I didn't want to believe it. And I didn't, not at first. He told me about what he'd read: the prophecy of the Master and the Slayer, how when she faced him at last, she would die, but it said nothing of the after-effects, simply that the Master would rise to the surface and prowl the earth once again.

It didn't say if the world would come to an end, or that the Hellmouth would be destroyed, or anything along those lines, but Giles confessed to me that he feared it did mean the end of the world. The earthquake last night, for instance, that could have been a sign, after all the earth shaking and trembling and ripping itself apart was a sure sign of the supernatural at work.

I still didn't believe him, not until he shoved the book into my hands and let me read it for myself.

I read it eight times, still not willing to believe it.

But there was no escaping what was written: Buffy, the Slayer, was going to die. And there didn't seem to be a way around it.

"What are we going to do?" I asked Giles, after finally putting the book down and sitting in silence for a very long time.

Giles was chewing on the thumb of his right hand while he used his other to agitatedly rub the back of his neck. He shook his head slowly, a pained expression on his face. He looked weary, frightened, defeated.

"There must be something!" I said, getting up, and beginning to pace about the room, "After all we've been through, how many times we've found solutions to seemingly impossible problems, there's got to be something we can do to avoid this." I gestured at the evil little book that had so blatantly told me my friend was going to be killed.

"I-I don't know." He said weakly, rubbing both hands along his face, "I can't find anything, no alternative, no reference to a later prophecy, nothing. If there's a loophole to be found, I'm not seeing it."

I rubbed my palms together, trying to keep my agitation from showing too much. He was already upset enough, he didn't need to see how upset I was.

That's the thing about the supernatural world, I've found: things can always get worse.

More than fearful, I was angry. Angry that after all this time and everything she'd been through, this was the end she was meant to come to, and for what? It didn't stop the Master, it accomplished nothing, nothing at all, so what was the point? What had been the point of any of this? Any of what we'd done?

And she was so young…just a child…

I stopped pacing and closed my eyes.

"We have to tell her." I said.

Giles sighed heavily.

"Maybe we should, I don't know, keep looking?" He asked. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He looked even less confident that we could possibly find something than I did, "Maybe there's someone out there who knows more than we do?"

"Do you know of anyone?" I asked.

"I-I could try some of my contacts," he said, "They might reference material they thought unrelated to the Master, or, I don't know, but we have to try something!"

I nodded.

"We do." I said, "We must." I sighed and looked out at our private collection. "I'll start going through the materials we do have, and see if there's something we overlooked-"

"Angel." Giles said suddenly. I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Angelus?" I said, "What about him?"

"Maybe he could help us?" Giles asked, "He-He might know something we don't, after all he seemed to know about the Master before we'd even heard about it. And he would be eager to aid Buffy, I'm sure."

I frowned incredulously. I didn't want to say it, but he had a point. I was going to argue that if I knew nothing of it, being the senior creature here, then odds were Angel wouldn't know more about it than I did. Then again, I hadn't known of the Master, either.

"Do you know how to reach him?" I asked.

"If he's still in town, then yes." Giles answered, hurrying to his desk and picking up the phone.

"Well," I said, setting myself down on the edge of the desk, "we do need all the help we can get."

I waited while Giles dialed a number, and I could hear the dial tone through the handset as it connected to whatever phone Angel had given Giles the number to. He picked up after the fourth ring, and he sounded suspicious.

"Hello?" he said quietly.

"Hello, this is Giles," Giles said quickly.

"Giles?" Angel said in surprise.

"Yes, uh, Rupert Giles. "I-I need to see you."

The sound of footsteps and the door to the library opening and closing caught my attention. I took a good whiff of the air and caught the strong sent of coffee and perfume.

Miss Calendar had come.

I whispered this to Giles, though I'm not sure he registered it.

"Well I can't really come right now, you know." Angel chided Giles gently.

Miss Calendar looked at me inquiringly as she paused in the doorway, watching Giles. She looked at me again.

"What's going on?" she mouthed. I held up a hand to signal for her to wait.

"Yes, I-I realize that." Giles said, "Can you come after sundown?"

"Yeah, I can manage that." Angel replied, "I'll come as soon as it's dark."

"Good," Giles breathed, "see you then."

He hung up, then looked up at me and sighed. We both knew this was our last avenue of escape, in spite of our talk of finding another way. There was a sense of finality to this. Something dark and oppressive that hung heavy in the air, a feeling that told us there was no escaping fate, not this time.

"Good afternoon, Miss Calendar." I said, and Giles stood and turned towards her.

"Evening," she said, dipping her head at me, and to my surprise she didn't inquire as to why I'd been absent for so long. I think she knew there was something not quite, well, normal about me, but I'd asked Giles not to tell her what I was. Not yet. There was still something about her I didn't trust, and the smaller the circle of people that knew my condition, the better.

She fixed her eyes on Giles and cocked her head.

"You know," she began, "that outfit looks just like the one you wore yesterday, only wrinklier. Were you here all night?"

Giles looked at his shoes, his mind working.

"Uh, sorry, we're uh, not up to socializing just now." He said. I was surprised he included me in the statement, and evidently so was she, since she gave me another inquiring look.

"Something's going on, Rupert, and I think you know what it is." She said, and looked at me.

"I think both of you do." She added.

"Wh-What do you know?" Giles asked weakly. Ms. Calendar shifted stack of files in her arms and invited herself into the office, slipping herself into Giles' vacated seat.

"Well," she said, "I have been surfing the internet, looking for unexplained incidents. People are always sending stuff my way, they know the occult's kind of my turf." She flipped open on the files and pulled a sheet of paper out of it.

"Here's the latest," she said, clearing her throat to read, "A cat last week gave birth to a litter of snakes,"

I raised my eyebrows and looked at Giles. This wasn't getting off to a good start.

"A family was swimming in a lake," she continued, "when suddenly the lake began to boil; and at Mercy Hospital last night there was a boy born with his eyes facing inward."

I shuddered and looked down.

This was really, really not good. To put it lightly.

"Guys," Ms. Calendar said, standing up, "I'm not stupid. This is Apocalypse stuff. And if you throw in last night's earthquake I'd say we've got a problem." She paused, to let one of us say something if we so chose.

We didn't.

"I'd say the End is pretty seriously nigh." She continued, "A little info here would be really appreciated."

"I don't know if I can trust you." Giles said, leaning against a wall. I moved to stand next to him. "We," he rectified, "we don't know if we can trust you."

"I helped you cast that demon out of the internet," she reminded us, "I think that merits some trust."

Giles gave a slight smile at that.

"Look," Ms. Calendar said, "I'm scared, okay? Plus, I've got this crazed monk emailing me from Cortona about some Anointed One?" she fished around for the email and I looked sharply at Giles.

"That can't be." I said.

"No," he agreed, he looked at Ms. Calendar, "no, that-the Anointed One, he's dead."

"Someone's dead?" She repeated.

Giles waved the question away and removed his glasses.

"Who is this monk?" he demanded.

"Uh, a Brother Lucca something, he keeps sending out mailings about a prophecy."

"If the Anointed One isn't dead," I murmured to Giles, "then we killed the wrong one."

"I need you to talk to him," Giles said to Ms. Calendar, "find out everything he knows."

Ms. Calendar blinked at us.

"Look, Rupert," she said, "you haven't told me jack, so what's with the order?"

"Just do it!" Giles snapped. We both looked at him in surprise and he mollified his vehemence. "I'll explain later." He promised.

"You better." She said.

Once she was gone I looked at Giles. His mind was still racing, but his eyes were jumping sporadically, following trains of thought I couldn't see. Combined with his unkempt appearance, he looksed borderline deranged.

"How much are we planning on telling her?" I asked gently.

"I-I really don't know, Margery," he confessed, "she has earned some trust, but she's still an outsider, to a certain extent." He looked at me then. "Telling her about you, is up to you. What we're going to tell her about Buffy is another matter."

I nodded and then he was moving about again.

"All right," he said, "we have about-" he checked his watch, "two hours or three before the sun will be set enough for Angel to come. Which means we can get started contacting my people and you get started-" he started to moved for the door, and suddenly stopped and swayed on his feet.

He began to tilt, and I hurriedly grabbed his shoulder and steadied him.

"No." I said. "There's nothing else we can do for now." I started to lead him to the sofa, he resisted.

"But we have to-" he protested. I shushed him and practically threw him on the sofa.

"I'll keep looking," I said, grabbing my coat and thrusting it at him again, "you need to rest before you faint."

He started to protest again, I pushed him back, and he didn't bother to try and raise himself.

"The world will still be ending when you wake up," I joked half-heartedly, "I doubt anything more disastrous can happen while you try and rest."

He made a protesting sound, but his eyelids were already beginning to close on their own, and in a moment they were closed and his breathing had slowed. I watched him for a moment, to make sure he wasn't faking, and then I went and sat down at his desk and opened the book of prophecy once again.

I could almost quote it by this time, but I had nothing better to do, and besides, it would give me time to think of how on earth we were going to tell Buffy about this.