Chapter 169: Lessons

Cemetery

Buffy and Dawn were not patrolling as they had planned to. Instead they leaned against a headstone making out. They had chosen this particular headstone because the grave was fresh and a vampire was about to rise.

As the vampire burst through the ground they rolled away from the headstone and came up stakes in hand. Their moves timed perfectly. As Buffy glanced toward Dawn she smiled. Just a year ago Dawn had been fourteen going on fifteen. And now here her wife was twenty going on twenty-one. Before she would never have let Dawn patrol with her. But now she couldn't imagine not patrolling with Dawn.

The vampire seemed to be taking its time as Buffy and Dawn waited. As they watched it seemed he was having trouble getting out.

"Something wrong?" Dawn asked.

"I think I'm stuck," the vampire said.

Dawn rolled her eyes as she deadpanned. "You're stuck."

"My foot's caught on a root or something," he continued, a bit sheepish. "I don't even know how I got down there. If you girls could just give me a hand …"

"Well I guess we can help him out. We need him more out of the ground for proper leverage," Buffy projected telepathically to Dawn.

"I told you to bring a sword or an axe," Dawn replied.

"I know, next time I will," Buffy replied.

"I really appreciate it," the vamp prattled. "It's just so dark, and I don't know what I'm doing here—"

While he yammered on, Buffy yanked him by the collar of his jacket and set him on his feet.

"Whoa, thanks. That was a help." He grinned evilly. "Unfortunately it was the last—"

Dawn thrust her stake into the vampire's heart before he even knew what had happened and he exploded to dust. She moved back to Buffy and began once again making out with her wife.

"We should go," Buffy said after a few moments. "You don't want to be late tomorrow."

Dawn let out a sigh. "I don't know how you talked me into doing this, Buffy. Who's going to watch the rink while I'm there."

"Since Piper is staying on at the club. I can run the rink for ya," Buffy replied. "Just like we talked about. Then we'll never know what's coming next."

Halliwell Castle

Dawn woke to find herself alone in bed.

"Dawn, baby, are you up?" came Buffy's voice from downstairs.

Dawn rolled her eyes and smiled. "You already know the answer to that," she thought.

"I know," came Buffy's reply. "Doesn't mean I'm not going to ask. You better hurry up, you don't want to be late."

"Again tell me why you talked me into applying for the guidance counselor position?"

"You know the answer to that."

Dawn sighed. She did know the answer to that. Gateway High School had been rebuilt on the Hellmouth.

As Dawn got ready for the day Xander came by, he had something to show them.

"Good morning," he said warmly, carrying the rolled-up blueprints.

Buffy said to Xander. "You're unconscionably spiffy."

They walked into the kitchen. Xandcr had come to pick Dawn up, dressed up now that he was a general Contractor

"Client meeting," he told her glancing around the kitchen. He cocked his head. "How are …"

Buffy shrugged. "My wife's about to go work at the same high school that tried to kill me for three years and I can't begin to prepare her for what could possibly come out of there." She put on a smile. "So. peachy with a side of keen, that would be me."

"Well, here's a little something for what ails ya," he told her. He gestured to the tube.

They went into the dining room meeting Dawn as she came downstairs.

He unrolled the blueprints and said, "Take a look."

Dawn smiled at Xander, saying, "Hey. check out double-O-Xander. Blueprints for the school?"

Xander nodded. "I've got two crews working on this diabolical yet lucrative new campus." he told them. "One here, finishing the science building. And one here, reinforcing the gym. There are no pentagrams, no secret passageways. Everything up to code and safe as houses."

"Nothing's creepy? Strange? From beyond?" Buffy asked.

"Well, there is one interesting detail," Xander conceded. "I managed to scare up the plans from the old high school. You remember, the very center of San Francisco's own Hellmouth?"

He took both sets of plans over to the window, putting one set over the other so they could make comparisons.

"Under the library," Buffy said.

"Right." Xander nodded. "So I lined up the plans, new and old. And right exactly where the library was we now have …" He looked to them to fill in the blanks.

"Principal's office," Dawn said. "I'll keep my eye on him."

"The last two principals were eaten," Xander pointed out. "Who'd even apply for that job?"

"Guess we'll see," Dawn said.

Gateway High School

Xander dropped Dawn off at the entrance to the school. She did not notice the new principal walk up behind her.

"You must be Prudence Halliwell."

Dawn turned and looked at the man. "That's me, but you can call me Dawn," she said as she stuck out her hand.

The principal smiled as he shook Dawn's hand. "I didn't expect you for a few more days, the school board did tell you that you would only be here part time right?" he asked.

"I just thought I would check out the campus, learn where everything was. That way I wouldn't be lost in a few days when I officially start work," Dawn replied.

"By the way my name's Robin Wood," he said.

"Nice to meet you," Dawn replied. "So you're the new principal. I expected you to be more ... aged."

Principal Wood smiled. "I actually have heard of you. Ms. Halliwell…

"Mrs," Dawn corrected. "I'm married."

"Ah," he said. "Anyways as I was saying I heard of you, well your sister, Payson anyways."

"Payson's my wife," Dawn corrected again.

Principal Wood looked at Dawn in shock. "Well I am sticking my foot in it today, aren't I. My apologies. But I did hear of her. She graduated from the old high school, am I right?"

Dawn gazed at him trying to assess what he was getting at. "Yes, how did you …?"

"Well, I better get back to work. Gotta start deadening young minds. It's really nice to meet you," he said as he walked away.

"That was suspicious," Dawn murmured.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The first place Dawn went was to the bathroom. As she freshened herself up she noticed some weird chicken-bone thing tied together with string and picked it up …

… and what looked back at her over her shoulder was a very dead girl, looking the way the decomposing dead look in real life and not on TV, who said eerily, "You can't protect them. You couldn't protect me."

Then an equally dead janitor appeared and bellowed, "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!"

Then they both disappeared. Dawn stayed in the corner, trying to process what had just happened. She then shimmered out.

Halliwell Castle

Dawn shimmered in next to Buffy. "So anything to report?" Buffy asked when she spotted Dawn.

"There is some kind of zombie-ghost thing," Dawn said noticing that Buffy was feeding Celia. She gave their daughter a kiss on the forehead.

"So, zombies or ghosts?" Buffy asked.

"I'm not sure," Dawn told her wife. "They were in the mirror, but they disappeared. But they touched me. I think." She frowned. "Well, let's just start with dead and pissed."

"They were after you personally?" Buffy asked.

"They talked about protecting people," Dawn replied. "Told me to leave. I'm going back, I need you to check the Book and see what you can find out."

Gateway High School

The moment Dawn shimmered back into the bathroom she heard the sound of someone sobbing, really crying hard. She checked stall after stall, listening at each door till she found the right one. Huddled on top of the seat in one of the last ones in the row was a tough-looking Goth girl, practically catatonic with fear.

"There's someone in here," she told Dawn.

"Saw something pretty creepy, huh?" Dawn asked sympathetically as she helped the other girl out of the stall. She glanced in the mirror and saw the dead trio again. "Come on," she said as they turned for the hallway door. Suddenly three pairs of dead hands smashed through the tile floor and grabbed at their ankles. A whole chunk of floor crumbled beneath them, and down, down, down they slammed, to the lower level of Sunnydale High.

Hellmouth level ...

The school basement was not a pleasant place to be. Nor was it user-friendly in terms of exits. And it also seemed that the walls might be moving. Dawn knew she could shimmer them out, but she wanted that as a last resort as she tried to figure out what was going on. She said to the other girl, whose name was Kit, "What did you see when I found you in the stall?"

"A girl," Kit told her. "She said she died here, and that everybody dies here, and that we would too."

Then they made another turn … and a guy appeared. And Kit and the guy screamed.

His name was Carlos, he was not a dead guy, and he was just as scared as Kit was.

"I just came downstairs for a smoke, you know and I saw … It was the janitor, yelling at me. I thought he was just pissed, but I saw him in the light …"

Dawn decided it was time to shimmer them out as she waved her hand. "Upstairs hallway," she said and Kit and Carlos shimmered out. Now it was time to decide what was going on.

"So you are a witch," the dead Janitor said. "That won't save you, you know. Nothing will save you."

And then she noticed for some reason the three spirits stood between her and a door. Maybe there was something on the otherside of that door. Dawn smiled, waved and then shimmered out and into the room on the other side of the door and found Spike?!

Dawn instantly frowned as she remembered what had happened months before, before he had left. She wished she had a stake with her, but she hadn't expected to find a vampire during the daytime. She could shimmer him outside into the sun though. As she reached for him he giggled histerically.

Then Dawn remembered the spirits. "They'll be here in a second and I need to take care of them before I do anything about you."

"Nobody comes in here," Spike assured her, and she saw that he was … crazy. Spike had lost his mind and Dawn began to laugh. This was better than watching him dust.

"It's just the three of us," he continued and then he burst into tears. "I dropped my board in the water and the chalk all ran. Sure to be caned." He laughed. "Should have seen that coming."

He moved away from her into a corner. She followed. He leaned against the wall and pulled his loose shirt over his chest.

Cautiously she pulled it back to see what he was hiding. He was gravely wounded, his torso a mass of cuts and welts.

"I tried, I tried to cut it out …" he wept, and she was completely bewildered.

"Spike," Dawn said with a sigh, "you said they won't come in. Do you know what they are?"

"Manifest spirits," Spike filled in, "controlled by a talisman and raised to seek vengeance."

"A talisman," Dawn echoed. The bone thing in the bathroom, she realized. "Of course." She shimmered out and back into the bathroom where the spirits waited for her, standing between her and the talisman.

"You really wanna keep this up?" Dawn demanded.

The janitor mocked her. "What are you going to do, kill us?"

He had a point, Dawn thought anxiously as the three evil beings began to converge on her. Dawn smiled. "Remember last time," she asked. "Talisman." And the talisman shimmered into her hands and she snapped it in two.

The trio vanished.

Dawn let out a sigh. "Sorry guys," she said. "Maybe you can rest in peace now though." She pulled out her cell phone and dialed, letting Xander know about the cave-in in the girl's bathroom and that he should get a crew over here to repair it and then she shimmered back home and into Buffy's waiting arms.