And then we rode madly off in all directions.

Well, not literally all. But Angel left via the sewer system, Willow on her bike, Giles and Buffy in the Citroen, Cordelia in Queen C, and Xander and Sheila with me, with Rae following, so that's four different directions right there.

When we got to the Echolls estate, we were a few minutes early. We made sure everything was set, as Rae came over and said, "There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?"

"Yes. And there's a reason, and you know neither Sheila nor I would do anything likely to get you hurt." Sheila nodded in agreement.

"I know," she said. "But considering who I saw at the school, I think I'm justified in being a little worried."

"Not here, you don't." Not if I have Aaron pegged right, and even if I have him pegged wrong, not if Sheila has anything to say about it. "The dangerous part is elsewhere."

"Got it."

"So," Xander said with mock joviality. "Ready to go in there and distract us some guards?"

"'ts degradation day," Sheila said.

So I walked across the street, everyone following me, and rang the buzzer at the front gate. "Mars, Mistwood and friends here to see Aaron Echolls and – friends," I said.

A few seconds later we were buzzed onto the grounds. The door was opened when I got there – and that's when the first of no doubt many spanners was thrown into our works.

Aaron was there to greet us.

As was Logan.

And Lynn.

Logan, we'd factored in. Lynn, we hadn't expected.

"What -"

"Oh," Aaron said cheerfully, "Lynn dropped by to pick up a few things and I convinced her to stay to see what I was doing."

"Come, father dear," Logan said. "The word is 'begged,' not 'convinced.'"

Lynn looked irritated, but she didn't look like she was being browbeaten into staying, and one thing about Logan: He'd take shit himself, but he wouldn't let anyone give his mother a hard time. "The important thing, son," Aaron said, "Is that she's staying." He looked up and realized for the first time that Rae wasn't the only person I'd brought with me. Still smiling, he said, "You must be Rae Mistwood."

"Yes. Nice to meet you, Mr. Echolls. Mrs. Echolls -"

"Ms. Lester," Lynn said firmly, earning her an aggrieved look from Aaron, which bothered exactly no one in the room.

"Ms. Lester, then," she said. "And good to see you again, Logan."

"You've met Ms. Mistwood?" Aaron asked.

"I get around," Logan said.

A good straight line, but I wasn't here to take shots at Logan. Despite my earlier concerns, Aaron seemed willing to accept the non-explanation, and simply turned and said, "And who's this?"

Logan answered before I could, saying, "Father, you remember Sheila Kelly, of course, and this is Xander Harris. Harris makes sense, but what Kelly's doing here I have no idea. I've honestly always thought her the type to be causing criminal activity instead of trying to prevent it."

This, at lest, we'd planned for. Sheila smiled and said, "'ve reformed."

Logan rolled his eyes, but I said, "And besides, even if she has a past, who better to know where things are happening than a former bad influence? Look. If you're concerned, I give you my word: Sheila is here neither to steer Whitestone wrong, nor to swipe your silver."

"She had plenty of chances when she was here a couple of months ago, son," Aaron said. "If Veronica trusts her, so do I."

"Your mistake," Logan muttered.

"So I figured the more, the merrier, in telling the folks at Whitestone where the trouble spots are." I looked around and saw a disturbing lack of elite security forces. "And the nice folks from Whitestone are –?"

"In the backyard," Aaron said. "Ready to go whenever you are."

"Rae?"

"I'm ready."

"We figured Rae would talk first and then Xander, Sheila and I would go out there and cover anything she might not know about."

"Sounds good," Aaron said. "Rae?"

He led Rae outside; I heard someone muttering "ten-hut!" which fit what Willow had told me about Whitestone. They did have a good reputation, overall; she hadn't found many complaints about them. They definitely all were ex-military or ex-police, but their employees weren't from the low end of the scale; i.e., if you're a thug who likes killing things, look elsewhere. Aaron couldn't have done better if he'd been competent.

Lynn walked over by the door, though she wasn't enthusiastic about it. Logan hung back with us, waiting until she was as far away as possible before muttering, "Okay, Mars. What the hell are you up to?"

Okay, it was decided whether to lay it on the line time. Our prep dictated that what to tell Logan was entirely up to me, though Sheila and Xander would follow my lead.

We would not be telling him the whole truth, not under these circumstances. Not with Lynn here. "Put some thought into it," I said. "You know I'm not after money and I maneuvered your father into bringing everyone from Whitestone here. What does that tell you?"

Logan Echolls wasn't stupid. "It means you wanted Dad and Whitestone here because someone's doing something somewhere else. Your father, probably."

"Almost exactly right," I said. "Something important is happening and this thing with Whitestone stood a chance of screwing it up."

"And you're here because?" Logan directed at Xander.

Xander smirked. "She's paying me."

"And if I paid you more?"

Xander shook his head. "Oh, that wouldn't work. Once a Harris is bought, he stays bought."

"I won't bother asking you, Kelly," Logan said. "If Mars asked you to kill all of us in our sleep, you would."

"Messily as possible," Sheila said with her usual evil grin. "But manhunter wouldn't do that."

"No, anyone I want dead I'm perfectly capable of taking down myself," I said.

"Okay. And it has nothing to do with me or my mother?"

And this was where those finely honed truth evasion skills came in. "No," I said, and it was the truth and nothing but. The whole truth? That's another story.

Logan nodded. "You'd damn well better not be lying, Mars."

"I like your mother, Logan."

Right then, Lynn came back towards us then, followed about five seconds later by Aaron. "Ms. Mistwood said she was more comfortable talking to them without me being there." After a couple of seconds, he said, "But she's doing great out there so far. So, can I get you kids anything?"

"We're good," I said. "Look, we wanted to go over with you what we're going to tell the people from Whitestone," I said. "Is that okay?"

Aaron sat down in the nearest chair, giving a go-ahead gesture. "Shoot."

Oh, I'd like to.

"In the meantime, mother," Logan said, "I had something I wanted to ask you. May we?"

"Of course!" Lynn said with gratitude on her face, and they walked away. As they did, Logan shot me a "you owe me" look.

We'd had no idea where Aaron would be, of course, but we'd actually set up where we were going to be in relation to him. I stood in front of him to my left, and Xander stood next to me. Sheila took up a position somewhere to our right, where if Aaron was looking at us he really couldn't be looking at her.

"I don't know why you wanted to rehearse; you're one of the most confident people I know," Aaron said.

"Well, you should know, Mr. Echolls," Xander said, "Confidence and confidence talking to a group of people's a whole different thing."

"True enough. Well, go ahead, Veronica; hit me."

Oh, I'd like to.

"I was going to lead off by saying," I began, "That pretty much everywhere in this town is a danger zone, because apart from when my Dad was sheriff I can't think of a whole lot of places people haven't been killed or attacked. Hell, you were there when that gang invaded the school."

"I was," Aaron said.

"'s attacked right outside a club," Sheila said, "Till Veronica saved me."

"My best friend," Xander said tightly, "Was killed in a club. Gang members."

"And my best friend was killed in her own backyard," I said. Aaron started slightly, so slightly you wouldn't have seen it if you hadn't known to look for it. "By person or persons unknown, now that Dad proved that Jake Kane paid off Abel Koontz."

"Do – do the police have any leads?"

"In Sunnydale? Don Lamb's probably still sulking about getting upstaged, and the rest of the force here combined don't have the brains to open a can of soda. That's why you were bringing in Whitestone, I thought: Because the Sunnydale Sheriff's office as currently constituted couldn't possibly track down who killed Lilly Kane, much less have been able to prevent the murder."

"That's true enough," he said after a second. Then, taking a deep breath, "Anything else?"

"Does talking about Lilly's murder bug you, Mr. Echolls?" Xander asked.

Letting out a deep breath, Aaron said, "Yeah, it does, a little. Things like that – things like that happen to -"

"People like me?" Sheila asked.

"Yeah. No offense meant."

It offended the hell out of me, and I wasn't the target, so I know it offended Sheila and Xander, but they didn't let it show.

"'sall good," Sheila said. "I know enough about you not to let that bother me." Clever, clever girl. The exact truth but meaning something entirely different from how Aaron would interpret it.

