Saturdays were always busy for coffee from the moment the shop opened right up until the moment it closed. Business barely tapered off for the nine hours Dawn worked, keeping her rushed off her feet all day, making drink after drink. And so it was with great satisfaction that she finally whipped out the portafilters on the coffee machine, replaced the caps with ones that held fluid rather than filtered it and filled them with cleaning chemicals and shoved them back into the machine to start flushing the coffee out.
"No more coffee today." She said smugly.
"You might wanna pipe down." Casey said from beside her, starting to clean the coffee grinder. "Can't let the customers know we actually want to go home on time." She rolled her eyes and inclined her head towards the people still grouped around tables drinking and eating. Lisa was stood impatiently in the doorway of the washroom, eager to load everything into the dishwasher.
"I want to leave on time tonight." Ryan said as he approached with a broom, sweeping up coffee grinds and crumbs and mini marshmallows and coffee beans. The debris of a normal day at work. "I've got a CSI marathon planned."
"Ooh, which one?" Casey asked, turning her back on the machine she was currently wiping down. Ryan grinned and paused his sweeping to lean on the broom and look at her.
"Vegas of course." He told her.
"What I wouldn't do to have an excuse to stick photos and stuff on a wall and join them up with different coloured strings and drawing pins…" Casey sighed wistfully. Dawn froze with her back to her friends, fingers hovering over the buttons to flush more water through the coffee machine.
Ryan laughed.
"Um, okay, but they don't do that you know? They've got computer programs and proper incident boards and…other cop stuff." He continued.
"I can dream." Casey replied.
Dawn hit the buttons automatically, starting the machine humming again as boiling water ran through the tubes and into the tank below. Her mind was whirring. Incident boards and connecting it all up and CSI and she had been half way there, hadn't she? Printing off the information about the victims. So far that seemed to have proven fruitless, but…What if she also combined it with the locations of where they lived? Or…or where they were last seen? And if that too proved fruitless, what harm could it do?
Well…Besides causing more victims through the inability to find the demon and stop it…
"-llo? Dawn?"
Dawn blinked and turned towards the voice to find Casey staring at her in concern.
"Are you okay?" She asked.
"Sure, fine!" Dawn said. "Um…Excuse me." She turned and hurried off towards the washroom. Casey and Ryan exchanged a look at their friend's odd behaviour. Finding no explanation Ryan merely shrugged and continued to sweep the floor.
The washroom was a tiny box of a room that lead directly onto the main shop through a single free-swinging door. Inside was a sink, a dishwasher and a fridge. Two bins were tucked into one corner, the cleaning supplies in another. Large square trays of crockery that had already been run through the dishwasher sat on racks waiting to be put away. Another sat on the draining board of the sink, half filled with dirty plates and cups. Lisa was doing the rounds in the shop clearing more tables.
Out of sight of customers Dawn took her mobile phone from her trouser pocket and dialled her sister. Buffy still insisted on walking her home to keep her out of trouble in the dark months, but today Dawn had other plans.
"Hello?" She answered after a few rings. Dawn opened her mouth to greet her and was instantly cut off. "What's wrong? Has something happened? I'm on my way!"
"What?! Buffy! No!" Dawn yelped. "Everything's fine, I just-I had an idea, okay?"
"…An idea…?" Buffy asked slowly.
"Yes. Sheesh, overreact much?" Dawn grumbled.
"So sorry, I'm used to my sister getting into it with unholy beasts." Buffy said sarcastically.
"Oh, come on, Spike isn't that bad." Dawn teased. She cleared her throat as Buffy pointedly didn't answer. "Anyway, can you meet me at the library in about an hour?"
"What for?"
"Can't say, gotta go." Dawn said quickly and hung up as she heard her manager's voice outside the door. She stuffed her phone back into her pocket and turned to the trays of clean washing up, grabbing some cups just as the door swung open. She winced as she realized it was a fresh tray just out of the dishwasher. The china was still eye-wateringly hot and was burning her fingers. She smiled and rushed passed Jimmy as he entered and quickly dumped the cups on their respective shelves beneath the counter.
