"So, this guy, Rack, what do we know of him?" Faith asked Tara two hours later as Connor reversed the car onto Revello Drive.
"Nothing of his origins," Tara answered. "He's a peddler of spells and magical trinkets, always demanding part of the price as magical power which he sucks out of you. The loss is not permanent but still slow to recover. He's very hard to locate as his 'shop' and residence are inside a kind of pocket dimension. The entrance shifts from day to day, and no one can get in without his permission."
"Willow," Faith immediately made the connection.
"Yes," Tara nodded sadly. "Remember Amy? The Witch who used to be a rat I told you about. She took Willow to Rack's for the first time, and that really started the downward spiral."
"And now Willow and this Amy are together?" Faith asked for clarification.
"Yes. They live together in Angel's old mansion on Crawford Street. Rack pays them, and also Xander and Anya, exorbitantly for the right to use their 'intellectual property'. There's also an unspoken agreement that they kinda turn a blind eye to what Rack does with said property. Rack himself isn't interested in money, so they are practically the richest people in Sunnydale. They are also on a list of 'untouchables', which means that even at night they are completely safe from harm. Dawn is also on that list, as is the house, but not me. After sunset I'm only safe within the property. And, like I told you, they can trace my movements at any time. Mostly they don't bother with me unless I've wandered too close to the city limits."
"Huh?" Faith blinked. "Wonder why with all that money they didn't bribe someone to off me while I was in prison."
Tara stayed silent for a long while, until Faith probed her with a quiet, "Blondie? You awake?"
"Sorry, I was just thinking of a way to bring this up with you. But simply, they most likely never even thought of keeping track of you once the 'business' started rolling. And if they did, a new Slayer would have been an unknown variable. An incarcerated Faith, on the other hand, was a devil they knew."
"And what about the Council... and Giles?" Faith prompted further. "One way or another I'd have believed them to want a Slayer back in business. Either by attempting to free me or kill me."
"As I told you, I'm secretly in touch with various covens here in the West Coast and England," Tara explained further. "They are unable to help us directly at the moment, but I did hear rumours that money and other favours have traded hands so that the Council would turn a blind eye to the 'Slayer situation'."
"Fucking corrupted assholes," Faith growled, her anger at the Watchers' Council gaining another notch. "Is Giles in on this?"
"Um, no," Tara shook her head. "He, um, is not in a condition to be much in on anything."
"Right," Faith nodded in agreement. Buffy's death had obviously hit her Watcher hard. 'Too bad,' she grinned mentally somewhat viciously. 'I've got a few surprises in store for you, G-man.'
"But there was one Watcher, someone I'm sure you remember," Tara continued. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. He was apparently very vocally on your side."
"Wes?" Faith gaped in total astonishment. "Where is he now?"
"He, um, was silenced," Tara answered hesitantly. "Permanently. He fell out of a window in Los Angeles approximately half-a-year ago. It was written off as a suicide. There were no witnesses."
So, Wesley was dead as well. She didn't really miss the guy that much, but she still added him to the list of things that the Council would have to answer for, one way or another.
Even though she knew what their first stop would be, Faith still felt cold shivers run up and down her spine as the car pulled over to park on the opposite side of a tall white building.
She had once lived there, courtesy of Mayor Richard Wilkins III.
The place looked pristine and had been cordoned off. She could spot a few hidden spotlights in the bushes around the entrance. She didn't have to see their alignment to know that they were pointed straight at her former balcony.
"Ok, talk to me, Blondie," she prompted her companion quietly. She had heard the skinny on their drive to Sunnydale, but now she wanted the whole sordid story.
"This whole place is a kind of Slayer exhibition centre," Tara started. "They have books, artifacts and lectures about the Slayer lore and so on. In your, um, former apartment they, uh... re-enact the final fight between y-you and Buffy twice a night."
"What?" Faith almost shrieked. She hadn't heard the final bit until now. "Who?" she demanded. "Do they have some fucking vampires playing us?"
"Uh, no," Tara shook her head. "There was a guy, Warren Mears I guess his name was, who was a genius in animatronics and artificial intelligence. They, um, forced him to create two robots, or 'slayerbots' as they call them..."
