Chapter 73
The Dream
"Settle down, guys, take a seat."
Mr. Schuester looked like he hadn't slept much last night, his face unshaven and his eyes sunken. Everything about him seemed to wilt, like a heavy weight was pressing down on him and he could barely muster up the energy to write down a lesson plan. His tired eyes scanned his glee club students, sitting down at the tiered seats of the choir room. He only counted up to eight.
"Where are Mike and Tina?"
The others shrugged, knitting their brow and wondering the same thing.
"Do you want one of us to go look for her?" Kurt offered.
Will sighed and scratched the back of his neck. "No, we have to get on with the meeting. We have some stuff to talk about. First thing-"
As if on cue, Finn Hudson awkwardly walked through the door in baggy jeans and his letterman jacket, a sheepish look on his face. Quinn gave a small, warm smile, beckoning him to come sit.
"Sorry I'm late," he muttered to Mr. Schuester.
Will mustered up a welcoming smile. "You didn't miss anything, Finn. I was just about to tell everybody that you've decided to rejoin glee club. We're glad to have you back."
Finn nodded, smiled curtly and took a seat beside Quinn in the front row, Puck clapping him on the back from the seat behind him. Kurt and Blaine smiled dutifully at him and when he glanced at Rachel on the other side of Quinn, even she had her lips politely pursed and nodded at him as if to say hello again.
Everyone's eyes moved to the doorway as the click-clack of high heels sounded down the hallway and a girl with a crooked nose and light brown hair that none of them recognized walked in carrying a Juicy Couture handbag, a pair of dark oval sunglasses, a furry-hooded jacket and a hint of a smile on her pink frosted lips.
She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head, glanced at Mr. Schuester and said, "So did you introduce me yet?"
The others gaped at her and Will uncomfortably cleared his throat. "Um, no, not yet, Sugar."
Sugar rolled her hazel eyes, her false lashes fluttering and shoved her sunglasses into her handbag. "Well, there goes my grand entrance. I'm Sugar Motta."
They continued to look at her, perplexed. She couldn't have been more than fifteen, but she walked with the gait of a middle-aged Beverly Hills housewife.
"Um, Sugar's our new member," Will explained, his head ducked.
"I saw your performance of Roar at the back-to-school assembly," she said, her voice feathery and nasal, "It was so uninspired."
Rachel's mouth fell open and her brow furrowed. "Excuse me?" was all she could manage to say. She'd fought for them to perform Roar at the assembly, opposed to Kurt's suggestion of Lady Gaga's Applause.
"I mean, I like Top 40 pop as much as the next person, but you guys just can't pull it off," Sugar said earnestly, shrugging her shoulders, "I figured that it was my civic duty to join your little club."
Kurt looked at her, incredulous. "So you're joining us out of pity?" he scoffed.
"Yes," Sugar said matter-of-factly.
Will grimaced. "Well, Sugar, how about you take a seat-"
"Or you can show us what you got," Mercedes suggested, leaning forward in her chair from the back seat and frowning down at Sugar.
Kurt smiled at Mercedes, while Rachel squirmed uncomfortably in her chair.
Will paled. "That won't be necessary-"
"I think it's a great idea," Blaine smiled, oblivious, "A chance for Sugar to display her talents."
"I don't mind," Sugar shrugged confidently, tossing her handbag at one of the legs of the grand piano and tussling Brad's hair, "Big Spender, G-sharp. Hit it, sweet stuff."
The glee clubbers watched, bemused, as Sugar Motta continued to perform the most disastrous, off-key performance of Big Spender - or of anything - they'd ever seen. Sam had to hold his hand in front of his mouth to keep from laughing. Will shrank beside the piano, embarrassed for his new student. Rachel's uneasiness passed and she smiled to herself.
Sugar quit singing and looked to her schoolmates, a smug smile on her face. "Awesome, right?"
After the meeting had ended and the glee clubbers dispersed, Rachel strode away after Mr. Schuester, Quinn reluctantly following.
"You can't possibly be serious about Sugar Motta. She has no place being in show choir. She's going to turn glee club into a joke."
Will rolled his eyes. "It's not like I'm going to give her any solos."
Rachel glowered as she followed him to his office. "We're going to have to waste time waiting for her to catch up on all the routines. This is torture. We're never going to make it to Nationals with her dragging us down! We're only as strong as our weakest link."
"Rachel, please, she's not a bad dancer, okay? We can assign her to her strengths."
"She's spoiled and rude! How are you supposed to manage glee club with such an intolerable diva?"
