CHAPTER 2
Buffy Summers stood near the edge of the enormous crater where the city of Sunnydale had stood until a few minutes before. As the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign tottered at the very edge and then fell in, she realized numbly that perhaps Spike's departing soul- the very same soul he had struggled and fought to get back, specifically for her- had knocked it over on his way out of town, as a final farewell.
"You're not the one and only Chosen anymore," Faith told her. "Just gotta live like a person. How's that feel?"
"Yeah, Buffy," Dawn said. "What are we going to do now?"
Not the one and only Chosen anymore. The thought brought a bittersweet smile to her face. After seven years, the weight of the world had finally lifted off her shoulders. Or at least had started to be distributed among several other Chosen ones. She could let go.
But letting go also caused her emotional barriers to collapse; in addition, the fact that she had just run along rooftops and leapt from building to building for at least a half mile to catch up to a speeding schoolbus, after having her abdomen run through with a literal broadsword from Hell, caught up to her. She burst into tears and collapsed into the arms of the person closest to her proximally, physically and emotionally; Dawn's knees buckled momentarily under the sudden weight of her sister, but she quickly straightened up and held her tight, and then the two people next closest to her, Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris, joined in holding and comforting Buffy.
"It's okay, Buffy," Dawn whispered. "It's over." And then the reality of their losses hit her too. She knew that both Spike and Anya had failed to escape the collapsing Hellmouth, as well as Amanda, the only Sunnydale native and her closest friend among the other Slayers. The home they had lived in for the past seven years, their mother's grave, everything they'd owned that they weren't wearing or carrying with them, was at the bottom of that crater. Dawn instantly regretted her flippant remark about fighting on the wrong side because they'd destroyed the Sunnydale Mall, and joined in Buffy's loud sobbing. And she knew better than to ask Buffy if it was "happy crying".
Rupert Giles stepped in and joined the group hug, reaching in and stroking Buffy on the back and kissing her on the forehead. The very fact that he was doing this indicated to the others that this was something different, that things perhaps would never be the same.
Buffy looked around, searching among the faces of her sister and closest friends and the others standing around the school bus. They'd gone into the Hellmouth with thirty three Potentials and emerged with no more than a dozen.
"Anya," she whispered. "Where's Anya?"
"She didn't make it," Xander said with his voice cracking.
"Oh, God! I'm so sorry, Xander!" She hugged him as they cried into each other's shoulders.
"It wasn't your fault, Buffy," Xander tried to reassure her.
Giles stepped back from the huddle. He let the others just stand there and cry for as long as he could stand it- which was for about two minutes- then gently prodded them toward the bus. "We need to go. Wood and several of the others need to get to the hospital."
The others nodded and moved toward the bus, still sobbing occasionally. As Giles and Xander started to boost the others up to the rear bumper and open rear door, they all heard the sound of another vehicle approaching from the front and then stepped around to the left side of the bus to look. Speeding up the oncoming lane of the highway was a green Army Humvee. After it braked to a halt alongside the bus, four soldiers in woodland BDUs, helmets and web gear, with M-16s slung on their shoulders, stepped out. The one who had been in the front passenger seat approached Giles.
"Captain Kranich, California Army National Guard," he introduced himself. "Can we be of assistance?"
"Yes," Giles nodded. "We have a number of injured on the bus. One man with a severe sta- puncture wound in the abdomen, a couple with what appear to be concussions, a few others with severe cuts."
"Are you all right, Miss?" Captain Kranich squinted at the bloody cuts on both the front and back of Buffy's blouse where she'd been skewered by one of the Ubervamps.
"It looks worse than it is," Buffy reassured him; although her quick-healing Slayer power made that true, she was still feeling the loss of blood. "The others on the bus are worse off than me."
Captain Kranich walked around the front and stepped up the side entrance of the bus and took in the scene. Robin Wood was now laid out flat in the aisle, barely conscious with Faith and Vi tending to his wounds; Chao Ahn had lapsed into unconsciousness in her seat and Rona was barely managing to keep from doing so herself. Kranich took a headcount, stepped back out and went back to the Humvee. Buffy, Giles, Dawn, Willow, Xander and Andrew stood around as he reached for the hand mike to his radio.
"Delta Six Two, this is Yankee Seven Niner, over," he called.
"Go ahead, Yankee Seven Niner," a voice replied on the radio speaker.
"I'm at the edge of the crater on Highway Five Seven. We have a school bus with twenty survivors, some of them wounded. We're gonna need a Dustoff for about five or six patients, including one with a severe gut wound and two with head injuries. Over."
"Roger," the voice replied. "Dustoff for five or six wounded including gut wound and head injuries. Over."
Kranich pulled out a handheld GPS monitor from his cargo pocket, then gave their coordinates. The voice at the operations center read them back for confirmation.
"Medevac helicopter's on the way," Kranich told Buffy and her companions. "Were there any other survivors you were aware of that might have made it out?"
"As far as I know, we were the last ones left in town," Giles replied.
"That's what I'm assuming," Kranich nodded. "To tell you the truth, I was surprised there was anyone left in town. We came in Thursday after the Power Company shut down and have been patrolling the streets, and haven't seen anyone."
"Yes," Giles nodded. "The Seismology Department wanted us to keep getting the readings to the last possible moment, and I'm afraid we cut it too close."
"You should've checked in with us when we arrived."
"Sorry, Captain," Giles said dryly. "No offense, nothing personal, but you would have tried to force us out of town, and I really wasn't looking forward to precipitating a shoving contest up at the State Capitol between the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Adjutant General."
"Got a point there," Kranich shrugged. "You didn't lose any people, did you?"
"No," Giles said quickly. It was one more boldface lie on top of the first ones, but one that they couldn't afford not to tell.
It wasn't more than a couple of minutes later that the reverberant muttering of a helicopter in flight could be heard. Echoes off the bottom and far side of the crater made its source hard to place, but before long, a dot became visible in the sky a few miles down the highway, and it grew into a Blackhawk helicopter. Soon it was close enough for them to notice the red cross on the nosecone, and it touched down on the highway, close enough so that the bus and Humvee were just outside the arc of its rotor blades.
Six medics in nomex flight suits jumped out carrying collapsible canvas litters and aid bags and, at Captain Kranich's direction, went into the bus by the side entrance. After a few minutes of working on the injured, they carried Robin, Chao Ahn and Rona on litters out the open rear door, and were followed by Julianna, one of the more recently arrived Slayers, whose head and one arm were now bandaged but still bleeding, and Tracie, who had a long bandage across her ribcage. Faith walked alongside Robin's litter holding up a plasma bag with an IV tube that ran into his arm.
"I'm going with them!" she shouted to Giles and the others over the idling helicopter engine. "They're taking them to St. Francis Hospital in Ventura!"
"All right," Giles shouted back. "We'll catch up to you there!"
The medics carried the three litter-borne wounded into the Blackhawk while other crewmen assisted the three other Slayers aboard. After they were strapped in, the helicopter engine powered up and it lifted off, kicking up a small dust storm as it turned around and headed back in the direction it had come from.
"You folks going to be okay?" Captain Kranich asked as the helicopter noises diminished.
"We should be able to make it to Ventura," Giles nodded. "Thanks so much for the help!"
"Glad we could help." As Kranich stepped back to the Humvee and reached for his radio mike, they piled into the bus. As she stood in the open rear doorway, Buffy made sure Kranich and the other Guardsmen had their backs to them before reaching for the Scythe where she'd left it on the roof.
"Okay," Xander put up his cheerful front as the bus doors were closed, "since Robin's on the chopper, who's gonna drive this big boy? Let's see. We've got the one-eyed ex-carpenter with no depth perception, the Englishman who let his California license expire, the witch who's still woozy after sending her Slayer-activating mojo all over the world, the Slayer who's trying to pretend she's not about to keel over after being shish-kebabed and who routinely jumps curbs and knocks over mailboxes when she's perfectly healthy and sober, or the sixteen year old with the provisional license who's not supposed to be driving other teenagers around!"
Giles rolled his eyes. "I'll drive, Xander. If we get pulled over, I'll tell them I lost my license in the crater. I believe an entire city disappearing into a crater constitutes enough of an emergency for them to let me slide."
"All yours, G-man!" Xander stepped aside and let Giles pass him in the aisle. As Giles took the driver's seat and started the engine, he joined Willow in the back row of seats with Buffy and Dawn across the aisle from them. The four of them knelt on top of the seats looking out the back windows as Giles threw the bus in gear. In the next seat forward from Xander and Willow, Andrew- the only other Sunnydale permanent resident on the bus- did the same. None of them could see that Giles was nearly as thoughtfully fixated on the crater in his rearview mirrors.
The road out of town was a straight, flat stretch that ran through the desert for several miles before rising up over a gently sloping ridge, so the enormous crater stayed in view, diminishing in apparent size at a very slow rate, for nearly twenty minutes. In that time, there were several sniffles and occasional sobs from the five erstwhile Sunnydale residents in the rear, and otherwise dead silence aboard the bus. The two Summers sisters put their arms around each other for mutual comfort, and Willow and Xander did the same with Willow resting her head on Xander's shoulder. A few rows forward, Kennedy looked at the two of them with a hint of jealousy but said nothing. She knew she would never be part of that inner circle.
It was relatively quiet in the Emergency Room at St. Francis Hospital by the time they got there; the staff had been expecting many more casualties from the "earthquake" in Sunnydale, even though the city had been almost completely evacuated. The triage team at the entrance almost breathed a sigh of relief as the half-dozen new Slayers with minor cuts and bruises came in with Giles, who reassured the team that these were likely the last casualties to be coming in. The remaining new Slayers, Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Xander and Andrew brought up the rear.
As Buffy saw the triage team looking the wounded Slayers over, she scanned around anxiously, then grabbed Dawn by the elbow and pulled her into the women's lavatory nearest the entrance.
"What?" Dawn asked.
"Here's where our being able to borrow each other's clothes all the time pays off!" Buffy said. "Let's swap tops!"
Dawn thought for a second, looking at the bloody cuts on her sister's top, then nodded. "I get it!" As the two sisters peeled off their blouses, they both looked at Buffy's wounds, the bleeding from which was down to trickles.
"Score one for quick-healing Slayer powers!" Buffy smiled.
"So how come the others aren't healing up like this?"
"Don't know. Good question."
They emerged with Buffy wearing Dawn's charcoal top and Dawn wearing Buffy's bloodstained tan peasant blouse. As they took seats in the waiting area with the triage team members looking over the injured new arrivals, one team member noticed them and approached Dawn.
"Do you need help, Miss? That looks pretty serious."
"Oh, no," Dawn smiled quickly, pulling up the blouse to expose her midsection. "It's not my blood."
The newly arrived wounded were taken to various treatment bays in the ER. The uninjured and Buffy looked up at a TV in the waiting room and saw that, not surprisingly, regular programming had been interrupted by coverage of the Sunnydale quake. A FEMA spokesperson, a National Guard colonel and a US Geological Survey representative were interviewed successively; they indicated that while the entire city of Sunnydale had fallen into a sinkhole about 150 feet at its deepest point, there had been no reported loss of life. There were some injuries among a seismology team from UC Sunnydale who had stayed until the last possible second, while the Guard troops patrolling the city had escaped with no casualties. The Geological Survey member commented that while there has never been a statistically significant correlation of small tremors predicting large quakes, it was uncannily fortunate that the municipal government and residents of Sunnydale had unilaterally decided to evacuate the town over a series of tremors that barely registered on the seismographs. The camera then returned to the FEMA spokesperson, who added that the fact that this quake had been anticipated by the Sunnydale residents precluded the likelihood that this was an act of terrorism.
"We should call Grandma and Grandpa," Dawn said to Buffy. "I'm sure they're worried."
"And Dad." Buffy nodded.
"Well, Dad can wait," Dawn said with a hint of bitterness. "We waited for seven months to hear from him after Mom died."
"You waited for seven months. I was dead for a good part of that, and apparently being impersonated by Spike's former sex toy," Buffy replied, managing a thin smile even though this was bringing back memories of what was arguably the most painful part of both their lives. "But you're right. Dad probably assumes we evacuated with the rest of the town. But Grandma and Grandpa will definitely be worried since they know the whole story."
"I'll call," Dawn said as she started to stand. "I left the cell phones on the bus"
"Wait!" Buffy held her wrist and motioned for her to sit back down. "You have your cell phone?"
"Cell phones. Yours, Willow's and Xander's too. And our wallets, except for Xander's which he has. I had them in my weapons bag. It was the last thing I grabbed on the way out of the high school with Xander."
"We went to fight the First Evil and its Ubervamps at the Hellmouth, and you took all our cell phones and wallets with you?" Buffy mused. "Dawnie, you're a lifesaver!"
"Drivers licenses, passports, school ID, credit cards and ATM cards," Dawn nodded, then shot a glance at Willow sitting with Xander on Buffy's other side. "I never leave home without mine. Not since Willow did that kerflooey amnesia spell and you and I ended up being Joan and Umad!"
"Hey!" Willow interjected with mock indignation, "You keep bringing that up, and I'm gonna tell your grandmother you said her name was 'so blah!'"
"Yes!" Buffy taunted. "You 'Uck!'-ed Grandma's name! I'm telling!"
"Hey!" Dawn gestured toward Willow, "We were all under your amnesia spell! There's no way I could've remembered that Joan was Grandma's name!"
"I did," Buffy said smugly. "At least on a subconscious level, if I named myself after her."
"Nuh uh!" Dawn shot back. "You said you felt like a Joan. You were having this young-female-warrior-martyr Joan of Arc complex thing!"
"Whatever. But you still 'Uck!'-ed the name Joan."
Faith then entered the ER waiting room from an interior hallway and spotted them.
"Robin and Tracie are in surgery," she told them. "Chao Ahn's in ICU, still unconscious, Rona and Julianna are being kept for observation."
"Everyone else who's been seriously hurt is being tended to," Buffy said.
"Well," Dawn said, "while we're waiting, I may as well get the phones."
Except for the sounds of the TV, which was still covering the news of the earthquake and sinkhole, there was a tense, stony silence throughout the McDade home. Carl Kolchak sat on the couch holding Joan's hand, trying his best to comfort her while knowing as well as she did what could have happened to their granddaughters in Sunnydale. Their daughter Polly knew what was going on, while son-in-law Matt and their kids had some vague, half-disbelieved suspicions about what might be happening to Buffy and Dawn and their friends. There was a flash of hope at the word of a busload of survivors getting out of Sunnydale. The hopes dimmed somewhat when it was reported that the survivors were from a seismology team; Carl said nothing, but knew that being a seismology team was just the kind of cover story that Rupert Giles would make up.
Everyone started when the cell phone rang inside the jacket pocket of Carl's seersucker suit. All eyes turned to him as he pulled it out and looked at the Caller ID. He tensed up as he read: "Summers D".
"Hello. Dawnie?" he said.
"Grandpa!" Dawn's voice replied.
"Are you all right, Sweetheart? Where are you?"
"I'm okay, Grandpa. Buffy got hurt but she's healing real fast, she's right here. She didn't even bother to see a doctor."
"Thank God!" Carl sighed, then turned to the rest of the family. "Dawn and Buffy are okay." They sighed with relief, and he said back on the phone: "Everyone else make it out okay? Where are you?"
"We're at a hospital in Ventura," Dawn replied, then her voice became more tremulous. "We lost Spike and Anya, and over twenty of the Potentials including my friend Amanda."
"I'm so sorry, Dawnie!" Carl shut his eyes momentarily. He'd gotten to know Anya and most of the Potentials, but he was feeling the loss of Spike above all the others; over three decades earlier, a soul-less and pre-chip Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody, and a much younger Kolchak the Night Stalker had tried to kill each other at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. But like opposing warriors years after the end of their war, upon their reunion a few weeks ago they found themselves sharing a special bond, made even stronger by the fact that it was Spike's feelings for Kolchak's newfound granddaughter that had sent him on his torturous quest to regain his soul. Spike and Buffy may not have described themselves as being in love, but the old man knew that it was at least something very close to it. "How did you get to Ventura?" he said after he was able to continue. "Do you have transportation?"
"Yeah. We got out in a school bus."
"Why don't you all come down here? How many of you are there?"
"Twenty in all, but at least five are staying in the hospital," Dawn replied.
"Can the rest of you come down here to Glendale? Your Grandma and I have a suite with a second bedroom that you and Buffy can have, and we'll see about other vacancies in the hotel."
"I'd like that, Grandpa." Dawn's voice began to tremble. "I guess that's up to Buffy and Giles."
"Can you put Buffy on?" Carl asked.
"Yeah. She's right here."
"Hi, Grandpa!" Buffy's voice came up a second later, steadier than Dawn's but sounding very tired.
"Buffy, are you all right? Dawnie says you got hurt."
"Got a sword through my gut, but it's healing."
Carl winced. The fact that she was the Slayer didn't make it any less painful hearing his granddaughter tell him that. "Buffy, Dawn just told me about Spike and Anya. I'm so sorry."
"Me too."
"Spike was my friend too."
"I know, Grandpa."
Carl wanted to ask what happened but could tell that Buffy wasn't in any mood to talk about it. "Buffy, why don't you and Dawn and the others come down here to Glendale?"
"Sounds like a good idea, Grandpa. I'll ask Giles."
"Is he around?" Carl asked. "Let me talk to him."
In the ER waiting room, Buffy handed the cell phone over to Giles. "Grandpa wants to talk to you."
"Hello, Carl."
"Giles, how are you?"
"I got through pretty well unscathed," Giles replied. "I'm one of the luckier ones."
"What the hell happened?"
"It was a costly but brilliant idea of Buffy's actually," Giles said, stepping away from the others and keeping his voice barely above a whisper. "We figured out how to empower all the Potentials in the world, turn them all into Slayers, then the ones who were with us did a preemptive raid into the Hellmouth."
Carl shot a quick but knowing glance at Colette who was sitting on the floor next to her siblings. "I see. Apparently it worked."
"Not exactly. It's a rather long story. I'll give you the details the next time I see you."
"Speaking of which, I was suggesting to Buffy and Dawn that all of you come down here to Glendale. I'll see about vacancies at the hotel where Joan and I are staying."
"Actually, that may be our only viable option, Carl. I started asking around, and it seems that a rather large part of the population of Sunnydale ended up here in Ventura after the exodus. Hotel room vacancies are rather scarce here."
"It's settled then. We're at the Harwood Terrace, Room 802. Near the Harwood Avenue exit on Highway 143. Actually we're at Buffy and Dawn's aunt's house right now, but we'll be at the hotel by the time you get there."
"Don't know when we'll get there, though. We're not sure how many of our wounded will be staying here yet."
"Call and let us know just before you leave," Carl said.
"I'll do that, Carl."
"Thanks. Giles. Could you put Buffy and Dawn back on? Joan and Polly are anxious to talk to them."
Carl muted the phone as he turned to his wife and daughter. "Spike and Anya didn't make it," he said grimly. "I don't know any more details, and I don't think either of the girls are ready to talk about it."
Pauline had overheard Carl mentioning the loss earlier and was already crying, feeling the pain almost as much as her father. Spike had, after all, helped Dawn and Buffy save her life the last time she was in Sunnydale.
In the ER in Ventura, as Dawn took her cell phone back from Giles and she and Buffy exchanged words of comfort and reassurance with their grandmother and aunt, Faith put her hand on Giles' shoulder.
"I want to stay here with Robin and the girls that are being admitted," she told him.
"That would probably be a good idea, if we can find you a room here in Ventura," Giles nodded. "I have a feeling that with their Slayer powers activated, some of the girls will be having what the staff here will consider miraculous recoveries over the next few days. In the meantime, the rest of us are going on to Buffy's and Dawn's grandparents in Glendale."
"Oh, yeah," Faith nodded. "The other gals told me about them. Grandpa's some old guy who was a reporter turned vamp-hunter back in the sixties and seventies, then struck it rich when they made his papers into a TV show. Way before my time."
"That's right."
"And he worked for the Council, too, right?"
"As a part-time consultant," Giles nodded. "As an American, he was hardly an insider."
"Big surprise," Faith nodded sarcastically, "considering the way those jerks treated B."
"Actually," Giles replied, "the Council never realized they were related. Carl's wife took Joyce and her sister away from him and changed their last name right after he killed his first vampire."
"So it turns out vamp-hunting is the family business," Faith mused.
"Yes," Giles nodded. "Seems to be more than just a coincidence as to why she was Chosen."
"And why the Brat grew up to be such an ass-kicker without being chosen," Faith shot a glance toward Dawn.
"Yes, well, I've got my own theory about that. It might not be wise to let her hear you call her 'the Brat'!"
Faith frowned and raised her eyebrows.