"B and I," Faith completed the explanation with a flat statement.
"Yes," Tara nodded quickly. "I haven't seen them myself, but I've heard that they are quite sophisticated and..."
"And?" Faith growled from between clenched teeth.
"And apparently anatomically indistinguishable from, uh, humans," Tara rushed to get the final part out of her mouth.
"I really hope you're not saying what I think you're saying," Faith said in a hollow voice, the implications of Tara's words being something beyond any normal perversion.
"I...," Tara began hesitantly. "With, um, sufficient finances it's possible to rent the apartment and one or both of them for a, um, private session. The bots, um, can evidently be programmed for other actions besides, um, fighting."
Only extreme self-discipline kept Faith from lashing out at anything... everything. Some fucking basement dweller bastard had created a sex doll with her body, face and voice, and it was pimped out to some fucking rotten corpses with a Slayer kink.
"Faith, sweetie, breathe," she heard Tara's slightly worried voice address her. "It's a robot, not you. And Warren was tortured until he broke and agreed to build them. They killed him once the bots were finished. Now there's a team of Rack's own 'techno mages' keeping them functional."
Seeing that the younger girl was still on the verge of a meltdown, Tara decided to risk even bodily harm, and gently gathered Faith into her arms. The Slayer didn't resist in any way as Tara started cooing soothingly into her ear.
"You know it would be bad, Faith," she murmured. "But still you wanted to do this. You're one of the strongest persons I've known, and for you, personally, this stop is probably the hardest one to face. Whatever comes along, I will be here for you. I'll never abandon you, sweetie."
Tara's quiet words finally broke the dam in Faith. Clinging on to the older girl, she started crying uncontrollably, letting the accumulated filth flow out of her. She didn't care that Angel's brat was there to witness her total collapse. The only thing that mattered were the gentle arms around her and the warm and firm shoulder into which she had buried her face.
"I'm so sorry," she kept repeating amidst hiccoughs.
"Shhh, I know, sweetie," Tara kept whispering in her ear while soothingly rubbing her back.
It took close to 15 minutes for Faith to get it all out of her system. Once the tears were exhausted, shame started creeping in. She had never broken down like that before, not even during the most intensive therapy sessions in prison. In there she had managed to keep her walls up and impenetrable, but now a girl she had known hardly a day managed to worm her way inside her closely guarded heart. Tara was sure to hate her now. No one wanted a weak, snivelly Slayer.
"I gotta look fucking disgusting," she growled as she pushed away from Tara's hold.
"You look nothing but beautiful," Tara replied quietly and leaned in to touch Faith's cheek. For all her determination, Faith didn't back away. "So beautiful," Tara whispered, her voice full of emotion.
"Sorry to be the spoil sport here," Connor's slightly annoyed voice interrupted their moment, and they both backed away like they'd received an electrical shock. "We know they have informants among the people, so we shouldn't loiter too long in one place, especially one that is so central to their operations."
"Yeah, um, you're right," Tara replied, slightly shaken. "Take the third right and then the second left. You'll know when we're there."
When the car started moving again, she leaned towards the dumb-struck Slayer's ear.
"To be definitely continued," she whispered and squeezed Faith's limp hand encouragingly.
Sunnydale High was still the same ruin Faith remembered from the time between her waking up from the coma and then hightailing it to L.A. after the body swap episode. The area was encircled by a tall, barb-wired fence through which only a single gate with a toll booth allowed entrance. A tall tower, almost like a construction crane, was erected on the premises with the neck straight above the derelict building.
"Is that...?" she queried as she leaned against the side window to see the top of the structure.
"Yes," Tara nodded and leaned over as well, which brought her almost on Faith's lap. "That's where Buffy and Glory fought their final battle and from where she leaped to close the portal Glory had opened. The ledge is straight above the old library. From what I've heard, there's a basement underneath the library which contains the actual Hellmouth and some mystical seal that's there to keep it closed. The tower, the ruined library and the basement are all open to visitors. What's, um, remaining of the library contains a memorial to Mayor Wilkins. He, um, is sort of a cultural hero in certain circles."