"I think I've managed pretty well so far."
Rachel glared at him, her cheeks flushing. "Why are you fighting so hard for her to be in glee club?"
Will sighed and took a seat behind his desk as Rachel and Quinn awaited his response. "Her father offered to pay our entire year's budget if we let her in the club."
Rachel's mouth hung open. "You were bribed?!" she asked, scandalized.
"Rachel, you have no idea how much money goes into glee club. If we didn't have Mr. Motta's donation, we wouldn't make it to Nationals!"
"We're not going to make it to Nationals with her on our team!"
"Rachel, please," Will raised a hand, exhausted, "This year is going to be hard enough on its own."
Rachel frowned, guilted. "No luck in Fort Worth?"
Will shook his head. "No. Could you do me a favor and go find Mike and Tina? Update them about glee club."
Rachel nodded, somber, and left the room with Quinn following. Will squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and wished he could sleep for a week, when a light knock came at his glass office door. He looked up to see Terri smiling sympathetically from the other side and he motioned for her to come in.
"How are you?" she asked tentatively, taking a seat across from him.
"Tired," he answered bluntly, "Having to think about glee club and classes and Buffy all at once..." And, of course, he was always thinking about Emma, but he didn't say that.
"I know, it's hard," Terri said softly, "How did it go with Buffy's mother?"
Will sighed. "She hates me. I don't blame her. This is all my fault."
Terri frowned. "How is this your fault?"
"All this time I've told Buffy that being a slayer is the most important thing in her life. It broke her. That's why she left town."
Terri stared hard at him. "Will... I couldn't tell you what was going through Buffy's mind when she left Lima because I don't know her all that well, but I can tell you that as long as I've known you, you've never done anything to hurt anyone. If anything, you made her life just a little bit better."
Will smiled gratefully. "Thank you."
"Any time."
xxx
Rachel pushed the girls' bathroom door ajar and heard the quiet breaths and whimpers coming from inside one of the stalls. The tell-tale signs of sobbing. She motioned for Quinn to follow her in and the two girls walked quietly into the bathroom. Quinn got down on her knees on the bathroom floor and peered under the stalls, spotting a pair of white vintage go-go boots.
"Tina?" she called.
The crying halted and Rachel went up to the stall door. "Tina, it's just me and Quinn. What's wrong?"
A sliding and a clicking sound came from the stall and Tina opened the door to reveal her tear-streaked face and mussed hair.
"Tina, what happened?" asked Rachel, horrified. Tina was always sensitive, but Rachel had never seen her cry like this.
Tina opened her mouth to speak but something caught in her throat and she started sobbing into her palms again. Rachel looked at Quinn, helpless. Quinn picked at her black-polished nails, uncomfortable, but she quickly wrapped an arm around Tina's waist and guided her to the sinks, letting her lean against them. Quinn grabbed a few scratchy eco-friendly hand-wipes from their holster mounted on the wall and put them in Tina's hand. She crumpled them up and wiped her eyes, her face red and blotchy. Rachel placed a hand on the girl's back and waited for her sobbing to turn into quick, short breaths.
"Will you tell us what happened?" she asked gently.
Tina sniffed, her face red. "Mike dumped me," she said, her voice thick with the struggle to stop crying.
Quinn and Rachel glanced at each other, their eyes wide in surprise. "What? Why?" asked Quinn, not quite believing it.
"B-Because..." Tina started to explain, but started blubbering again.
Rachel bit her lip and mouthed 'What do we do?' to Quinn as Tina buried her face in her hands. Quinn frowned and thought back to when her first ever boyfriend, Preston Casey, dumped her in the 6th grade. She'd been sobbing and ready to set something on fire. Santana, who'd never displayed any kind of sensitivity, even at twelve years old, took Quinn home after cheerleading practise, made her a cup of cocoa, let her spill her guts out about how much she hated and loved Preston, and then when the crying jag was finished, she treated her to dinner at a TGI Fridays and a stupid zombie movie at the Lima Theater. By the end of the day she'd forgotten old what's-his-name.
Quinn's stomach clenched painfully at the thought of her friend. She wasn't sure that treatment would work on Tina. For one thing, they weren't twelve anymore and for another, Preston Casey was no Mike Chang. Everyone was so sure that the first wedding for the class of 2014 would be Mike and Tina's. Quinn never realized it before, but part of her counted on them to be one couple who stayed together. They gave her hope.
"Let's skip the rest of school today, huh?" she said aloud.
The suggestion led to looks of horror from the two over-achievers.
