Nothing really happened for the rest of the regular school day, if you discount Duncan coming up to me and asking what had Logan in such a bad mood.

"You mean, apart from his mother leaving his father and his father deciding to become the next Charles Bronson?" I asked.

"Yeah, apart from those," Duncan said. "I've known him long enough to know that that's only part of it."

"Am I my obligatory psychotic jackass' keeper?" I asked. "I can't say what's got him in a bad mood." Look at me, Veronica Mars, master of the literally true but still deceptive answer. I got a future as a genie waiting for me. Or an Oracle of Delphi.

"Okay. Look, if you find out, tell me, okay?"

"If he tells me, I'll tell you," I said.

"Thanks."

For his part, Logan seemed more likely to throw rocks at my head than confide anything in me, up to and including "Your hair's on fire."

Then came what seemed like the mandatory meeting in the library at the end of the day. I said to Xander as he and Cordelia and I walked in together, "It's like I'm a full-fledged member instead of an honorary one."

He laughed. "You know, I think I had the genre right, I just gave you the wrong name."

"Huh?" I said brightly, as we all sat down.

"I'm the one who first called you J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter, and now I'm thinking that I should called you by a different superhero name."

"It'd better not be Wonder Woman," Cordelia said.

"Relax, Cor. Nowhere close."

"Thanks a lot," I said.

After looking back and forth between me and Cordelia for a few seconds, he said, "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"

"Got that right, bucko," Cordelia said.

I let him off the hook and asked, "So. Who am I in the superhero universe, if I'm not the Martian Manhunter?"

"The Phantom Stranger."

I had some familiarity with superheroes, but had no clue who that was.

"Kind of an honorary member of the Justice League," Xander said. "He's this supernatural dude, no one even knows where he comes from, and he kind of shows up every once in a while to clue the League in on some major-league bad stuff going down, usually on the magical side of things. Then, when the crisis is over, he disappears until the next time he's needed."

"I was kind of hoping for Batman – because he's a detective – but okay, Xander, that's not bad."

Cordelia snorted when I mentioned Batman, and said, "You wish, Mars."

"Actually, I don't, and anyway that's going to be Aaron Echolls' job."

"Which," Giles said, "Is a sign that we should probably begin. Progress?"

"'mdone the tracking spell," Sheila said from the far end of the table. "Ready whenever. Tonight?"

"Actually," Buffy said, "If we could maybe hold off on that until the weekend. That way we won't be racing the sunset." It being early December, there was maybe an hour and a half between the time school ended and sundown.

"That does make sense, Sheila."

"Okay," she said. "Saturday noon. Holding you to it, manhunter."

"I'll be there, too," Buffy said. "Just in case we get close and someone gets nervous, grabby, or has more brains than sense, which pretty much fits every vampire I've ever met who wasn't Spike, the Master or Angel."

"Fair enough," Sheila said. "Just wanna get this done, you know?"

"I know," Buffy said.

Willow and I then gave our report, and then Buffy said, "We're going to catch a vamp tonight and hustle Veronica over there tomorrow as soon as school's over."

"Good," Giles said. "Then we should have everything set by late on Saturday, if all goes well."

"Big if," Xander said. "This is Sunnydale. Since when does any go well?"

"A valid point, but let us be optimistic until we have reason to be otherwise," Giles said.

"Speaking of . . ." I said.

"Yes?"

"Aaron Echolls and his plans."

Giles said, "Yes. Buffy was kind enough to inform me of Mr. Echolls' pledge to 'clean up' Sunnydale, and from the context it didn't remotely sound like he meant it in any kind of janitorial capacity."

"Not hardly," Cordelia said.

"You know something about this?" I asked.

"This is my circle, nimrods. I know everything about it."

"How?"

"Duh, he told me."

"Really?" Buffy asked skeptically. "When?"

"Last night. After he got back from Leno – you do know they tape that in the afternoon, right?"

"Not really the important thing right now, Cordy," Buffy said.

"Yeah, probably not. Anyway, he was making the rounds of the rich people in Sunnydale to see if he could get their support for this 'improve Sunnydale' kick. God knows why he thought about it now -" I'd tell her later – "But anyway, he was there for about fifteen minutes telling them all about what he was going to do."

"Why were you there?" Giles asked.

"It's my house. And you're supposed to be so smart."

Repressing a chuckle – it had been badly phrased – I said, "I think he meant, why were you in the room?"

"Because when my parents told me to leave, Aaron said, 'No, stay, Cordelia. I'm not just talking to people my own age, I'm talking to the youth of Sunnydale as well. I need to get out the message to you most of all.' And that's pretty much exactly the way he said it, too." Hmmm. Movie-hero pomposity to go along with the attitude. Lovely. I was wrong; Aaron Echolls hadn't turned into Batman, he'd turned into William Shatner.

"And what was the message?" Willow asked.

"Well, that you've already heard, with a lot of boring numbers attached. Lots of murders, lots of accidents, and the rampaging 'gangs on PCP,' and he also ripped into the Sunnydale Sheriff's Office for being completely incompetent lameoids, which they really, really are." Thanks, wish. Thanks, Anyanka. Now you've got Aaron Echolls making sense.

I said, "Now that's something we can agree on."

Giving me a look of barely disguised horror, she said. "Don't make me sorry I came here, Veronica. Check that. I'm always sorry I come here."

"Then why do you do it?" This from Buffy.

"Someone has to keep an eye on you freaks."

Giles said, "Yes. If we can get back to the main point – this could indeed pose a problem. The incompetence of the local constabulary helps us more than a competent one would be able to do anything to stop the real problems of this town. Further, they'd be far more likely to impede Buffy, or even assume that she was one of the causes of the mayhem, rather than one of the solutions."

"Not to disagree with your main point," I said, "But I'd like to point out that not too long ago we did have a competent Sheriff's office, and that they actually did a halfway decent job in lowering the murder rate. Not as good as Buffy has, but better than Deputy Lamb and his cohorts on the best day of their lives."

"No offense to your father was intended, Miss Mars," Giles said.

"And none was taken," I said. "Just giving my Dad credit where credit was due."

"Fair enough. In any event, this is not likely to be those circumstances; this is due to a wish granted by a vengeance demon, and such wishes rarely turn out well."

"Evil genie?" Xander asked

"I believe I get your reference, Xander, and yes, that's a good analogy. We must assume that whatever Mr. Echolls is doing under this wish's influence, that it will only affect us negatively."

A good assumption to make. At one point, I knew the future, but right now I was utterly clueless in knowing what was going to happen.

Still, no time for backtracking or doubts now. I was committed to this path come Adversary or high water.

The meeting broke up, and I headed to Dad's office to do some more winnowing of the 45 places I had left on the list.

X X X X X

That night I got down to 38, through judicious use of logic, luck, and in a couple of cases, remembering the future; the mansion on Crawford Street hadn't been on the radar yet –

But I'd already blown things to hell and gone, anyway. I uncrossed it off the list.

39.

You'd think from the high number of demons and vampires and other magical beings that hung out in Sunnydale that there would have to be at least a few hundred buildings Willow and I couldn't cross of the list, but you'd be wrong for a couple of reasons.

One, a lot of the buildings that were used were used either by multiple beings, or different ones in succession. Vampires tended to hang out together, and not all of them liked buildings, anyway; the Master and his crew had hung out in the caves under Sunnydale, and a lot of them, of course, used the sewers.

Two, there were a lot who were like Clem, or even like Doyle, who could pass for human or who were actually part human, who no more wanted to live in abandoned buildings than most of the rest of us did.

Three, some of them simply lived out in the woods at the edge of town, and had no fixed address.

And four, this time around we were tracking down vampires, and specific ones, at that. Some vampires didn't mind caves, or sewers, but Spike and Drusilla, in canon, didn't spend a whole hell of time holing up there. Spike was willing to hang out in a crypt when he was by himself, but when he was with Drusilla they needed someplace a bit bigger.

Of course, I couldn't make my reasoning known for most of that – the Adversary would have my ass if I did - but Willow seemed willing to follow me lead, this being my relative field of expertise. (Not that she was a bad detective herself, as she showed in Gone and, for that matter, in the original run through of Lie to Me.)

Another hour and I still wasn't able to narrow the list any further.

Well, poop.

Still, from "everywhere in town" to "39 buildings" wasn't actually that bad – a lot better than I'd thought I was going to get going in.

So, pure deduction was done, and we were waiting till Saturday to use magic.

Which left my Leroy Jethro Gibbs impression for tomorrow.

Good. After the events of the last couple of days, I had a little bit of aggression to work out.

X X X X X

Friday, for once, went smoothly, if you discount Logan still giving me the cold shoulder, which at this point I more or less have to.

I wish I didn't have to leave things like this, but I was fairly sure I was going to have to. Barring a wild misinterpretation on my part of how and when my bet was going to end, or deliberate obfuscation by the Adversary – and while he'd been cryptic, and cruel, he'd never been deliberately deceptive – my time here, my "storyline," was going to come to an end in the next couple of days.

You may ask, then, why I kept up with the routine; why I went to school at all. I could make up some answer, pretend that it had some kind of larger purpose, but the truth is, I don't really know. Maybe I needed the routine; maybe I didn't want to get Dad worried; or maybe it was something from down deep, some psychological reason even I wasn't particularly aware of.

