Here's a hint, in case you haven't figured it out: Eight letters. Begins with D.
I'd swear, but I'm not sure there are cuss words powerful enough. This is the part where David Eddings has his characters say they'd waste time inventing new swearwords, but honestly, I don't think I could invent cuss words powerful enough.
So I'll have to settle for a single, "Shit!"
"What is it, Mars?" Logan asked.
I told Buffy, "Please keep looking. Please."
"Wasn't planning to take it easy," Buffy said. "Be careful, Veronica. Drusilla's likely to be targeting you."
"The carefullest I've ever been in my life."
I hung up. Xander and Sheila, hearing me swear, had come over to see what the problem was.
"Logan -"
"Forget it, Mars," he said. "This is my house. I'm not going anywhere."
"Fair enough. Sheila, Xander: Read between the lines."
"Mars -" Logan said.
"Back off," Xander said. "She's going to tell you what's going on."
"The truth, and nothing but," I said. "Once again, the whole truth isn't my secret to give out." When Logan looked like he was about to interrupt, I said, angrily, "Shut up. We don't have time for you to be petulant right now. Take it out on me later. If there is a later."
"That bad, manhunter?" Sheila said.
"Yes, and no," I said. "I'll give you the gist. This was a distraction – but from something more important than you'd probably think." Hell, it;s more important than Buffy thinks. "The Slayer and a couple of allies were going after a couple of very powerful vampires named Spike and Drusilla. That was the after-action report, right there, and of the fifteen vampires at the sire, they killed fourteen."
"Which one?" Xander asked. "'cause I'm thinking if it was one of the redshirts you wouldn't be so worried."
"Drusilla," I said.
"Shit," Xander and Sheila said in unison.
"Bad?" Logan said.
"Worse. Trust me. Strong as all vampires and completely insane. I mean, Joker-level lunacy, only even more unpredictable. The Joker's pretty much homicidal by definition. An encounter with Drusilla'll probably leave you dead, but that's not a guarantee." After a pause, "I know, because I've run into her twice."
"How –?" Logan asked.
"She likes me. Why is too long to explain, but she's killed people who were threatening me before." Now wasn't the time for a deep conversation about the metaphysics of magic. Or even a shallow one. "The good news is, we're safe for the moment. It's sunny outside, and she can't come into a residence without an invite." I looked at Logan. "No one here's invited any strange women inside, have they?"
"You forget whose son you're talking to, Mars."
"Right. Damn." At this point, it was unlikely that Aaron would have slept with Drusilla – Aaron wasn't dead, and Drusilla was at this point relatively faithful to Spike – but it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. Of course, Aaron's handy collection of do-it-yourself porn in his poolhouse would say yea or nay to that, but we didn't have the hundreds of hours necessary to check them over.
Nor, it should be said, the stomach.
Still, if I wasn't here, Drusilla would have no reason to –
No reason. Look who I was talking about. Since when had Drusilla ever needed a reason for anything? One anyone else was capable of understanding, anyway.
This was assuming she knew anything about what was going on, but the way things usually go for me? She knows. Where she was during the fight beats the hell out of me; it wasn't likely that she just stood there and watched Spike be killed – she probably wouldn't have cared about the minions all that much – but otherwise, who the hell knows?
"Manhunter?" Sheila said, snapping me back. "'snot the time to go driftin' off into your own little world. What do we do?"
"Don't suppose you can cast a tracking spell on Drusilla, could you?"
"Sure. Won't do any good, though. Tracking spell I do leads me to someone. 'snot like radar. Don't know where they are at all times."
"And," Xander said, "Call me crazy, but I'm thinking we really don't want to find her right now."
"Not without a platoon of properly trained Marines to back us up," I said.
Logan snorted and pointed to the backyard. I said, "You know what I mean, Logan. This is a woman who can mass murder experienced witches."
Shock registering on his face, Logan said, "That massacre last week – that was her?"
"Yes. And she was doing it to protect me."
"What?"
"Yeah," I said. "She 'likes' me, remember?"
