Chapter Four – Meeting Someone New

Olivia was sitting back in her chair in Buffy and Dawn's room. Buffy, Dawn and Alex had been spending the past few minutes explaining about Slayers and Demons. She wasn't certain what to think. Either the world was far stranger than she ever believed or her friend had somehow gotten herself hired as legal advisor to a bunch of lunatics.

But she couldn't think of any other explanation for what she saw and felt in the gym. She'd seen people strung out on PCP and all other manner of drugs. None of them could move as fast and with as much grace as those girls displayed. And she'd never seen anything like Buffy outside of a movie. Then Buffy had projected the Slayer at her. She had never felt anything remotely similar in her life.

"I'm sorry to hit you with all this at once Olivia," Alex said.

"Why now?" Olivia said. "You've been missing for almost ten months."

"I told you," Alex said. "I didn't want to get married without you here. My finance was rather insistent about that. Said he was tired of me moping around about missing my friends and told me to invite you."

"So who is this guy?"

"Actually, you've met him," Alex replied.

"I have?"

"Xander Harris," Alex said. "You and Elliot interviewed him at Guardian's New York office."

"The eye patch guy?" Olivia said. She remembered the man from her interview.

Alex smiled. "That's the one. I met him the second day I was here. We didn't start dating until after New Years. He proposed three weeks ago."

"Short engagement," Olivia said.

"I know," Alex replied. "But this just feels right. Neither of us wants a big huge complicated ceremony. We want something small that we can share with our friends. That why he insisted we get you here."

"It's lucky you changed your mind about coming," Dawn said. "Another day and we would have been forced to go with plan B."

"Plan B?" Olivia said.

Buffy cut in. "No need to discuss that. It wasn't necessary."

"Why do I have the feeling there's story there," Olivia said suspiciously.

"Let's just say Plan B would have left little doubt in your mind about the existence of magic and leave it at that," Dawn said.

"Xander really wanted to be here when you arrived," Alex said. "But he's downtown right now dealing with the zoning board and getting permits to do the renovations to the second floor."

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," Dawn said.

"Wait ..." Buffy started.

But the door had already opened. Olivia turned to see who was there. She was on her feet in a second and instinctively reaching for where her gun would normally be.

"Ms Winters."

"What is it Clem?" Alex said. "I thought I said I didn't want to be disturbed."

Olivia was still staring. This was just one shock too many. 'Clem' looked over at her.

"Oh, you must be Olivia," Clem said. "Ms Winters has told me a lot about you," he reached out to shake Olivia's hand.

"What are you?" Olivia said, taking another step back.

"She hasn't quite processed everything Clem," Dawn said.

"I understand," Clem lowered his hand. He looked down at the floor and started shuffling his feet. It looked like someone had hurt his feelings.

"I'm, uh, sorry. Uh. Clem is it?" Olivia wasn't quite sure what to say. "What are you?"

"I'm Clem," he replied. "I work here part time as a gopher."

"You work here?" Olivia said. Her brain still hadn't quite caught up to events.

"Yea," he said. "Mostly in Ms Winters department. I help get stuff from the library, fetch coffee for people, deliver messages and do other stuff. Ms Winters is pretty tough, but she's been a good boss."

"Speaking of your job Clem," Alex said. "Why did you come up here?"

"Oh, sorry, forgot," Clem said embarrassed. "Tessa called. She said they found where the bodies are buried but they still need a way to lead the police to them so they can nail DeCastro."

"Call her back and tell her to e-mail everything she knows about the location," Alex said. "I'll try and get something too them by tomorrow morning. DeCastro can't summon another demon until next week, so we've got time."

"Gotcha," Clem said. "Nice meeting you Olivia. Hope you stay around for the wedding," Clem waved and then left.

"And that was Clem," Buffy said. "I sensed him outside. I should have told him to stay there. Sorry about that."

"No problem," Olivia said. Ok her friend wasn't a lunatic. Although she was no longer certain about herself. She felt her hands start to shake.

Alex got up from the couch and helped Olivia sit down again.

"Feeling Ok?" Alex asked. "Buffy explained it all to me before I got here. But I wasn't real until I saw my first actual demon."

"I'm really don't know how I feel," Olivia said. "This is all real. You aren't just a bunch lunatics."

"There are a lot of people that would dispute our sanity," Dawn said. "But this is all real."

"What are you doing here Alex?" Olivia stared at her friend. "Why would these people need an ex-ADA?"

"Actually this thing with DeCastro is a perfect example of why they hired me," Alex said. "Brian DeCastro is murderer. But he uses magic to kill people. The police can't do anything to link the crime back to him. Which means they can't touch him legally."

Olivia looked at Buffy. "So one of your Slayers would go out and kill him."

"No," Buffy said forcefully. "Slayers are not killers. Generally speaking we avoid stuff that deals with humans and stick to demons. And even there, as you've seen with Clem, we don't just randomly kill. Slayers exist to protect life. Not take it. Yes, we can kill if we have too, to protect another life. But it's not something that any Slayer takes well. Even when it's justified."

"But there are still humans out there killing people with magic," Alex said. "They need to be stopped and the police don't have the resources to do it. So they hired me to help them come up with ways to stop people like that legally."

"And how do you do that?" Olivia asked.

"DeCastro's killed nine people over the past year," Dawn explained. "The problem is he's had air tight alibis for each murder. The police are certain he's behind them, because everyone whose been killed is either been a business rival or someone DeCastro had a grudge against. They figure he hired someone to do the job. But they can't find any evidence to prove it. No money trail, no phone records, nothing. And they won't."

"Why not?" Olivia asked.

"Because he's using demons to commit the murders," Alex said.

"Specifically he's using Emoately Demons," Dawn said. "They live in a parallel dimension. At specific points in time DeCastro can summon one to appear at a location of his choosing and kill his intended target. The demon then pops back into it's home dimension and the police are left with nothing. All the while DeCastro's at some party with the town mayor or some other prominent citizen smiling away in front of dozens of unimpeachable witnesses. Following us so far?"

"Not really," Olivia said. "But go ahead and continue."

"Here's the thing," Dawn said. "We can't get him for these murders. But we might be able to help the police nail for the other murders he committed. In order to gain the power to summon Emoately demons, DeCastro had to sacrifice three lives. And in order to maintain the link, he had to leave something of himself with each body. Usually a tuft of hair and some blood."

"When Andre presented that to me I told the Slayers Buffy had sent to investigate the murders to find those three victims,"Alex said. "If we can lead to police to them, in a way that's legal and doesn't trample on DeCastro's civil rights, then the police can arrest him for those murders. We won't get justice for his current victims, but DeCastro will still spend the rest of his life in jail."

"As an added bonus, as soon as the bodies are uncovered and the linking items removed, DeCastro can't summon anymore demons," Dawn explained.

"And you do this all the time?" Olivia looked at her friend.

"Pretty much," Alex replied. "Most of time its not as cut and dried as this situation," she looked over at Buffy. "We've had a lot of fights about how best to deal with some situations. Although I can honestly say I haven't had that many dull days here."

"I need to sit down," Olivia said.

"You are sitting down," Buffy said.

"Then maybe I need to lie down."

Alex smiled. "I am sorry to do this to you Olivia. I've been here for almost a year now and there are still days when it gets overwhelming."

"I've been doing this for thirteen years," Buffy said. "And I still get surprised."

Thirteen years, Olivia thought. Buffy said she was called when she was fifteen. What kind of universe throws a fifteen-year-old girl into this?

"The next time Captain Cragen tells me to go do something normal I'm going to shoot him."