David pulled the car into the school parking lot but left the engine idling for a moment. In the harsh light of day, the school didn't look any different, but now that he knew what happened inside of it - what the librarian was doing with his daughter every day - it had an almost foreboding air about it.

"It's just a school, Dad," Emma said, somehow sensing his hesitation.

"No, it's not," David protested, turning to face his daughter. "Not anymore. It might be 'just a school' to everyone else in this town, but it's not to me. When I look at this building now, all I see is a place where my daughter is being trained to kill monsters every day; a place where monsters try and kill her. So no, it's not just a school, Emma, and now, it never will be."

"Then think of it as a place that's helping to save my life," she told him. "Without Gold's help, I might never unlock my full potential and until I do, I'm skating on thin ice with this whole Slayer thing. I mean, we can't let them have too many advantages, can we?" Emma offered her father a forced smile as she released the buckle on her seatbelt and pulled open the car door.

David remained where he was sitting for just a moment longer, memorizing his daughter's words. He had a feeling that by the time the day was over, he'd be repeating them like a mantra in an attempt to cling on to what little was left of his sanity.

The morning was gently warming into what would eventually become a nice weekend when he finally stepped out of his truck. And yet, the moment his eyes landed on the spot he'd been attacked in the night before, David felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He wasn't sure if he was imagining things, but he thought he could still see some of his blood on the ground. Some of his daughter's was likely mixed with it, and he couldn't help but wonder how much more of Emma's blood would be spilled in the weeks to come.

"They can't hurt you now," she said suddenly, as she appeared at his side, staring at the same spot in the middle of the road. "You're safe while the sun is up."

"That's good to know," David mumbled, because it meant that he would only need to worry about his daughter dying for half a day, instead of a whole one.

"All of the old fairy tales are true," Emma continued, seeming not to have picked up on her father's sarcasm. "They don't like garlic or silver or crosses. They can be killed with a wooden stake to the heart, decapitation, or sunlight, and they can't enter a person's home uninvited."

David made a mental note to do his best to lock his daughter in the house after dark. That would at least keep her safe for the hour it would take her to find an alternative way out. He shook his head in frustration and watched as Emma began striding confidently towards the school's entrance, without sparing a second glance to see if he was following her.

"What about public buildings?" he asked, when he eventually caught up to her just inside the long hallway. David's eyes were flying to each and every corner and every door they passed; his hand was resting on the gun clipped to his belt. "Can vampires enter those without invitations?"

"Yes," Emma explained, "But Gold says they don't tend to make too much of a fuss when they're out in public. That would draw too much attention to them and that's not what they want."

"Oh, yes, heaven forbid an entire school finds out there are vampires in town."

"It does more harm than good," Emma chuckled. "At least, for them. If the whole school knows there are vampires in town, nobody would leave their home after dark."

"So why aren't we telling the entire town about this?" David pressed. "If we tell them to stay in their homes after dark, surely the vampires will eventually get bored and just move away.

"If, by some miracle, everyone believed you, it still wouldn't work like that," Emma explained, shaking her head sadly. "Gold thinks they're here for a reason and not just to feed. If that's true, they'll go to the nearest town to feed and then keep coming back until they do… whatever it is that they want to do. My job is to try and stop them before they can get that far."

"I still don't understand why it has to be you," David grumbled, as they finally approached the set of double doors with the word LIBRARY written above them.

"Because fate chose me," was all Emma said, as she pushed her way into the space.

David had never been inside the school library before. He wasn't given much time to examine it, however, as his daughter came to a sudden stop only a few steps over the threshold, and then declared loudly, "Oh, come on! You cannot be serious right now."

"Fitness is an important aspect of being the Slayer," another voice called back. This one was completely unknown to David, and it took him a long moment to realize that the reason it sounded so odd was because the speaker wasn't American.

"I already have gym class twice a week, isn't that enough?"

"No. No, it is not."

A middle-aged man appeared suddenly from a small room just beside the checkout desk, and for the first time ever, David found himself face-to-face with the man he assumed was his daughter's trainer.

"Oh, hello," he said, stopping short at the sight of the Sheriff standing in the middle of his library.

"Gold, this is my father, David Swan. Dad, this is the school librarian and my watcher, Mr. Gold."

Gold gave David a small nod and extended his hand for shaking - which David reluctantly accepted - before he turned his attention over to Emma.

"Is there anybody left in this town who doesn't know about your secret identity?"

"He was attacked last night," Emma defended hotly, as she waved a hand in her father's direction. "He saw everything. What was I supposed to tell him?"

"I don't know. Make something up," Gold suggested, pulling off his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose. "I thought you kids were good at doing that."

The resulting, "Hey!" that came from his statement had David's head twisting back around to focus on the large mahogany table in the center of the room, where two other students were already sitting with stacks of books piled between them.

"How long have you guys been here?" Emma asked, carefully stepping her way through the maze of fitness equipment at the front of the library to reach their side, where she picked up some of the books that were littering the table.

"Only about an hour or so," the young woman sitting closest to her said. "Someone overslept."

"It was a long night," the teenage boy on the other side of the table explained, as he tossed a heavy-looking book onto a heap forming to his left. "It's not like it matters much anyway. Noneof these books mention anything about The Master or a Harvest."

"The Master?" David asked, drawing everyone's gaze back to him.

"Some kind of big bad vampire," Emma explained, as she offered him a small, sympathetic smile. "He's going to do something called a Harvest to open something else called a Hellmouth."

"What's a Harvest and a Hellmouth?"

Emma shared a brief look with her friends before the teenaged boy sitting at the table stood up suddenly. "Here, Sheriff Swan, you're probably gonna want to sit down for this," he said, as he pulled out the chair next to the now empty one and threw himself down into it.

David hesitated for a brief moment but the nod of encouragement from his daughter had him moving over to take the seat he was being offered.

"Well, Gold, this is your time to shine," Emma declared, as everyone turned to look at the librarian who was lingering close to his office door. "Oh – and don't forget to show him the murder-boards. Visuals always help with this stuff and we worked hard on those."

"I'm not sure decorating the edges counts as working hard," Gold mumbled, but nevertheless, he made his way through to the office where the whiteboards were located.

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