"Hear me out," said Quinn, "This is obviously a serious emergency. The three of us need to drive back to Lima Heights, drink some Colombian coffee and talk about what happened."
Rachel grinned at Tina. "What do you say?"
Tina shrugged. "I don't know..."
"Come on," Quinn begged, "It's the second day of school. You're not gonna miss anything."
Quinn drove Tina's father's Volkswagen bus out of school without signing out, leaving Rachel and Tina fidgety and nervous that they were skipping school. They made it back to Lima Heights, where Sofia took one look at Tina's tear-streaked face and turned on the kettle to make homemade chai teas.
Tina brought up her feet and hugged her knees on the living room couch as How I Met Your Mother buzzed quietly on the TV screen.
"It sounds like you two just want two different things," Quinn frowned after Tina explained what had happened.
"Yeah," she sniffed bitterly as she clasped her mug of tea, "I want to be with him and he doesn't want to be with me."
"Oh, Tina, that's not true," Rachel shook her head, leaning forward on the armchair, "Mike loves you, anyone could see it."
Tina sniffed, more tears appearing in her eyes. "Then why doesn't he want to be with me?"
"He does want to be with you," said Quinn, "He just realized that the two of you want different things in life."
"He'll come around," Rachel smiled encouragingly, "Maybe you two can figure out a way to make it work."
"What if we can't? I want to be a watcher. I want to train a slayer and guard the Hellmouth. I don't want to follow Mike to Harvard like a puppy dog and be a doctor or a lawyer or a businesswoman. I don't want a house in a gated community and kids who go to private school, who don't know anything about the world around them. He does."
Quinn and Rachel looked at each other, their jaws set, fearful that she was right.
"But... you guys can't break up," Rachel said quietly, "Maybe Mike will change his mind."
Tina scoffed. "This is all Mike has ever wanted. The Ivy League school, the good wife and the white picket fence. I can't give him that. I don't want to give him that."
"Maybe you two are just too different," Quinn frowned.
"Or maybe Mike will come to his senses and realize that you are the best thing that's ever happened to him!" Rachel exclaimed, "After all you've been through, he can't just end it like this. He'll come back to you, I know he will."
Tina squirmed. "I wish I was that sure." Her face crumpled and she started to cry again.
"Oh, Tina," Rachel cooed and put her hand on Tina's shoulder.
"I'll get some Kleenex," said Quinn, standing up and walked out into the kitchen.
Her heart hurt for Tina but she was glad to be out of the room while the girl was sobbing. It made her uncomfortable.
"Shelby?"
She'd walked into the warm terracotta-tiled kitchen to find Shelby leaning against the island counter talking to Sofia, who was rocking Beth on her hip and cooing in Spanish.
"Oh, Quinn, I thought you were at school," Shelby frowned.
"We had an emergency."
"Hellmouth problems?"
"Boy problems, but close. What are you guys doing here?" she asked, sidling over to Beth and smiling, blowing up her cheeks for the baby to smack.
"Sofia and I have decided on an arrangement. I'm going to be dropping Beth off in the mornings with Sofia and I'll be picking her up at five. That way you'll have a nice hour after school to spend time with her and you won't have to drive to the apartment."
Quinn frowned, confused. "What about Jesse? He's not nannying anymore."
Shelby pursed her lips and picked at a loose thread in her dark purple cardigan. "Jesse isn't with us anymore."
Quinn smirked. "What does that mean?"
"He decided he needed to get on with his life. Out of Lima."
Quinn's smile faded. "Out of Lima? Where?"
"I don't know. All I know is that he's leaving soon."
"Why...?"
"I don't know the details, Quinn," Shelby shrugged, exhausted, "I just know if he does leave, he's probably not going to say goodbye."
xxx
Buffy let herself into the abandoned club after dark, when the city was illuminated by neon signs and taillights. She walked to the door in the corner that Reefer had come out of the night before and put her ear against the split pinewood. She couldn't hear anything on the other side, so cautiously, she opened the door and let herself in. The doorway led to a narrow cement staircase with faded graffiti on the walls and several phone numbers followed by x's and hearts written in Sharpie. At the bottom of the staircase was an open doorway that led into the expansive basement.
Buffy narrowed her eyes into the dark and trailed her hand along the wall, looking for a light switch. She turned a knob until it clicked and one dull light bulb turned on. It was enough to see to low-ceilinged space with a DJ booth, several tattered couches, a bar with a sticky surface and a bunch of empty bottles strewn on the ground. The air smelled thick and Buffy peeled her eyes for anything suspicious.
