The student lounge at Sunnydale High School had a career fair going on, and while it wasn't exactly required, Principal Snyder knew how to get everyone taking part – threats of detention, mainly. Buffy, Jesse and Xander sat at a table, helping each other fill out their tests.

"'Are you a people person, or do you prefer keeping your own company?'" Xander read out loud, taking on a faux-thoughtful expression. "Well, what if I'm a people person who keeps his own company by default?"

Buffy shrugged. "So, mark 'none of the above'."

"Well, there are no boxes for 'none of the above'. That would introduce too many variables into their mushroom head, number-crunching little world."

"No, Xan-Man," grinned Jesse, nodding at Willow as she joined them with her own test, "tell us how you really feel."

"It's just these people can't tell from one multiple-choice test what we're gonna be doing for the rest of our lives," Xander groused. "It's ridiculous!"

"I'm kinda curious to find out what sort of career I could have," Willow said, optimistic as ever for all things academic.

"What, and suck all the spontaneity out of being young and stupid? I'd rather live in the dark."

"You're not gonna be young forever."

"Yes, but I'll always be stupid." He smirked and looked at his friends, but none of them said anything, making his smart alec demeanor falter. "Okay, let's not all rush to disagree."

Jesse looked up abruptly. "Oh, sorry, did we switch from 'silly' to 'serious'?"

"You're not stupid," Buffy assured him.

Xander gave them both an acknowledging sarcastic grin, then looked up when he heard Cordelia passing. She had a clipboard, taking her test as she walked into the lounge accompanied by two of her groupies.

"'I aspire to help my fellow man,'" she read out loud as she passed the table. She marked her test. "Check. As long as he's not smelly, dirty or something gross."

Xander rolled his eyes. In a combative mood today, he decided to try and take a swipe at the popular Miss Chase, for no other reason than to do it. "Cordelia Chase – always ready to give a helping hand to the rich and the pretty."

Cordelia didn't even miss a beat. "Which, lucky me, excludes you. Twice." Xander, a little startled she'd gotten him back so swiftly, had nothing in return, so Cordelia just walked away, followed closely by her cronies.

"Is murder always a crime?" he asked the others.

"Not if you're rich and pretty," Jesse replied, trying not to laugh.

Buffy spoke up abruptly. "Do I like shrubs?"

"That's between you and your god," Xander assured her.

Buffy peeked at Willow's test. "What'd you put?"

"I came down on the side of shrubs," her friend replied.

Good enough for her. "Go with shrubs! Okay!"

"Personally, I think that should've been an essay question," said Jesse, wiggling his pencil between his fingers. "There's so much to unpack there!"

She let out a frustrated groan. "Uhhh! I shouldn't even be bothering with this. It's all Mootville for me. No matter what my aptitude test says, we already know my deal."

The others murmured sympathetically. "Yup," said Xander, "high risk, sub-minimum wage…"

"Pointy wooden things…," Buffy nodded.

"Then why are you even taking the test?" asked Willow.

"It's Principal Snyder's hoop of the week. He's not happy unless I'm jumping. Believe me, I would not be here otherwise."

Willow tilted her head. "You're not even a teensy weensy bit curious about what kinda career you could've had? I mean, if you weren't already the Slayer and all."

"Do the words 'sealed in fate' ring any bells for you, Will? Why go there?" Buffy snapped, a little more harshly than she meant to. Damn it, now Will had that kicked puppy face she did so well whenever she received a cutting comment.

Xander scolded her with a shake of his pencil. "Y'know, with that kind of attitude you could've had a bright future as an employee at the DMV."

Buffy took a breath. "I'm sorry, it's just… unless Hell freezes over and every vamp in Sunnydale puts in for early retirement, I'd say my future is pretty much a non-issue."

"Not necessarily," said Jesse, only half-heartedly filling out his test at this point. "You could do something at home during the day." He grinned a little. "You could write an autobiography."

Frowning at the idea, Buffy shook her head. "What person would ever believe my autobiography?"

"No one. That's why you market it as 'fiction' and call it a 'fantasy horror novel'."

"Writing a book," Willow commented amusedly. "Giles would be so proud of you."

Buffy bit back a small smile at the thought. "I'll think about it."

Spike paced with growing frustration in his warehouse. He kept trying not to look at Drusilla, who stood at one end of a large table dealing her tarot cards and singing to herself. She had only gotten weaker lately, and it pained him to see her like that. He focused more on the vampire sitting next to him. Dalton was supposed to be the brainy one of his team, and while he'd done decent work in the past, he'd been next to useless trying to translate the ancient text in the book that they stole from the library a few weeks back.

"Read it again," he insisted.

Dalton shifted nervously. "Well, I'm not sure. It could be, uh…" He shrugged helplessly. "Deprimere… ille… bubula… linter."

Spike paged through a Latin-to-English dictionary. "Debase, the beef, canoe," he translated in his flattest voice possible. Dalton looked up at him and smiled a stupid smile. Unable to abide him, Spike punched him in the face. "Why does that strike me as not right?" he hissed.

Dalton looked at him sheepishly and turned his attention back to the book.

Drusilla's voice called out to him as she came near. "Spike, come dance?" she asked hopefully, holding out a hand.

Spike, still angry at Dalton, spoke in greater anger than he meant to. "Give us some peace, would you? Can't you see I'm working?" He realized how harsh he sounded, but Drusilla already pulled back her hand and began to pout and whine like a puppy. "Oh, I'm sorry, kitten," he groaned remorsefully. "It's just this manuscript. Supposed to hold your cure, but it reads like gibberish. Even Dalton here, the big brain, he can't make heads or tails of it."

Drusilla put her hand to her head. "I… I need to change Miss Edith," she murmured. She only made it a few steps before putting her other hand to her head as well, bending over and whining. Spike rushed to her, put his arms around her and pulled her back up.

"Oh, forgive me! You know I can't stand to see you like this." He gently sat her down and crouched, holding her close. "We're runnin' out of time. It's that bloody Slayer! Whenever I turn around, she's muckin' up the works."

His words seemed to calm her as she tried to comfort him back. "Shh. Shh. You'll make it right. I know."

Relieved he hadn't sent her away, Spike put his hands around her neck and kissed her gently but firmly. After they released their kiss, he stood up again and turned his attention back to Dalton. "Well," he said, walking around the table. "Come on, now. Enlighten me."

Dalton looked up nervously again, indicating bad news. "Uh, well, it looks like Latin, but it's not. I - I'm not even sure it's, it's a language, actually, I…"

God, how was this guy the brains of this outfit? "Then MAKE IT A LANGUAGE!" Spike bellowed. "Isn't that what a transcriber does?!"

Dalton swallowed. "Well, not exactly…" He yelped as Spike grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him from his chair.

"I want the cure."

Drusilla's voice wafted gently from the other side of the table. "Don't…"

"Why not? Some people find pain," he paused to punch Dalton in the stomach, "very inspirational."

While Dalton doubled over, Drusilla looked up from her tarot cards. "He can't help you," she said before looking back again. "Not without… the key."

Spike looked and saw she was pointing at one of her cards. "The key? You mean this book is in some kind of code?"

