Addendum to the Author's note: well, holy geez, I just noticed that I referenced you all to the MCHS website without providing a link. So, um, here you go: It's hard to tell from the picture, but yes, there is a third floor to the Beall-Dawson house. The windows to it are on the sides of the house, not shown in the image.
This story is giving me some trouble in that, unlike the Bunnyman, I know exactly what I want to do with it, yet, like the Bunnyman, I'm not certain how I'm going to get there, yet. Well, that's half the fun of writing, isn't it? Even the author wants to see what happens....
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 7: Foresta
Part two
"Is it just me, or does it feel like we're going in circles?" Dawn poked at cheese quesadilla.
"Well, we've been to the DC area before, if that's what you mean." Xander took a large bite out of his burrito, then reached for his soda. "I kind of like it, though." He glanced out the window, over the parking lot of the plaza. "Its got a small town feel, while being close enough to a big city that you don't have to get bored."
They were sitting in a California Tortilla, next to a large movie theater, no more than three blocks from the Historical Society. Foresta had recommended the place to them when they muttered about being hungry, but wasn't joining them. Something about having to take some time to think without them around.
Xander suspected it had something to do with their comments earlier about "something spooky" happening. They'd managed to somewhat freak the young woman out, which he regretted. On the other hand, if she was worried about it, she was aware of it, which he couldn't quite think of as a downside.
Dawn was nodding. "That must be it." She nibbled at her quesadilla with a thoughtful look. "We should actually go into DC, this time. We might not get the opportunity again on this trip."
"Yeah." Xander smiled. "I bet you could get Wood to give you credit on it for your social studies class. That International Spy Museum sounds pretty neat."
"And Joanna recommends the shopping in Georgetown."
The two sat silently eating for a few more minutes, watching the people walk by on their way to the theater. Xander finished his burrito and reached for his nachos. "What do you say to a movie tonight? 'Dawn of the Dead' is showing."
"Zombies?" Dawn swallowed. "Isn't that a little bit too close to home?"
"Nah, they never get the details right. We could mock it."
"Sounds like a plan."
They finished their meal quickly, then stood to leave.
"What do you think our spooky is going to be, on this one?" Dawn stepped through the door as Xander held it open for her. "I'm betting on the Foresta painting. It's kind of creepy, the fact that they had to finish it after she died."
"Nah," Xander turned toward the theater. "That ghost story sounds pretty tame. Lights on in the attic? A ghost wandering around with pre-wedding nerves? She died of tuberculosis, not some violent thing. I doubt she's violent at all."
"Still, weird coincidence, you know? Foresta-ghost, Foresta-slayer?"
"A bit." Xander nearly choked when he saw the price of the movie tickets. "Geez. In Sunnydale, tickets were nearly half this much." He grumbled slightly as he handed over his credit card. "$8.50 for one ticket? What a ripoff!"
Dawn shrugged. "So I won't make you buy me popcorn. We could do with a little bit of non-slaying fun."
"True." Xander took the two tickets from the sales person, signing the receipt. "Think Giles will let this through as an expense of the trip?"
"We'll tell him it was for research purposes."
"That'll never work. The G-man is always talking about how pop culture misrepresents the supernatural." Xander grinned. "But it would be fun to try."
As they walked toward the escalator, Xander spotted a group of people ahead of them and paused.
They each wore a black trench coat, though the styles varied. The three guys were singing softly as they stepped on to the escalator. It was a song he recognized, though they were singing it in lounge singer style.
"You mother get up, come on get down with the sickness,"
The sole girl of the group was smiling softly at them, rolling her eyes a little. Her trench coat was some sort of fake-leather material, and a nicer cut than that of the canvas coats her three friends were wearing. She glanced back at the theater lobby, catching his eye momentarily.
Xander sucked in a breath.
She wasn't wearing her glasses this time, and her curly hair was tied back into a small, messy ponytail. Corkscrew curls wafted out of it around her ears. Her were a clear greenish brown color, and widened as she glanced from him to Dawn and back again.
It took Xander a moment to place her. She lifted her foot slightly, scratching the side of it over her platform sandals. A red butterfly decorated the black band that stretched over the top of her foot, and it clicked.
The girl from Maude's. In Gainesville. What on earth was she doing in Rockville?