She was sure the body she and Angel had stumbled upon in the alley's was Lily's. The slight frame, the pale skin, the scraggly blond hair and the moon eyes were all identical to her co-worker's. Sure, she'd aged a good sixty years, but Buffy never expected to be able to explain everything on the first try. This was the work of something otherworldly, clearly, and it was no coincidence that Lily's dead body was dumped in the alley right around the corner from the place of the party she'd talked about a day earlier.
Buffy turned around, to the doorway. Under the phone mounted on the wall beside it was a tall metal table with crumpled pages set into a clipboard, two pens laying beside it. Buffy moved toward the papers and saw a bunch of names scrawled on it. A guest list! Buffy flipped through it and found two Lilys. Lily Pendanski and Lily Corgan. Buffy wrinkled her brow at it, wondering if either of them was her Lily.
Her eyes widened as she connected the name Corgan to the frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins. Lily had gotten her name from a Smashing Pumpkins song! Buffy was sure this was her, and she thought back to how Reefer had said he didn't know what Lily's last name was. He didn't even mention that there was a guest list. Buffy was sure that if something bad happened to Lily, Reefer was behind it.
Buffy squinted at Lily's name. Next to it in red pen, someone had written 'Candidate'.
"Candidate for what?" she wondered aloud.
"What are you doing?"
Buffy looked up to see Reefer standing at the end of the stairway, his sunglasses propped up onto his blue head of hair. Buffy locked her jaw, determined.
"Candidate for what?" she said again, addressing Reefer.
Reefer swallowed and looked at the guest list in Buffy's hands. "This is private property."
"Somehow I doubt that," Buffy frowned, "A bunch of these names have candidates beside them. I wonder if those kids are missing like Lily, too. I'm willing to bet they are."
Reefer looked caught. "You're gonna get yourself in trouble," he said, cautious rather than threatening.
Buffy put the guest list back down on the table, the back of her neck tingling. "I don't want trouble," she sighed, "All I wanted was to be alone and be quiet, with a fireplace, a cup of tea, maybe a book, I don't know. And instead, I get trouble. What are you doing to these kids?"
"I'm not doing anything! I just give names... I give him the names of the healthy ones. The ones who can go all night and are hardly hungover in the morning. Not the ones who are into heavy drugs... He doesn't want them to go through withdrawals-"
"Who is he?!" Buffy demanded.
Reefer pursed his lips. "The guy who owns the space next door."
Buffy furrowed her brow. "The deli?"
"No, the other side."
Buffy thought back to the dimly lit space beside the empty club. It had looked like a place where AA meetings were held, not a place where young adults were kidnapped and turned into senior citizens.
"Who owns the space next door?" asked Buffy.
"Look, they close up shop and leave by eleven every night. You're not gonna find anybody in there this late, I promise-"
"Who owns the space next door?!" Buffy demanded.
Reefer grimaced. "His name is Jeremiah."
xxx
Jesse flipped through the numbers on his iPhone, pausing at Shelby's. He hovered over the delete button but decided against it, turning it off and shoving it back into the pocket of his biker jacket. He looked up at the flight schedule on the flat screens above the check-in desk. He had a one way ticket to New York booked on the fly and his plane left in two hours. He had time to kill at the airport and he idly wondered if his wolfsbane would be taken from him at customs when he felt an itch all over his body. The usual feeling of when a fellow Wiccan was near.
He turned around, one hand clasping his carry-on bag, and spotted Quinn Fabray rushing into the airport, a heavy black jacket draped over her slender frame, her pink hair wild.
"Jesse!" she exclaimed when she spotted him.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, slightly bemused as she ran toward him. He grunted as she tackled him with a tight hug. "Quinn, what are you doing?"
Quinn pulled back, her eyes narrowed angrily. "What are you doing? You're moving to New York without even saying goodbye? Without even telling me?"
Jesse shrugged. "I'm not one for goodbyes."
Quinn winced. "That is so lame, Jesse. After everything... you just leave?"
"I didn't think you'd be all choked up."
Quinn rolled her eyes. "You can be such an ass sometimes."
"Quinn, come on," he sighed, "Look, this is hard for me. I've never been good at admitting that I care. I let myself believe that there was something between me and Shelby again, and I made a mistake."
"That's why you're leaving? Because Shelby's not into you?"
Jesse rolled his eyes. "No, I'm leaving because... Because there's no reason for me not to leave. And before you get personally offended, yes, you're important to me. I care about you and I will miss you, but I have to get on with my life. I have to do something with myself."