"Yeah," Drusilla confirmed. Dalton nodded as well, despite still being in pain. Satisfied they were finally getting somewhere, Spike shoved him back into his chair and walked over to Drusilla, looking at one of her cards – a mausoleum was pictured on it.

"Is that where we'll find this key?" he asked.

Drusilla smiled eagerly. "Yeah!"

Spike smiled back. "I'll send the boys, pronto!"

"Now will you dance?" she asked hopefully.

He took her hand and helped her up. "I'll dance with you, pet." He pulled her up from her chair and lifted her into his arms. "On the Slayer's grave!" He started to spin around with her in his arms.

. . .

That night, Buffy walked through the cemetery at a relaxed pace. She'd put all thoughts of the career she'd never have out of her head, telling herself she needed to focus more on her slaying. She just needed to stay busy. So, of course, things were slow tonight.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, causing her to pause for a moment and listen to the night around her. She continued on, more alert for her enemy, scanning the graveyard around her as she went. She stopped again when she heard clinking noises coming from a mausoleum. Looking at it, she could see light coming from inside. She walked over to it, pushed the door open a bit and peeked in.

She saw an older vampire with a balding head chipping away at the wall, exposing a chamber behind it. He reached in for something as Buffy pulled her head back out and closed the door. She walked down the steps and turned around to wait for him to come out. A few moments later, he opened the door.

"Does 'rest in peace' have no sanctity to you people?" Buffy drawled, making the vampire jump in fear. "Oh, I forgot. You're not a 'people'."

Just then, she sensed another vampire coming up behind her. She turned around and kicked him in the gut, then the jaw, then again in the gut. He took a swing at her, but she grabbed his arm and punched him twice in the face. He swung at her with his other arm, but she ducked and caught it, too. She yanked it back, and she heard a very satisfying snap. While she had him leaning back, she thrust a stake into his heart. He exploded into ashes.

"One down," she grinned before turning to find the other one had disappeared into the night. "One gone." She looked around, but saw no sign of him anywhere.

Buffy decided to take the less conventional entrance to her room via the window. Climbing her way up, her senses tingled again, but she knew who it would be before she even got to the window – which, how about that, was already open. Smiling a little, she rested at the sill and peeked inside.

Angel had his back to her, looking over her bookcase. He must be really thinking about stuff if he hadn't sensed her arrive. He took her stuffed pig from the shelf. Deciding to be a little silly, Buffy reached for her bag and tossed it loudly through the window and onto the floor. Angel turned around, startled, gently squeezing the pig. "Buffy! You scared me."

Buffy nodded as she climbed in. "Now you know what it feels like, Stealth Guy." She crouched down by her bag and reached into her hair to pull out a few clips. "Just dropping by for some quality time with Mr. Gordo?"

"Excuse me?" Angel sounded confused.

"The pig," she clarified, opening her trunk and dumping the bag in.

Angel seemed to realize he still clutched the toy in his hands. "Oh," he chuckled. "I, uh…"

"What's up?" she asked, walking to her desk.

"Nothing." He tossed the pig onto a chair and walked to the foot of her bed. She dropped her hair clips into a desk drawer and faced him.

"Only you don't have a 'nothing' face. You have a 'something' face. And you don't have to whisper. Mom's in L.A. till Thursday. Art buying, or something."

Angel furrowed his brow. "Then why'd you come in through the window?"

"Habit." She crinkled her nose as she said it. Sometimes, even she didn't know her own habits were weird until she had to explain them to someone else.

"I wanted to make sure you're okay. I had a bad feeling," Angel explained.

Oh great, something else for her to worry about. "There's a surprise. Angel comes with bad news." Not surprisingly, he let out a frustrated sigh at her reaction. She did tend to hound him a bit when he was just trying to help. Feeling bad, she walked over to him. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. Look, I've been Cranky Miss all day. It's not you."

"Well, what is it then?"

"It's nothing." He tilted his head, not buying it. Clearly, she couldn't pretend her 'something' face was a 'nothing' face either. "Uh, we're having this thing at school."

"Career Week?"

She looked at him in surprise. "How did you know?"

"I lurk," he shrugged.

"Right," she nodded. Was that creepy or cute? Maybe it was some third category. It was such a fine line with him. "Well, then you know it's a whole week of 'what's my line', only… I don't get to play." She sat on her bed despondently. "Sometimes I just want…"

Angel sat next to her. "You want what?" Buffy looked up and saw her reflection in her long mirror – alone in the reflection. "It's okay," he assured her.

Buffy looked at him again. "The Cliff Notes version? I want a normal life. Like I had before."

"Before me."

"No, Angel," she assured him, touching his hand, "it's not you." She smiled as she touched his cheek with the other hand. "You're the one freaky thing in my freaky world that still makes sense to me." Was that a good compliment? Would that have worked in a romance movie? She lowered her hand again. "I just get messed sometimes. I wish we could be regular kids."

Angel looked down briefly. "Yeah. I'll never be a kid," he said, getting up.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Okay, then a regular kid and her cradle robbing, creature-of-the-night boyfriend."

He stopped to look at her, and then he let out a laugh. A quiet reserved laugh, but hey, good enough for her. He saw a picture on her desk and picked it up – the one of her as a child on ice-skates. "Was this part of your normal life?"

Buffy laughed and went over to look as well. "Oh, my God. My Dorothy Hamill phase. My room in L.A. was pretty much a shrine. Dorothy dolls, Dorothy posters, I even got the Dorothy haircut. Thereby securing a place for myself in the geek hall of fame."

"Hmm, you wanted to be like her?

"I wanted to be her. My parents were fighting all the time, and skating was an escape. I felt safe."

Angel looked at her thoughtfully. "When was the last time you put on your skates?"

Casting her mind back, Buffy took a breath and shrugged. "About a couple of hundred demons ago."

He stepped closer to her. "There's a rink out past Route Seventeen," he told her. "It's… closed on Tuesdays."

Buffy felt a smile split her face as she looked up at him. "Tomorrow's Tuesday."

"I know," he smiled back.

Jesse didn't have much on his mind when he came to school the next day. He slipped his backpack off to swap out a few textbooks from his locker. He paused briefly to get out a binder he also needed, opening it to go over a few of his hastily-scribbled Chem notes, and after a few seconds, he became aware someone was staring at him. He glanced up and saw a guy about half his height with interesting hair and inquisitive eyes approaching, his hand clutching his backpack strap a little apprehensively.

"Hey, are you the Scotsman?" the guy asked.

Jesse blinked, checked over his shoulder and looked at him again in obvious confusion.

"From the Cultural party last month," he clarified. "You were a Scotsman."

Remembering that hectic night with the undead princess, Jesse lit up. "Oh, right! Yes! That was me!"

"Cool," the guy replied, nodding. "I'm Oz. I mean, Daniel Osbourne, but I prefer 'Oz'."

Jesse held out a hand to shake. "Jesse McNally. Charmed."

They shook hands, and a pause descended over them.

Jesse felt almost uncomfortable – not from the guy himself, but just the fact that the talking had stopped. "Er, your move, guy," he said quietly.

Realizing, Oz nodded again. "Right, sorry, just… not sure how to proceed."

"Proceed?"

"Well, I noticed you were there with a girl in an Eskimo outfit."

