and she toppled backward. Xander wrenched his wrists, managing to shift the dummy slightly to the left so it wouldn't land on top of her. Foresta, already a good twenty feet down the path, stopped at Dawn's exclamation, looking chagrined.
"You sure you guys got that?"
Xander shrugged a little sheepishly. With a small, manly grunt, he hoisted the dummy up over his left shoulder and reached out his right hand to help Dawn up. Dawn took it, but as her weight shifted, Xander overbalanced, the dummy's weight dragging him backward, until he and Dawn landed in a pile on grass.
Dawn rolled off Xander, wiping sweat off her forehead. Foresta came running back toward them as she stood up.
"Oh my gosh, are you two alright?" Foresta bounced a little, then set down two of her dummies so she could offer a hand to Xander.
"Fine!" Xander ignored her hand, preferring to stay where he was for the moment to catch his breath. "Just fine." He grinned. "I refuse to be felled by a dressing dummy."
"Good." Foresta raised her eyebrow. "Mary Kay would kill me if I managed to maim her only young volunteers."
Xander finally shoved himself to his feet, reaching down to pick up the fallen dummy. He stood it up on its stand, resting one hand on the dummy's shoulder. He affected a haughty tone. "I am not maimed, for I am ARTIE!" He struck a muscle man pose. "The strongest man in the world!"
Dawn started down the path. "Fine then, Artie. You can carry your own dummy."
"You know how they say that some portraits' eyes follow you wherever you go?" Dawn leaned to one side, then the other. She and Xander stood in the parlor of the Beall-Dawson house, waiting while Foresta sifted through her papers for the umpteenth time. "These portraits do that."
Xander nodded.
The portraits in question, displaying a stern-looking Victorian man and a reclining Colonial woman, were hung just over an antique roll top desk on the far wall. Their painted eyes held an authoritative glint that had Xander unconsciously standing up a little straighter.
Dawn was impressed. Anyone who could have that effect on Xander, even painted, must have been powerful.
"All portraits do." Foresta folded her papers back in her pockets, looking toward the paintings. "That's what happens when the eyes of the painting are focused properly. There's nothing supernatural about it." She frowned. "At least, I don't think there is." She tilted her head at the portraits. "Well, not about Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, anyway. They were farmers." She smiled. "They didn't even die mysteriously." Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. "Well, there's one painting in our collection whose eyes don't track. You guys want to see her?"
Xander shrugged. "Sure. So long as we don't have to do any more carrying."
It was late afternoon now, and Foresta seemed to be confident by this point that Xander and Dawn were, for the most part, on the level. She had given them every random, back breaking, remedial task she could think of on her exhibit, and they did it with a smile, and in Xander's case, a lot of rather silly jokes. She had told them earlier that she was pretty sure a con-man would have given up on her when she had them carry two of the dummies back to the storage building, only to bring them back up the stairs to the exhibit room again two hours later. This had earned her a brief glare from Dawn.
But if it meant that they got her to the safety of the Institute, the pair of slayer-trackers was willing to deal with a few pulled muscles and twisted ankles.
Foresta lead them back up the stairs to the exhibit room on the second floor, then walked straight to the back of the room, easily shifting one of the eight foot, blue display panels to one side. She revealed a fireplace, and above it, a portrait of a young woman about her own age, sitting on a stool by a window in a billowing white dress. The woman's mousy brown hair was pulled back sharply from her forehead, and she watched the room with a faint, half-smile, reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. Foresta stepped back, a similar soft smile gracing her features.
"This is Foresta." She shrugged. "The Society found this painting a couple years before I was born. My mom was a total history buff, and when she came to the museum and heard about Foresta, she decided she liked the name, so she gave it to me." Foresta cocked her head to the side again. "It sorta seems right to me, you know? That I would end up working here." She stepped back. "I was gonna reveal her anyway, since that's her wedding dress she's wearing in the painting. I thought it would make a good addition to the exhibit."
Dawn was leaning back and forth again. "You're right, her eyes don't track." She frowned. "What, was the painter really bad, or something?"
"Not at all." Foresta stepped back and leaned against the table, not shifting her eyes away from the portrait. "It was intentionally. Tradition or something. Superstition maybe, that if you finished a portrait after the subject died, you didn't let their eyes follow you."
Xander blinked. "She died before it was done? She's pretty young there, isn't she?"
