Disclaimer: 'tain't mine. Except Rae, and Sheila (mostly), and the storyline.

X X X X X

Fortunately, Dad didn't get back to me with any plans to catch Epimetheus within the next few days.

Fortunately, I say, because saying my plate was full was like saying Perry Mason won some of his cases. You couldn't have fit another scrap onto it with the Jaws of Life.

I'll give you what happened in more or less chronological order.

It started comparatively innocently: I got another case. Yes, I was trying to find Epimetheus, but even were that a straight gig it was more of a long-term project. I wouldn't be cheating Giles by taking on another client.

I'm not going to get into the details too much, except to say that any spare time I might otherwise have had, I was devoting to trying to track down a stolen laptop for a sophomore named Jonah Everson.

Seems routine enough. "Seems." But, honestly, when are any of my cases ever really routine?

X X X X X

Giles had asked me to meet him at my earliest convenience. I went in to visit him during a free period before lunch, after I spent about fifteen minutes looking for the computer. (Having a friend who knew something of the local petty criminal element was a help; Sheila said she'd keep an ear out for anyone bragging about a recent heist.)

"Ah. Miss Mars," he said as he moved out from behind the desk. "Fully recovered from our battle with Spike and Drusilla?"

"I don't think I got more than a few scrapes and bruises," I said.

"I wasn't referring to physically," he said. "There is a difference between simply being aware of vampires and actively going out and seeking them. Despite the "imminent apocalypse" I was truly not expecting you to get involved at the level you did. Not that I am not grateful for your and Miss Kelly's assistance."

"I've confronted vampires before," I said.

"One. At a distance. This was an entirely different scenario." That's right; he either didn't know about Logan, Sheila and my battle with the vamp during the rerun of School Hard, or he believed Aaron Echolls' propaganda.

I smiled a bit. "I appreciate the concern. But I'm fine."

He studied my face carefully, as if to determine whether I was lying. Ha! Better men than you have tried and failed, Rupert Giles. But thanks for playing. "Well," he finally said, smiling slightly, "If you do feel any effects, do let me know. I'm scarcely a psychiatrist but I should be able to help."

"I'll do that," I said.

"And Miss Kelly and Ms -- Mistwood, was it? The proprietor of the magic shop?"

"Not her real name," I said.

"I shouldn't think so," he said.

"Rae -- Ms. Mistwood -- doesn't seem like she's got any long-term damage, but she's not champing at the bit to get out there and get with the vampire-killin," I said, deliberately affecting an atrocious Southern accent. "But," back to normal, "Sheila seemed to enjoy herself."

"She's not planning --" Giles began.

"No. If she tried, I'd tackle her," I said. That, I meant wholeheartedly. "Just because she's picked up some magic along the way? Doesn't make her Charles Bronson. She knows this."

"Good," Giles said. "Just making certain." He took a deep breath and said, "Now, as for magic, it seems that Willow has taken an interest."

"I know," I said. "She came to me and I passed her on to Rae."

He frowned. "I wish you hadn't," he said. "Magic can be dangerous."

"So I've heard," I said. "But, honestly, knowing Willow the way we do, if I'd told her to go take a flying leap and you tried to forbid it, she'd go look it up anyway. She may not be the queen of the rebels when it comes to most things, but intellectually? Marlon Brando."

Another small frown. "I thought that was James Dean."

Score one for Keith Mars and his love of classic cinema. "I was thinking more of the movie The Wild One, where a woman asks Brando 'What're you rebelling against?' and his response is 'Whaddaya got?'"

The frown, as the saying goes, turned upside down. "True, that does fit Willow's personality. And I suppose at this point there's no way to undo what's already been done. I wish she or you would have thought to consult me first, though."

"Why?"

"I could have made her more aware of the dangers. Instilled a sense of caution," he said.

"And you think Rae Mistwood's just going to hand her a spellbook and some material components and tell her to go to town?" I couldn't keep the annoyance from my voice. Rae had worked wonders with Sheila, so far.

He paused, probably sensing my irritation, and said, "No. But -- despite how she seems to have helped Miss Kelly, whom, if you will forgive me saying so, was not known for her discipline and restraint, I do not truly know her. And neither does Miss Calendar -- whom, though not powerful enough to be a witch, certainly knows quite a bit about both the theory and practice of magic."

