Author's Note: And now I'll be concentrating on this for a while. Interim chapter in the investigation, but we're headed somewhere big soon.

Disclaimer: Veronica Mars was created by Rob Thomas; Buffy by Joss Whedon. This merging is mine.

X X X X X

Okay. New day. New plan. Playtime, as they say, is over.

Last night, Sheila, knowing I was on a case, asked if there was anything if she could do to help me.

"Other than keeping an eye out to see if anyone seems more interested in what I'm doing than they should be, no," I said. "This isn't an investigation I'm getting paid for. This is personal."

Mistake. I knew it the second it left my mouth. Unfortunately, lacking any convenient method of time travel, I was pretty much stuck with it. The next thing Sheila said was, "Someone hurt you? Let me know who. I'll hurt 'em right back for you."

"If I knew who, I wouldn't be looking," I semi-lied. Duncan, I knew about; Warren I strongly suspected. But, like I'd determined last night, I wasn't going to make the mistake of focusing on him to the exclusion of everyone else. That way lay frame-up. And since I realize I'm perfectly capable of letting my emotions get me to concentrate on my pet theory to the exclusion of everything else -- Mr. Rooks, anyone? -- I'm forcing myself to be extra careful.

"Well," Sheila said, "If you find out and you decide you want 'em beaten up, give me a call. Right now I got all these violent tendencies and nothing to do with them."

I winced. "Could you maybe call it 'nervous energy' and not 'violent tendencies?' Less change for trolls to overhear you and decide that you are 'contributing to the disciplinary problem in this school.' You might want to avoid people wanting to send you to institutions and pump you full of drugs."

"Why? Gotta do something now that I've sworn off booze."

"Well, for one thing, no privacy rules in places like that. Vamps can just walk in and munch on anyone. Not so much a problem most places, but here?"

Sheila sighed. "You ruin all my fun, manhunter."

"I live to serve."

"Well, remember what I said. You want someone beaten up, let me know okay?"

"Will do." That kind of loyalty is frightening. It might be helpful, but it's scary.

Also sweet, in a sick sort of way.

Anyway, on with the plan. I was figuring on tracking down three of my targets during school today. The fourth, of course, was Warren, whom I was reasonably sure didn't go here yet. That would kind of be the climax of the day.

Whether he was guilty or not. I'd at least like to know how the hell he managed to get himself invited to the party.

And there was one of my targets, just shutting his locker: Percy West. Even though this year he was the sixth man on the team, he still had the arrogance and swagger you see in some high school jocks.

Let me stress that some. Wallace Fennell had been perfectly capable of basking in the glow of deserved adulation while avoiding becoming an arrogant ass.

Percy wasn't rich, but he acted as entitled as any '09er, and was as big a jerk to me after my downfall as anyone -- anyone not named Logan Echolls, of course, though in his case he actually had a reason.

Still made me think that Xander had to have a reason beyond thinking I was a Veronica-come-lately to the world of hating Sunnydale's rich and famous. That he and Willow thought I was a hypocrite because I hadn't realized it until I was a victim came from him.

That was later. The jackass at four o'clock was now, and a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. I stepped in front of him as the locker closed and, pasting a big old fake smile on my face, said, "Percy. Hi. How you doing?"

He looked at me like he was amazed I was daring to talk to him. He should know better; Veronica Mars dares to talk to almost anyone. (I might draw the line at Osama Bin Laden.) In any event, I didn't take it personally; Percy looked that way at pretty much everyone except for other athletes, authority figures, and women he thought he had a shot at sleeping with, (So far, to the best of my knowledge, none of them had.)

"Manhunter," he sneered. "What do you want?"

"To ask you a couple of questions about Cordelia Chase's Christmas party," I said.

His response was short and unhelpful. "No." He started to step around me.

"And if I said I knew that girls had been dosed by GBH at that party and that you'd been seen handling it?"

"I'd say no one's going to believe Veronica Mars."

"See, that's where you're wrong," I said. "'cause I'm thinking hatred of people trying to date rape them? Stronger than hatred of me. Look. I know you had it. You know you had it. Let's skip past the parts where you deny it and I have to threaten you again, and move on to the part where you agree to answer my questions just to shut me up. It'll be faster for everyone."

"Okay. Yeah. I had it."

"So who'd you use it on?"

Percy said, "I put a little bit in one drink. Not enough to make someone unconscious. That's no fun for anyone and I don't go for unwilling."