"I think I'd rather receive affection from a couple of hammerhead sharks," Logan muttered. "But -"
"Focus, Echolls," Sheila interrupted. "There're more important things right now."
"Yes," I said. "First thing. Are there any sewer entrances inside around here?"
Logan looked ready to open his mouth and ask why, then apparently figured out I wouldn't be asking without a reason. "Not that I know of. Maybe one out by the pool."
"Outside?"
"There's not going to be one in the poolhouse."
That was a relief. Admittedly, my definition of the word relief may differ widely from yours.
"Okay," I said. "Xander? Can you think of anything I've missed?"
"Why are you asking Harris?" Logan asked.
"Because Harris," Xander said pleasantly, "Knows more about vampires than she does." Not actually true, of course; I had five and a half more seasons of Buffy and five seasons of Angel to work with. But here? Now? He did, and it would only make sense for me to ask him.
Logan said, "You didn't pay have to pay him, did you?"
"Not a penny," Xander answered.
"Okay. Then, in relative terms, we should be safe now. Keep an eye out for crazy brunettes who dress like they think they're Stevie Nicks." Saying that the word safe there is relative? Wild understatement. Safe compared to having no parachute and jumping out of a plane five miles up, maybe.
Logan nodded. "Okay." Then he shook his head. "Inspirational thought for the day: 'There's no way to get that mushroom cloud back in that nice shiny uranium sphere.' Isaac Asimov." Then he turned and left.
"What was that?" Xander asked.
"Logan wishing he could unlearn things," I said.
"There're forget spells," Sheila said.
"No."
"Wouldn't do it without askin'. Just sayin' it's an option, if he wanted to take it." Oh. I still didn't like it all that much, but at least she wasn't thinking of going the nonconsensual route.
"Okay, then," Xander said. "I assume what we do right now is run for the hills? 'cause I'm not too manly to run when it's necessary."
"Why're you assuming she's coming here?" Sheila asked.
Because the Adversary hasn't shown up saying, "Game over." Because that's what the script would demand, if script there were. Because it wouldn't be a thrilling enough ending if Drusilla left town, or attacked Buffy, Angel and Giles in a mad rage, or started gathering up pieces of the Judge on her own.
Because that's the way it has to happen.
I couldn't tell them that, though.
What could I say?
"Not run," I said. "But walk quickly. Drusilla's out of her mind but I have to go with the assumption that she's not going to target random people, but is instead going to go after those who killed Spike. Since she didn't charge out after Buffy and company right then, she either wasn't there or got there too late to do anything." A not unreasonable assumption, even where Drusilla was concerned.
Sheila asked, "'sthat take the load off you?"
"No. We also have to assume she knows everything."
"How could she?" this from Xander.
Just because I was magic-null, and Anakha to boot, didn't mean Drusilla couldn't find out about me by going the long way and picking it up from someone else. "Magic; she could beat it out of someone; she could have seen what happened and overheard; and because it would be a really bad idea to think otherwise."
"Hmm. Yeah, you're right. Better to be paranoid. Fortunately, I live in Sunnydale, so I've gotten really good at that."
"So . . ." This from Sheila.
"So we go outside and finish up our job here, but we do it quickly. Not quickly enough to make anyone suspicious, but quickly enough that we can get out of here and let Rae and the Whitestone people go their separate ways."
"Sure, why give the crazy vamp lady an all-you-can-eat buffet?" Xander asked. "Well, at least a convenient one."
"'skills the plan, though," Sheila said.
Yeah. Unfortunately, it did. Much as it galls me to come this close to force Aaron Echolls into an agonized confession and not being able to pull it off, we really have no choice. We have to scatter and get safe before Drusilla has any chance at all to show up.
"Wait a minute," Xander said. "I still think -"
"No, Xander. Sheila's right. Stick the knife in a couple of times if you can, but getting a confession is less important than staying alive."
"But -"
"I know it pisses you off. You don't think it pisses me off?"
