Logan, for his part, was still fine with our class being over the weekend. "Actually," he said. "Knowing that I'm going to know about it has relieved my mild anxiety. I was going to look on the internet –"

"Bad idea," I said. "It would be like looking up medical symptoms. Sure, that cough and icky feeling is probably a cold, but my god, here's lesser Monrovian striped fever, and that's fatal to everyone born on the west coast of the United States, oh my god, I'm going to die."

"Sledgehammer not necessary, Mars," Logan said.

"Fair enough. Just saying that if you do look, be skeptical."

And with that, we went our merry way.

Making sure about the rest of Lie to Me was a bit thornier. Originally, I'd been content to let it run its course, but my presence still might actually change things. God knows I didn't want to be anywhere around when Spike, Drusilla and company wandered by. They might decide to have an appetizer before their evening meals, and Keith Mars did not raise me to be anyone's hors-d'oeuvre.

If I remembered correctly, Buffy was supposed to meet Billy Fordham at the school at 9 o'clock.

Wait.

She hadn't.

She'd shown up at the Sunset club before the sun even went down. Then she'd gotten trapped in there with the idiot vampire wannabes, and Spike had started wandering over shortly after sunset.

During lunch, I went to the journalism office. "Veronica," Duncan said, frowning slightly. "Were you supposed to come –"

"No," I said. "I just wanted to check something up. We have today's paper?" He gave me a look. "Today's non-school paper?" I amended.

"Right there."

"Just wanted to check something." I found the weather section, and down at the bottom: sunset, 6:27 PM. As I put the paper down, Duncan said, "Are you busy?"

"Depends," I said. "What do you need?" I knew it wasn't going to be anything personal. Not yet, anyway. This version of Duncan seemed slightly more stable than the one from the first half of my junior year – maybe Celeste wasn't drugging him into a stupor, or at least as much of one – but he and I still weren't friends.

"Remember the confrontation we had?"

Point of fact, we'd had a couple of confrontations – there had even been a Buffyverse equivalent of "You stand idly by –" but none of those were things he'd need to bring up again. "Of course," I said.

"There's something we kind of left unfinished."

Shit. Yes, there was. We'd said we were going to set up a DNA test, and then never did. "Duncan, I'm sorry –"

"Don't be," he said. "I can understand how my piece of mind wouldn't be your top priority." I couldn't tell if he was being bitter or remarkably tolerant. Hell, he probably didn't know either. I decided to be charitable, though he was certainly entitled to the bitterness.

"It is now," I said. "Still, we're both underage --"

"Money might not be able to buy happiness, Veronica, but it can buy the silence of a doctor and a DNA lab. I can arrange an appointment to have the blood drawn whenever it's good for you."

It couldn't be today. It couldn't be the weekend.

That left tomorrow. When I suggested it, Duncan said, "Fine. I'll meet you after school."

"Duncan," I said. "I really am sorry; I know you want to get this put behind you." The problem, of course, was that I already knew I wasn't Duncan's sister, and so the issue had, stupidly, slipped my mind.

There are times when I may not be the most sensitive person on the planet. Unfortunately, this falls under the heading of Not News.

"Assuming we can," he said.

"We will. I'm sure of it."

Duncan sighed. "I wish I had your confidence."

To assuage my guilt feelings, I spent the rest of lunch doing some proofreading. When the bell rang, I left.

The rest of the day went fairly smoothly. There was a pop quiz in algebra that, even without having so much as opened the algebra textbook in the last week and a half, I got 19 out of 20 on.

I caught Willow surreptitiously looking at my paper when it was handed back, and struggling to suppress a smirk. "Let me guess," I said. "Perfect?"

"Plus extra credit," she said smugly. I let her have her moment. At this point, Willow's ego was built around two, maybe three, things: her faith in her intelligence, her hacking ability, and her friendships with Xander and Buffy. Within a couple of weeks it would grow to encompass her relationship with a certain werewolf-to-be.

And that was something I wasn't touching -- Oz's becoming a werewolf. I might -- might -- derail one Veruca when she showed up, assuming the bet wasn't over by then. But beyond that, Oz never killed anyone, never contaminated anyone, and only went unrestrainedly wolf a handful of times.

"Good for you," I said, and meant it. Her face fell a little. I guess she wanted me to feel bad that I hadn't outstripped her. "Relax, Willow. This isn't a competition."

"Darn tooting it isn't," Willow said, then said, "Wait. You meant that in the friendly, let's-all-hold-hands kind of way, right?" I nodded. Interesting metaphor, too. "Opening mouth and removing foot now."

"Like I said, relax. There's room enough in this school for two smart girls." A pause, then, "Besides, you're smarter than I am. I work my ass off to get these grades." Well, I had the first time through, anyway. "You could probably spend all night playing video games and drinking cheap whiskey and still come up with an A." I'd had my fun, but Willow needed her crutch, for the moment.

"Not that I'm actually going to experiment," she said, "But, thank you."

"You're welcome," I said.

After school, I headed for Dad's office. I found him standing in the lobby with his carry-on. "Oooh!" I said. "Are we going to Disneyworld?"

"Nope."

"Perth Amboy?"

"Wrong again."

"You finally figured out where Amelia DeLongpres is."

"I knew if I gave you three tries, you'd get it."

"Naah. I knew it right away. I just thought I'd make things a little more suspenseful."

"Tell yourself that if you like, sweetie," he said. "So, I was just waiting for you to get here from school. I," he said, "Am off to Las Vegas."

I mock-frowned. "For a night of booze, gambling, and prostitutes?"

"Only afterwards," he said. "That's where Amelia DeLongpres is going to college." Hmmm. I don't think that's where she was back in Neptune. That hooker Abel Koontz had used had been there, but she hadn't.

Well, other things weren't the same between universes, either. Jake Kane had no longer invented streaming video, but the most popular anti-virus program in the world. Aaron Echolls had made different movies, and won one fewer major award. Amelia DeLongpres was in college. That was the important thing.

After Dad left, I did a little routine office work, took a few calls, dealt with a disappointed would-be patron or two, but in the end they'd have no choice but to come back if they needed PI work done in Sunnydale. One of the few blessings of the Buffyverse: The Adversary had declined to bring along Vinnie Van Lowe, Neptune's answer to a question nobody asked. And no one else had taken his place as possible rival, either.

I like to think even the Adversary couldn't stand Vinnie. All gods everywhere knew I couldn't.

Okay, so my difficulty here was going to be staking out an area to make sure a whole lot of vampires walked past it not long after sunset. Even given that I'd be perched in my LeBaron with the motor running, it was a risk. One, and more trivially, Buffy might see me. Two, Spike might see me, before I see him. I wasn't sure he'd recognize me, but I wasn't about to take the risk.

I wonder if his face had healed yet.

Still, I needed to be sure everything turned out okay. Given vampires and cameras --

No. Wait. Halloween. The opening segment, if I remember, had Spike videotaping Buffy fighting a couple of lesser vampires somewhere that sold pumpkins. If that vampire could be videotaped, others could.

The traditional explanation I'd heard involved mirrors and how they were used in regular cameras and not in video cameras -- and certainly not in digital cameras, which were as yet a bit pricy for routine use.

At least, too pricy for Mars Investigations.

Still, that wasn't a problem. If Spike could see a vampire on a video camera, so could I. I didn't need to record anything; in fact, it would probably be a bad idea for me to save anything to tape that I didn't mind answering questions about later.

Aaron Echolls would find that out soon enough. (I hoped.)

In the meantime, I didn't have a whole lot of lead time. Spike and company had left at sunset, but that was only an hour or so away, and wherever Spike was in fairly easy walking distance of the Sunset Club, so I needed to be out of the vicinity by 6:27 PM at the absolute latest.

I quickly attached the best transmitter we had -- I had to be within a range of a few blocks, but that would still be well out of sight of the approaching vampires. I set the whole thing up to show on the laptop computer -- clunkier than the ones I remembered -- Dad had had someone wire up to use as a remote view screen. Then I took off.

There was the alley leading to the Sunset Club. Across the street, there were some trees and bushes -- not a fully developed woods or anything, but good enough for my purposes. I spent a few minutes toggling with it, made sure the transmitter was broadcasting to the laptop, and drove a couple of blocks away to a more mainstream retail area that I'm reasonably sure Spike and the Spikettes wouldn't have wandered through along the way. I got myself a soda from a nearby convenience store and waited.

No one noticed me. No one noticed anything. This is Sunnydale, remember?

Members of the Sunset Club started trickling in within a few minutes. The only ones I recognized were the dude in the cape -- his name still escaped me -- and Chanterelle. The last one to go in, about 6-7 minutes before sundown, was Billy Fordham himself.

A couple of minutes after that, Buffy followed him in.

So far, so good.

I'd just finished the soda, about eight minutes after actual sundown, when Spike and Drusilla wandered by the camera, followed by a handful of other vampires. Whatever burns Sheila and I had inflicted seemed to have healed.

Ah well. I'd doubted the scars would be permanent, anyway.

A few more minutes just to be sure.

And here came the members of the Sunset Club, passing Xander, Willow and Angel. The former vampire-worshippers were disappointed and confused. I couldn't say I blamed them. I supposed it would be the equivalent of having Jesus come down to Earth and tell Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "all religions are equal. The only people sent to Hell are narrow-minded bastards like you."

Decision time.

I drove back to the alleyway, got my camera out of the bushes, and drove away before Buffy or her friends could see me.

And there she was, a block or so away. Chanterelle. I pulled the car to a stop. "Need any help?" I asked.

"No. Go away," she said.

"Look. It's dangerous in Sunnydale at night."

"And maybe you're one of the dangerous things," Chanterelle said.

"No," I said. "I'm not a vampire."

She looked at me. "How do you know about vampires?"

"I notice things," I said. "They're one of the things I notice."

She stopped. "What the hell," she said, and got in the car.

"I'm Veronica," I said. "What's your name?"

"Ch -- no."

"No?"

"I was going to tell you my name was Chanterelle. But it isn't. Chanterelle is what I called myself when I thought I would thrive in the harsh night. No. That's not me anymore. I'll bloom in the daylight. So you can call me Lily."

Okay. I had aka Lily in my car.

Now what?