Chapter Five: A New Woman

"Yes, well I believe the vampire Buffy has encountered was once an evil witch." Rupert Giles put on his spectacles, and read aloud from the ancient leather-bound volume on supernatural lore. "In the year 1627, the village of Clapton in Staffordshire suffered a series of mysterious deaths. Because the victims were children, the villagers naturally assumed the culprit was a local midwife and herbal healer known as Mother Covington. With the help of one Dr. Isaac, a Puritan minister and noted scholar, the people of Clapton were able to trap the elderly woman in her cottage and burn it to the ground. The killings stopped soon after, thus proving to all concerned that Mother Covington was the murderer."

"That's great – except it all happened in exactly the opposite way." Heads turned as slim, golden-haired Buffy Summers marched into the school library, her brown eyes blazing.

"Buffy!" Xander Harris looked absolutely overjoyed to see the Slayer again. But then his good-natured face turned puzzled. "We thought you were trapped in the crypt. We were coming to rescue you . . ."

Bored and beautiful Cordelia waved her manicured hand. "Please. We were so not coming to your rescue . . ."

Xander ignored the interruption. "We were totally coming. But you're still alive, so does that mean the evil lady vampire who runs the health spa outside of town has been dusted?"

"She's totally not evil, Xander, and no, she has not been dusted. We talked, that's all." The beautiful blonde Slayer gave a casual shrug, as though she had merely forgotten her geometry homework. "Edwina Covington is mega-cool."

"I know, right?" Cordelia's dazzling dark-brown eyes lit up with a rare smile. "My skin, hair and nails were already perfect, but Edwina has taken perfect to the next level."

"Why are you wearing a scarf around your neck, Buffy?" Willow Rosenberg's soft voice interrupted Cordelia's glowing tribute to Edwina's amazing beauty treatments.

"What, this?" Buffy waved her hand, lazily imitating Cordelia. "I think Edwina took some blood to prepare a protection spell, for when I go up against the Master."

"You think?" Giles the librarian looked as though he were about to have a stroke. "You think a vampire bit you on the neck? You think she drank your blood? Well that's – I mean to say – it's your job to be certain about these things, Buffy."

"Yeah, and what's all this about you going up against the Master?" Xander's cheerful, laughing features clouded over. His dark eyes looked worried. "What about the whole, 'he's going to kill the Slayer because it is written' thing?"

"Edwina's going to help me," Buffy chirped, with breezy confidence. "We talked the whole thing over, and she told me what really happened in 1627. See, she was really a good witch. The Master just framed her for killing all those children. He disguised himself as a Puritan minister, and got the locals all stirred up against her. Then when she was dying, he turned her into a vampire. The guy's a total creep!"

"And Edwina . . . that is, Mother Covington . . . she told you all this?" As a proper Englishman, Giles was clearly reeling at these stunning revelations about his country's sordid past. "I'm sorry, Buffy, but the entire account . . . well, it simply strains one's credulity. A vampire wearing Puritan garb!"

"People always do horrible things in the name of God," Cordelia commented. "Why can't vampires?" Seeing how Xander and Willow were staring at her, she shrugged. "What, I'm not allowed to have an insight now and then?"

"Edwina Covington is a vampire," Xander said slowly. "She drinks blood. She drank your blood, and she probably drank Buffy's blood. Am I the only one who has a problem with that?"

"Xander, you so don't get what Edwina is all about." Buffy stretched in her chair, looking very satisfied and content. "When I went down into her lair, I was all like, Slayery and stuff. But after we talked, and I had this amazing tea, and she took a drop or two of my blood, I felt like . . . like . . ."

"Like a new woman," Cordelia finished for her.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "Exactly. And when I face the Master, he won't even know what hit him."