I said, "Would you like me to arrange a meeting between the three of you?"

"That would be splendid, yes," he said. Well, hell, why not? "And now, has there been any progress on Epimetheus?"

"I think you need a turn signal to change lanes that quickly," I said.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. I --" foolishly, in retrospect, but it seemed like a good idea at the time -- and, by the way, have you noticed that most of the great human-caused disasters in history can be summed up with the phrase, "It seemed like a good idea at the time?" -- "asked my father to look at some of the evidence. No, I didn't give out any proprietary information. You will notice that I am not currently either in a mental institution or 500 miles away."

"So noted," Giles said wryly. "And I trust you, in this. It is your field of expertise."

I debated whether even to mention the handwriting, then decided I had to. I couldn't take the risk on Dad mentioning it to him -- let's face it, if Dad wanted to know who my client was, he could find out, and if I didn't mention it, people would start to wonder why. And I doubted they'd be buying "I forgot" as an explanation. Sometimes a rep for being smart has its drawbacks, but it's too late to try to get people to buy a dumb blonde routine.

So I said, digging the hole I was in deeper with every word, "The handwriting on the note to Ms. Calendar definitely seemed disguised. So maybe you could go over people who know you and see who could be capable. Besides Ethan Rayne," I said before he could draw a breath.

"I shall do so," he said.

"Anything else?"

"Not at the moment," he said.

And so I left and headed back to class.

X X X X X

After hurriedly gulping down some food, I spent most of my lunch period continuing my quest for the missing laptop. In between nailing down a couple of solid leads, and finding out that it wasn't quite as simple as just "person A took person B's property to make money off of it--" trust me, always the major reason for theft -- I had a brief conversation with Xander Harris.

He pounced on me a couple of seconds after I finished questioning someone. "So," he said. "Working on a case, huh?"

"Your perspicacity never ceases to amaze me, Xander," I said.

"Huh?"

I sighed. "Never mind. What do you want? I'm horrendously busy right now."

"I was just wondering about the case you should be working on." Xander sounded irritated.

"Epimetheus is kind of a long-term project," I said.

"I wasn't talking about Epimetheus."

Ah. That explained the irritation. Lilly was on his mind. Possibly a bit of guilt given his current secret fling with Cordelia. "That's also a long-term project. How many times am I going to have to explain this to you?"

"She was your best friend," Xander said, as if maybe I needed that explained to me. "I can't believe this isn't your top priority."

Now I was starting to get annoyed. "Top priority isn't the only priority."

"It should be."

"You're not my superior officer, you're not my father, and you're not my boss," I said. "So don't try giving me orders." I turned to walk away. There was still time left in the lunch period to check in on a potential suspect in the laptop case. (No one I'd ever heard of, of course.)

After I'd taken a couple of steps, he said, "Veronica?"

Spinning, I said, "Yes?"

"Look. You didn't deserve most of that."

"Most of it?" I said, eyebrows raised.

"I think it's a legitimate question I asked. But it's also not fair of me to take it out on you when I don't like the answer. It's just – it's incredibly frustrating."

I've been through it before; I know how damn frustrating it can be. And that's one of the reasons I want to make sure it goes right this time.

You don't know how many times I've wanted to simply go to the Echolls estate, knock Aaron Echolls over the head, and drag him out to the nearest cemetery. Maybe after bleeding him. But, personally satisfying as that would be, it wouldn't get what I want out of this: I want Aaron found guilty. I want him rotting in jail.

Killing is easy. Justice is hard.

And let's never mind the prospect that some starstruck vampire might think it was the height of coolness to turn Aaron. My mind rebels at the idea.

Okay, my mind throws up at the idea.

So I simply told Xander, "I get your frustrating. You know I get your frustrating."

He sighed. "Yeah. Look. I'm not going to tell you to forget I said anything, but forget I was an ass, okay?"

"I'll just add it to the other nine hundred times," I said.

It took Xander a second or so to realize I was teasing, and he said, "Fair enough."

Behind Xander, I saw Cordelia round a corner. Seeing Xander, and then me talking to Xander, her face got happy, studiedly bored, annoyed, and then once again studiedly bored. She stopped and stared for a second.

Oh no; they weren't making out in closets yet. Not at all . . .

"Is that it? The quicker I finish this case, the quicker I can get back to work on the other two."

"We're done," he said.

I turned around to find that my potential suspect had fled for parts unknown.

Of course.

To quote the great philosopher: Grr. Arg.

X X X X X

I tracked the suspect down later in the day, but that was still a couple of hours wasted. In the meantime, Sheila had gotten back to me with the name of a student known for, occasionally, heisting electronics. So that was something.

In the meantime, there was one more significant conversation at school. I heard a voice behind me say, "Veronica?"

"Yes?" I said as I turned around.

I must have sounded as short-tempered as I felt, because Buffy took a half-step back and said, "Whoa. Someone sneeze on your Wheaties this morning?"

I said, "Sorry. Long and frustrating day, soon to become a long and frustrating weekend. Let's just say that right now I'm grateful for people like Cordelia."

"What on Earth for?"

"Because she doesn't talk to me."

"You want me to turn around and walk away? I got nothing that needs your immediate attention." It was a genuine offer; she didn't seem in the least upset.

"No," I said. "Right now a stress-free conversation with my fellow SOB might help. And for the record, no, no one sneezed on my Wheaties. But so far that's about the only thing that's gone right. And you?"

"Well, I've had a better day than that," she said. "I just wanted to catch up and see how things were going." She held up a hand. "Not in a progress report sense. Giles is the one who wants those. I'm sure you'll catch that Happy Medium guy eventually --"

Despite myself, I laughed. "Epimetheus," I said.

"Epimetheus, then," she said. "Anyway, just thought I'd give you a Spike and Dru update and just see how you were."

"Spike and Drusilla?"

"Relax. I said it didn't need your immediate attention. Just wanted you to know that they seem to have dropped off the face of the Earth. No one's seen hide nor fang since Kendra saw them crawling off in the sewers."

"I'm guessing? Probably didn't decide discretion was the better part of valor."

"Believe me, in full agreement here," she said. "Can't track them down if they don't pop up occasionally. Way I figure is they've gone to ground while Spike waits for his arm to be all whole again. Even with vamp healing powers it's going to take a while."

"One-armed vampire still might be dangerous."

"Sure, against most people."

I said, "And you're not most people."

"Not for a couple of years now."

We walked and chatted for a few more minutes. It was nice, and relaxing, and completely frivolous.

Nice and relaxing.

And then it was over, and I had the rest of the weekend to get through.

X X X X X

My weekend, in summary:

The class, on Sunday, went fairly well. Sheila already knew not to clue Logan in to our extracurricular activities, though she did insist on showing him what she could do so far with her magic. Which turned out to be limited, in practice, to the three spells she'd already perfected: "find the target," "focus," and "witchfire." I know Willow usually didn't name her spells, but it seemed somewhat less unwieldy to actually do the D&D thing instead of saying "that spell Sheila used to focus all of her strength on one point." She was progressing faster than Willow had, but Amy Madison had been strong enough to cast an impromptu memory spell about a year after her Mom had died, so it wasn't like it was ridiculously out of the ordinary or anything.

Since Sheila had already brought up the subject, we discussed magic for most of the time. Its effects, those as could cast it, what anyone (save me) could do, what only witches could do, and why Logan shouldn't do any of it. Not that he was interested in performing any, though he was (reluctantly) impressed with Sheila's abilities. (Not that he actually told Sheila directly, of course. Our young Mr. Echolls wouldn't give her that satisfaction.)

By the time Monday morning rolled around, I was almost looking forward to going to class and doing nothing but listening my bored English teacher go on about something I read for the first time two (subjective) years ago, and hadn't really found all that interesting the first go-round. My mind definitely needed the break.

Of course, look what I'd done in the last three days: Looked for a stolen computer and Epimetheus, tried if I could find any more evidence to damn Aaron Echolls or clear Abel Koontz than I already knew about, done my homework and some office work for Dad, talked to Giles, Rae, and Jenny Calendar about the meeting he'd wanted me to arrange, and again to Ms. about magic and Willow and Sheila (she wasn't as worried as Giles had been), took a couple of photos for the Sunnydale high newspaper, ate (sporadically), slept (not much), and had a pleasant chat with Drusilla.

Oh? I didn't tell you about that?