Jesse smiled briefly at the memory of Willow's big bulky parka and harpoon. "Yeah, that was Willow. She made it herself."

"Willow," the guy repeated, seemingly relishing saying her name. "Cool. It's just, I wanted to know… are you guys… together?"

Jesse's eyebrows rose in surprise, and he chuckled. "Oh, no, Will and I just went together, but we're not a couple. We've been friends since second grade."

Oz's expression brightened – sort of. He was kind of stoic. "Cool! I just… well, I was wondering…"

It took a second for Jesse to put it together, and when he did, his smile widened. "Are you… interested in Willow?"

"Is that hard to believe?"

"Not at all! It's… cool!" His brow furrowed. "You're not a creep, are you? Because she… had an experience with a guy over the internet once. That smarted for a while."

Oz paused, like he was actually thinking about it. "Pretty sure I'm not a creep."

Jesse nodded, then grinned. "Well, no, I don't think you are either. Otherwise, you wouldn't have asked if she and I were together."

"Just didn't want to step on anyone's toes."

"Well, my toes are untarnished. Feel free to approach her guilt-free."

Oz smirked and nodded. "Thanks, man. Appreciate it." He patted him on the shoulder and continued on his way down the hall. Jesse watched him go.

Nice guy, he thought, and he shut his locker.

As he started down the hall again, he saw Cordelia come striding down the adjacent hall with a smug grin on her face. "The results of the career aptitude tests are on the bulletin board," she grinned. "Guess whose ideal careers are 'personal shopper' or 'motivational speaker'."

Jesse grinned. "Telling other people how to dress and talking – it's like they know you."

Cordelia's smile became a spiteful smirk. "Better than what your little friend wound up with," she snarked before continuing down the hall.

"Which little friend?" he called after her. "I'm taller than all three of my friends!"

She just laughed and continued off down the hall, leaving him with a sense of dread. He'd forgotten about the career aptitude test. He really didn't want to look at his results. Swallowing, he headed for an exit door and started across the quad to find his next class.

"You and Angel are going skating? Alone?"

He looked up at Willow's voice and saw her and Buffy taking a path perpendicular to his. He ought to intercept them to let Willow know she had an admirer. The further in advance she knew about it, the better a chance she had to get used to the idea and finish panicking about it before Oz actually approached her.

"Unless some unforeseen evil pops up," Buffy was saying. "But I'm in full 'see no evil' mode."

"What's the deal?" Jesse asked as he caught up. "What evil are we not seeing?"

"Angel's taking Buffy ice skating!" said Willow excitedly.

That info brought Jesse up short. "Angel? On ice skates?"

"I know. Two worlds collide," Buffy replied.

Then, just to ensure everyone got a moment to talk, Xander approached them, looking very downtrodden. "Wouldn't you two say you know me about as well as anyone else?" he asked. "Maybe even better than I know myself?"

"Xan-Man, did you forget your locker combination again?" Jesse asked.

"What's this about?" Willow asked.

Xander remained agitated. "When you look at me, do you think 'prison guard'?"

Buffy and Willow started giggling, while Jesse just smiled broadly. "Um, crossing guard, maybe, but prison guard?" Buffy asked, shaking her head at the idea.

"They just put up the assignments for the career fair, and according to my test results, I can look forward to being gainfully employed in the growing field of corrections."

Buffy started giggling even more. "Well, at least you'll be on the right side of the bars."

Xander glared at her. "Ha, ha, ha, ha! Laugh now, missy, they assigned you to the booth for law enforcement professionals."

That brought her laughter to an abrupt end. "As in police?"

"As in polyester, doughnuts and brutality."

Not what she wanted to hear. Buffy let out a whiny noise that sounded vaguely like a seal full of helium.

"But," Willow smiled helpfully, "doughnuts!"

Buffy just whined louder. "Well, I'll just jump off that bridge when I come to it." They spotted Giles walking along with a tall stack of old books in his arms. "First, I have to deal with Giles. He's on this Tony Robbins hyper-efficiency kick. Expects me to check in every day after homeroom." She walked off after Giles, muttering about the police under her breath.

Before Jesse could say anything, though, Xander turned to him with the same level of sarcasm, "Oh, don't worry, Jess. I saw yours, too. Congratulations on your future career in 'business management'."

Jesse did a double-take, his world absolutely rocked in just a few short sentences. "Wait, what? How the hell did saying 'yes' to shrubs put me in 'business management'?" The implications really began to set in. "Oh god, I'm gonna have to wear a tie! And a shirt with all the buttons buttoned! I hate buttoning the collar button!"

Xander patted his shoulder consolingly. "At least now I know to get you a stress toy for Christmas."

He started to walk off, but Willow held him back. "You didn't check to see which seminar I was assigned to, did you?"

"I did, and you weren't."

"I wasn't what?"

"On the list."

Willow's expression turned alarmed. "But I handed in my test! I used a number two pencil!"

Xander shrugged. "Then I guess you musta passed."

"It's not the kinda test you pass or fail."

"Your name wasn't up there, Will."

Willow looked between them, quite taken aback.

Buffy followed Giles into the library, where she found him balancing his stack of books. He carefully set them down and leaned over a bit to straighten the stack, but over-leaned, and the books began to fall over. He reacted quickly to try to stop them, crying out in alarm, but Buffy just casually put her hand on top of the stack just as he did, and together they pushed it back up.

Giles gave a sigh of relief. "Buffy. Thank you," he gasped, while she simply took a seat at the table. "I've been, uh, indexing the Watcher diaries covering the last couple of centuries. You would be amazed at how numbingly pompous and long-winded some of these Watchers were."

Buffy smiled dryly. "Color me stunned."

Either Giles missed the cheap shot or he just ignored it. "So, uh, I trust last night's patrol was fruitful?"

"Semi. Mm, I caught one out of two vamps after they stole something from this jumbo mausoleum."

"They were stealing?"

"Yeah! They had tools, flashlights, whole nine yards. What does that mean anyway? 'Whole nine yards'?" she wondered while her Watcher began to pace. "Nine yards of what?" She made her whining noise again. "Now it's gonna bug me all day. Giles, you're in pace mode. What gives?"

Giles' pace slowed but he didn't stop. "Um, this vampire who escaped, did you see what he took?"

Buffy shook her head. "No, but I could take a guess and say it was something old."

That made him stop pacing. Unfortunately, it also made him look supremely annoyed. "You made no effort to find out what was taken?"

"Have a cow, Giles!" she said defensively. "I just figured it was your everyday vamp hijinks."

"Well, what if it wasn't? This could be very serious! I mean, if you'd made an effort to be more thorough in your observations…"

Flaring with indignation at Giles yet again acting like her minor slip-ups were the end of the world, Buffy got to her feet defiantly. "Y'know, if you don't like the way I'm doing my job, why don't you find somebody else? Oh, that's right, there can only be one. As long as I'm alive, there is no one else. Well, there you go! I don't have to be the Slayer. I could be dead."

Giles glared fiercely at her attitude. "That wasn't terribly funny. You notice I don't laugh."

"Wouldn't be much of a change. Either way I'm bored, constricted, I never get to shop, and my hair and fingernails still continue to grow. So really, when you think about it, what's the diff?"

"Do we have to be introspective now? Our only concern is to discover what was stolen from that mausoleum last night."

Spike and Dalton stood with Drusilla in her bedroom. Dalton had gotten what they needed – an intricately carved gold cross. Spike held it out to her on a red velvet pillow, and she ran her hand over it, awestruck. "This is it, then?" he asked.

Dru nodded. "It hums. I can hear it," she breathed.

Glad something had gone right for a change, Spike smiled. "Once you're well again, we'll have a coronation down Main Street, and invite everyone, and drink for seven days and seven nights."

Dalton, helpful though he was, couldn't read that three's a crowd. "What about the Slayer? She almost blew the whole thing for us. She's trouble."

Spike glared fiercely at him. "You don't say?" he practically hissed. "Trouble?! She's the gnat in my ear! The gristle in my teeth! She's the bloody thorn in my BLOODY SIDE!" He kicked the nearby table violently.

The smile left Drusilla's face as concern took her over. "Spike?"

Spike tried to rein in his temper but it was a challenge. "We gotta do something. We'll never complete your cure with that bitch breathing down our necks." He took a breath, trying to remember what he'd learned from that yoga instructor he'd killed seven years ago. "I need to bring in the big guns. They'll take care of her once and for all."

"Big guns?" repeated Dalton.

Spike nodded. "The Order of Taraka."

Dalton actually looked alarmed while Drusilla got out her tarot cards. "The bounty hunters?!"

As much as Spike wanted to kill the Slayer himself, Dru's health had taken a turn for the worse lately, and restoring her strength would take first priority over everything else. There would be other Slayers. There was only one Drusilla.

She dealt three tarot cards onto her bed – one of a Cyclops, another of a centipede and the third of a panther. "They're coming to my party," she said in a quiet voice, looking up at them with wide eyes. "Three of them."

Spike walked back to the bed to look at the cards.

Dalton, however, squirmed a little. "Uh, yes, but… The Order of Taraka, I mean… isn't that overkill?"

"No," Spike replied simply. "I think it's 'just enough' kill'."

The student lounge bustled with activity as the Career Fair went into full swing. Jesse and Xander milled around, annoyed at the careers they'd been stuck with as they sought out the booths they needed.

"Ever get the sense that we're just cogs in a machine?" Jesse grumbled.

"All aboard the Capitalist Express," Xander replied. Then, he spotted Willow not far away. "Willow! What are you doing here? Fly! Be free, little bird, you defy category!"

"I'm looking for Buffy."

"She and Giles ditched a while ago," said Jesse. "Something about snooping around some ooky mausoleum. Can't believe I'd rather do that than sit through a business lecture."

Willow started to fret. "If she doesn't get back soon, Snyder's really…," she trailed off, and they followed her gaze to see the aforementioned principal coming down the stairs, " … done a great job with the fair this year, hasn't he, guys?"

Jesse rolled his eyes, but Xander nodded eagerly. "Principal Snyder! Great career fair, sir! Really! In fact, I'm so inspired by your leadership, I'm thinking about Principal School. I wanna walk in your shoes. Not your actual shoes, of course, because you're a tiny person. Not tiny in the small sense, of course. Okay, I'm done now."

Snyder didn't blink once during the exchange. "Where is she?"

Willow tried to look innocent. "Who?"

"You know who."

"Yes, we do," said Jesse with a sage nod. "She's probably involved in matters of national security that aim to protect the nation's best interests. I mean, we all know she's the real power behind this organization. He's not going to be much use, given all the trouble he's been in lately."

Everyone stared blankly at him. "Who's 'he'?" demanded Snyder.

"Her husband, of course."

Snyder balked. "Buffy Summers has a husband?!"

Jesse looked startled. "Buffy? I'm talking about Hillary Clinton. Were you referring to Buffy?"

Xander and Willow discretely turned away to hide their shocked giggling while Snyder looked like he might blow his top. "McNally," he growled, "you are certifiably insane!"

"I'm certified? Groovy! Does that mean I can drop out of school and be insane full time?" His expression turned serious. "No, you know what? I'm going to finish up here. You wouldn't want me to leave you here, would you, dearest Principal?"

He gave Snyder a friendly nudge on the shoulder with his fist, and Snyder visibly blanched and started fast-walking away.

Xander just shook his head at Jesse. "Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but I got an appointment with the warden on standard riot procedure. Ciao," he waved before walking off.

Jesse and Willow waved goodbye to him as he merged into the crowd of students. "So…," Jesse started. "Wanna join me at the business booth? I was going to…" He trailed off when he saw two men in dark suits approaching them.

"Willow Rosenberg?" one of them said, causing her to face them. "Come with us, please?"

"Excuse me?" Willow asked, confused.

"Let's walk," he said as they took her by the arms and guided her to a curtained-off area of the lounge.

Jesse stared after him, dumbfounded and half-wondering if Willow had just been abducted right in front of him by the FBI. Had they heard him make the Hillary Clinton joke?

He heard movement beside him and turned to see Amy Madison walking up, smiling briefly at him before she too watched Willow disappear behind the curtain. "Looks like Willow's finally been recruited," she remarked.

Jesse looked between her and the curtain. "Recruited?"

"Yep, that's where the mega-geniuses end up going when they take an aptitude test."

It all clicked into place in Jesse's brain, and he realized. "And the rest of us squander our lives in anonymity." He glanced at her. "Which booth are you betrothed to?"

She smiled dryly. "Landscaping.."

"Let me guess – you came down in favor of shrubs."

"How'd you guess?"

Willow stood awkwardly with the two recruiters in a much nicer looking section of the room. Two free-standing walls separated this area from the general population, and Willow felt like she'd been dropped down the rabbit hole. The space had been refurbished into a deco salon, complete with soft lighting and a gentle bossa nova playing from hidden speakers. On the wall, she saw a logo she didn't recognize, but it looked strangely like the Microsoft logo.

A waiter in a white jacket and black bow tie held an hors-d'oeuvre tray up for her.

"Try the canapé. It's excellent," one of the recruiters told her.

Willow just shook her head politely to the waiter, and he immediately departed. "What is all this?"

"You've been selected to meet with Mr. McCarthy, head recruiter for the world's leading software concern. The jet was delayed by fog at Sea-Tac, but he should be here any minute." He indicated the nearby couch. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

Willow frowned. "But I didn't even get my test back."

"The test was irrelevant. We've been tracking you for some time."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I would think so. We're extremely selective. In fact, only one other Sunnydale student met our criteria." Without another word, the two recruiters turned and left through the curtain.

Stunned, Willow toyed with just ditching. She wasn't interested in this kind of thing, and something just felt weird about it. After a moment's thought, though, she decided she'd kick herself if she didn't at least stay and find out more, so she turned to the plush couch and saw the other student sitting on the opposite side.

It was a boy, about her height, with interesting hair and an inquisitive expression as he studied another tray of canapé. She stepped over to the couch and sat down on the other end, folding her hands in her lap and looking over at the boy. He noticed her sitting and turned to look, doing a brief double take when their eyes met. She had to look away from him – he looked almost happy to see her. She felt movement next to her and looked up again to see him holding the tray up to her with a cool expression.