"Yeah." Foresta finally turned away from the picture. "She died on her wedding night, or possibly a couple days after, the details are a little fudgy. I think it might have been tuberculosis. There's a ghost story that Mr. Dawson tells about her, too, that she wanders around the third floor, late at night, filled with nerves about her encroaching wedding. They say you can see lights on in the windows up there, when no one's in the building, but I've never seen them."
"You come by here a lot at night?"
"I live in the storage house, just moved in a couple weeks ago. That way, if the library alarm goes off late at night, there's someone here to make sure it's not a false alarm before calling the police. Considering the fact that that's like, the most sensitive alarm EVER, I end up waking up in the middle of the night a lot. Never seen anything spooky out here, though."
Dawn winced. "Well, you will now."
Foresta frowned. "What do you mean?"
Xander shrugged apologetically. "Murphy. You've now cursed us all. Just wait, within a week, something 'spooky' is bound to happen."
Foresta shuddered.
Tbc. . . .
Post-chapter notes: Yeah, the portrait of Foresta really DOESN'T track. It's kind of creepy. The explanation as for why is completely true.
So, incidentally, is the wedding dress exhibit at the Beall-Dawson house. If you live in Montgomery County, you should totally go check it out. Details of the exhibit hours can be found at the Montgomery County Historical Society website:
The Beall-Dawson House and the Dr. Stonestreet exhibit are both also real. The one time I went into the doctor's exhibit, many years ago, I nearly threw up. This is actually a common reaction to the exhibit. Xander and friends may end up in there at some point, but I'd prefer to get a chance to see the exhibit in person again, first, so don't hold your breath....
Addendum to the author's note: Does anyone in the DC area know of any decent job openings for a recent graduate? Just kidding. But since it is my search for employment that's keeping me from updating as frequently as I'd like, cross your fingers so the economy can improve.
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 7: Foresta
Part One
The next day found Xander and Dawn once again northwest of Washington DC, only a few exits further out from the beltway. They were sitting in a booth at the back of the Broadway Diner in Rockville, MD, across from Foresta Dawson-McKinley, a 23 year old slayer they had met that morning. She'd arranged quickly for the time off work, which Xander appreciated, since it was obvious when they'd met up with her in her office at the Montgomery County Historical Society that she had a lot she needed to get done. Something about an exhibit, he wasn't entirely sure what. But her boss had let her off for an hour and a half, and they had to make the most of the time.
Dawn had just finished her usual spiel about slayers, vampires, and the forces of darkness, and surprisingly, Foresta hadn't even blinked.
She did, however, give them a narrow-eyed suspicious look.
"Did Mother Jude send you?"
"What?" Xander leaned back in the booth.
"No, obviously not." Foresta smiled at him. "You're a guy."
"So glad you noticed."
Foresta shrugged. "She didn't seem too keen on men as a whole."
Xander blinked. 'Who is Mother Jude?"
"I'm not sure." Foresta spent a moment attacking her salad. "But a couple of girls about your age," she nodded to Dawn, "came by last week, told m the same thing about being chosen by God to rid the world of evil. Only, instead of wanting me to go to Cleveland, they wanted me to join them under the tutelage of a 'Mother Jude'. I think they were nuns, they introduced themselves as 'sisters of the order'. It sounded like some kind of wacko cult, so I told them I'd think about it, and 'lost' their number."
Xander and Dawn stared at her for a long moment, while she went back to eating her salad. They exchanged a look.
"Um, as far as we know," Dawn leaned forward, elbows on the table. "We're the only ones looking for slayers. My sister was the only one, like we said, but a friend of ours awakened the rest of you."
Foresta nodded without looking up. "I know I'm different than I was a year ago, that part all makes sense." She glanced at Xander, then back to her plate. "How do I know that your 'Helsing Institute' isn't another cult?"
"You don't, I guess." Xander frowned. "Though I don't think Buffy's charismatic enough as a leader to start one." He grinned at that, remembering how much trouble his friend had had, convincing the potentials to follow her instructions, even before the near massacre at the vineyard. He didn't notice the way Foresta's eyes brightened when he smiled, but Dawn did, and filed the information away for further reference. "How about we stick around, tell you more about the Institute, and you can decide for yourself?"
Foresta's arched, sandy eyebrows rose, then lowered and scrunched together. "I don't think I have time for that right now." Her eyebrows rose again. "Unless you want to help me out with the exhibit. You could tell me about it while we hang dresses?"
Xander's eyebrows drew together. "Ooookay."
"Of course, I'd have to clear it with my boss, first. We're always keen on volunteers, but she likes to meet them, know they won't try to steal anything, or hurt the exhibits." Foresta pulled out a Palm Pilot, and began marking things off. "Can you come by the Historical Society tomorrow morning? Say, 9:30?"