Xander started, stopped, and then said, "Of course it does. Well, maybe we'll get lucky and one of the knife twists we get in'll be the lucky one."
"A boy can dream," I said.
To my surprise, Xander chuckled for a second. "Yeah. I know. We already dealt with that, though."
Right. Nightmares. Before my time. I said as much.
"Yeah. Wait, you don't remember having any nightmares come true?"
Actually, no, I didn't. "Nope. Anyway, let's go see how Rae's doing."
We walked out to the back. Aaron Echolls was leaning against the back wall of the house, watching Rae – and for once, for him, not looking at a woman as though she was his next conquest. Action hero slash family men didn't do that, I supposed.
The people from Whitestone were standing, watching her politely; many were in the classic at-ease stance, but they were all paying attention. She must have given them quite a long list of dangerous places, to keep going for so long. Again, though, this is Sunnydale we're talking about. She probably could've held them for another two hours.
Rae looked over at me, and I tapped my watch, hoping she'd understand what I meant.
She appeared to, saying, ". . . reason, it's not nearly as bad during the day. Night's when the trouble starts. And, to tell you something about that, I've got three local teenagers: Veronica Mars, Sheila Kelly, and Alexander Harris." Apparently this wasn't a time to stand on informality. "Miss Mars?"
I went first, then Xander, while Sheila finished things up. We were out in front of them, combined, a total of maybe fifteen minutes. We didn't want to look too terribly like we were rushing out of there, even though that's exactly what we were, in fact, doing.
Why would I care, given that I'm fairly sure there's literally no tomorrow? In this case, primarily to avoid raising suspicions – everyone's suspicions. Didn't want Aaron or the Whitestone people to wonder why they were being given the bum's rush, didn't want Xander and Rae or even Sheila to wonder why I wasn't particularly concerned about tomorrow.
It's a delicate balance and one I've been walking for months now. In a way, it'll be a relief to get off, no matter which way the bet goes – but I'm not going to get off the tightrope until I absolutely have to.
Along the way, we did manage to needle Aaron a few more times – we were rewarded with winces and guilty looks every time, but no tearful admissions of guilt.
If I stay in the timeline, that might be something to build on. As it was, now, well, the best-laid plans of Mars and men aft gang a-gley, and all that.
When Sheila finished, Aaron stepped forward, slightly shaken, but still mostly in control of himself. "Thank you, Ms. Mistwood, Ms. Mars, Ms. Kelly, Mr. Harris. Do any of you from Whitestone have any questions?"
Okay, something else we hadn't planned for: A Q and A session. Lovely.
Fortunately, there weren't a lot of questions. One of them asked if we had any idea why the people in this town seemed so oblivious, and the response was a collective "beats me," which was absolutely true. In the real world, the Sunnydale effect only goes so far. It must have been something, well, magical, but beyond that? Not a clue.
A couple of clarifications and one request for Rae's phone number later (she told the man she was in the book), we were done. Ten minutes later than we wanted to be, but we were done.
Thank all the gods.
The people from Whitestone filed out. That much had gone right: They were properly distracted. As the last of them left through a gate, I breathed a sigh of relief (really, I should know better) and quickly told Rae what was going on.
As I finished, Logan, from the house, said, "Veronica, before you leave, could you come here for a moment?"
"Sure." I walked inside. "What do you need?"
"Apparently I was wrong."
"About . . . "
"Whether there's a sewer entrance inside the house."
Oh, shit.
"I don't suppose you're telling me this for purely academic reasons," I said.
"No."
"Won't you come closer, my martian?" Drusilla said, walking from behind a wall.
How did she get inside?
Drusilla continued: "And, no, there's no silly sewer entrance anywhere around here. I am a tree. I provide my own shade. Now, come closer, martian."
"I don't think so," I said, and backed swiftly towards the door.
Drusilla made no move to follow, instead reaching back behind the wall and dragging out Logan's mother. "Now, if you leave the house, I'm afraid I shall be quite cross."
Well, we wouldn't want that.
X X X X X
So, how did she get inside? Tune in next week to find out . . .