Faith was starting to understand that she was meant to die here.

Most of her memories had returned, even the gun barrel jammed into her eyeball. She dreamed of that over and over. Sometimes she deflected the bullet off her eye socket, or knocked the gunman's hand away with bits of a moment to spare. That must be the brain damage talking; she couldn't have done that.

They should have released her by now, if they were ever going to. It wasn't as if her eye was going to grow back too. Instead she was stuck prowling the hospital's halls, sometimes chatting with the kid who would only call herself Shoat. Faith had found her chart, which said she was Cora Gleisan, but she refused to acknowledge the name.

Shoat spent most of her time in the long-term care ward talking to little old ladies on their deathbeds, or in the morgue, but she usually would speak to Faith too. She said Faith was an "instrument of death", which was creepy as all get-out, but she ate up Faith's tales of slayage. Faith tried to gloss over working for the Mayor, but before long the kid had weaseled it out of her. She didn't seem to mind, which was crazy of her.

For five days, that was life-hanging out with Shoat, jawing about old times, winning an arm-wrestling contest by a lot less than she expected, and wondering when whoever had tried to kill her would come back to finish the job.

On the sixth day Faith crawled out of bed feeling unusually cranky. She had a lot of stamina, but she'd never been able to match Buffy's ability to run on basically zero sleep. She'd never quite matched Buffy in anything, and for all that Giles had reassured her that she'd improve with time, it had eaten away at her.

The hospital was quiet. Faith checked the clock. She must be resuming the night life; either she was up early or she'd slept the day away.

Good odds what had woken her, though. Something felt off. Danger. It was about time. She slipped over to the door and inched it open.

"Hi," said Shoat.

"Jesus, kid!" Faith said after she was back in her skin. "You shouldn't be out of bed. It's after eleven."

"You are."

Faith decided not to argue. "Look, kid, someone wants to kill me. Stay up if you want, but go back to your room, okay?"

"If that's them, you're too late." Damn, the kid's tone was ice-cold! She was right, though. A M'Fashnik demon came around the corner, flanked by three humans with rifles. How'd they get those in here?

Well, if that was all...no, it wouldn't be all. Not if it was the same person who'd called the first hit. "Shoat, just run!" The gunmen opened fire. Faith grabbed up a stack of trays, holding them at an angle as they shook and sprayed bits of plastic.

Shoat didn't run, and she didn't hide, either. She scooped up a pen from the nurse's desk-ino, kid, what the hell?/i-and flung it at one of the gunmen.

It sank into his left eye, and he dropped.

The remaining gunmen turned to fire at Shoat. Faith flung the trays at one, and he went down. The other put a bullet in Shoat's chest.

She didn't fall. She made a face-it clearly hurt-but Shoat didn't fall. Must not have hit anything immediately vital.

Shoat picked up the tray table and slammed the gunman in the face with it, knocking him over. She should have been on the floor after that, crying in pain, even with the adrenaline.

There was really only one thing she could be, Faith concluded. Faith had died, just for a few moments, and...

Shoat bent down and sank her teeth into the fallen man's neck.

"Hey! Hey, what the hell, kid?" Faith seized her by the shoulder and tried to pull her away. Damn, the kid was strong! Faith found knotted muscles and taut tendons. It took a serious effort to yank her up off the man.

Shoat had his gun, and the M'Fashnik was nowhere in sight.

The girl wasn't a vampire. Faith had felt her pulse, could hear her quick but steady breathing. She had also seen fangs. What the hell was this kid?

"No guns," Faith warned. That had been Buffy's rule, not hers, but Buffy was the good Slayer, and Faith the bad one, and this kid definitely needed a good example to follow.

"You're nuts," Shoat said. "They're trying to kill us." The gun wasn't that much shorter than she was!

The M'Fashnik demon came back around the corner, this time with two more of his own kind and two Fyarls. Shit, this was no good. Shoat might be a Slayer-she was definitely a isomething/i-but she was totally untrained.

Shoat lifted the rifle, her eyes colder than any ice as she stood among the fallen bodies. It could never work. The demons were built to take punishment, the Fyarl could only be killed by silver, and at least two of the humans weren't even dead!

Shoat lifted the barrel, pressed it against a M'Fashnik forehead, and, in utter silence, a twisted grin plastered on her face, began to squeeze the trigger. The demons broke and ran.