"How's this for irony?" Buffy mused as she and Dawn took back their drivers licenses and passports and handed the forms they had just signed to the bank officer. "I struggle for a year and a half to make ends meet, slinging burgers at the Doublemeat Palace and then counseling part-time, then our filthy rich Grandpa- who we didn't even know was still alive- shows up and gives us a half million dollars each, just as we get into a situation where money meant nothing!"
"I rather think of it as an object lesson in what really matters in life, more than irony," Giles said in his usual dry manner, sitting beside the two sisters. As he said so, the bank officer left the desk and stepped over to the vault.
"Well, the money means something now," Dawn said. "It's just now sinking in that I'm half a millionaire!"
"No, it started sinking in for you a couple of weeks ago when you started shopping around for a Mercedes like Grandpa's!" Buffy replied, half teasingly, "Which, if you had gone ahead with it, would be buried at the bottom of the crater with everything else we owned!"
"Well, it's good to know that we're putting up the cash for everyone's new needs and it's barely putting a dent in what we have in the bank."
"And I assure you," Giles said, "that the Council will be good for the reimbursement. As soon as the waiting period for unfreezing its assets passes. And Buffy, once we establish the fair living allowance for each Slayer, you'll be getting seven years worth retroactive."
"Giles, that's not even on my radar right now," Buffy replied.
They returned to the bus with Dawn carrying a zippered canvas money bag.
"Listen up, everyone!" Giles called out, and everyone else silenced. "We're going to the Wal-Mart up the street. Dawn and Buffy are going to hand out four hundred dollars to each of you. That should be enough to buy everyone his or her own basic necessities, a few changes of clothing, underwear, shoes, outerwear, toiletries."
Author's note: yes, I know there's no Wal-Mart in Ventura. I also know there's also no Highway 143 or Harwood Avenue or Harwood Terrace Hotel in Glendale. This is fiction!
An hour and a half later, the Sunnydale entourage emerged from the Wal-Mart. They had drawn a lot of strange looks and whispers from the other shoppers and the store employees, particularly those wearing bandages and/or bloody clothing; Dawn in particular drew a lot of attention until she and Buffy slipped into a dressing room in Women's Wear and swapped back to their original tops, and then most of the attention shifted back to Buffy. The stares and whispers heightened as the entourage went through the checkout and congregated at the front of the store, but when Giles left them and then drove up to the door in the bus with "SUNNYDALE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT" on its sides, the whispers suddenly turned into a stunned, awed, almost reverent silence and stillness.
They all got back on the bus, and Giles turned back and went the short distance to one of the pricier motels, a few blocks from the hospital. Giles stopped in the parking lot a distance from the main entrance as Faith stepped forward to the front exit.
"It's the only vacant suite we could find," Giles told her. "Rather upscale, but the money Buffy and Dawn gave you should be more than enough to cover the rental until we can come back for you, plus the expenses for Wood and the girls when they get discharged."
"Thanks," Faith said, then turned to the two Summers sisters who were now in the seat directly behind Giles. "Thanks, B. Thanks... Dawnie."
Dawn raised her eyebrows at Faith's use of her diminutive nickname as Buffy gave Faith a quick hug, and then Dawn did the same. "Take care, Faith," Dawn said.
"We'll be back soon," Buffy said. "Keep us posted on Robin and the girls. You have our cell phone numbers, right?"
"Yeah," Faith nodded.
"You keep a low profile," Giles cautioned her. "You are still an escaped convict."
"Like I have to be reminded?" Faith rolled her eyes back.
"Let me work on that," Giles said with an attempt at reassurance. "There may be an opportunity here with the collapse of Sunnydale. If we can somehow convince the state that you were buried in the crater, they'll stop looking for you. And we'll work on creating a new identity for you."
"Oh!" Buffy said, half serious, half sarcastic. "You should talk to our grandma about that!"
"Yeah!" Dawn added. "Grandma, AKA Mrs. Carl Kolchak, AKA Mrs. Kirk Wilson! She pulled it off for forty-one years."
"And would have kept right on pulling it off if Grandpa hadn't come back in the picture!" Buffy smiled.
"I'll keep that in mind," Faith nodded.
"Anyway, the suite is reserved under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Robin Wood," Giles said.
"Hey, not so fast!" Faith laughed, then turned and waved to the others further rearward. "Later, guys!"
The others shouted back their goodbyes. Giles closed the bus door behind her, but waited until she was inside the hotel lobby before driving off and heading back toward the freeway.
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