"Sure!" Dawn shoved her last french fry into her mouth. "Sounds like fun."
"Yeah," Xander's voice was slightly more hesitant. He was briefly worried what spending his time hanging dresses would do to his status as a heterosexual male, but figured it couldn't be any worse than seven years without a male best friend. He grabbed the check before Foresta could reach for her wallet, and Dawn smirked. She had a few plans of her own in the making.
"Soooo," Dawn drew out the single syllable while XAnder unlocked the car. "Foresta seems . . . nice,"
"Yeah." Xander shot Dawn a look over the car. "She's definitely taking the slayer thing well."
"And she's pretty cute."
Xander grinned. "True. Which means that your mind is off and running, thinking of ways to set us up."
Dawn tried for an innocent expression, then gave up quickly. "She likes you."
"She's suspicious of me."
"No way! Did you notice the way she melted when you payed the check?" Dawn smirked. "Of course you didn't. You're an oblivious male."
Xander nodded. "Of course, if she's interested in ME, then she must be evil."
"Well, that is your track record." Dawn sighed theatrically. "I guess we'd better call Buffy, we'll need her for slaying duties, soon,"
Xander snorted. "Oh, like your record is any better? I seem to remember you dating a vampire or two in your time."
"Please, I have impeccable taste."
"You crushed on SPIKE."
"I crushed on YOU, too."
Xander's grin took on a rather dopey quality as he navigated the heavy lunch time traffic on Rockville Pike. "That's right, I was your first crush, wasn't I?"
"Well, if we're going on the 'I was created by monks at age 14' time line, yes." Dawn grinned. "But in my mind, that honor belongs to another."
"Who?"
"That kid from 'The Adventures of Pete and Pete'."
"Which one?"
"Pete."
Xander rolled his eyes. "I always liked Pete's friend."
Dawn blushed. "Really?"
"Hell yeah, Ellen was a total hottie."
"Oh, her. I was talking about Little Pete. His friend was cute."
"Artie?" Xander made a face. Even HE had a better fashion sense than Artie. "Or do you mean the weird chick with the broken arm?"
Dawn shuddered. "I told you, I have impeccable taste. Of course the weird chick with the cast. She rocked."
Xander grinned. "That was a great show."
"Yeah it was. Or how about 'Clarissa Explains It All'?"
Xander nodded. "Ah, the heyday of Saturday Night Nickelodeon. I remember it well." He was glad he'd gotten Dawn's mind off of Foresta for the moment. With his record when it came to slayers, he didn't need her playing cupid.
Even if Foresta WAS cute.
Foresta's boss was more than thrilled to meet Dawn and Xander, once she learned that they were interested in volunteering. As Foresta had joked, the MCHS was always looking for more "young blood". She then immediately started backpedaling when she realized how much that made the Society ladies sound like vampires.
Xander had smiled at her, reassuring her that he and Dawn knew what she meant, which made Foresta blush and Dawn smirk.
"Your face is going to freeze like that, you know," Xander muttered to her as they followed Foresta out the back door of the administration building and they headed toward the Beall-Dawson house.
Dawn stuck her tongue out at him.
Their first job, it seemed, was as pack horses. It took an hour to set up several dressing dummies in one of the bedroom-turned-exhibit-rooms. Dawn took advantage of the time to give Foresta a cliffs notes version of the past seven years, making certain to highlight all of Xander's exploits. She and Foresta leaned back against the large display table in the center of the room, Foresta scanning through pages upon pages of notes and pictures, while Dawn mostly smirked and urged Xander to move the dummy "a little to the left". It was difficult to tell if Foresta was buying everything that Xander was telling her. She'd obviously noticed her increased strength and stamina, having carried two of the heavy, antique dummies up the stairs by herself, while Xander and Dawn had struggled to maneuver a third, but it was still rather a bit of a logic leap to make it from "hey, look, I'm strong!" to "oh my god, vampires, demons, mummies, and giant bugs really exist."
It seemed to Xander that Dawn was focusing entirely too much on her occasional conversations with Ampata about Xander's charms, and not nearly enough on the important facts of life on a hellmouth. He was too out of breath from dummy maneuvering to complain, however.
"So we all decided that since we were the ones to call all the potential slayers, it was up to us to find and train them. Or at the very least, let them know what they're up against." Dawn twirled a pencil between her fingers. "The first girl we found, Joanna, was actually from this area, too. Well, Bethesda. She got a real good look at the demonic night life, when we went up against a demon that had been terrorizing Cabin John for the last several centuries. . . ."
