"Buffy, do you know when Angel first became aware of you?" Jessica asked her.
"When he came to Sunnydale to fight vampires."
"No, I magically traced his path before the two of you met. He spent a year pretty much sitting outside your bedroom window in LA watching you. And that's pretty much what he does here in Sunnydale as well."
Joyce gave a shocked gasped. "He's been stalking her?!"
"No." Buffy protested. "He was probably just trying to protect me."
"Why? Vampires can't get into your house and if a demon had managed to, you're a Slayer, you could of dealt with it yourself. You didn't need him to protect you. And watching you sleep, isn't protecting you anyway. It's obsessing over you. Both parts of him actually."
"What do mean, both parts of him?" Buffy asked, confused.
"I know you never considered it. even after Angelus was loosed, but they're essentially a split personality. You can't be involved with Angel, without also being involved with Angelus. The curse didn't break because you had sex with Angel, it broke because you had sex with Angelus. He got a great big giggle out of screwing his mortal enemy."
The look of dawning horror on Buffy's face was excruciating to see. "I'm sorry to be brutal, but I think that's what it's going to take for you to understand. You're not just in a relationship with Angel but also Angelus and Angelus has been influencing Angel. He's a master manipulator. He's a demon and they share head space. All he has to do is whisper in his dreams. Thing is, we also think, he's influencing the three of you. Xander and Cordelia have protections on them. Oz's werewolf nature provides a certain amount of protection. I think he's also been influencing you, Mrs. Summers. What was your first reaction to finding out Buffy had had sex with an older man, before you even found out about the vampire part?"
"I wanted to kill him. I might have settled for arresting him."
"And yet, you didn't do anything. You tacitly allowed the relationship to continue, despite your reservations. I don't think that's a normal response for you either."
"No, it's not." Joyce grimly. "And I can remember times I thought about saying something and then just didn't."
"And let's consider something else. Buffy is the only known Slayer in history who apparently can't sense vampires."
"Since when?" Asked Wesley. "Because her first Watcher, Merrick, said she had a very strong ability to sense vampires."
"She didn't know Jesse had turned. I did." Xander said. "That was her second day in town. And she's never sensed Angel. Not to mention, she uses visual cues to identify vampires, has since she got to town."
"Yes, the first time I attempted to help her hone her ability to sense them, I noticed that." Giles said. "I meant to follow up on it, but didn't. Why didn't I?"
"And we'd like to know just how much of that trap Buffy walked into with the Master, Angel was involved in." Charles said.
"What do you mean? That was a prophecy from the Pergamum Codex." Giles said.
"The Pergamum Codex was destroyed a century ago." Rabbi Levinson said. "And yet Angel somehow knew where something that had been destroyed was. Something that had a prophecy specific to Buffy in it. Add in the fact that he got you to tell him about the prophecy, but never bothered to tell you that Buffy was standing right outside the door listening, something he could tell, because she was close enough for him to hear her breathing and because vampires can sense Slayers."
"And that it apparently never occured to you to do tests to confirm its authenticity." Mary said. "Or that it never seemed to concern you that it had disappeared immediately afterward."
"I'd also like to know why you never tried to find out where the soul was after the curse broke. Or why you never did an evaluation on Willow after she used black magic to curse a soul. How can you not understand the ramifications of that act? The potential damage to her? The soul was in one of two places, the after life or a new life. But you all ignored Xander's protestations and allowed Willow to do it anyway. The only reason we didn't intervene at that point was Acathla. It was potentially the only way to keep that from being activated. Our own attempt to stop Angelus had failed."
"You went after Angelus? When?" Buffy asked.
"Just after Valentine's Day. Xander and Cordelia didn't really break up. Or didn't any of you wonder how that spell managed to affect a vampire, let alone only one vampire? Drusilla was a seer, we had to distract her, before we could even try. Xander was holding a religious icon that belong to Drusilla when she was human. If Angelus hadn't tagged along after her, we'd have gotten him. Of course, the spell wouldn't have been so bad if Amy hadn't called on the power of three goddesses. I will never understand why she included the goddess of the hunt in the spell." Jessica told them.
"We want to do an evaluation on all of you." Charles said. "Clearly you've all been affected by something or someone, possibly more then one such influence. If you're willing. Evaluations don't hurt and can reveal any number of problems or spells. Unless someone confesses, it's the only way you can know for sure."
