Author's Note: No Halloween yet. Within a part or two, I promise.

Disclaimer: Buffy, Joss; Veronica Mars, Rob; story, me.

X X X X X

What wouldn't be next was one, any more investigation into my rape -- I'd hit a dead end, and short of DNA testing or a spontaneous confession there was nowhere else to go. For the sake of completeness I suppose I could run down everyone at the party -- assuming I could get Cordelia to provide me a list, or, more likely, Logan or Duncan to give me the names of everyone they saw. But I wasn't expecting it to get me anywhere.

And two, any interference with Reptile Boy. That would just have to go on more or less as scheduled -- there were no major negative ramifications, beyond the girls who were, unfortunately, already dead.

Halloween, though . . . I had plans for Halloween.

In fact, I had too many plans for Halloween, which was part of the problem.

Part of me wanted to derail the while thing before it started. How, was still an open issue.

A small part of me simply wanted to make sure that I wasn't caught up in the hysteria, and head off with Cordelia to buy my costumes at Party Town. That part was fairly easy to ignore. I might not exactly have a hero complex, but I rebelled against the notion of letting a whole town go to hell because I didn't want to get in trouble myself.

(The same, incidentally, did not hold true for Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered. Assuming I didn't screw things up all to hell for Xander and Cordelia -- and how the hell odd was it that Cordelia Chase was treating me like more of a human being than Xander Harris? -- I wasn't going to be anywhere near Sunnydale High the days of that love spell. If I had to pull a Ferris Bueller, if I had to run away from home, if I had to barricade myself in my room so thoroughly the SWAT team couldn't have gotten me out, nothing was going to put me under the influence of that love spell. I know, I know. The best laid plans of Mars and men. But still.)

And then there was that part of me that wanted to "take advantage" of the whole becoming your costume situation, and try to dress like someone with really cool powers and then keep them. There were two problems with this.

One was that Xander's soldiering knowledge seemed to come and go. On the one hand, he was able to break into an army base; on the other, he got into a freaking slap fight with Harmony the vampire, for goodness' sake. (Which had always struck me as poor writing. Xander might not have been Captain America, but he wasn't Lucy Ricardo, either.)

Unfortunately, since I was stuck in the Buffyverse now I could no longer chalk it up to sloppy writing; I had to acknowledge that any knowledge or abilities I got would be with me sporadically at best.

Two, Ethan really wasn't stupid. He set his costumes up to cause maximum chaos. A soldier with a working machine gun was about as close to good guy as he would get. Five would get you five hundred that there wouldn't be any superhero, Xena, or Jedi costumes in the place. No dressing up like Supergirl or Wonder Woman. Hell, probably no dressing up like Sherlock Holmes. The little demons had been little demons, alright, but there had been no corresponding little angels. Ethan didn't want people going around trying to fix what he'd done, or to stop the chaos from spreading. And superheroes, or warrior princesses, or Jedi Knights, or master detectives, would have brought order to the town, not chaos.

So the odds were that even if I did decide to go the "cool extra abilities" route, that it wouldn't be much help to me in the long run.

Still, I wasn't completely sure yet.

And I had a couple of weeks, anyway.

In the middle of which, I got my official invitation from Aaron Echolls for that dinner.

And, even though the only reason I had to go onto the Echolls estate was to find the camera setup hidden in the poolhouse, I lacked any excuse to do that. (Okay, I had one excuse, but I would sooner have bitch-slapped Spike than take it.)

So of course, I said thank you, but no thank you; shucks, Mr. Echolls, 'weren't nothing', I was just doing my job.

The next day, at school, I found out that Sheila was going.

"What?" I asked politely.

"'snot my idea, manhunter," Sheila said softly. "But the invitation came directly to my Mom. And of course, Mama, who can't stay sober, essentially told me that I had no choice. 'Try to hook up with the Echolls kid,' she said. So Saturday night I'm going to be there whether I want to be or not.

I laughed then quickly explained myself. "I'm not laughing at you. From what you've said your Mom's typical Sunnydale -- drunk half the time, barely able to hold on to a stripping job, but for this, she gets sober."

"Yeah. Parents. Ain't saying she was sober, either, manhunter; just sober enough."

Well, shit. I couldn't force Sheila to go through it alone. When I got home that day I called the Echolls house and accepted.

Logan answered. "You out of your mind, Mars?"

I said, "Sheila's Mom is forcing her to come. And I'm not going to leave her alone to face the tender ministrations of your darling father."

"Don't forget the booze-soaked ramblings of my darling mother," he said. I knew Logan loved his mother.

"I doubt your mother's quite the threat your father is," I said.

"I think Kelly's virtue is safe," Logan said. "As hard a time as Daddy Dearest has keeping it in is pants, he's not likely to whip it out in front of you and her, and me, and Mom."

"One can only hope," I said. "Anyway. See you there Saturday."

"I'm all a-tremble with anticipation," Logan said. "By the way: How did that investigation into what happened at the Christmas party end up?"

"With you not getting blamed for anything other than being yourself," I said. "Whatever happened to me, I don't blame you."