"Canapé?"

She smiled.

Buffy still felt angry at Giles for their argument that morning, so she made sure to walk just fast enough that he had to hurry to keep up. She swung open the metal gate and strode in, holding a flashlight for snooping purposes.

Giles came running to catch up with her. "Buffy! Slow down! Please!"

"Giles, we have work to do, remember? Get with the program."

Holding his chest a tad dramatically, he breathed hard to catch his breath from running after her. They continued walking to the mausoleum. "You're behaving remarkably immaturely," he panted.

Buffy nodded in agreement. "You know why? I am immature. I'm a teen. I have yet to mature."

"I was… simply offering some… constructive criticism."

"No! You were harsh! God, you act like I picked this gig. But remember, I'm the 'picked'."

Giles continued to gasp for air. Sheesh, how much did he smoke in his youth? "What you have… is more than… a gig… It's a sacred duty… Which… shouldn't prevent you from e-e-eventually procuring some… more… gainful f-f-form of employment. Uh-uh-uh, such as I did."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Uh, Giles, it's one thing to be a Watcher and a librarian. They go together like chicken and… another chicken, or… two chickens, or… something, you know what I'm saying!" Dammit, why wasn't she better at this by now?! "The point is, no one blinks an eye if you want to spend all your days with books. What am I supposed to do? Carve stakes for a nursery?"

Giles took advantage of her tirade to get in front of her as they made their way past several gravestones. "Um, point taken. I must, however, admit, I-I've never really… Well, now there's a thought, have you ever considered law enforcement?"

Buffy stopped in her tracks as Giles turned to face her. Was he crazy or psychic? Or had one of the others told him her results and he was just being a tool? But then, she saw the mausoleum behind him and was spared having to answer him. "This is the place."

"What?" He turned to look. "Oh! Splendid!"

They walked up the steps and went in. The chamber stood bare except for two large stone vases and a pile of rubble on the floor.

Coming down the steps, Giles held out his hand for the flashlight. "May I?"

"Be my guest," she replied, handing it to him.

He turned it on and walked over to where the wall had been broken into. "It's a reliquary," he explained. "Used to house items of religious significance. Most commonly a finger or some other body part from a saint."

Buffy wrinkled her nose. While she respected peoples' rights to believe in whatever they wished, she always found religion to be just a tad too freaky for her. She leaned against the wall as Giles scanned around the rest of the room with the flashlight. He spotted a name engraved on a stone high above.

"Du Lac," he read, his expression falling. "Oh dear, oh dear."

"I hate when you say that," she grumbled.

"Josephus du Lac was buried here. He belonged to a religious sect that was excommunicated by the Vatican at the turn of the century."

"Excommunicated and sent to Sunnydale. There's a guy big with the sinning."

While Giles didn't disagree, his expression still looked haunted when he turned around. "You remember the book that was stolen from the library by a vampire a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah."

"It was written by Du Lac. Damn it! I let it slip my mind with all the excitement."

Well, they'd both screwed up today, so Buffy silently decided they were even and started leading him out into the open again. "I'm guessing it wasn't a 'Taste of the Vatican' cookbook."

"No, the, uh, book was said to contain rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil. However, it was written in archaic Latin so that nobody but the sect members could understand it."

"So, everything's cool then," she said hopefully.

"It's not. First, the book was taken from the library, and now the vampires have stolen something from Du Lac's tomb."

"You think they figured out how to read the book?"

"Something's coming, Buffy, and whatever it is, I can guarantee it's not good."

The next day, Buffy called a Scooby meeting at the library, and she sat with Willow, Jesse and Xander around their usual table. Okay, it was the only table, but it felt like theirs. "So," said Willow, "Giles is sure that the vampire who stole his book is connected to the one you slayed last night?" She frowned briefly. "Or is it 'slew'?"

Giles came out of the stacks with a National Geographic magazine. "Both are correct, and, yes, I'm sure. Du Lac was both a theologian and a mathematician. This article describes an invention of his, which he called 'The Du Lac Cross'."

Xander leaned forward. "So, why go to all the trouble of inventing something, and then giving it a weak name like that? I mean, I'da gone with 'The Cross-o-matic', or, uh, 'The Amazing Mr. Cross'."

Everyone just gave him blank looks.

Giles chose to continue as if he hadn't spoken. "The cross was more than a mere symbol," he said, handing the open magazine to Willow. "It was used to understand certain mystical texts, to, uh, decipher hidden meanings and so forth."

"So you're saying these vampires went to all this hassle for your basic decoder ring?" Buffy asked.

That must've been a good metaphor because Giles looked thoughtful. "Uh, actually, yes, I, I suppose I am." Finally, she got in a good one.

"According to this," said Willow, still reading the article. "Du Lac destroyed every cross except the one buried with him."

"Must've worked out someone would abuse them," suggested Jesse. "If it can translate certain mystical texts, then certain texts must've been dangerous."

"Which we'll soon get to experience for ourselves up close and personal," Xander pointed out.

"Unless we can preempt their plans," said Giles, almost sounding kind of confident.

"How?" asked Willow.

"Uh, by learning what's in the book before they do. Which means we can expect to be here later tonight," he said, taking a seat at the table.

Willow, naturally, smiled broadly. "Goody! Research party!"

Everyone else rolled their eyes fondly. "Will, you need a life in the worst way," Xander sighed.

Buffy, however, got up. She had a prior engagement on this all-too-precious Tuesday. "Speaking of, I really have to bail, but I promise I'll be back bright and early tomorrow and ready to slay."

Giles looked flabbergasted by her apparent flightiness. "This is a matter of some urgency, Buffy."

"I realize that," she said evenly. "Well, you have to admit, I kinda lack in the book area. I mean, you guys are the brains, I'd only be here for moral support anyway."

"That's untrue, Buffy, you totally contribute. You go for snacks!" Xander said supportively.

"I'm just flattered someone included me in 'the brains' for a change," said Jesse with a wry grin. "Get going, Buffy. We got this."

Oh, right, Jesse knew about her date with Angel. So did Willow, so Buffy looked to her for help.

"She should go," Willow fortunately said. "Y'know, gather her strength."

Giles still looked conflicted, but he thankfully relented. "Perhaps you're right. There may be fierce battles ahead."

Triumphant, Buffy made tracks for the door.

"But Ho-Hos are a vital part of my cognitive process!" Xander objected.

She smiled back at them. "Sorry, Xand. Someplace I have to be."

The quiet only made the enormous ice skating rink feel even bigger. The moonlight shone through the grimy windows that made up most of the ceiling, giving the ice a light glow that gave her a thrill. She skated gracefully on her own. She knew Angel was nearby. He wasn't ready for skates yet, but maybe she could convince him to put some on later.

She made use of the whole rink, doing practiced turns and spins. Funny how the old skills came back to the surface after remaining dormant for so long. It was good to know she had some non-Slayer talents to her name.

She did a crouching maneuver, but wiped out and slid backward against the sidewall. As she started to get up, she felt something wrap around her neck, and her feet left the ice. After flailing for a moment, she realized it was someone's very strong arm.

