Buffy Summers was The Slayer. Correction, she was a Slayer. Willow's little mojo two weeks ago had changed the rules of the game. However, for all intents and purposes, Buffy was in fact the HSIC: the Head Slayer in Charge. Normally, she would have sent one of the trained girls to investigate something like this. However, she had the feeling this case required her... unique touch.

She literally felt like a mess of rumpled hair and clothes. That's what happened when you had to catch a red-eye from L.A. to New York. She and her Slayers had stayed with Angel's crew at his hotel to recover and tend to the wounded. She had been shocked to find out that Cordelia Chase, formerly "Queen C" of Sunnydale High, had been put into a coma. She was furthermore shocked to find out that Angel was now CEO of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart, a.k.a., evil's cabana boys/Attorneys-at-Law. Needless to say, she was eager to get herself and her group out of L.A. as soon as possible. While she was glad Wolfram & Hart didn't take advantage of her crew's unfortunate state, she wasn't going to stick around in case they changed their minds. That was the reason she hadn't let Angel in on the Slayer-awakening spell. For all she knew, they could have been waiting for the Scoobies to recover to lull them into a false sense of security. It wasn't that she didn't love or trust Angel; quite the contrary, deep down inside she really did. But she was caring for an army of young girls. If Angel was being duped or, daresay, corrupted, she wanted her embattled gang as far away from L.A. as possible until they were able to properly handle any situation that could come about.

Putting that concern out of her mind for the moment, she, Giles, and Willow went to get a taxi getting their stuff from baggage claim. Trying to get a handle on the situation, she wanted to know their first strategy.

"So, Giles. Where're we headed?" she asked.

"The Council's financial resources were left in place, thankfully, after the blast. They have an apartment building near the downtown area. We'll be able to set up base camp there."

Giles was extremely glad that they had the resources they did. It seemed that the Council had planned for such an occasion. The system that they used to keep track of their funds and holdings also made sure that if the board members didn't access the systems within a specified amount of time, all control was to go immediately down the chain of command until the proper person accessed it. All Watchers had been fitted with an emergency pager, which would receive a special code in case anything happened to headquarters. If access to monetary funds were granted to a Watcher in an emergency, another special code would be sent to that specific Watcher. No one knew of the signal relay or the computer server station except the Head Watcher, for obvious reasons. It was all Quentin Travers' idea. While Giles had resented Travers for his hard-headed and heavy-handed ways, even he had to admit the man was an effective and resourceful tactician.

Good show, Travers, good show, he thought.

At around 10:30 a.m., they arrived at the location. Ready for a hot shower and a decent meal, each of them got ready to start the day. Giles had brought some of the extra tomes he stored away for safekeeping and Willow set up her laptop, since the building had been fitted for wireless access. She had been to New York when she was younger, but even then she didn't get to see many of the sights. But when your parents were hers, making time with their daughter seemed to be low on the list of things to do. And being in town for a dark omen wasn't what you would call 'vacation time'. How she wished Xander or Kennedy were here with her. Kennedy had decided to go to South America to set up until Willow arrived. She would come to New York if things weren't settled quickly or if they needed an extra brutal hand for things.

Then there was Xander. Sweet Xander.

Losing an eye had been bad enough for him. But losing Anya had been the straw that broke the camel's back. He wanted to leave as soon as possible and get started on finding those new Slayers. Normally, he would have joined them on their quest to New York. But he felt that he needed some time away from not only California, but the entire U.S.A. to sort out his thoughts and delve himself into work. Of all the places he picked for his sojourn, Africa was his choice. She hoped that her best friend in the entire world would find the strength to recover and make his own path.

"We're all set up. We just need to find out anything that could clue us in to what Buffy's vision meant."

Giles had a pen and paper handy, ready for the rigorous task of note-taking and research. "Now go through what you saw in your dreams. Try and pick out any details, clues, as to what you saw."

Exasperatedly, Buffy began to tell the tale.

"Well, there was a cemetery. Hands coming out of the ground, like the dead were coming back to life. But that wasn't the strangest thing. Suddenly the sky turned red and it was like a camera's lens was zooming out. The red was an eye, looking at me like it wanted to kill me in the worst way. Zooming farther back I saw that the eye was part of the Statue of Liberty. Then the face morphed into a woman with jet-black hair who was screaming. And finally, there was a huge, black hand that punched through the statue's chest and ripped out its heart. And it was still beating. Then I woke up."

Giles was more than a bit concerned. While Slayer dreams could be vague and confusing, rarely were they ever as grisly as what he had heard.

"That's quite disturbing, to say the least," he replied, after only a few moments of silence. "The woman in your dream may be an actual person. We have to find out."

"Maybe Willow could check the police records, or the morgue database. You know, a nice little unauthorized entry?"

"Would that I could, Buffy. But this is New York, not Sunnydale. More money, more resources, more security. Even if I tried, someone would be alerted to it and respond in no time." Willow knew what she was talking about. Before going uber-witch she made a pretty decent turn as hacker. Of course, hacking in a town as oblivious as Sunnydale and hacking in one of the biggest and most important cities in the world were two different things.

"Well, it seems we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way: newspapers, obituaries section, headlines..." Giles said.

"Already on it," Willow replied as she typed furiously on her keyboard. "I'll check all homicides in the New York area in the past month, see what comes up. Maybe something made the front... wow, that was quick."

"What is it, Will?" Buffy asked.

"Well there seems to have been a particularly grisly murder about three weeks ago. Police identified a Marie Valakesh, 32, as the victim. She owned a health food store on the Upper West Side. They say that her heart had been cut out."

"That might be our dream lady. We won't know until we ask around," Buffy replied.

"Agreed," said Giles. "Willow, perhaps you can continue searching on the clues to Buffy's dream while Buffy and I ask around."

"No problem. I'll call if I find anything."

"Likewise," said Giles.

He had hoped that, maybe, just maybe, this case might be an easy one. Fate could be generous in this instance and set it on a silver platter for them. Then they could be on their way to Europe and away for awhile.

Of course, Buffy knew that fate being generous to them was like a vampire going on a diet of pig's blood. Once, maybe twice, but after that she knew that any other chance would be a long shot.