She turned back to her friends, tapping one of them on his shoulder. The taller boy, wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, glanced back at Xander and Dawn and shrugged. Though his hair was lighter than hers, and much straighter, it was easy to tell by their facial features that the two were related. She grimaced at him.
"Can I have my ticket?"
Xander glanced back down at Dawn, who was looking at him with a puzzled expression. He nodded, handing her the ticket, then gestured toward the group in front of them.
"That girl. . . ."
"What girl?"
Xander looked back at the group. Three guys were riding down the escalator in front of them. The girl had vanished again. Xander shook his head.
"Nothing,"
What the hell was going on?
Dawn leaned back on her bed, flipping her cell phone closed. "Well, we've got the go ahead on the weekend in DC. No slayers, no supernatural beasties, just you and me and a bunch of museums and monuments."
Xander winced a little at the idea of spending that much time in museums. "They want us to go look at old stuff, and expect us not to encounter the supernatural?"
"Giles says that the Smithsonian is clean of that stuff. They have special researchers, or something. The woogy stuff all goes to a source center in Northern Virginia so it can be contained properly."
"Wow. Go Smithsonian."
"Yep." Dawn glanced at her computer, where she had been typing sporadically throughout her conversation with the folks still at the Institute. "Wood says I have to go to the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and at least two of the art galleries. He wants reports on at least one thing from each one." She smiled. "And Giles says that if we don't go to the International Spy Museum, he'll string us up by our toes. I think he was kind of jealous."
Xander laughed. "G-man is interested in spies, huh? Makes sense."
"Yep!" Dawn glanced back down at the laptop screen. "Oh, and we're supposed to check out the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and I get extra credit if I can find the Taft Memorial."
"Taft?"
"Yep."
"Did he do anything?"
"Got stuck in a bathtub."
"So they made a memorial for him?"
Dawn shrugged. "He was also the first president to ride in a car."
"That's still not memorial worthy."
"Well, I don't really need any extra credit, so I think we can skip that one." She clicked something on the screen. "The tourist board puts pretty much everything but the International Spy Museum in roughly the same place. I bet we can take one day to do all of that stuff, then spend a day in Georgetown."
"Sounds like a plan."
Dawn grinned. "You should invite Foresta to come with us."
Xander groaned. "Dawn,"
His complaint was cut off by the ringing of Dawn's cellphone. Xander still hadn't gotten a chance to replace his.
"Speak of the cutie," Dawn flipped her phone open. "Hi Foresta! . . . Yeah, we're back at the hotel. . . . We really were kidding about that. Um, mostly. . . . You did? . . . Okay, we'll come over. . . . About twenty minutes. . . . No, you shouldn't call the police. If it is a ghost, they won't be able to help. . . . You said you got a lot of false alarms with that. . . . Whatever you think is best, it's your workplace. . . . Yeah, bye." She flipped the phone closed again. "You owe me twenty bucks. Seems like Foresta-ghost is making her presence known."
Xander grimaced and handed over a twenty dollar bill. "I still think she won't be troublesome."
"Well, she's got Foresta pretty freaked." Dawn closed her laptop and grabbed the keys off the night stand. "To the Mystery Machine!"
"For the last time, we're not calling the car that!"
Dawn pulled the car into the small gravel lot behind the Beall-Dawson house. She peered through the darkness at the old building, but couldn't see any unusual lights or anything. The night was practically silent, as silent as any can be next to several main roads in the middle of a city, anyway. There were no alarms blaring, or ghostly whisperings.
"False alarm?" She glanced over at Xander, who was likewise studying the house.
"Probably." Xander frowned. "I really don't think it's the Foresta-ghost that we need to worry about. That girl–"
"Xander, there was no girl there. Just three guys in trench coats, singing the song from the movie."
"She was there, Dawn. She was in Gainesville, too. I don't know what's going on, but if you had just let me talk to that guy–"
Dawn shook her head. When she and Xander had gotten to the bottom of the escalator in the movie theater, Xander had immediately set out to start questioning the three guys in front of them, specifically the one wearing glasses. She'd had to grab his arm and lean all her weight against him to get him to stop. He was insistent that someone had been there, but she hadn't seen anything unusual.
"Look, Xander, there wasn't anyone there." She placed a hand on his arm. "I know you've been having a tough time, recently, after . . . what happened in the woods in Virginia,"
"I'm not going crazy, Dawn." Xander shrugged her hand off, opening the door. "I'm fine, and I know what I saw."