"Why does it have to be in New York?"
Jesse smiled down at her. "I need to live in a place that shines as bright as I do."
Quinn rolled her eyes again, but broke out into a smile. "What am I supposed to do without you and your big head?"
Jesse shrugged. "You'll survive."
"And what about you? How are you going to afford living in New York?"
Jesse scrunched up his face. "My dad's rich, Quinn. I'm going to stay in a hotel until I find a place to live and eventually I'll become famous and will be able to support myself, my wife, my second wife and my four homes."
Quinn laughed. "You got it all figured out, huh?"
"Mm hm. Ones in Europe," Jesse smiled, "Promise me you'll keep practising magic. Shelby's a good mentor, you just have to prove to her that you're worth it."
"Keep in touch. I mean it. We've had a lot of ups and downs between the two of us, but you've seen me through a lot of changes. All my changes. I don't want us to forget about each other."
Jesse leaned and hugged Quinn with one arm, the other still clutching his bag. "We won't."
xxx
Kurt twisted and turned in his sleep, his sheets tangled around his legs. He felt restless and stuck half awake and halfway into a dream. He tried to imagine a meadow, a warm billowing breeze and the scent of lavender to lull him to sleep. He'd coddled himself into a dream, and once he was in it, he sighed. For once, there were no vampires or eerie warnings from his late mother. It was just him, in a field of white tulips that smelled like his pillow's fabric softener. A pale purple butterfly fluttered past against his skin. He wore a white pair of pants and a white v-neck sweater with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the jagged white scar that usually graced his arm had vanished.
He breathed in deep, glad to have a moment of peace. He walked idly through the meadow, until he spotted a slice of white off at the edge of the horizon. He turned from it, not giving it much thought, but after a moment he looked back at the white strip and wondered what it was. His dream suddenly started to feel more real. Not a fabric of his imagination but a real place he had been transported. He walked over to the fine slice of white and once he was close to it, it was about the size of his bedroom door, wider and taller than him.
Curious, he walked through and squinted in the white light that followed. The light faded and he was standing in the courtyard at McKinley. He blinked around at his school's campus. Some dream this was. Why would he dream about his school's dreary courtyard when he could be dreaming about his beautiful imaginary meadow? He spotted two girls sitting at one of the circular benches. They were huddled close, gossiping about something, eager smiles on their faces.
One, he realized, was his mother. Not somber and dressed in white like she usually was in his dreams, but looking like she did in his father's high school yearbooks. She wore a denim vest, a pair of acid-wash jeans and dark combat boots. Her blonde hair was full of thick curls. The girl next to her was Carole. Kurt blinked at his stepmother. She looked younger, and more beautiful, but she had the same crinkly smile and warm eyes.
"You're not supposed to be here yet."
Kurt whirled around. It was his dad. He looked younger too, as young as he did in high school, with a head of dark hair hidden under his baseball cap. He looked a lot like Finn, but shorter.
"What do you mean?" asked Kurt.
The girls couldn't hear them and if they could, they made no indication of it.
The young Burt shrugged. "You're not usually here yet. It's just us, back in the good old days," he smiled, not at all as perturbed as Kurt was, "Don't they look nice?"
Kurt glanced at his mother and stepmother. "Uh, yeah."
"They're getting along. I always knew they'd get along," Burt smiled to himself, staring warmly at the two girls as they laughed together.
Kurt smiled softly and looked from his father to the two women. He realized that this wasn't his dream. It was his father's. Somehow, he'd entered his father's dreams.
"Mom would be happy that you and Carole are together," said Kurt.
Burt smiled gratefully at his son. "I know."
Kurt looked around, spotting another slice of white light above the steps on the northern side of the courtyard. He figured he should leave his father to dream in private and walked up the steps and into the light. Before the light left his eyes so he could see what was on the other side, a cacophony of noises filled his ears. He heard feet stomping on metal, people cheering wildly, an unclear voice into a microphone and the screech of feedback through speakers. He let his eyes adjust and he was in the school's football field.
It was night and the too-large moon and glittering stars illuminated the whole field. People were going crazy on the bleachers, screaming, cheering and holding giant colorful signs with 'Finn Hudson Rules' in bubble writing and glitter. Kurt rolled his eyes. He just wanted to be back in his own dream. The moon cast a spotlight on his stepbrother in the middle of the field, who was being held up by his teammates after an apparent win. The scoreboard read '9000 to 0'. The cheerleaders, who were going nuts, wildly shaking their red and white pom poms, were mostly faceless, except for two.
