"I don't, I don't understand, Buffy. I'm not even really sure I understand vampires, but no one's bothered to explain them. So if you could just explain?"

"Alright, vampires are demons. Real demons, Mom, from Hell. A vampire kills a human and a demon moves into the body. The demon has no physical form of its own, it's kind of like a ghost, it basically posseses the dead body. It's nothing like the vampires you read about in books or see in movies."

"And you fell in love with one and had sex with him?! How? If you knew what he was, a dead body, a demon, how could you love him, let alone have sex with him? This doesn't make any sense, Buffy." Joyce pleaded for answers to confusing questions. "How did you even meet him? Start there, okay?"

"I met him the first day I started school after we moved to Sunnydale. I'd met Cordelia and Willow that day."

"Cordelia? I've heard you mention her a few times, Xander's girlfriend? I haven't met her."

"You wouldn't have wanted to meet her then, Mom. She was Sunnydale's version of me at Hemery. She gave it all up to be with Xander and they've both been good for each other. They're making each other better people. Angel and I made each other worse people." Buffy said sadly. "Anyway, I realized someone was following me as I went to the Bronze for the first time and hid in an alley until they appeared. It was Angel. See, being what I am, a Vampire Slayer, I can sense vampires and they can sense me."

"Than why didn't you do something about him right then? If you knew he was a vampire?"

"Because I didn't know he was a vampire, unlike all other vampires I couldn't sense him."

"Why not? If you could sense all vampires, why not him?"

"I didn't find out why until later and by then it didn't matter to me, I was already in love with him. Anyway, he had a message for me, an old, very old vampire that was trapped underground was trying to escape and he said I needed to be ready. Then he gave me a gift, a beautiful silver cross necklace."

"I've seen you wear it, you just accepted a gift from a total stranger and it didn't strike you as weird?"

"I didn't like him at first, I thought he was creepy, but you're right, I should have wondered why I kept the necklace and I didn't. Although I didn't start wearing it for awhile. So we stopped the old vampire from getting out."

"We who?"

"Xander, Willow and Giles and me."

"How did Xander and Willow get involve in all this?"

Buffy looked sad. "Xander's best friend got taken by a vampire the same day I met Angel. Not just taken, killed and became a vampire. It's even worse than you think, Mom. A vampire doesn't just possess a dead body, it can access the memories and knowledge the person had. The first vampire Xander ever destroyed was named Jesse McNally, before he was murdered by a vampire and his body was possessed by another vampire. A vampire that tried to kill Cordelia and Xander...stopped him. He held a stake to the chest of a boy he considered his brother in all but blood and hoped to find something that was still Jesse McNally. Except for the memories, it was all monster."

"Oh God." Joyce moaned in sympathetic pain for the young man.

"The next time I saw Angel was when you were attacked and ended up in the hospital."

"When was I attacked? I don't remember being attacked, Buffy."

"They diagnosed it as acute anemia and said you fell on a barbeque fork. The girl, Darla, who said she was my tutor, she was a vampire, Angel's Sire actually. The one who made him, she wanted him back."

"And you just let me believe that. How could she even get into the house if she's a vampire, do I have to worry about other vampires getting into the house?!"

"You invited her in, that's how vampires can get into people's homes."

"And you're just now telling me this?! Buffy, I could've invited other vampires in and never known it! How could you not tell me?!"

"Because I had to keep it secret about vampires, Giles insisted on it. And after what happened the last time I tried, I was afraid to."

"Everything I hear about that man just makes me angrier at him." Joyce muttered, lips thinned in anger. "You said that's when you found out he was a vampire, but just before that you told me you were already in love with him. Buffy, this is not making sense. You saw him one time snd thought he was creepy, but somehow convinced yourself you were in love with him? Without seeing him in-between? What changed?"

"I thought he was the one who attacked you because he was holding you when I came in and I could see he was a vampire, so I tried to destroy him. That's when I found out Darla attacked you and he destroyed her when she attacked me. He told me, gypsies used Magic to curse him with a soul."

"Magic is real?!"

"Yes."

"Okay, I'll deal with that thought later. You thought he attacked me, he protected you and told you a story about having a soul and you believed him? Why?"

"Maybe because he saved my life so I trusted him. I offered him my throat, literally and he didn't hurt me. It felt like proof."

"It's insanity, is what it is! You had no proof and you offered your throat to a vampire! He might have felt different from other vampires and might have saved your life, but you knew Magic was real and what you should have done is expected a trick! Something else was going on, Buffy, something had to be, because that's not a normal response!"