But I did. I had to have something to do, to kill the time between morning and "let's go interrogate us a vampire." I'd already let Dad know I wouldn't be coming into the office after work, and he said it was okay; he had a cheating-wife case he was working on anyway, and the suspected cheater was "working late" tonight, so he wasn't going to be in the office either. (So I wasn't to go there either, was the undercurrent, which I appreciated. Keith Mars doesn't go for unnecessary overprotectiveness, and with Drusilla around, very little protectiveness at all actually reached the "over" category.)

I quickly updated everyone on where Willow and my investigation had stalled after school before Buffy and I headed out, and handed Giles a copy of my list. Willow said she'd go over it again, and Xander actually volunteered to help her, much to Cordelia's annoyance. Sheila, by prior arrangement, hadn't come to this meeting, because there really wasn't anything more she needed to do.

She was spending the night at casa de Mars, though, also by prior arrangement. Mabel aka Grace Kelly had booked another all-nighter and Sheila didn't particularly want to spend it locked in her room, not that I blamed her. For the moment, she was going to the magic store to do some more meditation under Rae Mistwood's watchful eye; I would pick her up once I was done the interrogation.

Buffy and I headed to the abandoned store before the sun had completely set. Turned out the place had once been a hardware store. Most of the useful things had been stripped from the place long ago, leaving some knocked-down shelving and some spilled red paint on the floor –

"It's paint," Angel said, reading my expression accurately. "Hello, Veronica. Our guest's in the storage room."

"Hello back," I said. To make sure the captured vampire couldn't hear us, we moved to just outside the back door – someone had kicked it in, and the sun had gone down, so there was no danger of Angel going kablooey because of a few stray rays of light.

"Same routine as before?" Angel said.

"No; this time we're going to go for honesty."

"Honesty?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah. At least, he'll think it's honesty. He tells us, he gets a quick death. He doesn't tell us, you torture him, beat him to a bloody pulp, and then kill him. Slowly. Inch by inch. At least, that's what we're going to tell him." Once again I have to reiterate that I'm not a fan of torture, even on vampires.

Getting the vampire to tell us because of the fear of torture, though, is another thing entirely.

Buffy said, "No offense, Veronica, but I could have done that on my own."

"Then next time, do," I said, taking no offense. "I may not always be available. But tell me, how would you have done it?"

"Gone in and told him exactly what you just did."

"Were you even watching me last time?" I asked in mock exasperation. "I got creative with what I said would happen to the vampire if he didn't talk, but the only thing I actually did was drip some holy water on his neck. That plus threats of you was enough to get him to tell us everything he knew about Rack. So I-"

"Not quite," Angel said. "That, plus you promised to let him go once he talked."

Right. I actually had forgotten about that.

"True," I said. "But I'm not so sure it'll matter. We wanted a lot more info from that vampire than we want from this one. We spent 45 minutes getting what we needed from that one. From this one? All we need is an address . . ."

X X X X X

It took under fifteen minutes from the time I walked into the room until the time another one was biting the dust. Beyond Angel cuffing him once, and Buffy pricking the skin of his foot with a knife while idly musing about the many, many things she could do with that knife that wouldn't actually kill the vampire, we didn't physically harm him until Buffy shoved the stake through his heart.

The address given was nowhere I'd ever heard of.

There were four places still on my list that I specifically remembered from watching Buffy were the mansion on Crawford Street, the warehouse Spike and Drusilla holed up when while they assembled the Judge, Ted's place, and the abandoned fraternity on the campus of UC-Sunnydale, and this wasn't any of them.

It was on the list, though. An old bus depot, abandoned years ago when Greyhound stopped coming to Sunnydale.

Okay, that's two out of three.

I left Buffy there – she was headed out for an early patrol before going home for dinner, while Angel removed the manacles and headed home. They watched while I got in my car, just to be sure Drusilla wasn't lying in wait – she wasn't – and I drove to the magic shop to get Sheila.

On the way, I turned on the radio just in time to catch the 6 o'clock news.

"-ayor of Sunnydale just sat there and said that maybe my time and money would be better spent on charity. Really, Mayor Wilkins? Charity? More people got killed here in Sunnydale last year than got killed in all of San Diego, and you don't want someone looking into it? That has me suspicious, Mr. Mayor, as to why you don't care about the safety of the people of Sunnydale. And that's why I'm going to do something about it. No more holding back. This weekend, there will be a new security force on the streets – paid for, and led, by me. Aaron Echolls."

Well, would you look at that. The riot has spread onto the field.