Her attacker was male, with long wavy brown hair and a thin goatee. Also, he had a nasty scar running down over an empty-looking eye, which told he'd seen some action in his time and continued walking. Whether he was human or not, she couldn't ascertain at the moment. He was so busy strangling her, she couldn't get a decent read on him. Buffy tried to pry his hands from her throat as she struggled to breathe.

"Buffy!" Angel leapt in and tackled the attacker, knocking him off of Buffy. She fell from the railing onto the ice with her knee. Angel lifted the guy to his feet and punched him in the face. The guy wasn't fazed, and returned with a double-fisted punch to Angel's stomach, sending him back into the wall. Angel came off the wall and jabbed him in the face again, but the bounty hunter just shrugged it off. He punched Angel in the face and gut, making him stagger into the wall again, then grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up.

Buffy came skating toward them at a fast pace. The nut case turned to face her. She grabbed a net hanging there and used it to swing up with her foot and hit him in the throat with the blade of her skate, crushing his trachea. He let go of Angel and grabbed his own neck, unable to breathe.

He took a few steps onto the ice and collapsed there, dead.

. . .

Drusilla took the tarot card of the Cyclops and turned it over. Spike looked on from the side of the bed, concerned. "He's passing under our feet right now."

Spike nodded. He'd had a feeling the Slayer would be able to handle herself with these bounty hunters. He'd accounted for that. Still, he hadn't expected one to fall already. "No worries," he said, more for his own benefit than hers. "We're close to decoding the manuscript. We just need a bit more time."

Drusilla touched his face, smoothing out the worry. "Time is ours," she assured him. "It brings the Slayer closer to them." She looked down at the other two cards of the Jaguar and the Insect. He smiled faintly. Yes, they would get through this. They would get through this.

. . .

Buffy rubbed her sore knee. The cold of the ice rink helped considerably. Angel crouched over the bounty hunter and lifted his hand to inspect his ring. "The Hellmouth presents: Dead Guys On Ice," Buffy grunted. "Not exactly the evening we were aiming for."

She noticed Angel looking closely at the ring. "You're in danger. You know what the ring means?"

"I just killed a Super Bowl champ?" she blithely replied.

His tone turned annoyed. "I'm serious! You should go home and wait until you hear from me." He dropped the hunter's hand and stood up. Buffy skated over to him. "Are you okay?" he asked, referring to her knee.

She put her gloved hand on his cheek and saw the bloody cut above his eye. "What about you? That cut!"

"Forget about me. This is bad, Buffy. We gotta get you outta here."

"What, you mean hide?" Was he seriously going to treat her like a little kid again? When was he going to get it through his thick skull that she didn't need him to protect her? She could handle herself.

"Let's just get you someplace safe!" he insisted.

"No! Your eye!" She reached back up to him, but he shook her off. "Hey! Don't be a baby. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"It's not that. I…" He trailed off, sounding embarrassed. Almost ashamed.

"What?"

"You shouldn't have to touch me when I'm like this."

She looks up into his vampire features, and in that moment, she realized he hadn't switched out of his game face yet. "Oh," she murmured. She removed her glove and reached up to touch his brow and his wound, brushing gently across and down his cheek. "I didn't even notice."

Perhaps it was corny, but it was true. She'd gotten so used to seeing him with that face that wasn't repulsive or horrifying – it was simply a part of him, and she could accept that. She moved closer to kiss him. He responded, and they kissed gently. It became more passionate as she reached her hand behind his neck to draw him closer.

She thought for a moment she felt someone watching her, but she shrugged it off.

Giles inspected the ring under a magnifying lamp. Buffy sat on the steps holding an ice pack to her knee while Jesse, Willow and Xander sat around the table. "This guy was hard-core, Giles. And Angel was power-freaked by that ring."

Nodding, her Watcher turned it over in his hand. "I'm afraid he was not overreacting. This ring is worn only by members of the Order of Taraka. It's a society of deadly assassins dating back to King Solomon."

Xander pretended to think. "And didn't they beat the Elks this year in the Sunnydale adult bowling league championships?"

Giles shot him a look. "Their credo is to sow discord and kill the unwary."

Xander shrugged. "Bowling is a vicious game."

"That's enough, Xander!"

Xander's head dropped, looking suitably chastened after being snapped at like that. Buffy exchanged looks with Willow and Jesse, who looked very startled. While Giles was not a fan of Xander's quips, he usually just rolled his eyes and moved on.

Noticing he might have hurt the boy's feelings, Giles softened ever-so-slightly. "Sorry. It's just not the time for jokes. I need to think." He took off his glasses to do the thinking.

Buffy found her voice. "These assassins, why are they after me?"

"'Cause you're the scourge of the underworld?" Willow suggested.

"She's been a scourge for ages," Jesse pointed out. "Why are these guys showing up now?"

Rubbing his eyes, Giles let out a deep breath, muttering, "I don't know, I don't know… I think the best thing we can do is to find a secure location. Somewhere out of the way you can go until we decide on the best course of action."

Buffy got up, ignoring how much it hurt her knee. Her Slayer healing hadn't kicked in yet. "Okay, now you and Angel have both said to head for the hills. Are you saying I can't handle this, that I'm not strong enough to fight these people?"

"They're a breed apart, Buffy," Giles explained, his voice hard. "Unlike vampires, they have no earthly desires, but to collect their bounty. They find a target, and, uh… they eliminate it. You can kill as many of them as you like, it won't make any difference. Where there's one, there will be another, and another. They won't stop coming until the job is done."

Buffy's breathing felt a little heavier as she listened to him talk.

"Each one of them works alone. His own way. Some are human, some… are not. You won't know who they are until they strike."

. . .

Truly wigged and fully tense, Buffy walked down the hall, holding her hands to the back of her neck and shoulders. She jumped when a boy barged through the doors in the hall in front of her.

She walked through the doors and scanned the students in the hall, paranoid about them looking at her. The police recruiter looked at her, and she stared back. A teacher came down the stairs in front of her and looked at her as he ran a comb through his hair. Several students walked past her, giving her the occasional glance.

Behind her, she heard someone walking at a quick pace in her direction. She heard a locker slam behind her and spun toward the noise, noticed a boy quickly bearing down on her, took him by the neck and shoved him into the wall.

"Try it!" she hissed.

The boy – who was actually about her height – simply looked around in confusion. "Try what?" he asked in a reasonable voice.

He wasn't an assassin. Embarrassed, she let go of his neck. "Uh… I'm sorry," she said, letting out a deep breath.

The boy didn't look angry – just confused and a little concerned. "Still not clear what I'm supposed to try."

"Nothing. God, I'm… sorry, I…" She stepped away from him, looked both ways down the hall and quickly headed off in the direction she was going.

She could hear him say something as she moved off. "That is a tense person."

No kidding, she thought bitterly.

Jesse sat at the table, still poring over the latest volume Giles had handed him. He really didn't have the attention span to do all this reading, so he had to re-read a few sections because he knew he would miss most of it. He looked up as the Watcher came out of his office, cleaning his glasses, passing Willow on the counter with her own volume.

"I wish there was more we could do," she said sadly.

"We're doing all that we can," Giles assured her as he put on his glasses. "The only course of action is to try and find out what was in that stolen book."

Willow looked between them. "I've never seen Buffy like that. She just took off."