"But you're fine with helping it along with a little GHB," I said.

"There's a difference between giving someone drinks and hitting them over the head, manhunter," he said as though I were stupid. "But when the girl didn't start acting like I'd given her anything, I figured I'd gotten a bad batch and tried to pawn it off on those musicians."

"Tried?"

"They didn't want it. So I gave some to that dorky kid." He laughed. "If anyone needs GHB to even have a shot at a girl, it'd be him."

"Was his name Warren?"

"How the hell would I know?" After a pause, "Look, are we done?"

"Yes. No. One more thing. Whose drink were you trying to spike?"

"Cordelia Chase's."

X X X X X

After that, I let Percy go.

First off, holy crap. I knew the guy was a jackass but I didn't realize, even from the show, that he was that big an SOB. I'd be keeping an eye on him. Anyone with that shady a definition of what was willing and what wasn't was a prime candidate to go over the line.

And that's assuming he wasn't lying now. He was definitely on my suspect list. Maybe not as high as Warren, but he was a possibility.

Second, Cordelia? He wasn't in her league by any definition. Maybe, vaguely, by the end of senior year he'd be what Cordelia would want right now, when she was still aiming, at least to some extent, at social status; but he wasn't remotely in her league as a human being, and that was the current, I'm a bitch but I'll put up with you bozos because I'm helping save the world Cordelia, never mind the self-sacrificing heroine of later Angel. (And don't tell me that Cordelia died at the end of season 4. One of the tenets of my Buffyverse fandom is that Cordelia Chase can never die.)

And, if I had my way, she damn well wouldn't this time around either. (You might be thinking: Veronica Mars a Cordelia Chase fan? With all the '09ers I had to deal with? Yup. I loved the way she always told the truth. Not something I get a lot of in this business.)

Before I tracked down Cordelia, though, I ran into Larry. "So, Larry," I said. "Got a minute?"

"For a pretty girl like you, I got all day," he said. "Whaddaya need? Want to sample some of Larry now that you've sampled half the rest of the football team?"

"Oh, Larry," I said, "You should know better than to believe rumors. Otherwise I might have to believe that one about you never actually carrying through with a woman, ever. Might even lead certain people to suspect certain things about you." He wasn't ready to reveal his homosexuality yet.

"Such as?"

"Oh, I don't know. Who know why a young man might not be able to follow through?" I said pleasantly, "Anyway, that's really got nothing to with why I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you about anything out of the ordinary you might have seen at Cordelia's Christmas party."

"You mean besides you getting wasted and dancing around as though you were at a strip club?"

"I already knew that," I said. "Point of fact, I'm trying to figure out why. That wasn't drunk, that was drugged." No, I really didn't think Larry had had anything to do with it. Underneath the posturing macho swagger was a decent guy struggling to come out. Still, I had to cover all the bases here.

"You're kidding."

"This face?" I said. "My no, I'm not kidding face."

"Damn. Who the hell did that?"

I blew out a breath. "If I knew --"

Larry was ahead of me. "You wouldn't be asking me. Okay. Logan Echolls offered me some, but I turned him down. I don't touch that stuff and I don't like people who do."

"Really? The way you act?" Testing.

"I don't need it," he said. "No matter what you've heard." Like I thought. He still wasn't ready to admit it. Possibly not even to himself.

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Yeah. I saw your ex staggering out of the bedroom late in the party."

"Duncan?" I had to feign surprise.

"Duncan. He seemed kind of out it himself. I made sure he got home."

You couldn't have opened the door, could you, Larry? Your overcompensating machismo couldn't have gotten you to check me out while I was unconscious?

Ah well. I knew about Duncan, now, officially. I'd confront him about it after school.

"Thanks," I said.

"Look. You're not going to spread it around, you know? That I'm not able to follow through?"

"That's between you and your therapist," I said. He turned around and left.

Okay. Progress. This was good. Still wasn't any closer to figuring out what Warren was doing there, or whether he might have raped me.

I had the Duncan part nailed, though. That meant I could get that out of the way after school.

I wonder if I'd still have to do the DNA testing. I wondered how expensive it would be to prove to everyone involved that I wasn't Duncan's sister, so that he could get on with his life.

I guess I'd figure that out soon enough.

In the meantime, I still had two major figures left to talk to: Cordelia, and Warren.

Talking to Cordelia wouldn't be fun.

But at least she wouldn't be trying to cover up anything.

(I should really remember to stop tempting the fates like that.)