The library was almost empty when Dawn arrived, out of breath and red faced due to sprinting the short distance between the buildings. She made it with thirty minutes to spare before the library closed. That should be long enough, and if not she should be able to commandeer Willow's laptop at home to finish it off. The most important part required the library's A3 printer. She hurried to the back of the building where the computers were and dumped her bag next to a chair, dropped down onto it and logged onto the computer. She shrugged off her coat while waiting for the desktop to load, tapped her fingers impatiently against the keyboard. Once she was finally in she immediately launched the internet browser and her documents folder together, cursing the slow loading technology. She anxiously checked the time on the computer but time seemed to be moving slower than she thought. She breathed a sigh of relief and typed into the internet search bar, looking for a decent street map of the city. As that loaded she went into her documents folder and opened the research she had done the previous day on missing persons, scanning through the information and hoping it would help…
As Buffy walked towards the library she wondered what on Earth it was that the youngest Scooby was up to this time. She had been at the library yesterday too and had come home with a load of missing person reports, both open and closed. Could they expect more of the same? Or was this something different? Maybe Dawn had figured out what it was exactly that they were up against. That would be handy. But then, Buffy suspected, her sister would have said as much on the phone. That was another thing. Whatever it was that Dawn had thought up had excited her enough to call Buffy during work hours. Sure, it was to tell her to meet at the library instead of at work, but still…A text would have been enough.
Whatever it was, they needed it. The collected knowledge base held within Willow and Giles' books was less helpful than usual, and the patrols of Cat, Kennedy and herself had thrown up nothing. The creature they were hunting was like…like a demon ninja and Buffy hated it. Hated being outsmarted by a monster. She sighed as she approached the entrance to the library and strode inside.
"Tell me you've got something good." She murmured, eyes scanning for sign of Dawn. Seeing nothing among the shelves closest to her she moved further inside and eventually spied her sister sat hunched at a desk by herself with her back to Buffy.
"The library will be closing in five minutes."
Buffy glanced over to the help desk towards the voice, smiled and nodded.
"Got it." She replied. "Just collecting my sister." She pointed towards the teen and hurried over. Dawn had an A3 sheet of paper in front of her, a street map of part of the city printed on it, and was busily marking neat little crosses at various points in different coloured biros. The younger Summers looked up as she heard noise from behind her, twisted in her seat and grinned at Buffy.
"Hey!"
"Watcha doin'?" Buffy asked, peering curiously at the bits of paper spread around the desk. Dawn had taken some notes and was now transcribing them onto her map.
"It's a map." Dawn told her, holding up the A3 sheet.
"Thank you, Dawn. I would never have guessed it by myself." Buffy remarked drily. Dawn rolled her eyes and returned the page to the desk. She began to gather up her pens and paper, sliding it all carefully into the main compartment of her messenger bag.
"I was thinking about the victims and finding patterns between them." She explained as she packed. "There's no correlation between age, sex, appearances, whatever." She stood up and pulled on her coat, swung her bag across her chest. "So I started thinking. What if they're randomly selected victims, picked from the same area. I've been putting marks onto the map for last known locations and body dumps."
"No more Tempe Brennan novels for you!" Buffy told her, nudging her shoulder playfully as they began walking towards the exit.
"You won't be saying that when I've finished." Dawn told her smugly. "I have found the demon's hunting grounds. Maybe. Um…It's pretty spread out and some people don't fit but…" She let the sentence hang. She didn't need to say any more. It was better than nothing. A lead even.
"Go Dawnie." Buffy told her proudly, leading the way out onto the street. It was growing dark, the temperature dropping rapidly. Streetlights hummed and shone orange in the gloom. Dawn zipped her coat up to the neck and stuffed her hands into her pockets to keep out the chill.
"You say that now, but wait until you see the size of the area you need to search." She said, almost bitterly as the excitement of her discovery faded with thoughts of the practicalities of the matter. They didn't know a thing about the demon, didn't know how it operated. The disappearances and bodies occurred within a large area, but clustered enough for Dawn to realize it was an area in which the creature mostly stuck to.
"Okay, well, how about you give me and Kennedy an idea of where to look and we can start tonight on patrol while you finish your map thing?" Buffy said. "And if we find it I promise we won't attack it without knowing fully what we're up against." Conventional methods of attack had proven useless when she and Cat bumped into the creature the first time round. She did not want a round two without knowing how to at least incapacitate it.
Dawn nodded slowly as she considered it. Buffy would be out patrolling anyway, but at least she could vaguely point the slayers in the direction she suspected their target was prowling.
"So, you'd be scouting out the area?" She asked.
"Yup. Mission Impossible style." Buffy said. Dawn snorted.
"Sounds about right."
Dinner was on the table when they got home, and Buffy and Kennedy left the house straight after bolting it down. Dawn sat at the now empty dinner table with her map and notes spread out in front of her. Willow and Tara bustled around the kitchen tidying up. She could hear them chatting and laughing as she marked a neat red cross on the city map, then crossed the corresponding information out in her notebook. Dawn sighed and sat back in her chair, hearing more laughter from the kitchen. There were only ten more points to find on her map. She put the cap on her pen and tossed it onto the table, shoved away her research. She could finish it tomorrow after work. The slayers were already out patrolling, a few more marks on the map wouldn't benefit anyone currently. She pushed back her chair and stood up, making her way towards the kitchen to investigate, and frowned as Willow darted passed the doorway.
"Hey, guys, what're you-" She spluttered as she received a face full of warm soapy water and heard Tara gasp.
"HAH! Too slow!" Willow announced smugly.
"Um…" Dawn wiped bubbles from her face and stared at the redhead.
"Oh, Dawn! I thought you were doing your map?"
"Sorry, Dawn…" Tara said sheepishly, approaching the teen with a dry towel in hand. Dawn took in the sodden appearance of the Wiccans and the little puddles of bubbles on the floor.
"Wow, guys. Maybe I should do the dishes?" She teased, taking the towel from Tara.
"Tara started it." Willow insisted.
"Oh, really?" Tara replied, eyebrows raised.
"I'm going to finish the map thing tomorrow." Dawn said, wiping bubbles out of her hair. "Wanna watch a movie?"
"Sure!" Willow said. "Go pick a movie. We'll…fix the mess we just made fixing the previous mess…"
The Eastern horizon was growing light as Buffy trudged up to the front door of her home, keys in hand. She slowly and carefully slid the key into the lock, taking care not to make any noise that may rouse sleeping occupants, and twisted. The door swung inwards soundlessly and she crept inside, easing the door shut behind her and wincing at the click from the lock re-engaging. It sounded like a canon blast in the silence of early morning.
As she sat on the stairs to take off her boots she noticed a flickering blue glow coming from the living room. She shrugged off her jacket as she stood and hung it over the bannister, then crept into the living room, navigating the darkened house with ease.
Kennedy lay sprawled across the sofa, half tucked under a blanket with a bowl of crisps balanced on her stomach. The TV was on, playing a muted film, bathing the room in an eerie flickering light.
"Morning." The dark haired slayer whispered, sliding upright and offering Buffy her bowl of snacks. Buffy shook her head, stayed standing in the doorway to the room. "Guessing you didn't find anything?"
"Dusted some vamps. No demon. You?"
"Nada." Kennedy sighed. "Gave up about an hour ago and came back here. Figured our demon's hiding elsewhere."
"Yeah…" Buffy grumbled.
"We'll think of something." Kennedy said, sensing the blonde slayer's dejection. Buffy nodded and started to leave the room.
"I'm going to bed." She announced.
"Night." Kennedy called after her, and settled back down to watch the rest of the film. In silence, without subtitles, she had no clue what was going on.
Buffy expertly made her way up to her bedroom without so much as a floorboard squeaking. Feeling somewhat put out by that night's fruitless patrol she began to undress in the dark, carelessly tossing aside her clothes to deal with in the morning. She pulled on her pyjamas and climbed into bed and lay staring up at the ceiling as the gloom grew lighter with the approaching sunrise.
She had thought with both Kennedy and herself covering a wide search area they might at least come across some sign of the monster. No such luck. Not even a slight tingle of the slayer sense. Without a pattern to follow they were blindly looking in the hope they might eventually cross paths. A hunt without a trail.
They needed to think up another approach.
She gave a heavy sigh and rolled onto her side, closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep.