Author's Note: Hi guys! Miss me?

Disclaimer: Veronica Mars belongs to Rob Thomas, Buffy to Joss Whedon, and the storyline and "Sheila Kelly" to me.

X X X X X

Well, the first thing I did was not panic. My adventures in fending off Spike and the bugman notwithstanding, I'm not action girl and I don't pretend to be. If Buffy or even Xander were here, they'd charge forward and try to take Patrice down. Me? I don't even have my taser, and all my holy water pistol is going to do is get the woman wet. Might startle her for a half second, before she slit Jonathan's throat.

Or possibly mine.

The second thing I did was watch her carefully to see if she had any clue I was back here. She didn't seem to; hell, if she kept walking backwards the way she was, she'd smash right into me.

Which might be something of a solution to the problem, but it would also be very risky. That knife was too close to Jonathan's neck for me to want to take that chance.

Think, Veronica.

Got it!

I hope.

She didn't know I was back here, but she'd collide with me in about four seconds if I didn't move. If I flattened myself against the wall, or ran in front of her, she might do something with the knife. An itchy trigger finger might also indicate an itchy blade finger; in any event, it wasn't something I was going to take a chance on.

If I remembered correctly, Patrice got about halfway down the hallway before throwing Jonathan down and taking off. My being where I was would interfere with that. So . . .

I moved, in the only direction I could. Further down the hall. Apparently she was making too much noise to notice me scrambling backwards behind her. Good. A stroke of luck. I could use one of those.

Hell, I could use a whole tennis match full. But I'll take what I can get. Neither Buffy nor Kendra said anything, Willow was too busy looking after Oz, and Jonathan's attentions were, understandably, elsewhere. There was no one else in sight.

Knock major wood here. Because this would be a particularly bad time for Snyder to burst through the door behind me. And Lamb -- hell, he'd probably assume I was the perpetrator.

There. She just threw Jonathan to the floor. She was turning around . . .

And now Patrice was flat on her face. My outstretched leg had something to do with that. And before she could get up, or maybe take me hostage, Kendra had her foot on the woman's back. Jonathan said, "Was that a demonstration?" as he shakily moved away. Buffy was checking on Oz.

So did I.

And of course, right then is when Snyder burst in. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

X X X X X

No matter how hard he and Deputy Lamb tried, though, they couldn't pin what happened on me or Buffy. There were too many witnesses to testify otherwise. They started out with "what are you doing, assaulting a law enforcement officer?" but half a dozen people, from Jonathan to Oz (before he was taken away by the paramedics) said that the bogus law enforcement officer had started it; when Logan came back and said the same thing, they officially threw in the towel.

As they hauled Patrice away, in handcuffs -- Kendra had long since disappeared, presumably back to the library -- I walked over to Logan and said, "This the kind of excitement you had in mind?"

And, with a serious tone in his voice, he said, "Hardly. You okay, Veronica?"

What, you mean apart from trying to run a universe minus omnipotence and with only partial omniscience? (And yes, I realize that's an oxymoron.) "Yeah. All things considered."

"What were you doing, getting in that nutjob's way like that?"

"You know me," I said. "If there's a wrong place and a wrong time, I'm there."

"Well, try to avoid that in the future," he said, still seriously. "This place would be a whole lot less fun without you."

"Why Logan," I said, still trying to keep things light. "If I didn't know better I might think you actually meant that."

"I do," he said. "Oh. And if anyone asks, I ducked and covered. Specifically, if my father asks."

"No one will learn of your heroism from me," I said.

"Why Veronica," he said, deliberately mocking me. "If I didn't know better I might think you actually meant that."

"I do," I said.

X X X X X

Of course, the rest of Career Day wasn't cancelled; that would have interfered with "the orderly running of the school." I suppose we should have counted ourselves lucky that we were given five minutes to catch our breaths before being told to disperse. (And that Oz was allowed to go to the hospital rather than simply being given a Band-Aid by the school nurse and told to walk it off.)

Still, everything after that was a decided anticlimax. Of course, a 6.2 earthquake would have been an anticlimax after the morning's events.

When Sheila caught up with me, she punched me in the arm. "Ow," I said. "What was that for?"

"'sfor trying to get yourself killed, manhunter," she said. "I haven't learned resurrections yet. Try not to die, okay?"

"Not in my immediate future," I said. "Oh, and resurrections? Ask Rae about them. From what I know, they're something to stay away from."

"Relax. Wasn't going to. Still would've missed you, though."

Rubbing my arm, I said, "And you expressed it so well."

"Did you expect me to cry and hug you? You've got the wrong girl, manhunter."

"Not one for crying?"

"Not even to impress guys," she said.

"Doesn't matter. I appreciate it," I said. "Really."

Sheila gave me an odd look. "That all it take to impress you? Just keep watching me. I do a lot of not crying."

X X X X X

I knew there was a Scooby meeting after the attack; in the original timeline, this was where Xander and Cordelia had told them about the bug man. But then, Buffy and I hadn't spent an hour or so hiding in the basement, either.

I wasn't invited to this one; either that, or Cordelia was taking the day off from being Giles' messenger bee. Either way, nothing more supernatural happened before I left to go do some paperwork at the office that afternoon.

"So," Dad said casually the second he walked into the office, a few minutes after sunset. "Anything interesting happen at school today?"

"Same old same old," I said. "How was your day?"

"Veronica –" he said reproachfully. He knew. Of course he knew. I'd known he would know, and he probably knew that I would know.

"What?" I said. "I can't have an interest in how my father's day went?" I shook my head sadly. "They grow up so quickly."

"Veronica," he repeated. Okay, now he seemed genuinely irritated. Time to knock off the banter.

"It wasn't as big as it seemed."

"A fake cop starts shooting up the student lounge, you helped capture her, and that's not as big as it seems? Veronica, why didn't you call me?"

"Because you're not the Flash," I said. "By the time you could have gotten down there it all would have been over."

"And afterwards?"

He was worried about me, of course. Hell, I'd been worried about me. There was nothing in my deal with The Adversary that said that I was immune to being killed between now and the time I had to make my big decision. Presumably, if I'm killed, I won't have lived up to my end of the deal.

I wondered about what would happen if I were made into a vampire. I'd probably still have to live up to it -- whatever I still existed --

Brief digression here. The Buffy universe seemed to divvy what made you you into three parts: Body, mind, and soul. A vampire had your body and mind, but not your soul. They always made a point of saying that the vampire "wasn't you," but I always thought that was kind of oversimplified. A vampire is very much you. It's a mostly sociopathic version of you, but it's still you in a lot of ways. Whatever demon takes you over clearly doesn't maintain its own personality; it might take yours and twist it, but it doesn't seem to find things in you that aren't there. For further details, please contact the vampire Willow.

Harmony the vampire, for instance, sure as hell still thought and acted like Harmony.

Given that, I doubt the Adversary would let me back out just because my soul happened not to be inhabiting my body any longer. Which would make things very interesting.

And while my life at times seems to overflow with interesting, that particular iteration? Not so much good.

Okay. Digression over. I hadn't been traumatized. I told him as much. "I didn't have time to be." I said. "Really. I'm okay."

He looked into my eyes in that way Dads do to see if maybe I was feeding him a line. After a second, he realized I wasn't. "Okay," he said. "I believe you. But try not to do that, okay?"

"Try not to save the day?"

"Try not to put yourself in a position where you might get killed."

"So you're giving me permission to drop out of school! Yay!" I jumped up and down and grinned like an idiot.

"Veronica --" Still, the point was made. This was Sunnydale. There were no really safe places.

I was amazed that he hadn't said to hell with it and simply left, taking me with him. Yes, no place was really safe, but there were a whole lot safer places than Sunnydale.

Those places were known as "everywhere." Possibly excepting the vicinities of erupting volcanoes, the middle of war zones, and Challenger Deep sans bathysphere.

I wondered if the Adversary had anything to do with that. No way for me to live up to my end of the bargain from the middle of No Horse Town, Idaho.

Note to Adversary, if you're listening: I'm not interested enough for you to put in an appearance. Keith Mars is not in the least bit stupid, and protecting me is kind of eight or nine of his top things to do with his life. So let me just take it for granted that you've done something to keep me here, okay?

"Veronica, what? You didn't raise me to run like hell at the first sign of danger. And running at that point might have gotten me shot in the back anyway. If I'd been on the other side of the room, I'd've been the first one to say, let Lamb throw himself into harm's way. But she was kind of backing towards me at the time. Sometimes, the line of fire finds you."

"I'd rather that not be literal, sweetie."

"You and me both."

Right then, the phone rang. "Manhunter?" Sheila said, somewhat breathlessly. "Good. Hoped I'd find you there if you weren't at home. Got some shit here you might want to take a look at."

"Mystery?"

"'sno mystery," she said. "I think you and I both know who around here's capable of kicking a door down and dragging people off."

I looked over at Dad, who nodded and headed into his office.

"Who got dragged?" I said automatically, mentally kicking myself. Stupid Veronica. Stupid, stupid Veronica.

"That good-guy vamp you told me about. Didn't get a chance to see a whole hell of a lot -- I ain't stupid -- but I sure as hell heard what was going on. Sounded like someone was getting their head knocked in."

"Did you go down and take a look?"

"Yeah. No one there. Not the vamp, not the guy he was dragging, nothing." Damn.

That meant that Spike had Angel -- and the cyclops.

And tonight was the night of the new moon, and the ritual (while it had some prep time, if I remembered) could take place anytime after sundown.

And now that I'd changed things around, Willy the snitch wouldn't have any idea where the church was.

Hell of a way to lose a bet.