"You're not fine." Dawn jumped out of the car after him, refusing to the let the subject rest. "I know you've started having the nightmares again. Dammit, Xander, listen to me!"
Xander continued walking toward the storage house, forcing Dawn to run after him. She finally caught his arm again, only a few feet away from the house's back porch.
"You need to talk to someone, Xander."
"I'm FINE, Dawn."
Dawn ignored him. "Even if it isn't a real doctor. Just, talk to me, maybe? Tell me about the dreams, or about what happened. You can't keep pretending it didn't."
Xander seemed to deflate. "Okay. I–the next time I dream, I'll tell you about it, I promise. But this isn't about what Caleb did. I know I saw that girl. Not once, but twice. And both times she disappeared when she realized I saw her."
Dawn sighed. "Okay. I'll start looking stuff up when we get back to the hotel." Dawn nodded toward the porch in front of them. "But right now, we've got a spooked slayer to deal with. We help Foresta, and then we look into your mysterious disappearing girl. Deal?"
Xander smiled, relieved. "Deal." He stepped up to the back door of the storage house and knocked. It was answered almost immediately by a flustered looking Foresta, her hair sticking out slightly to the sides. She had sneakers on, and a jacket thrown over her flannel pajamas.
"Oh thank god, you're here." Foresta stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. "The lights went off, and the alarm stopped a little bit after I called you. I need to go over there, make sure that everything is okay, but I didn't want to go alone." She smiled a little sheepishly. "Maybe I'm some kind of super hero, but I'm not used to this stuff, you know?"
Xander smiled at her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. No one but the old watcher's council ever said that the Slayer had to do everything alone. Let's go find ourselves a ghost, shall we?"
Foresta blushed, then nodded. Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply, then let the air out in a whoosh. "Right. Let's."
They searched the whole house, but couldn't find anything out of place. As they finished checking the third floor, Foresta seemed to grow more and more embarrassed.
"God, looks like I was imagining things." She punched Xander lightly in the shoulder. "This is your fault, you know, telling me that something spooky was going to happen."
Xander shrugged, smiling. "Well, usually when you bring stuff like that up, it does. Not my fault that your imagination decided to fill in the gaps,"
She giggled slightly. "I, um, have been known to occasionally freak myself out."
Dawn smiled at the way the two were gently flirting with each other. She suspected that a girlfriend was exactly what Xander needed to get his mind off his troubles. Foresta was quirky enough to be Xander's type, without the abrupt, tactless way of speaking that made Anya so unique. They started back down the stairs.
Foresta wanted to take one last look at the wedding dress exhibit, to make sure nothing had gone wrong. They'd gotten a lot of work done that day, and she didn't look forward to having to redo any of it.
The three split up into opposite corners of the room, looking over the day's work. Foresta was relaxing more and more as she looked, and she began casting glances back at Xander, in the opposite corner, more often than she was actually looking at the exhibit. Xander caught almost of all of them, as he was finding himself hard pressed to stop looking back at her. He was pretty sure Dawn would be giving him merry hell about it for the rest of their time in Rockville, but couldn't bring himself to care. He liked Foresta, more than a lot.
"Um, guys?" Dawn stood in the corner opposite of the door, staring at the painting over the fireplace. She paced back over to the door, her eyes never leaving the painting's. "The painting is, um, watching me now."
"What?!" Foresta's gaze jerked upward toward the painting, as did Xander's. Sure enough, its eyes were focused. "That's impossible," She reached up to touch the frame. As her fingers made contact, a loud bonging sound echoed through the house, causing her to jump.
Xander's eyes snapped up toward the door at the noise, before he recognized it. "Just the clock." He relaxed slightly.
Foresta's shoulders remained tight. "Yeah," Her jaw was clenched over her words. "But that clock has been broken for twenty years."
Xander shot her a look, but a flash of white out of the corner of his eyes caused him to turn back to the door again.
Dawn stared wide eyed back at him, but he wasn't watching her. He was watching the pale figure standing in the darkened hallway just behind her. A figure of a woman in a white dress, her hair pulled tightly back from her forehead.
"Er." His voice was soft, deeper than normal. "Foresta?" The young woman looked up at him, her face still startled from the combined shock of the painting and the clock. Xander gestured vaguely at the door and the woman in white. "Meet Foresta."