"Good to know, but I was actually pretending to care for a moment about something other than myself."

"Nice job. I was almost convinced." Then I added, "I found out enough. The view's not crystal clear, but I'm not looking at it through a window caked over with mud, either."

"Okay. I'll be here on Saturday. Feel free to let me run interference."

"Okay, now I'm even more convinced."

Logan chuckled. "Don't get the wrong idea, Mars. I just dislike the illustrious Aaron Echolls more than I dislike you."

"So I'm working my way up the charts. I can deal."

X X X X X

Saturday came soon enough.

In the meantime, Reptile Boy had ended with more or less the same results as last time -- I saw the story in the paper the next day. Of course, Don Lamb was taking credit for being the one to finally bust the murderous fraternity house "after a long investigation," but that was only to be expected. No one had noticed it over the years. Apparently not even Mayor Wilkins.

Hmmm. There was a possibility. In Band Candy Mayor Dick had made it clear that he owed part of his 100-year ascension to demonhood to various other demonic powers -- and the one in that episode who wanted to eat the babies was distinctly snakelike. While clearly not every power holing up in Sunnydale did so with the advice and consent of the Mayor, they seemed a bit too similar to be coincidental.

Maybe I'd ask Mayor Wilkins if I ever got the chance. And I've taken complete leave of my senses. (Which, in this town, was roughly once every two weeks or so.)

Xander was still looking at me as though I were something that belonged in a trash compactor, Willow was being the loyal friend we all know and love except when it annoys us, and Buffy was cheerfully oblivious of that.

I actually asked Cordelia. Her response, in full, was, "Please! Like I'd have any reason to know why that loser does anything."

Which left me at least two weeks until Halloween rolled around, so two weeks until I could directly influence an episode.

I had an idea, though. Again, I couldn't tell anyone about the future, but I could mention the past.

Jana Calderash becoming Jenny Calendar was in the past.

I didn't need to make excuses or come up with plausible reasons how I came by the knowledge.

And if I was going to change things for the better, one specific thing definitely needed to be changed:

Angelus could never re-emerge.

The curse could never be lifted.

If worst came to worst and everything else went to hell, I'd solve it by finding Angel's apartment and (figuratively) kicking the door down -- a little coitus interruptus, in this case, wouldn't hurt anyone; but then I'd have, to use the lingo, a lot of explaining to do.

I don't know if you've noticed this about me, but except for the times when I'm telling whodunit how I know theydunit, I prefer to have other people explain things to me. So if it comes to that, I'll feel like I haven't done my job.

The first thing was to get Ms. Calendar to admit that she was born Jana Calderash.

Which meant I had some researching to do; I needed to have the proof before I confronted her.

In the meantime, dinner with the Echolls.

I showed up at 8 PM -- you know, the time rich people eat dinner and poor people are home watching prime time television, having been done dinner for at least an hour -- and had one of he Echolls servants greet me at the door.

As I looked around, I noticed that this Echolls mansion stood in relationship to the one I was familiar with in the same way my Buffyverse apartment did to the one in Neptune: Everything was different, but it was exactly the same. The trivial details of layout and furniture had changed, but otherwise? You couldn't have picked 'em out of a lineup.

Anyway, Sheila was there, dressed up -- and, to use the vernacular, she cleaned up nice -- but clearly not having a good time. She was doing her best to talk to Logan while spending most of her time munching from a tray of hors-d'oeuvres.

That she was voluntarily talking to Logan showed how horrible the night was. She and Logan got along as well as any rich psychotic jackass would with a girl with which he had absolutely nothing in common other than a shared school, and who he had absolutely no interest in sleeping with.

Lynn was standing there as well, drink in hand, but she seemed reasonably jovial. Sheila saw me and looked at me as though I represented her hope of salvation.

In the meantime, Aaron had answered the door himself with a big grin. "Veronica!" he said. "Glad you changed your mind. How are you doing?" He extended a hand.

Forcing myself to forget for even an instant that this was the hand that had beaten Lilly to death, and shaking his hand and answering pleasantly, "Fine, Mr. Echolls," surely means I'm a better actor than Aaron Echolls has ever been.

I did add, "You know, I saw that episode of Batman you did the voice-over for. Gotta say, you make a convincing psychotic villain." Behind him, Logan and Sheila were making heroic efforts not to laugh. Lynn just looked confused

I kept maintaining my straight face well enough, apparently. He grinned widely and said, "Thanks very much. I'm thinking of branching into that a bit." He went over to put an arm around Logan. "I want to spend more time with my family."

"You mean the tales of your heroism haven't led to a flood of new movie offers?"

This time, apparently I hadn't kept all of the cynicism out of my voice. So be it. I'm not superhuman.

"Yeah, about that . . . that's part of why I wanted you here tonight." Then he added, "But you do understand why I did that, right?"

"Of course they understand, Dad," Logan said. "You're famous and they're not."

Aaron turned, a little angrily, but before he could say anything a servant came from the dining room and announced that dinner was served.

We all walked into the dining room.

Well. This should be fun . . .