"Shit," Faith breathed. "I've got to try that."

Shoat sank to her knees and drank again. This time, Faith was too unnerved to stop her. She finished off the fallen men, though Faith was sure the one she'd hit had no more than a concussion.

"Those things will be back for you, won't they?"

"Well, yeah, they will. But kid, I can take care of myself." Maybe she could. Even if she couldn't, she didn't want Shoat-Cora!-doing whatever she was doing to herself over it.

"Is that how you ended up here, shot in the head?" Shoat closed her eyes. A shudder ran through her body. "I hear them. Their voices...they whisper to me. They tell me what I can do. Like this." Shoat quivered like an arrow hitting its target, and a gash sprang into being on her throat, as if unseen claws were flaying her.

Faith grabbed her by the shoulders. "Stop it, Cora! What the hell? What idid/i you do?"

The girl looked through her. "You can't call me that. It's not my name anymore. But I was calling for help."

"Help? From where? That's no way to get help from anything good, kiddo."

Shoat met her eyes this time. "From the morgue."

What in the hell? Surely she didn't mean what that sounded like. Thump. Scrape. Okay. Maybe she did. Wait. "Kid, the morgue's three floors down."

"Close enough," Shoat said. "Besides, trauma care and the ICU are right beneath us. We do need to try and get down to them. They'll try to reach me but if they don't find stairs right away they'll try to smash through their ceiling."

Faith blinked. "Ok then, we better get going." Did she mean that she'd raised every dead body between them and the morgue as a zombie? That was gonna suck. It was gonna suck even if the zombies were on their side. "Out the window."

"But we need to get down to the next floor."

"Trust me, kiddo. We'll get there." She grabbed Shoat up by the waist and hauled her into the nearest room. Not hers-this one was empty. The windows weren't made to open. Faith pulled back one hand and shattered it. She leapt, pivoting on one of the metal frames, and swung herself and Shoat down onto the windowsill below. "Next floor, getting off."

Shoat's eyes widened just a bit. Then she shrugged and slammed a hand into the window the wrong way, all straight-armed with her fingers out. The window shattered anyway. Well, if she wasn't a Slayer she was a demon. Not all demons were bad, just most. Shoat stepped inside, careless of broken glass or the reaching hands of the man with the IV needle sticking out of his arm.

The man took her arm and pulled her carefully inside. "To the morgue," Shoat repeated. "Follow me."

A woman with burns covering half her body took faith by the hand. Faith twitched and nearly ripped the creature's head off, but the zombie just tugged her gently forward. The things really did seem to be under Shoat's full control. Faith kept an eye on their mouths anyway.

The halls seemed to have been cleared out, either by the patients' own choice or because orderlies had emptied them. Escorted by the pair of zombies, they made it as far as the stairwell before encountering another group of assassins. The Fyarl leading them pointed wordlessly forward and, to Faith's surprise, raised a shotgun. Must be a genius by Fyarl standards. Two M'Fashniks surged forward; two humans dropped back and to one side, aiming their guns.

The zombies soaked up bullets as the assassins fired. Faith leapt, grabbing the edge of the flight above them, and lashed out with her feet, crushing two M'Fashnik faces. They staggered backward, blundering into the Fyarl as he tried to target her.

Shoat opened fire in return, dropping sideways. How was she reloading? She hadn't had any cartridges on her, and she didn't even look like she was trying to get ammo into her gun. She just kept firing, and the rifle kept shooting.

Suddenly there was a shotgun barrel in Faith's mouth. With a harsh coughing laugh, the Fyarl pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded in his face, staggering him. Faith landed hard on the stairs, only just realizing that the barrel was crushed, twisted upward between her hands. Damn. She had really done that. Recovering, she flipped up onto her feet and began raining punches into his smoldering face. Maybe she couldn't kill him, but she could rough him up till he quit.

The zombie pair were tearing the human assassins apart, but the M'Fashniks had recovered. One of them had a shotgun of her own. She fired, and the shell thundered into the wall as Shoat dropped, deliberately tumbling down the stairs. The M'Fashnik reloaded, covered by her partner and the snarling Fyarl demon. The latter sneezed a gout of horrifying slime onto Faith's face. The stuff was supposed to be paralyzing-or maybe it just hardened; her Watcher had never been clear-but Faith snarled and kept the blows coming. She wasn't paralyzed yet. Her face did feel a little numb.

The thunder of running feet sounded, and a mass of zombies burst into the stairwell from below. "Now we're talking," Shoat enthused, as if she were seeing her favorite ponies join a race.

Even the Fyarl toppled as the walking dead pulled him down. "We're gonna get out of here," Faith concluded, feeling a surge of confidence. "And then we're going to Sunnydale."

"Sunnydale?" Shoat responded like someone who'd heard of the town. "Why-?"

"That," Faith told her, "is where we'll find Buffy. Sure, she hates me, and with reason, but she won't stand for more demons walking into her territory. And when we find her, we get her to help us find who tried to kill me, 'cause there's only one reason to do that. Somebody's making more Slayers, and it ain't the good guys."

Chapter 19-Armed and Dangerous

Another three parties of demons and human assassins tried to block their way out of the hospital, the last in the parking garage. None of them had any more success, though they whittled down Shoat's supply of zombies. Shoat had to pummel the last Fyarl into unconsciousness personally.

"Got it, kid," Faith said as she touched the motorcycle's wires together. The bike roared to life. "Climb on and let's burn some rubber. This's a rich person's cycle. Insurance'll get 'em another." Why did the girl look reluctant? She'd killed a dozen people in there. Sure, they'd been trying to kill her first. But why make such a fuss about stealing now?

Was it just that she didn't want to meet Buffy? Faith could relate. "We need the help, kid. I won't let her hurt you."

"She can't," Shoat said. "How many times did I get shot back there?"

"Buffy doesn't use guns," Faith explained. "Generally doesn't need them. I'm glad you're five by five, but if she wanted you dead she'd find a way. Trust me. I've been there."

"You're not dead," the girl said, as she climbed onto the cycle in front of Faith. She was small, thin. How was she so strong?

"Of course not," Faith explained patiently. "Buffy never wanted to kill me. Just make me suffer. And I did."

Faith's first thought was more assassins. The leather-skinned creeps on the choppers, though, weren't exactly professionals. They bragged about how tough they were and about their "anatomical incompatibilities" with human women.

"Funny," Faith said, "I hadn't figured it was something to boast about, not being able to satisfy a woman, and I'm not what most people would call anatomically compatible myself. Not that that's ever stopped me. You know, they have therapists for that these days." Her fist cracked the thing's jaw in half. "Self-help courses." Her knee found its groin. "No worries now. I got a copy of 'Sex Toys for Dummies' if your girl doesn't like the new you."

"Faith!" Shoat alerted her to said girl, who didn't look any less tough. A little smaller, sure. Faith spun and drove a broken handlebar through her guts.

"Whoops. That's gotta sting."

Shoat followed her example; thankfully, they'd discarded the rifle somewhere on the highway after Faith wiped it down to get rid of any prints. She used sharp little elbows and bits of improvised weapon and, unfortunately, even her teeth. Buffy wasn't going to like that.

Speaking of which: "That'll put marzipan in your pie-plate, bingo!" Buffy slammed an entire bike down on the biggest of the demons, smashing it into metal scrap. The motorcycle, not the demon, though the big guy had plenty of piercings.

"Buffy? I think prison took out my vocabulary. What'd you say again?"

The older Slayer just stared at her. "Faith. The evil Slayer. I kill evil things. Unless you'd like to join me for a three-way?"

Faith's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "Who's the thir-? I mean, what the hell is wrong with you, B?"

"What's a three-way?" Shoat piped up, holding a detached demon head in both hands.

"Oh! A three-way is when three people engage in-"

"You'll find out when you're older, kiddo." Faith cut Buffy off as neatly as she could. "B, kid's way underage to be hearing about this stuff. Let her have some innocence. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter," Buffy said brightly. "All systems are go. Um. I mean, I'm in perfect slaying shape."

Shoat dropped the demon head and stepped forward, sniffing. "She doesn't smell right. I smell oil."

Buffy frowned at her. "That's from the biker demons' bikes. Who are you? You're not in my memory."

"I'm the Shoat of the Mire. Are you sure you're Buffy?" She poked experimentally at B until Buffy got uncomfortable and pushed her away.

"Pretty sure," Buffy enthused. "But if you're not, I guess we can go ask my boyfriend Warren. Sunnydale belongs to him now. He's a supervillain! And he knows lots of cool stuff!"

"I thought you said Buffy was the good Slayer," Shoat said, scratching at a bleeding cut on her arm.

"I am!" Buffy insisted.

"So why are you a supervillain's girlfriend?" Shoat moved in closer to examine Buffy again, and again Buffy pushed her away. "You're not like...reverse-Catwoman or something?"

"That's it," Buffy said with instant conviction. "That's what I'm like."

Shoat glanced at Faith. Faith frowned back. Something wasn't right here. Maybe Buffy was sick. Then again, Buffy had fallen for at least one vampire. "How come you haven't asked about Shoat's weird name?" Faith wondered.

"I've...um, I've got a lot of things on my mind," Buffy mumbled. Yeah, something was off.

"She's not alive," Shoat said after a moment of hesitation. "She's not dead either," she expanded before Faith could ask the obvious question-not that this Buffy seemed like what Faith expected of a vampire Sl...vamp-Slay...Slaypire? "I don't think she was ever alive. She's a machine."

"A robot? Someone built a robot Buffy?" If this Warren really was a supervillain, and he knew Buffy was the Slayer...and at least nine out of ten students, maybe all of them, had been armed to fight the Mayor, so he almost certainly did...

"I'm not a robot," Buffy said, laughing a very un-Buffylike laugh. "That's crazy talk. I'm just me."

Shoat reached out and clamped her hand down on the thing's arm. Her fingers dug into the surface, exposing wires and tiny pistons. "Ouch!" The robot tried to wriggle free but could not.

"Where's the real Buffy?" Faith demanded. "Somebody's trying to kill me, probably to make new Slayers."

"I don't know!' the robot wailed. "She vanished at the end of last spring. Two weeks later her friends opened some kind of portal and went after her. I don't have any data on any of them coming back."

"And you've been fighting the vampires and demons ever since?" Faith considered her. "Maybe you're better than nothing."

"It's in my programming," the robot said. "But I have to service Warren or he'll stop letting me recharge my batteries."

Shoat looked puzzled, but Faith felt only disgust. The average nerd was okay-usually boring, but not an asshole, and some really were sweet. But some nerdy guys, whether they were sociopaths to start with or just lonely and desperate at first, developed freaky, rapey kinks about mind control, sexbots, and things like that. If Warren was one of them, and was really smart enough to make the things he wanted instead of just fantasizing-or if the hellmouth helped him do it-then he really was a supervillain, of the worst possible kind. And apparently he was in control of Sunnydale, or thought he was at least. Unfortunately, Sunnydale was small potatoes if someone was making Slayers.

Two birds with one stone. Having a fake Slayer was probably important to keeping whatever control he thought he had. "How's he charge you up? Wall current?"

"He's got to store it up in a charger...thing. Or there'd be a blackout every time he plugged me in." Shit. Energy hog. Not her fault.

"Okay. Next step, we st-" Maybe not the best way to put it. "We take it from him so you can take care of yourself."

"You can't fight the Trio," the Buffy robot said sadly. "They're too powerful." Might be true, on the Hellmouth. Probably not, but might be.

"We don't have to," Faith said after a moment. "We just have to get it and get away. Easy as pie." They could take the fight to Warren and his...Trio afterwards.

"Why are we helping it?" Shoat asked.

"If we can't find Buffy, we're going to have to fight whoever's making Slayers ourselves. And depending on how many they've made already, they might have an army. Depends on who they have to kill and how many they've done by now. If it's me, they've just got one. But if they can kill any Slayer, bring her back, and double their pleasure...maybe dozens. Or hundreds."

"Then you need an army to fight them," Shoat realized.

"Yeah." Faith looked to the Buffy...bot. "You want to fight the forces of darkness, B-bot? You're with me."

Warren, apparently, was an idiot. He had all kinds of gizmos and frammistats in his basement, but it wasn't ihis/i basement. He was still living in his parents' house. Maybe he figured it was cover. Faith and Shoat spied on the house till he was out, Faith claimed to be an irate girlfriend, and the dude's relatively on-the-ball parents let her in. They should've gone to the police by now, but while Warren's parents didn't seem like the drinking-and-beating type a lot of okay-otherwise parents couldn't believe their kids could do any wrong. And anyway, the Sunnydale PD sucked.

The charger was heavy, but that was no obstacle. Faith jacked it, talked her way past the 'rents with a tale about computers, and was out at the motorcycles in a few minutes. "You know how to ride a hog?" she asked B-bot.

"I'm a fast learner," the robot answered. "Where's a hog?"

"Motorcycle," Shoat clarified. They'd taken an extra from the biker demons.

The device had a full charge. Faith wished she knew how to rig it up to charge from the motorcycle, but she'd find some place to plug it in. Meanwhile it'd keep the bot going on what it had. She strapped it to the back. "Time to learn, then," she told B-bot. "Climb on."

It wasn't much of a start for an army. But it was a start.

"Where are we going?" the robot asked.

"I don't know yet. Back to L.A., soon. Know anybody else around here who might help us?" Buffy's Scooby gang had been the big deal here, but they hadn't been the only ones who had pull. The Trio weren't likely to help, but there had been a magic store here, one with real stuff, so there had to be witches. They could use witches. Also..."Where's Oz?"

"He left," B-bot said. "He wanted to not be a werewolf any more. I don't know where he went. Won't Warren come with us?"

"Not a good idea." No matter how smart he was, Faith doubted she could teach him the lesson he needed to learn. "Anyone else?"

"Amy Madison is pretty powerful," B-bot mused. "But she's a rat right now."

"There's got to be a way to fix that," Shoat said bluntly. "Can we find her?"

"Willow's mom keeps her," B-bot said. "I hope she's okay. Willow's mom doesn't remember stuff much."

It was a common ailment with Sunnydale parents. Faith wondered if the Hellmouth was clogging their minds, or if they were just crappy people. Probably a bit of both.

Amy seemed a little undernourished, and Sheila Rosenberg repeatedly called Faith "Fate Lalaine", but she was happy enough to palm off her daughter's pet rat on them. Faith hoped Amy wasn't going to change back into an old hag; she'd had a rat once and they aged fast. First things first, she had to figure out how to change Amy back at all, and even Willow hadn't been able to do that.

"How does someone turn into a rat?" Shoat asked. "I can raise zombies, but I can't do anything like that."

"Doesn't seem like one should be harder than the other," Faith said. "But I can't do either one. I really don't know."

"We need a witch," B-bot said. "Only, we have a witch."

Faith just groaned, but Shoat said seriously, "There's something to that. If she were able to cast, she might know how to break the spell herself. Otherwise, why'd she cast it on herself at all?"

"Huh." Faith hadn't thought of that. "Only, can she not cast because she can't talk, or because she's not smart enough, or just because she's not human?"

"Some demons can cast spells," said B-bot. "I don't know if a rat can."

"Know any more witches in the neighborhood?" Faith didn't, but she hadn't been around that long.

"Only Jonathan, but you said you didn't want the Trio." Faith shook her head at that. "And Rack," B-bot added. "If you don't want the Trio, you don't want Rack either. He's mean. Jonathan only went once."

"We'll keep them as reserve options," Faith decided. "If all else fails, we go to Rack." He sounded more likely to be competent than anyone working with Warren, and anyway the Trio would want B-bot back. "Let's head back to L. A.," Faith said finally. "Unless you know anyone else to pick up here." B-bot shook her head. "Okay. Maybe we can find more witches there."

"Worth a shot," Shoat agreed.

Their cycles kicked up dust as Sunnydale receded in their wake. "Whee!" B-bot squealed. She stayed on her cycle, though. Faith groaned and shook her head. Better than nothing.

"Look at that," Shoat said, pointing to a billboard. "That's new."

The huge sign bore a familiar image, and read, "Lilah Morgan for Governor." Faith grimaced. "That bitch is the last person California needs in office."

"Could she be the one trying to kill you?" Shoat wondered.

"It's possible," Faith said, thinking. "I screwed up, and screwing up with Wolfram and Hart might as well be screwing over the Mob. If she doesn't have another use for me, she probably does want me dead."

"Do you know anyone here who can help us?" B-bot asked. "You went to Sunnydale because you wanted the real me, but maybe someone here can do something too."

Faith thought a moment. "Kate Lockley. I hate to go back to the police, but she knows what's up. It's not like jail can hold me; she knows I turned myself in and she knows I could break myself out. And if she's kept tabs, she knows why I was in the hospital."

"I'll talk to the police," Shoat said, "and figure out where to find her. Then you can meet with her in private, if she'll see you."

"Sounds like a plan," Faith admitted.

"No luck," Shoat said an hour later. "She was kicked off the force a few months ago. No one knows where she went."

"Damn it!" Faith kicked the nearest wall. "I came back here for nothing!"

"Hang on," Shoat said, grabbing her by the arm. "There's more people here than just one ex-cop. Someone else can help us, surely."

"Who? I was gonna get Angel and his crew after I came back with Buffy, but they left with the Scoobies."

B-bot looked up from playing with Amy. "Vampires."

"What? B-bot, I don't work with any vampire but Angel." She carefully didn't look at Shoat. Faith still hadn't told B-bot anything about Shoat's...stranger powers.

"No," the robot said. "There are vampires coming this way."

"Oh. Well, if that's all, no biggie." The three of them could handle a good-sized group of vampires, judging from what she'd seen of Shoat and B-bot so far. "Where?"

Faith reached out with her own Slayer-sense-the one thing she knew of she could do better than Buffy. Sure enough, she could feel multiple demonic presences approaching, and vampires were what they felt like. At least a dozen were coming from the north, under cover of the lengthening shadows from the buildings. And one more was coming up behind them. An ambush? That made no sense, unless she was some kind of assassin, maybe using a bunch of clueless fledgelings as cover. "Got an extra one slipping up behind us. Watch for her." She pulled a stake from each of her side pockets, gave them to Shoat, and took out another two for herself. B-bot produced stakes of her own-Faith couldn't see from where, and wondered if she might have some kind of compartment to keep them in. Too bad Amy couldn't help out.

Then the vamps were on them. Faith danced and weaved, dodging here and there. Shoat took a more direct approach; she didn't seem nearly so badly hurt when blows connected. As for the bot...well, she wasn't either of them's equal, but any vamp who thought they could bite her was in for a surprise. Three of the vampires were dust before the first rush was over. Faith slammed one against the brick facing so hard his skull shattered to bits, destroying him instantly.

Shoat flicked one of her stakes out, dusting a vampire in mid-air as it leapt for Faith. B-bot duplicated Faith's feat with a head-butt, of all things. Well, she was made of metal, after all. Faith leapt over another vampire as it charged her, pivoting off an awning and coming down atop it before driving a stake into its chest as it lay prone.

Really, even this number of vampires was little more than a nuisance for the three of them. Trouble, but not real trouble unless they were already exhausted. In moments, the undead were gone.

"Shit!" Shoat swung left and hurled a stake ibackwards/i and to her left. The lone vampire'd made its appearance. The stake sank deep into its chest, vanishing, and...nothing happened. Except that the vampire sank moaning to her knees.

"I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm...huh?" She held up her hands in front of her face. "What the hell?" The baffled vamp patted her chest, searching for the stake, and seemed to find nothing.

"What'd you do?" Faith asked Shoat.

"I don't know. Made it vanish into her. Somehow." Shoat stepped up to the undead girl. "Who are you and what're you doing sneaking up on us?"

"I was totally going to help you!" Memory came back. Faith knew this girl.

"Jesus, Harmony! Since when are you a vamp?" She'd seen plenty of nice people come back as monsters, but a vapid socialite tended to stay a vapid socialite. Though one or two had formed dangerous cults around themselves.

"Faith? Since when did you get back to being a good guy? I died fighting the Mayor." She kept pawing around, searching for the stake.

"You won't find that," Shoat tried to explain.

"Well, it has to be somewhere!"

"Harmony," Faith insisted. "Why were you sneaking up on us?"

"I'm trying to be one of the good guys," the vampire bubbled. "Angel can be a good guy. Why not me? Besides, nobody likes you when you're evil, except other evil people, and evil people mostly just call me annoying and tell me I'm a stupid loser."

B-bot raised a stake, and Faith caught her hand. "You know what? We can't afford to turn anyone down right now. Harm, you betray us, you die, right there."

Shoat nodded. "That stake can come back any time. If it does, you dust."

Faith hadn't meant that-she'd intended to stake the vamp again herself. But it worked. "You got that? Do what we say or you're dust in the wind. Help us and maybe you can prove you're right. Hell, maybe we can figure out how to give your soul back."