Tbc....
This story is giving me some trouble in that, unlike the Bunnyman, I know exactly what I want to do with it, yet, like the Bunnyman, I'm not certain how I'm going to get there, yet. Well, that's half the fun of writing, isn't it? Even the author wants to see what happens....
Roads Less Traveled
by Casix Thistlebane
Story 7: Foresta
Part two
"Is it just me, or does it feel like we're going in circles?" Dawn poked at cheese quesadilla.
"Well, we've been to the DC area before, if that's what you mean." Xander took a large bite out of his burrito, then reached for his soda. "I kind of like it, though." He glanced out the window, over the parking lot of the plaza. "Its got a small town feel, while being close enough to a big city that you don't have to get bored."
They were sitting in a California Tortilla, next to a large movie theater, no more than three blocks from the Historical Society. Foresta had recommended the place to them when they muttered about being hungry, but wasn't joining them. Something about having to take some time to think without them around.
Xander suspected it had something to do with their comments earlier about "something spooky" happening. They'd managed to somewhat freak the young woman out, which he regretted. On the other hand, if she was worried about it, she was aware of it, which he couldn't quite think of as a downside.
Dawn was nodding. "That must be it." She nibbled at her quesadilla with a thoughtful look. "We should actually go into DC, this time. We might not get the opportunity again on this trip."
"Yeah." Xander smiled. "I bet you could get Wood to give you credit on it for your social studies class. That International Spy Museum sounds pretty neat."
"And Joanna recommends the shopping in Georgetown."
The two sat silently eating for a few more minutes, watching the people walk by on their way to the theater. Xander finished his burrito and reached for his nachos. "What do you say to a movie tonight? 'Dawn of the Dead' is showing."
"Zombies?" Dawn swallowed. "Isn't that a little bit too close to home?"
"Nah, they never get the details right. We could mock it."
"Sounds like a plan."
They finished their meal quickly, then stood to leave.
"What do you think our spooky is going to be, on this one?" Dawn stepped through the door as Xander held it open for her. "I'm betting on the Foresta painting. It's kind of creepy, the fact that they had to finish it after she died."
"Nah," Xander turned toward the theater. "That ghost story sounds pretty tame. Lights on in the attic? A ghost wandering around with pre-wedding nerves? She died of tuberculosis, not some violent thing. I doubt she's violent at all."
"Still, weird coincidence, you know? Foresta-ghost, Foresta-slayer?"
"A bit." Xander nearly choked when he saw the price of the movie tickets. "Geez. In Sunnydale, tickets were nearly half this much." He grumbled slightly as he handed over his credit card. "$8.50 for one ticket? What a ripoff!"
Dawn shrugged. "So I won't make you buy me popcorn. We could do with a little bit of non-slaying fun."
"True." Xander took the two tickets from the sales person, signing the receipt. "Think Giles will let this through as an expense of the trip?"
"We'll tell him it was for research purposes."
"That'll never work. The G-man is always talking about how pop culture misrepresents the supernatural." Xander grinned. "But it would be fun to try."
As they walked toward the escalator, Xander spotted a group of people ahead of them and paused.
They each wore a black trench coat, though the styles varied. The three guys were singing softly as they stepped on to the escalator. It was a song he recognized, though they were singing it in lounge singer style.
"You mother get up, come on get down with the sickness,"
The sole girl of the group was smiling softly at them, rolling her eyes a little. Her trench coat was some sort of fake-leather material, and a nicer cut than that of the canvas coats her three friends were wearing. She glanced back at the theater lobby, catching his eye momentarily.
Xander sucked in a breath.
She wasn't wearing her glasses this time, and her curly hair was tied back into a small, messy ponytail. Corkscrew curls wafted out of it around her ears. Her were a clear greenish brown color, and widened as she glanced from him to Dawn and back again.
It took Xander a moment to place her. She lifted her foot slightly, scratching the side of it over her platform sandals. A red butterfly decorated the black band that stretched over the top of her foot, and it clicked.
The girl from Maude's. In Gainesville. What on earth was she doing in Rockville?
She turned back to her friends, tapping one of them on his shoulder. The taller boy, wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, glanced back at Xander and Dawn and shrugged. Though his hair was lighter than hers, and much straighter, it was easy to tell by their facial features that the two were related. She grimaced at him.