Foresta blinked. "The old marble steps story?"
"You know it?"
"Mr. Beall, the guy who tells all the ghost stories for our Halloween History Day, loves that one. I always assumed he'd made it up."
"Never assume." Xander rolled back his sleeve, showing the faint pink lines of scars across his forearm. "You might get bit for it."
Foresta's eyes widened. "You go bit by that thing?"
"Well, to be fair, I was shoving a pocket knife through its jaw, at the time."
Dawn's smirk returned full force as she watched Foresta's eyes go wide. Oh yeah, the new slayer had it BAD.
"Does. . . . Does that happen a lot?"
"Which part, the jaw-knifing, or the biting?"
"Being injured."
"Not as often as you'd think." Xander shrugged. "I've been fighting demons since tenth grade, and managed to get out with a couple broken bones, but mostly just scratches and bruises. Maybe a concussion or two, though Giles–you'll meet Giles at the institute, if you decide to go–wins the prize for that one."
Foresta blinked. "That's it? But I thought you were just a guy. Not the one with all the powers and the like."
Xander raised a hand to the yellowed bruises on his left cheek. "Well, that's not ENTIRELY it."
Dawn grimaced. Neither she nor Xander really liked to dwell on what had happened to his eye. With Willow's enchanted prosthetic, it was pretty easy, usually, to pretend that it had never happened. For her, at least.
Xander still tended to wake her up occasionally, with his nightmares.
Foresta seemed to sense the increased tension and backed off the topic. She studied her notes again.
"Okay, these dummies should do for a couple of the larger dresses, but we've got a lot of really little ones." She grinned. "Seems that American obesity is entirely a late twentieth century fad. Most of these women were tiny."
Xander straightened, rolling his shoulders. "Are the smaller ones any lighter?"
"A bit."
"Right then." He gestured toward the door. "Lay on, Macduff."
Dawn adjusted her grip on her end of the dummy. "I thought you said these things were lighter?"
"They are." Foresta, standing on the back porch of one of the Society's storage buildings, had four of the dummies balanced perfectly across her arms and shoulders. Xander and Dawn were once again struggling with one. "Your witch couldn't make you guys stronger, too?"
"It doesn't really work like that." Dawn readjusted her grip again, grunting. "Please tell me these are the last of them." Her shoulders were really starting to ache.
"For now. I can get the rest later." Foresta jumped down the steps from the porch as though she was carrying nothing more than a light backpack. "I want to get some of the dresses on the dummies, so I can take pictures. We don't have enough dummies or display cases to go around, so a lot of it will be photographs hanging on the display boards." She grinned. "When we get these set up, we can start moving the panels. Thank you guys SO much for helping, I couldn't do this without you."
Xander grinned, and hoisted his end of the dummy higher, inadvertently forcing Dawn to crouch down on her end. "No problem, ma'am."
Foresta giggled, and for once, Dawn decided to roll her eyes instead of smirking. Hanging dresses she could do. She didn't like being a pack horse.
"Come on, my fingers are going numb."
Foresta nodded and danced lightly down the path back to the Beall-Dawson house. Xander lowered his end of the dummy again, so Dawn could walk more easily. They stumbled slowly down the steps from the porch.
Dawn's foot slipped on the grass, and she toppled backward. Xander wrenched his wrists, managing to shift the dummy slightly to the left so it wouldn't land on top of her. Foresta, already a good twenty feet down the path, stopped at Dawn's exclamation, looking chagrined.
"You sure you guys got that?"
Xander shrugged a little sheepishly. With a small, manly grunt, he hoisted the dummy up over his left shoulder and reached out his right hand to help Dawn up. Dawn took it, but as her weight shifted, Xander overbalanced, the dummy's weight dragging him backward, until he and Dawn landed in a pile on grass.
Dawn rolled off Xander, wiping sweat off her forehead. Foresta came running back toward them as she stood up.
"Oh my gosh, are you two alright?" Foresta bounced a little, then set down two of her dummies so she could offer a hand to Xander.
"Fine!" Xander ignored her hand, preferring to stay where he was for the moment to catch his breath. "Just fine." He grinned. "I refuse to be felled by a dressing dummy."
"Good." Foresta raised her eyebrow. "Mary Kay would kill me if I managed to maim her only young volunteers."