"Thanks," Aaron said gratefully. "So when someone kills someone – well, someone more like me -"

"Some complete and total bastard," Xander said. "Go on."

Aaron said, "Well, then, that makes you realize exactly how deep the problem is. I'm only sorry it took me so long to come to the conclusion I did – that this town needs help." He shook his head. "And yes, the person who killed Lilly was a complete bastard." Oh-so-slight emphasis on the was. He was going for redemption here, even if he'd been magicked into seeking it.

The Buffyverse allowed for redemption.

It also allowed for backsliding.

That he was a changed man was irrelevant. You don't get your damned redemption if you weren't responsible.

"I'm glad you agree," I said. "I'm hoping that somewhere along the way Whitestone might be persuaded to help find the person – even if they're not investigators. Give that to my Dad and I'm sure he'll join up."

A flat out lie, of course.

"I'll think about it," he said. "Anyway. We're off topic -"

"Oh, I'd say Lilly's death is as on topic as it gets," Xander said. "But yeah, we asked you to help us rehearse, not to discuss the brutal murder of a friend. Veronica?"

I took a deep breath and began talking about some of the other places in Sunnydale that were trouble spots, and while the answer actually was pretty much everywhere, restricted myself to those I had personal knowledge of –

And I stayed away from my rape. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to discuss it; I'd investigated it twice. It was that I wasn't willing to discuss it with him.

Think we're giving up? Not hardly. This is part of the plan. Knock him off balance, give him a little bit to recover, and then knock him down. If he'd confessed already, that would have been terrific, but we weren't counting on it. (Sheila's positioning was just in case.)

So far, so good.

Sheila talked next, and briefly, about a couple of clubs in town that weren't the Bronze; clubs that catered to a less mainstream clientele, clubs I'd actually been in, of course, in the course of my investigations, but which I wasn't really familiar with.

Then Xander took over, hitting on some of the school tragedies.

When we were done, Aaron blinked. "Wow. I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was that bad -"

"It is." And it was. The only thing we hadn't mentioned to Aaron, of course, is that 90 percent of the crime was caused by things that were other than human. Things that even trained commando-types like Whitestone, not being specifically trained in the hows and wherefores of demon-hunting like the folks from the Initiative were, would have had a hard time taking down.

Which was another excellent reason, of course, to stop this "elite security force" from roaming throughout Sunnydale looking for trouble spots: They were a whole lot less likely to get themselves killed. It was another good reason to get Aaron to confess to Lilly's murder while we could; they weren't the types to cheerfully work for confessed killers.

That's forward thinking, of course, when I might not exactly be "forward." But on the off chance I was, I couldn't in good conscience let Whitestone get killed. I couldn't have even if Willow'd shown them to be unprincipled thugs.

"Then," Aaron said, "The people from Whitestone are definitely going to want to hear this."

"'swhy we came," Sheila said.

"I'm going to go out and check to see how Ms. Mistwood's doing," he said, got up, and went to the backyard.

As if on a mechanical clock, Logan came into the room on a beeline for us. "Did you get what you needed?" he asked. Sheila and Xander walked to the back, to check on Rae.

"Almost," I said. "I'm waiting for a phone call. Where's your mother?"

"Looking out the window at Rae Mistwood," he said. "She actually doesn't think father dearest's idea is a bad one; she just doesn't trust his reasons for doing it."

"And of course, we can't tell him that his reasons are actually good, even if they're not his."

"Yes," Logan said.

"I thought you knew. I swear. You already know that magic exists; what would my percentage be in covering it up?"

"What is it ever?" he snapped, then said. "Look, Veronica. I actually believe you. That just doesn't make this balancing act that's been shoved down my throat any easier."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Trust me. You think you're doing a balancing act?" Right then my cell phone rang. "Excuse me," I said

Logan nodded slightly as I turned away. "Hello?"

An out-of-breath Buffy was on the other end. "Veronica. We're done."

"We are?" I looked around. No Adversary.

"Yup. The assault went almost as planned."

"Almost?" I didn't like that word, almost.

"Yeah. Let me tell you what happened . . ."