The Boss. Despite her keeping most of her inner thoughts to herself during her therapy sessions, one thread she had allowed to unravel. The relationship between her and Wilkins. She had loved the guy in a completely naïve way, and then her therapist had made her see how toxic the whole thing was. Of course, she had not mentioned anything about demons or ascensions, but she had been unable to keep it hidden that at least some of the crimes she had been sentenced for were done at the bidding of the late Richard Wilkins III.
Over several sessions she had become familiar with terms like "grooming" and "emotional abuse" which the therapist had used to describe her connection with the Boss. She had never willingly accepted outside influences on her thoughts, but with no escape from either the sessions or later herself in her cell, she had been gradually forced to come to terms with the facts on her own as well.
She still didn't actually hate the guy, but she could see much clearer how the whole affair must have looked to B and the rest of the Scoobies. And if there was one thing she had made peace with, it was her relationship with her former Boss. She didn't really believe he was resting in peace, wherever he was, but that particular book she had been able to close, for good.
"Gotcha," she nodded. "Guess he got his bunch of worshippers after all," she added as an afterthought.
Their next stop was The Bronze which was apparently a high-class nightclub for the really wealthy visitors. As they were driving slowly along the mostly empty streets, Tara filled her in with other less-obvious landmarks. For example, there was a large parking lot with a few two-decker buses with weirdly tinted windows, which protected the passengers from the sun so effectively that vampires could have sight-seeing tours around the city in broad daylight.
They also arranged guided tours to Sunnydale's sewer system, and from what Tara had heard, there were plans to excavate some parts of the Initiative's old subterranean research facility and make them accessible to the more proficient spelunkers.
Maple Court was pretty much like Faith remembered it, except perhaps a bit more run-down. The only shop there that looked somewhat well-kept was The Magic Box, which was still owned and run by Giles. There was a large "Closed for Inventory" sign hanging on the main door which apparently meant that the proprietor himself was... otherwise occupied today.
"I think I've seen enough for the day," Faith announced as they were driving along Crawford Street back towards Revello Drive. They had just passed Angel's old mansion which was currently inhabited by Willow and Amy. There were no lights on or movement within the forbidding property, but Tara knew that the place was protected by several guarding spells.
Close to home, they drove past the Restfield cemetery.
"Stop the car, Kid," Faith called out urgently as an inescapable need suddenly hit her.
"What is it, Faith?" Tara asked worriedly.
"There's something I gotta do," Faith said with absolute conviction and put her hand on the doorhandle. "I'll meet you back home."
"Faith, I don't think this is a good idea," Tara shook her head.
"Don't take this the wrong way, Blondie, but I really don't give a fuck," Faith growled. "I gotta do this, and that's it."
"Alright," Tara gave in. She took a coin out of her pocket and murmured a short charm over it. Then she handed it to Faith. "This will lay a glamour over you," she explained. "To me and Connor, you will look like your usual self, but to others you will show a completely non-descript form that they will immediately forget."
"Did you...?" Faith asked in amazement as she took the coin.
"Yes, it's based on the charm that's keeping the city isolated," Tara nodded with a hint of smile. "Like I said, it took me several months until I was able to temporarily circumvent it on me. Actual touching will penetrate the glamour, so you should avoid physical contact. It will last approximately two hours. Please be back well before that."
The look on Tara's face was again anxious, and Faith realised that the other girl really cared for her well-being. Just the thought of actually betraying her trust made her shiver with cold. "Scout's honour," she promised with her fingers raised.
"You were a scout?" Tara asked sceptically.
"No, but I've slept with a few. Same difference," she grinned and exited the car before Tara could come up with any kind of response. "I mean it, Blondie," she reassured the older girl through the open window. "I will be back before the time is out."
"Please be careful, Faith," Tara pleaded her. "Remember what we're supposed to be continuing."
"As if I could forget something like that," Faith grinned with her dimples in full view. "See ya,"
With a final wave she turned her back to the car and determinedly marched into the cemetery.