"Can I have my ticket?"
Xander glanced back down at Dawn, who was looking at him with a puzzled expression. He nodded, handing her the ticket, then gestured toward the group in front of them.
"That girl. . . ."
"What girl?"
Xander looked back at the group. Three guys were riding down the escalator in front of them. The girl had vanished again. Xander shook his head.
"Nothing,"
What the hell was going on?
Dawn leaned back on her bed, flipping her cell phone closed. "Well, we've got the go ahead on the weekend in DC. No slayers, no supernatural beasties, just you and me and a bunch of museums and monuments."
Xander winced a little at the idea of spending that much time in museums. "They want us to go look at old stuff, and expect us not to encounter the supernatural?"
"Giles says that the Smithsonian is clean of that stuff. They have special researchers, or something. The woogy stuff all goes to a source center in Northern Virginia so it can be contained properly."
"Wow. Go Smithsonian."
"Yep." Dawn glanced at her computer, where she had been typing sporadically throughout her conversation with the folks still at the Institute. "Wood says I have to go to the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and at least two of the art galleries. He wants reports on at least one thing from each one." She smiled. "And Giles says that if we don't go to the International Spy Museum, he'll string us up by our toes. I think he was kind of jealous."
Xander laughed. "G-man is interested in spies, huh? Makes sense."
"Yep!" Dawn glanced back down at the laptop screen. "Oh, and we're supposed to check out the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and I get extra credit if I can find the Taft Memorial."
"Taft?"
"Yep."
"Did he do anything?"
"Got stuck in a bathtub."
"So they made a memorial for him?"
Dawn shrugged. "He was also the first president to ride in a car."
"That's still not memorial worthy."
"Well, I don't really need any extra credit, so I think we can skip that one." She clicked something on the screen. "The tourist board puts pretty much everything but the International Spy Museum in roughly the same place. I bet we can take one day to do all of that stuff, then spend a day in Georgetown."
"Sounds like a plan."
Dawn grinned. "You should invite Foresta to come with us."
Xander groaned. "Dawn,"
His complaint was cut off by the ringing of Dawn's cellphone. Xander still hadn't gotten a chance to replace his.
"Speak of the cutie," Dawn flipped her phone open. "Hi Foresta! . . . Yeah, we're back at the hotel. . . . We really were kidding about that. Um, mostly. . . . You did? . . . Okay, we'll come over. . . . About twenty minutes. . . . No, you shouldn't call the police. If it is a ghost, they won't be able to help. . . . You said you got a lot of false alarms with that. . . . Whatever you think is best, it's your workplace. . . . Yeah, bye." She flipped the phone closed again. "You owe me twenty bucks. Seems like Foresta-ghost is making her presence known."
Xander grimaced and handed over a twenty dollar bill. "I still think she won't be troublesome."
"Well, she's got Foresta pretty freaked." Dawn closed her laptop and grabbed the keys off the night stand. "To the Mystery Machine!"
"For the last time, we're not calling the car that!"
Dawn pulled the car into the small gravel lot behind the Beall-Dawson house. She peered through the darkness at the old building, but couldn't see any unusual lights or anything. The night was practically silent, as silent as any can be next to several main roads in the middle of a city, anyway. There were no alarms blaring, or ghostly whisperings.
"False alarm?" She glanced over at Xander, who was likewise studying the house.
"Probably." Xander frowned. "I really don't think it's the Foresta-ghost that we need to worry about. That girl–"
"Xander, there was no girl there. Just three guys in trench coats, singing the song from the movie."
"She was there, Dawn. She was in Gainesville, too. I don't know what's going on, but if you had just let me talk to that guy–"
Dawn shook her head. When she and Xander had gotten to the bottom of the escalator in the movie theater, Xander had immediately set out to start questioning the three guys in front of them, specifically the one wearing glasses. She'd had to grab his arm and lean all her weight against him to get him to stop. He was insistent that someone had been there, but she hadn't seen anything unusual.
"Look, Xander, there wasn't anyone there." She placed a hand on his arm. "I know you've been having a tough time, recently, after . . . what happened in the woods in Virginia,"
"I'm not going crazy, Dawn." Xander shrugged her hand off, opening the door. "I'm fine, and I know what I saw."