Jesse rubbed his eyes despairingly. "One of us should've gone with her."

"What difference would that have made?" asked Giles.

"She could've been brave for us. We'd be something else for her to focus on." He meant it, too. From what he'd learned about her, Buffy always did better if she had a friend with her. Someone to bounce off of, someone to protect, she was her best self when she had one of them around. At least, that's how Jesse saw it.

Then, Xander came through the door, looking just as downtrodden as them. "Well, she didn't go home. I let the phone ring a few hundred times before I remembered her mom is out of town."

"Well, maybe Buffy unplugged the phone," Giles suggested.

Xander shook his head. "No, it's a statistical impossibility for a sixteen-year-old girl to unplug her phone." Willow and Jesse both nodded in agreement.

Giles shifted uncomfortably. "Well, perhaps my words of caution were… a little too alarming."

"Ya think?" Xander snapped, almost as if he was getting revenge for being snapped at earlier.

"It's good that she took you seriously, Giles," said Willow. "I just wish we knew where she was."

Buffy hadn't gone home. She'd walked in front of the house, but it was dark and forbidding right now. Nowhere felt safe, so she kept walking. She'd continued for a few hours until she found the one place she could feel safe – Angel's apartment. She came down the stairs into the hall and walked up to the door. She knocked, but there was no answer.

"Angel?" she asked.

Still now answer. She tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Summoning a little Slayer strength, she twisted the knob hard, breaking it and opening the door. She slowly came in, had a look around and closed the door, turning on the lights.

The apartment was sparsely furnished – he so needed a decorator. He had a modern desk strewn with papers against the far wall with a dozen old pictures hanging on the wall around it. Her heels clicked quietly on the bare concrete floor as she slowly walked over to an ivory statue enclosed in a glass display case. She looked at it a moment before going on.

Finally, she found his unmade bed, and slowly went over to it and sat down. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, weary from the day's events. A moment later, she laid herself down on the bed, resting her head on his pillow and curling up. She hugged her arms close to her heart, enjoying his scent before she drifted off into a much-needed deep sleep.

Angel hated having to come to Willy's Bar. It was on the outskirts of town, and it served the sort of people you'd find out there. That included demons and vampires. Willy didn't discriminate – and that was the most decent Angel could say about the little twerp. The guy was a double crossing snitch. Threaten him or bribe him enough, and he'd spill any secret he might've been let in on or at least overheard. Angel didn't have the scratch for bribing him so he'd go with threatening.

The place was mostly there as a sort of neutral ground to the various citizens of Sunnydale. Humans rarely attended, but those that did could usually do so without incident, so long as they didn't start anything. Granted, if a demon chose to start something, there wasn't much to be done, but hey, according to Willy, that's business.

It was after hours. Angel made his way in quietly. He would do better if he gave Willy a fright to get him nice and intimidated. He saw the short scrawny man sweeping up the place. Angel put himself in the shadow of the doorway.

Willy saw the figure. "We're closed! Can't you read the sign?"

Angel stepped into the light, and Willy's demeanor changed immediately.

"Oh, uh… hey, Angel," he stammered, fresh sweat appearing on his forehead. "I didn't recognize you in the dark there. What, uh… what can I do for you tonight?"

"I need some information."

Willy swallowed. "Yeah? Man, that's too bad, 'cause… I'm staying away from that whole scene. I'm livin' right, Angel."

Angel slowly walked past the booths over to the pinball machine. "Sure you are, Willy. And I'm taking up sunbathing."

"C'mon, man. Don't be that way! I-I treat you vamps good! I don't hassle you, you don't hassle me… We all enjoy the patronage of this establishment. Everybody's happy, right?"

Angel ignored his babbling and glared at him. "Who sent them?"

"Who sent who?"

Angel stopped at the pinball machine. "The Order of Taraka."

Willy visibly paled at the name. "I-I… I tell ya, I haven't been in the loop."

"Let's try again. The Order of Taraka, they're after the Slayer." He crossed over to the bar.

"C'mon, man," the bartender whined.

Angel took another step towards him. "Was it Spike?"

"Look, Angel, I-I got some good pigs' blood in, good stuff, my fence said…" Annoyed now, Angel grabbed Willy and smacked his head into the bar, knocking a half-empty pitcher of beer onto the floor. He pressed down hard on Willy's head with his hand. Not too hard, of course. The guy was human, after all.

"You know," Angel said casually. "I'm a little rusty when it comes to killing humans. It could take a while."

Willy groaned in pain. "Oh, Spike will draw and quarter me, man!"

"I'll take care of Spike."

"You know he ordered those guys! Spike's sick of your girl getting in his way!"

"Where can I find him?"

"I tell you that, I'm gonna need relocating expenses! It'll cost you!"

Angel pressed harder. "It'll cost who?"

"Okay! Okay! He and that freaky chick of his are…"

Someone kicked Angel in the face, cutting his interrogation short. He fell back onto the floor in a daze. Whoever's foot that was had strength and skills – he hadn't heard them sneak up. He looked up and saw a dark-skinned young woman glaring at him. She grabbed Willy's abandoned broom, broke the end of the handle off and attacked Angel with the makeshift stake.

Angel rolled out of the way of the girl's thrust. Ignoring Willy's decision to haul ass out of there, he got up again and ducked a swing from her. She tried a direct thrust, which Angel just pushed aside, but she followed it up with a punch to the face from her other hand and used her momentum to spin around for a roundhouse kick, knocking him through the door into the back room. He crashed into several cases of beer. When he got back up, he'd already switched to his game face.

The girl charged him with the stake held above her head in both hands. He blocked her charge with his arms and twisted her arms down, forcing her to drop the stake, and shoved her into a bank of lockers. He tried to knock her legs out from under her, but her footing remained firm and she kicked him in the back, knocking him down instead. Once down, he tried kicking again, and this time, she made her fall. She grabbed his shirt, pulled him up a bit and kicked him in the face. They both scrambled to their feet. Angel swung and missed. He swung the other way, but she blocked it and punched him three times in the gut and then a right hook to his jaw. She shoved him into the door of the cage. He bounced off of it and she kicked him in the chest, making him stumble backward through the cage door and into a bunch of empty water bottles. Several cans fell onto him from a shelf above.

She looked at him with cold eyes as he recovered from his fall. "Who are you? If you tell me what I need to know I won't hurt you." She laughed as she stepped back. "You think this is funny?" he growled.

She swung closed the cage door and set the bolt. Angel scrambled to his feet and slammed up against the door.

"I t'ink it is funny now," she replied in a thick Jamaican accent. "That girl. The one I saw you with before – "

"You stay away from her."

"I'm afraid you are not in a position to threaten."

Angel forced himself against the cage, but it didn't budge. "When I get outta here, I'll do more than threaten!"

"Then I suggest you move quickly." She looked up at the windows. "Eastern exposure. The sun will be coming in a few hours." She put a padlock on the cage. Did she just have that on her?! "More than enough time for me to find your girlfriend." She moved off a smug superior air about her.

Angel screamed in anger and slammed the cage with his hand.

Giles had been at the school library all night, trying to learn more so that he could help Buffy – who he still hadn't heard from since yesterday. He currently sat at his desk, studying a book while holding the phone, waiting for Xander to answer. "Xander? … No, no, I-I haven't heard from Buffy yet. Look, look, I-I-I think you should go to her house and check on her. … Well, ri-right a, right away. … I-I don't know, get Cordelia to drive you." He hung up without waiting for a response. He picked up the book he'd been reading and headed back into the main room with it.

To his surprise, he found Willow and Jesse both still present – and both asleep. Jesse had dozed off reading yet another book, his head resting on his backpack on the table, his left hand on the book and his right comically up in the air while his head rested on his arm.

Willow slept in front of the PC with her head resting on the keyboard. If he could say nothing else of Buffy's friends, they worked their hardest when she needed them most. Closing his book, Giles crouched slightly and gently placed his hand on her shoulder to wake her. "Willow?"

Willow woke with a start and sat bolt upright. "Don't warn the tadpoles!" she yelled in a voice loud enough that Jesse also jolted awake at the table. He groaned in pain as his formerly-upright arm made its lack of blood flow known to him.

"Are you all right?" Giles asked, looking between them.

Willow rubbed her eyes. "Giles, what are you doing here?"

"It's the library, Willow. You fell asleep."

"Oh! I…"

"'Don't warn the tadpoles'?" He probably shouldn't ask, but still.

"I… I have a frog fear. I'm sorry. I conked out."

"What? Please. You've both gone quite beyond the call of duty." He went to sit at the table, but he saw Jesse flailing his right arm about a bit violently. "Jesse?"

"Sorry," the lad said, "my arm's still asleep. Keep going. I'm listening."

"Ah, yes, I-I… uh, fortunately, I think I may have found something finally. It's a description of the missing Du Lac manuscript. It's a ritual, you see. Now, I, uh…I haven't managed to decipher the exact details, but… I believe the purpose is to restore a weak and sick vampire back to full health."

Willow's eyes widened. "A vampire like Drusilla?"

"Exactly."

Dalton slammed the Du Lac manuscript shut and handed Spike his handwritten pages of translation. Spike looked at it, read a bit and smiled triumphantly. "By George, I think he's got it!" he said, walking to Drusilla, who laid in bed. "The key to your cure, ducks. The missing bloody link, it was…"

"Right, right in front of us… the whole time," she finished. She took Spike's hand and pulled it down to her deck of tarot cards. The top card – a picture of an angel.

"I can't even believe you," Cordelia snarled at the back of Xander's head. "You dragged me out of bed for a ride? What am I, mass transportation?"

"That's what a lot of the guys say, but it's just locker room talk. I wouldn't pay it any mind." It felt a little harsh to say, but Xander chalked it up to being woken up so early. If it had been for anyone other than Buffy, he would've hung up on Giles, never called Cordelia and gone back to sleep. As it happened, Jesse had slept at the library and thus couldn't use his family car, and Xander wasn't allowed to drive at his house, so that meant calling one of the few people with a driver's license who knew the secret of the Slayer – Cordelia Chase.

"Oh, great, so now I'm your taxi and your punching bag."

"I like to think of you more as my witless foil, but have it your way." He took the steps up to the porch and knocked on the door. He looked in through the glass. "Buffy!" When he didn't see anyone stirring inside, he walked over to the window. "C'mon, Cordelia. You wanna be a member of the Scooby gang, you gotta be willing to be inconvenienced every now and then."

Cordelia scoffed while he started trying the windows. "Oh, right, 'cause I lie awake at night hoping you tweakos will be my best friends. And that my first husband will be a balding, demented homeless man."

Xander got the second window open and stepped through it. "Buffy could be in trouble."

"And what if she is exactly? What are you gonna do about it? In case you haven't noticed, you're the lameness and she's the super chick, or whatever."

Gritting his teeth, he opened the door for her and let her in. Theoretically, he could just send her away now, but he didn't fancy having to walk home. "Well, at least I'm the lameness who cares, which is more than I can say about you." He looked around a little. The house felt so cold and uninviting when neither Buffy nor her mom were home. "Buffy!" he shouted, but he got no response. "Buffy! I'm gonna check upstairs."

Cordelia rolled her eyes sulkily while he ran upstairs yelling Buffy's name. She spun her keys around as she walked into the living room, kind of peeking around at everything. She'd only been in here once before on Halloween, and they'd been in one of those crazy nutty situations, so she hadn't been able to appreciate that Buffy's mom clearly had taste. Did it skip a generation? Did Buffy's grandparents wear plaid and shop at Goodwill?

She heard a knocking at the door and went to answer it. Even if she didn't live here, she could just say she was house-sitting or something. She opened it, and she came face-to-face with a short stocky-looking man with glasses and a suit, holding a briefcase and smiling pleasantly.

"Good day. I'm Norman Pfister with Blush Beautiful," he said, holding up his case. "Skin Care and Cosmetics. I was wondering if I might interest you in some free samples?"

Cordelia lit up. "Free?" She stepped aside to admit him and closed the door.

Buffy's eyes fluttered open at the sound of a noise. She was still in Angel's apartment, but because he kept the place as his sun-free safe haven, she couldn't tell if it was morning yet. She'd been having a lovely dream – probably because she'd been hugging his pillow and had been breathing his scent all night. Her eyes scanned the room, and then saw movement. She immediately rolled to the far side of the bed as a hatchet struck the pillow where her head had been.

A dark-haired girl with a cold unreadable expression stood over her. She swung again and hit the mattress when Buffy sidestepped the blow. Buffy did a flip over the girl's back and onto the floor behind her, ready to fight. "You must be number two!" The girl replied with a swing of the ax, which Buffy leapt to avoid. "Thanks for the wake-up. But I'll stick with my clock radio."

The girl didn't reply. She just brought the ax down again, but Buffy caught her arm mid-flight. To Buffy's distress, she found she couldn't wrench the ax from her. They were locked in a dead-even struggle, like an arm wrestling match between perfect twins. For a moment, their eyes locked, as if recognizing their equality.

Then, Buffy took advantage of the moment and swept the girl's legs out from under her, causing her to hit the ground hard, but used her legs to pin Buffy's legs and bring her down, too. The two of them rolled on the floor, the ax still in the other girl's grip. They kept trading the upper hand. One moment, Buffy was on top – the next, the other girl prevailed. They smashed into Angel's table, his bookshelf, his dresser, why the hell wasn't he showing up in the nick-of-time to back her up, dammit?!

Fed up, Buffy switched back to 'quip mode'. "Come on. Don't make me do the chick fight thing!"

The other girl, still straining against her, looked confused. "Chick… fight?" she grunted through her effort.

"You know…" Buffy violently jerked her by the hair, distracting her as she dug her nails into the hand holding the ax. The girl cried out, dropping the ax. Buffy grabbed it and straddled the girl, pinning her. All set to kill this demon girl, Buffy couldn't resist taking a dig. "Cliched, but effective." She started to bring the ax down.

"Who are you?" the girl grunted.

The ax stopped. Confusion took over Buffy's face. "What do you mean, who am I? You attacked me. Who the hell are you?"

The girl glared at Buffy, proud and defiant. "I am Kendra, the Vampire Slayer."

Author's Note: This feels like a good place to take a break! Merry Christmas! See you in 2025!