Xander finally shoved himself to his feet, reaching down to pick up the fallen dummy. He stood it up on its stand, resting one hand on the dummy's shoulder. He affected a haughty tone. "I am not maimed, for I am ARTIE!" He struck a muscle man pose. "The strongest man in the world!"
Dawn started down the path. "Fine then, Artie. You can carry your own dummy."
"You know how they say that some portraits' eyes follow you wherever you go?" Dawn leaned to one side, then the other. She and Xander stood in the parlor of the Beall-Dawson house, waiting while Foresta sifted through her papers for the umpteenth time. "These portraits do that."
Xander nodded.
The portraits in question, displaying a stern-looking Victorian man and a reclining Colonial woman, were hung just over an antique roll top desk on the far wall. Their painted eyes held an authoritative glint that had Xander unconsciously standing up a little straighter.
Dawn was impressed. Anyone who could have that effect on Xander, even painted, must have been powerful.
"All portraits do." Foresta folded her papers back in her pockets, looking toward the paintings. "That's what happens when the eyes of the painting are focused properly. There's nothing supernatural about it." She frowned. "At least, I don't think there is." She tilted her head at the portraits. "Well, not about Mr. and Mrs. Dawson, anyway. They were farmers." She smiled. "They didn't even die mysteriously." Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. "Well, there's one painting in our collection whose eyes don't track. You guys want to see her?"
Xander shrugged. "Sure. So long as we don't have to do any more carrying."
It was late afternoon now, and Foresta seemed to be confident by this point that Xander and Dawn were, for the most part, on the level. She had given them every random, back breaking, remedial task she could think of on her exhibit, and they did it with a smile, and in Xander's case, a lot of rather silly jokes. She had told them earlier that she was pretty sure a con-man would have given up on her when she had them carry two of the dummies back to the storage building, only to bring them back up the stairs to the exhibit room again two hours later. This had earned her a brief glare from Dawn.
But if it meant that they got her to the safety of the Institute, the pair of slayer-trackers was willing to deal with a few pulled muscles and twisted ankles.
Foresta lead them back up the stairs to the exhibit room on the second floor, then walked straight to the back of the room, easily shifting one of the eight foot, blue display panels to one side. She revealed a fireplace, and above it, a portrait of a young woman about her own age, sitting on a stool by a window in a billowing white dress. The woman's mousy brown hair was pulled back sharply from her forehead, and she watched the room with a faint, half-smile, reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. Foresta stepped back, a similar soft smile gracing her features.
"This is Foresta." She shrugged. "The Society found this painting a couple years before I was born. My mom was a total history buff, and when she came to the museum and heard about Foresta, she decided she liked the name, so she gave it to me." Foresta cocked her head to the side again. "It sorta seems right to me, you know? That I would end up working here." She stepped back. "I was gonna reveal her anyway, since that's her wedding dress she's wearing in the painting. I thought it would make a good addition to the exhibit."
Dawn was leaning back and forth again. "You're right, her eyes don't track." She frowned. "What, was the painter really bad, or something?"
"Not at all." Foresta stepped back and leaned against the table, not shifting her eyes away from the portrait. "It was intentionally. Tradition or something. Superstition maybe, that if you finished a portrait after the subject died, you didn't let their eyes follow you."
Xander blinked. "She died before it was done? She's pretty young there, isn't she?"
"Yeah." Foresta finally turned away from the picture. "She died on her wedding night, or possibly a couple days after, the details are a little fudgy. I think it might have been tuberculosis. There's a ghost story that Mr. Dawson tells about her, too, that she wanders around the third floor, late at night, filled with nerves about her encroaching wedding. They say you can see lights on in the windows up there, when no one's in the building, but I've never seen them."
"You come by here a lot at night?"
"I live in the storage house, just moved in a couple weeks ago. That way, if the library alarm goes off late at night, there's someone here to make sure it's not a false alarm before calling the police. Considering the fact that that's like, the most sensitive alarm EVER, I end up waking up in the middle of the night a lot. Never seen anything spooky out here, though."
Dawn winced. "Well, you will now."
Foresta frowned. "What do you mean?"
Xander shrugged apologetically. "Murphy. You've now cursed us all. Just wait, within a week, something 'spooky' is bound to happen."
Foresta shuddered.
Tbc. . . .
Post-chapter notes: Yeah, the portrait of Foresta really DOESN'T track. It's kind of creepy. The explanation as for why is completely true.
So, incidentally, is the wedding dress exhibit at the Beall-Dawson house. If you live in Montgomery County, you should totally go check it out. Details of the exhibit hours can be found at the Montgomery County Historical Society website: