Robert Woo trudged down the slope of a small hill some thousand meters from the Watchers manor house. He moved surely in the dark, his familiarity with the path making for a quick descent, his anorak securely fastened against the evening's chill.

Robert Woo possessed an incredible ability to focus. This quality had made him perhaps the best practitioner of magic on the Watchers Council. His formidable powers of concentration were turned to his present problem: how to enter the Watchers sanctum.

He was also cautious and patient. This was his third day watching the mansion, each day on a different hill. He had relied on physical observation lest any use of magic reveal his presence, using a pair of binoculars purchased at a second-hand shop three villages over.

A plan was forming in his mind. A few more days and he would be ready.

The single red rose against the rainy, purple-gray background faded into black as the strings subsided. Oz and Xander sat in silence for a moment.

"I like that book," Oz said.

"Walking On the Moon?"

"Yeah."

"Is it a real book?" Xander asked.

"I don't know," Oz replied, "but it was the title of a song by the Police."

The thrum of the rain filled the space between them. Oz started to speak, but before he could say anything, Jessica Harris hurried into the room. She went to the door as the boys exchanged looks, ran a hand over her hair, and yanked the door open.

Stefan Warner stood framed in the doorway, hand raised to knock, water running off the umbrella held over his head. A rippling gray curtain played behind him.

"Mr. Warner," Jessica purred, "won't you come in."

Oz turned toward Xander, who emitted a strangled noise. "I think I should go," the werewolf said.

"No," Xander said. "Please."

Oz slowly extricated his arm from Xander's clutches. "No, I think it's really best that I go."

"That's probably a good idea," Mr. Warner said as he folded his umbrella and looked around for a place to put it. Jessica smiled and extended a hand. As he passed it to her, Jessica's hand moved up slightly; their fingers touched.

"Oh, God," Xander moaned. "Make it stop."

Stefan pulled his hand free. "I'm going to take off my shoes. They're soaked."

"You make yourself comfortable." Jessica winked at him. "Make yourself at home."

Oz leaned down close to Xander's ear. "Maybe she won't make you call him daddy."

Xander glared at him. "Not funny."

Oz shrugged as he straightened. "Pretty funny."

"Is that your van?" Stefan asked as he stepped out of his loafers.

"Yeah."

"You probably should get home. The street's pretty much flooded. In fact, I probably won't be able to come by for the rest of the week. It's that bad."

"No." Jessica sounded crestfallen. Xander rolled his eyes heavenward and mouthed 'thank you'.

"You're, uh, Daniel Osborn, right?" Stefan sat down and began opening his briefcase. "You're in a band, right?"

"Dingoes At My Baby."

Stefan nodded as he pulled out papers and began sorting them in piles. "I hear they're pretty good."

"Some people think so." Oz stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"Keep those cards close to the vest." Stefan clicked the catches of his satchel.

"That's my code." Oz nodded to Xander. "I'm out."

Oz stepped onto the porch and popped the hood of his jacket over his head. He craned his neck to look out from under the eaves and up into the downpour.

"It never rains in southern California," he intoned, "but man, it pours."

Giles stared down at Cordelia's supine form and ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from the rain. This was not the first time he had taken this action and said hair was pointing wildly in various directions. "How long has she been asleep?"

Matti crossed her arms. "We're coming up on twenty-four hours."

Giles frowned. "That's certainly… extraordinary." He glanced around. "Do you think we could discuss this in your living room. This seems a bit… unseemly."

Matti nodded. "I hear you. Standing over a student watching them sleep seems a little pervy, even when the supernatural is involved."

"Do you think this is of supernatural origin?" Giles asked as he lowered himself into a chair. His socks were soaked and his pants were drenched halfway to the knee. His shoes sat by the front door; the leather was sodden.

Matti shrugged. "She walked here in this storm. She looked like she didn't know where she was or who I was. She cried like her heart was breaking, then went out. It's been almost a full day, and she hasn't moved. That sounds like spooky business to me. On top of that, I may be, I don't know, overreacting, but it seems that the longer she's out, the deeper… whatever state this is becomes."

"How so?" Giles asked"It's just… well, how did you think she looked?"

Giles shrugged and stammered. "I.. I don't know. Like… like someone resting peacefully."

"That's what I mean. When she knocked on my door, something was wrong, but she looks like Sleeping Beauty now, and, like I said, it's been almost a day and she's not waking up. If anything, she's…" Matti trailed off.

"Why did she come here?" Giles asked.

Matti leaned back on the sofa. Her eyes widened, and she waved her hands. "I don't know."

"You said she seemed disoriented, confused, yes?" Giles leaned forward.

"Yeah.".

"Did you notice any marks or signs on her? Anything that could be a, a puncture mark or wound?"

"No, but I didn't really check."

GIles nodded. "Of course, of course. We can do that later, if it's necessary. So, if we assumed a supernatural element-"

"Which I think we can." Matti's mouth drew down into a thin line.

"Well, if so, then perhaps it wasn't a conscious decision to come to your house. Maybe she was drawn here."

"By what?"

Giles placed his hands on his knees and stood up. "I don't know." He glanced at the bedroom door. "What would you say is her condition, physically?"

Matti shrugged. "Fine. Her pulse is strong and regular, between fifty and fifty-five beats per minute-" She frowned at Giles's expression. "Hey, I checked a couple of times, okay? Her breathing is regular."

"Would you say she is in any physical danger or distress?"

"No, but-"

Giles stepped to the door. As he struggled into his wet footwear, he said, "Monitor her condition. If it changes, contact me." Grimacing as the cold, squelching leather slipped onto his feet, he continued. "I will research everything I can find about similar cases." He opened the door and the room filled with the sound of the deluge. "I will let you know as soon as I learn anything." He crossed the threshold into the downpour, pulling the door closed behind him.

Willow stared into the eyes of her reflection in the mirror. She felt faintly ridiculous; it seemed narcissistic. She shook her head to clear it. Focus, she had to be completely focused. She took a deep breath and looked back at her mirrored image. After a handful of seconds, she felt the slip (as she had come to think of it) coming on. A stray thought regarding her newfound ease in the process tried to skitter across her consciousness: she chased it away. A deep breath and-

She was there: the vague, shifting Other place. By reflex, she started to glance around and felt the weird dislocation that heralded her ejection. She gulped and began to concentrate.

"Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five…" The sensation passed. Willow swallowed and kept going. "...eighty-nine, one hundred forty-four, two hundred thirty-three…" She turned, or she thought of it as turning. Instead of hurtling back to her room, she found herself completing a circle. Was her imagination working overtime, or was the mist resolving into something more concrete? As she murmured the sequence, she thought about the shape of the world and, to her amazement, the gray-pastel wash began to form into… into what? It was- "One hundred twenty-one thousand three hundred ninety-three…" What was the next number? She racked her brain, furiously trying to add-

Willow blinked. Her legs wobbled and she sat down suddenly on the floor of her room. Her head felt slightly buzzy… no, fizzy was a better word: fizzy, like when soda went up your nose. She stretched out her arms and looked closely at her hands.

"Whoa," she breathed. "Okay, that's enough of that for one night. Honors chem, here I come."

Buffy felt the rain peppering down on her slicker. She was pretty sure that any vampires could see her coming a mile away, but the undead did not seem to be in a party mood "Here's a new low," she muttered. "Vampires have better sense than I do."

The words had barely left her mouth when she spotted four figures, indistinct in the haze created by the downpour, but clearly not human. They were about a hundred yards away down a gentle slope. With a deep sigh the Slayer began to pick her way through the shallow torrent. It was slow, squelchy going, and she was glad that the pounding rain masked the noise of her descent.

At least it did until, about two-thirds of the way down the slope, she slipped. More accurately, the turf beneath her left foot simply slid away in the deluge. The foot went completely out from under her and flew up in the air; simple physics resulted in her landing flat on her back. She rolled over as quickly as she could, but as she tried to scramble to her feet, the muddy terrain simply gave way. She slid to the bottom of the bank and came to a stop: muddy, drenched, and freezing.

"Dammit," she said and slapped the ground, which caused a gout of dirty water to splash into her face. "Dammit again," she said, struggling to her feet and turning to face her attackers.

But they weren't attacking. They turned in her general direction, but seemed to be having trouble locating her. Buffy shook her head, water spraying out in a fan, then charged forward-

-and fell on her face as her right boot stayed stuck in the mud. She lurched up, mud oozing up between the toes of her bare foot. The vampires stumbled in toward her; one reached out a tentative hand. The Slayer crow-hopped forward, ducked under the flailing arm, and struck. The usual puff of ash was replaced by a sodden splotch of mud. The other three vamps howled and struck out, but they were slow and confused. Buffy was easily, albeit clumsily, able to evade them. After the last one's ashes were swept away in the flood, she bent over, hands on knees and breathing heavily.

"Summers," she said, "be glad no one was around to see that clown show." She limped to her abandoned boot, pried it out of the mire, and turned it up, dumping out the water that had collected. She grimaced as she jammed in her foot: the soaked interior mixed with the load of introduced mud to produce a disgusting paste. She gagged.

"This is a new low," she muttered and hobbled away.

The eight ball rolled down the worn green felt, shivered as it kissed the corner pocket points, and dropped in. "That's game," said the slender, dark-haired girl as she placed her cue on the table.

"Let's go again." The speaker was tall and thin with a spray-of-stars tattoo crawling up his neck. His right eye stared straight at her while the left eye seemed to be watching the door. A greasy snap-back cap contained his hair. "Double or nothin'."

"Dude, you already owe me a hundred and sixty bucks playing double or nothing. You're not going to break the streak. Just pay up and let somebody else have the table."

"I don't want to let someone have the table. I wanna win back my money."

She made pouty lips at him. "If you don't have the one-sixty, you shouldn'ta played the last game."

"I've got the money, you little bitch," he hissed. "Now, let's play again."

"Not happening, Lurch. Pay me my money and I'll walk away." She dropped her right hand to the table; it closed around the cue.

"You need to be taught a lesson," he said and reached for her.

Faith whipped the cue around, rotating her hips to achieve maximum speed and force. The weighted butt caught the man on his left temple. It made a sound like an orange thrown against a brick wall. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he was unconscious before his body thought to fall. He dropped to his knees, then flopped forward on his face. His wallet was thus accessible, as he kept it in a back pocket.

"Maybe," Faith breathed as raked her hair back with her left hand, the cue still tucked under her right arm, "but you're not the guy to do it." She looked at the other bar patrons, who were frozen in the middle of whatever activity they had undertaken before the brief burst of fury. "Anybody object if I get my money?"

Silence, then an old guy hunched over a glass at the end of the bar rasped, "Not me. He ain't my friend." This seemed to be the general feeling; still, Faith kept the cue under her arm as she plucked the wallet. She pulled out a sheaf of bills and stuffed them in the pocket of her jeans. "I'm gonna assume this is the right amount." She dropped the cue onto the table; the entire bar jumped at the clatter.

"Been a pleasure." Faith smiled bitterly. "Enjoy the rest of your evening."

Giles pushed the heavy book aside and opened the next volume. His vision was starting to blur; he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He grimaced and stretched his arms, aware of a dull ache in his temples that matched the machine-gun smack of the rain on the roof.

"California, land of sunshine," he said as he leaned over the book. "Worse than a weekend in bloody Cardiff."

Buffy squinted through the downpour, then wiped her hands across her eyes in a futile gesture. She blinked, squinted, then blinked again. "What the hell?" she breathed. Something was moving in the downpour, something shapeless and low to the ground, something that slid through the flooded street. No, not something, the Slayer realized, somethings. She took a few steps forward, drawing a stake even though she knew in her bones that it wasn't the appropriate weapon. Whatever the things were, they hadn't noticed her yet. As she watched, two of the things disappeared. She wiped rain out of her face, then realized that they hadn't disappeared- they had slipped into the storm drains. As she watched, open-mouthed, another of the… whatevers squeezed its bulk into a curb cutout and vanished in the ridiculously small space. She crept closer. As she watched, the remaining whatevers glided through the flooded street, their viscous progress fouling the roiling water with a faint, oily sheen. One oozed over the curb and coalesced at the base of a tree obstructing its path. Its front part elongated and slithered up the trunk of the tree while its bulk remained on the ground. It shimmered back and forth for a few seconds, then withdrew and flowed back to the street. As the Slayer watched, the remaining creatures slipped into the drains.

Buffy snapped out of her trance and approached the tree. Even through the pouring rain, she could make out a definite outline where the bark had been macerated.

"Great," she said, straightening. "Now Pennywise is in town."