Quinn and Rachel stood in front of the crowd of Cheerios wearing cheerleading skirts that were somehow shorter than the real ones, their massive boobs jiggling underneath their tops. Kurt grimaced. Finn had to have one active imagination to dream up a version of Rachel Berry that rocked double Ds. The big-boobed brunette bounced over to Finn as his teammates set him down on the ground and stuck her tongue in his mouth as Quinn cheered on, ecstatic.
Okay, I've seen enough, though Kurt, spotting the white door and sprinting towards it. He blinked against the light and woke up in his bed with a chill, the bed sheets having fallen off of him. He sat up, perplexed and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. He got out of bed and padded to his desk, lifting his laptop open and waiting impatiently for Google to load. Dream travelling, he typed into the search engine, knowing how stupid it sounded. A Wikipedia article on astral projection came up. He bit his bottom lip and clicked it.
His eyes scanned the blurb and stopped when he read 'result of, some forms of spiritual practice'. He wondered if practising his psychic abilities was making him gain more. He thought about his father's pleasant dream and his stepbrother's vomit-inducing one. He wondered, quite eagerly, if he could travel into Blaine's dreams or if he should stop altogether. It may be - it was definitely - an invasion of privacy. He'd already learned to control mind reading, not wanting to encroach on anyone's private thoughts. He wondered if this astral projection was just an extension of that.
He went back to bed with itching curiosity. He knew even thoughts could be deceiving. You could lie to yourself until the cows come home. But dreams were honest. In dreams, your purest desires came to light.
xxx
Reefer had been telling the truth last night about everyone clearing out of the building beside the club by eleven. She had broken in through the back window last night looking for that floppy-haired Jeremiah, but she'd come out with zilch. She'd found one locked door with a bolt around it, but she decided to wait another day to bust it open. She decided to head to the building when her shift ended at Laszlo's. She closed her hand around her order pad, itching for the clock to move a little faster. She left an order with Dwayne and walked to a table in the corner where a dark-haired guy had taken a seat.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked him impatiently, staring at her order pad with her pen ready.
"Light blended frappucino," he answered, "Two pumps of amaretto, decaf."
"'Kay, I'll be-"
"And a half slice of carrot cake, heated with one scoop of vanilla. If you don't have vanilla, whipped cream is fine, but not the canned kind-"
Buffy looked away from her order pad and down at the customer, her teeth gritted. She widened her eyes in surprise when she registered the dark curly hair and sparkling gray eyes of Jesse St. James.
"Jesse?"
Jesse looked up from the menu printed on marbled paper and gaped at Buffy. A smirk grew on his face. "I don't believe it. Buffy Summers-"
"Shh!" she winced, twisting around to make sure no-one had heard him.
"And you changed your name, of course. To what. Anne?" he raised a dark eyebrow at her nametag.
"What are you doing here?"
"I moved. Lima was cramping my style and I need to get started on my career in show business. But boy, you left a lot of damage back in Ohio, I'll tell you that."
Buffy squirmed. "...How is everyone?"
"Why don't you go back and find out?"
Buffy sighed. "It's not that simple."
Jesse frowned. He didn't know what had happened to Santana or how much it had affected Buffy, but he knew that in her wake, her watcher had fallen into a depression and her friends barely knew what to do with themselves. Quinn, though she was in a happiness coma after she and Rachel got together, could also be seen holding back tears and putting on a brave face when she decided to wear the armour that Santana had worn. She was the one who led the scoobies to protecting Lima in the slayer's absence.
"I have to get back to work," Buffy mumbled.
"Let me take you out somewhere when your shift's over," Jesse said before she could turn away. She looked dubious. "It's not a come on. I just think you should consider seeing your friends again. Your watcher... Your mother."
Buffy frowned down at her order pad. "Will you tell me how they've been?"
Jesse nodded. "I'll tell you everything."
Buffy considered, then shook her head. "I have to be somewhere after work."
"Where?" Jesse asked, skeptical.
Buffy sighed and leaned closer to the table. "A girl I knew went missing and I found her body last night, except... something had changed her. I think I have a lead on what happened and I have to check the place out."
Jesse smirked. "You can take the girl out of the Hellmouth..." he trailed off, "Let me go with you."
"No, I'll be okay. I'm staying with Angel, so-"
"So, forget Angel. I'll be your undercover guy. I have acting skills to spare."
"Jesse-"
"And not to mention years worth of experience using witchcraft."
Buffy pursed her lips. "I get off at three."