"You're not fine." Dawn jumped out of the car after him, refusing to the let the subject rest. "I know you've started having the nightmares again. Dammit, Xander, listen to me!"
Xander continued walking toward the storage house, forcing Dawn to run after him. She finally caught his arm again, only a few feet away from the house's back porch.
"You need to talk to someone, Xander."
"I'm FINE, Dawn."
Dawn ignored him. "Even if it isn't a real doctor. Just, talk to me, maybe? Tell me about the dreams, or about what happened. You can't keep pretending it didn't."
Xander seemed to deflate. "Okay. I–the next time I dream, I'll tell you about it, I promise. But this isn't about what Caleb did. I know I saw that girl. Not once, but twice. And both times she disappeared when she realized I saw her."
Dawn sighed. "Okay. I'll start looking stuff up when we get back to the hotel." Dawn nodded toward the porch in front of them. "But right now, we've got a spooked slayer to deal with. We help Foresta, and then we look into your mysterious disappearing girl. Deal?"
Xander smiled, relieved. "Deal." He stepped up to the back door of the storage house and knocked. It was answered almost immediately by a flustered looking Foresta, her hair sticking out slightly to the sides. She had sneakers on, and a jacket thrown over her flannel pajamas.
"Oh thank god, you're here." Foresta stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. "The lights went off, and the alarm stopped a little bit after I called you. I need to go over there, make sure that everything is okay, but I didn't want to go alone." She smiled a little sheepishly. "Maybe I'm some kind of super hero, but I'm not used to this stuff, you know?"
Xander smiled at her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. No one but the old watcher's council ever said that the Slayer had to do everything alone. Let's go find ourselves a ghost, shall we?"
Foresta blushed, then nodded. Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply, then let the air out in a whoosh. "Right. Let's."
They searched the whole house, but couldn't find anything out of place. As they finished checking the third floor, Foresta seemed to grow more and more embarrassed.
"God, looks like I was imagining things." She punched Xander lightly in the shoulder. "This is your fault, you know, telling me that something spooky was going to happen."
Xander shrugged, smiling. "Well, usually when you bring stuff like that up, it does. Not my fault that your imagination decided to fill in the gaps,"
She giggled slightly. "I, um, have been known to occasionally freak myself out."
Dawn smiled at the way the two were gently flirting with each other. She suspected that a girlfriend was exactly what Xander needed to get his mind off his troubles. Foresta was quirky enough to be Xander's type, without the abrupt, tactless way of speaking that made Anya so unique. They started back down the stairs.
Foresta wanted to take one last look at the wedding dress exhibit, to make sure nothing had gone wrong. They'd gotten a lot of work done that day, and she didn't look forward to having to redo any of it.
The three split up into opposite corners of the room, looking over the day's work. Foresta was relaxing more and more as she looked, and she began casting glances back at Xander, in the opposite corner, more often than she was actually looking at the exhibit. Xander caught almost of all of them, as he was finding himself hard pressed to stop looking back at her. He was pretty sure Dawn would be giving him merry hell about it for the rest of their time in Rockville, but couldn't bring himself to care. He liked Foresta, more than a lot.
"Um, guys?" Dawn stood in the corner opposite of the door, staring at the painting over the fireplace. She paced back over to the door, her eyes never leaving the painting's. "The painting is, um, watching me now."
"What?!" Foresta's gaze jerked upward toward the painting, as did Xander's. Sure enough, its eyes were focused. "That's impossible," She reached up to touch the frame. As her fingers made contact, a loud bonging sound echoed through the house, causing her to jump.
Xander's eyes snapped up toward the door at the noise, before he recognized it. "Just the clock." He relaxed slightly.
Foresta's shoulders remained tight. "Yeah," Her jaw was clenched over her words. "But that clock has been broken for twenty years."
Xander shot her a look, but a flash of white out of the corner of his eyes caused him to turn back to the door again.
Dawn stared wide eyed back at him, but he wasn't watching her. He was watching the pale figure standing in the darkened hallway just behind her. A figure of a woman in a white dress, her hair pulled tightly back from her forehead.
"Er." His voice was soft, deeper than normal. "Foresta?" The young woman looked up at him, her face still startled from the combined shock of the painting and the clock. Xander gestured vaguely at the door and the woman in white. "Meet Foresta."
Tbc....