Author's Note: Halloween, the sequel.

Disclaimer: the Buffyverse characters belong to Joss Whedon; the Marsverse characters belong to Rob Thomas; and the plot is mine.

X X X X X

My instincts were telling me to drop everything and run.

Shut up, instincts.

The last thing I needed was for the Kanes to know that someone had been in their house. Yes, I was wearing gloves, but still, they had Clarence Weidman, and if there's anyone I'm not confident in my ability to outmaneuver, it's Clarence Weidman.

(Dad, of course, is on another plane entirely.)

I reinstalled the vent as quickly as I could, all the while keeping one eye out the front window, watching the police.

They didn't seem to be coming inside yet. Good. That gave me time.

Vent back in. Now. Time to skedaddle. I hoisted my bag and ran down the stairs towards the back door. There were no police or flashlights anywhere in sight. I closed the door, locked it behind me, and quietly made my way around to the front of the house, where I put the key to the back door back in the rock garden where it belonged.

The police were still hanging around the front, but they didn't seem to be coming in. Either they were waiting for me to stupidly walk out the front gate; they had no way in and were waiting for the Kanes to let them in (I doubted this; any decent security company will have a way to let police into a gated estate so that the burglars inside don't have a truckload of lead time); or they weren't here for the hypothetical alarm that went off,

Of course, now that they were blocking the easy way out, I had to figure out some other way off the property.

Unfortunately, every other way out involved scaling the wall – or waiting for the gate to open and running like hell. But while the Sunnydale police might not be swift of mind, they were reasonably swift of foot. And they had police cars.

Also unfortunately, I still wasn't Buffy, and I didn't have a handy trampoline, so jumping to the top of the wall was out.

At a temporary loss, I crept along the walls of the mostly-darkened compound to as close to the gate as I dared get.

"I don't know if Lamb is paying us enough to deal with this kind of crap," one of them said.

The other one said, "Haven't you learned anything? The Mayor depends on these people for his re-election campaigns; so if there's a citywide riot, they get special protection."

"It's just a bunch of kids," the first one said.

"In Sunnydale, there is no such thing."

Well, the good news was that I hadn't, apparently, set off any burglar alarms.

The bad news was that I was stuck in here for the duration, unless someone or something distracted the police – and while Sheila might be willing (and possibly Logan), no way in hell was I going to send them out into this night of chaos.

Which meant I had to get the chaos to end. And soon, before the Kanes came back – or, worse, before Dad noticed that I was missing. That was the only thing that kept me from hiding out in a dark corner for several hours, waiting for everyone to come home, and sneaking out when they were all in bed.

That meant I had to end the chaos, somehow, from here. And lacking mental telepathy. my cell phone (I didn't want it going off at the wrong time, like, say, now when I was thirty feet away from two police officers), or carrier pigeons, that meant I had to call someone else.

Which meant I had to sneak back into the house – which meant leaving evidence behind that someone had been in the house, even if it was only on the phone records. No, they wouldn't immediately be able to figure out from who I was calling

Cursing, grumbling, I ran back to the house, took the key from the hiding spot, and went back in through the back door.

I'd been planning to take care of this myself as soon as I was out of here. When you can't do, delegate.

The voice on the other end said, "Hello?"

"Hello," I said, disguising my voice as much as possible. "There's a new costume store in town named Ethan's. I thought you might want to check it out."

"Who is this?"

"Someone who wants the chaos in town to stop."

"Chaos? What chaos?"

"Just break the statue of Janus and it should all end."

"How do you know all this?"

"I have the gift of hindsight," I said, and hung up.

I hadn't meant to be a mysterious voice again; but I couldn't possibly identify myself. Not that Jake Kane and Rupert Giles traveled in anything remotely approaching the same circles, but I couldn't take the risk on someone else putting two and two together and getting four – aka, me.

Just to check, I called the Sunnydale High Library again five minutes later.

Nothing. Good. I checked my watch; it had been less than half an hour since the chaos started. I won't have been able to short-circuit everything, but the earlier this ends, the less damage there'll be.

I left the mansion again, moved close to the gate, and waited.

X X X X X

In one sense, it was a short wait. I knew about how far it was from Sunnydale High to Ethan's, and I knew that under the circumstances Rupert Giles would be pushing his Citroen to the limits getting there.

I'd also wondered how Willow had accompanied him -- I doubted he'd walked there. It was close, but not that close. At least by prompting him myself, I was eliminating what was probably the most egregious continuity error in the entire show: Willow and Giles go back to confront Ethan. Giles told Willow to leave, and Willow had done so, shutting the door in the process.

Neat trick for a ghost.

An on-the-fly calculation in my head -- I was no mathematics genius, but this hardly required advanced calculus -- told me that it would be about ten minutes from the time I left the house. That gave Giles time to drive to Ethan's, pound the chaos magician into a bloody pulp, and smash the statue of Janus. Possibly not necessarily in that order.

Eight minutes later, the distant background screaming stopped.

A couple of minutes after that, the police got a call through their radio. I couldn't quite hear what it said, but the upshot was that the police left their post.

I took a risk and crept closer to the gate. Both police had gone up the street about a hundred feet and they were still walking.

Ah.

Collecting kids.

Even the notoriously lax citizenry of Sunnydale would rebel at the deaths of dozens of children. I knew Spike, at least, was out roaming the streets right now, and who knows how many other vampires might not decide to take advantage of the easy meals?

The gate's bars were too narrow for me to slip through.

But I didn't need to.

I could, and did, open them manually, pressing a button on the inside, out of easy reach of any enterprising burglar on the outside.

The police, now a few hundred feet down the road, didn't notice me scampering away.

I got into my car, parked a mile or so away, and drove off.

The chaos in the streets had ended, but the remnants of chaos didn't go away right away.

Along the way, by a nice coincidence, I ran across Buffy, in her dress. She looked confused.

"Buffy?" I said, slowing down the car. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. I was near my house trick-or-treating with the kids . . . and all of a sudden I'm here."

"Want a ride back?"

Still somewhat confused, she said, "Sure. Sure. I guess I need to get back to see if those children are okay." As she got in, she said, "Any idea what happened?"

"Short answer? Riot. Now if you ask me what caused the riot, I have no idea. People were just acting really weird."

"Weird how?"

"On kid in a fairly realistic lion suit chased me," I said.

"Hmmm."

"I know. Fortunately, I got away, and then all of a sudden it stopped about ten minutes ago."

Buffy was about to say something in response, but then gasped and said, "Stop the car."

"We're not home yet –"

"There's someone I need to talk to."

I looked to where she was pointing and saw Cordelia, Xander, and a certain friendly vampire walking down the street. I stopped the car. Rolling down the window, Buffy yelled, "Hey! Over here!"

They all stopped; Angel ran over to the car. "Buffy!" he said. "We were just coming to find you." Cordelia took a couple of steps into the street, saw that Xander wasn't coming as well, and stepped back onto the sidewalk. Nope; no attraction there . . .

"No worries," she said. "Whatever happened, I'm feeling much better now. Veronica found me and picked me up a few minutes back." She looked at me like she'd suddenly remembered I was still in the car. "Veronica, this is Angel. He's a –"

"A college student," he said. "I tutor her sometimes. Thanks for finding her."

"Anytime," I said. "We short blondes have to stick together. Good to meet you, Angel." Shaking hands would have been awkward, involving reaching over Buffy, and anyway would have prompted me to make a comment about how cool his hands were. "You want to walk from here, Buffy?"

A look at Angel, then back at me. The look spoke trilogies. There was stuff they needed to talk about, and I wasn't a member of the "cool kids who know about vampires club." At least, as far as they knew.

As Buffy got out of the car, I said, "Buffy? Could you do me a favor?"

"If I can," she said.

"It might not be pleasant."

She shrugged. "I'm used to it."

"Tell Xander I need to talk to him, face to face, alone, for more than five seconds. It doesn't have to be right now – I'm not going to make him hold a serious conversation in the aftermath of a riot – but he and I need to settle our issues."

Angel grinned, cracked his knuckles and said, "I could force him to come." He sounded like he was looking forward to dragging Xander kicking and screaming. Funny mental image, but not what I want.

Buffy looked up at him and said, "Down." Then, to me: "He and Xander don't get along." I didn't need any detective skills to know that, and I wouldn't have even if I'd never met either of them. Or been blind. "I'm not going to make him."

"I'm not expecting you to. But if you could tell him one thing for me?"

". . . okay."

"Tell him I now have the proof of what I suggested to him earlier tonight, that I'm sure it's connected with the reason he hates me. And honestly, Buffy, I don't hate him. God knows he's given me enough cause to; I think he's given me more grief than Logan Echolls has, and I know Logan's reasons. He and I don't have to be friends, but if he's going to be my enemy, I'd like to understand why."

"It's not like Xander to act like that." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Angel rolling his. "Okay. I'll try to convince him. Like you said. We outcasts have to stick together."

"But if we do, won't we not be outcasts any more?"

Buffy looked at me, laughed, and got out of the car.

X X X X X

Dad hugged me the second I got into the apartment, then said, as he pulled free, "I want you taking that phone with you everywhere."

"Won't it get wet in the shower?"

"I'm not joking, Veronica!" he said. "It was a riot out there tonight and I had no idea where you were! And when I called the school, they told me you weren't assigned to take students around."

"Bureaucracy --"

"Cut it out," he said. "You're safe. That's the important thing. But I want to know why you felt you had to lie to me."

Shit.

I hadn't wanted to do this yet.

But short of running, I had no choice.

Without a word, I took out the videotapes and handed them to Dad. "While you watch these, I'll be changing."

I came back out five minutes later. An array of emotions was playing across Dad's face. "Where did you get this?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"In this case, yes."

I sighed and said, "I got it from Lilly's vent."

"At least now I see why you picked this costume."

"The only day of the year I'd blend in," I said.

After a long pause, Dad said, "This proves nothing, you know."

"It proves that Aaron Echolls was a statutory rapist."

"And it gives half a dozen people motives. Aaron, Logan, and anyone else who might have been involved with Lilly." As I had a horrid thought -- that list now included Xander Harris -- Dad said, "Still, once I manage to prove that Abel Koontz didn't do it, this should be enough to get the investigation going in a different direction. Good going. And if you ever do anything remotely like this again, I'll call Lamb myself and turn you in. Get to bed."

I got.

X X X X X

The next morning I was getting a cup of coffee when Xander sat down across from me.

"Okay," he said irritably. "You have five minutes."