"I don't know if I want-" Harmony saw B-bot glaring at her. "Okies. I can go with that."

"You live here in Los Angeles," Faith said. "We're looking for an ex-cop named Kate Lockley. Got any leads?"

"Do I ever! She hunts vampires in the neighborhood around her shop. She sells, like, magic antiques and stuff. I got a few unicorn knickknacks from her...um, well, sorta secondhand." Harmony twitched nervously. Probably she'd stolen them from victims.

"No human blood," Faith said sternly, "unless you get it bagged." Angel had been doing that when they'd met, though she'd heard something about him going all-animal. Shoat gave Faith a curious look. Faith just shook her head. They'd talk about that business later; meanwhile Harmony wasn't likely to restrict herself to attackers. "She has a magic shop?" Talk about your change in professions. But it sounded like a cover. "Take us there."

"You're a dead woman," Kate sputtered, staring at Faith's eyepatch. "They blew your brains out."

"They did," Faith said. "I got better. Who is 'they'?"

"You don't...'they' is Wolfram and Hart," Kate said, still stammering a little, eyes still fixed on the place where Faith's eye had been. "What are you? They bring you back as a vampire? You a demon wearing her body? A zombie?"

"None of the above," Faith said. "Guys, come on in. I don't think she's taking me back to jail. At least not yet. Kate, I'll go back when we get this business fixed, but you know why I can't let this alone."

"Lilah Morgan," Kate said under her breath as B-bot, Harmony, and Shoat filed into the store. "She's not just a lawyer any more, and I don't mean because she's going into politics. I don't know what she is. A witch, possibly."

"Can she fix Amy?" B-bot asked, smiling..

"Shush," Faith told her. "Lilah won't help with that." To Kate, she added, "Amy's a rat. We need to change her back."

"Maybe I can do something about that," Kate said, "but not right away. Lilah's developed some sort of mental powers. Nothing as simple as telepathy, from what I hear, but maybe she can do that too. I'm not sure about all of what she can do, really. Just...she's a hundred times as dangerous as she was. Possibly more. And she's taken over Wolfram and Hart, as an appetizer it looks like. I've been trying to protect this neighborhood from demons, but if Lilah becomes governor-or more; she won't stop there-that pretty much screws us all plus loan shark interest rates."

"Exactly," Faith said. "And if she's the one behind trying to kill me-twice-then she's trying to make her own private army of Slayers."

"Shit. Shit! This is bad." Kate came around the counter. "I'll go through the manifests, but I'm going to need some time to find things I might need to change Amy back to human. I presume she was human, right?" Faith nodded. "A witch, then. We need all the power we can get. I know people. I'll get...why didn't you go to Angel? Or even Buffy?"

"Out of town," Faith said. "Way out of town."

"Out of this dimensional plane," B-bot expounded. "Andrew knows all about that stuff."

"Well, I know a few more people besides those. It'll be a start."

"It's a start," Lilah said. "Faith's building up an army."

How do you know? I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in those reports.

"Didn't recognize the name Kate Lockley?" Lilah watched Darla's image in the mirror. It helped remind her that she wasn't just talking to herself.

Of course I did. You had me use her to get to Angel. I couldn't forget that.

"Well, she's on the move. She's been strictly small-time since leaving the force. Now she's got people coming and going at all hours of the day." Lilah frowned. "Little heavy on the estrogen. Nothing wrong with that exactly, but it means she's overlooking half the population for whatever reason."

I don't understand why this is good news.

"Look, Mara wants us to free the Exaltations. We can do that without too much trouble, but odds are they're going to spread out around the globe. They look for iheroes/i."

So?

"So, even if they start looking here, like that kid suggests will happen, a lot of them are likely to head out long-distance and Exalt people on the other side of the world. I can't afford to expend resources hunting down people in Kazakhstan. And the only way I can think of to prevent that..."

...is to fill the immediate area with as many suitable candidates as possible. Darla's image in the mirror grinned approvingly. But won't they be against you?

"Not all, with any luck. These girls have enemies who won't take kindly to them opposing me. And not permanently. I have to figure out what to offer them, or warn them about, that's all. Everyone has a price, even if that's 'getting to save the world'."

Think they can do it?

"They'd better. How else am I going to turn a profit?"