And it looked like they could see her. As Willow stared, frozen mute to the spot, the faded figures turned toward her. A small part of her mind registered the fact that they were not all Puritans: a great variety of costumes was represented. Her skin crawled as the shades began to drift toward her and a cold that did not come from the weather seized her. She turned away only to see, off to the south, past the bandstand and the tennis court, an even larger group, made indistinct by distance, but seeming to contain a greater variety of people: young, old, adults and children, and at least one who appeared to be carrying a musket.

"Are you okay?" Lucian placed a hand on Willow's upper arm. The redhead shivered and looked at him, her mouth open. Lucian's forehead was creased in concern as he stooped to peer into her eyes.

"Wh- What's down there?" she stammered as she pointed, a frown appearing on her face as she realized that the ghosts had vanished.

"Let me find out." Lucian waved at a man wearing a scally cap and a long muffler. "Uh, sir, could you tell me what's at that end of the Common?"

The man glanced over his shoulder without missing a beat. "Boylston Street, Emerson, Haunted Boston Tour." He barely spared the quartet of students a glance as he kept moving at a brisk pace. Willow blinked: Haunted Boston?

"It used to be the Central Burying Ground." A young woman wearing a gray watch cap pulled over an immense amount of curly dark hair crossed the footpath after the man had passed.

"The what?" Willow's voice felt squeaky in her throat.

"Central Burying Ground. Started in 1756." The young woman pointd at herself. "Oh, I'm Andrea, by the way. Andrea Rosselli." The students nodded in acknowledgement.

"Who was buried there?" Willow asked. She took a sip of her now lukewarm cocoa to ease her dry mouth.

Andrea shrugged, her hands in the pockets of her jeans. "British soldiers, foreigners who died in Boston, some famous people. The guy who painted George Washington, uh… Gilbert Stuart." She nodded. "There's a woman down there who died in 1755, she's buried with six of her children."

"Sheeeee-it," Quan whispered, "somebody's spent too much time in the cemetery. What a fucking weirdo."

"If you're interested in history, it's a really cool place to visit." Andrea sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

"Thanks, Andrea. I'm Lucian." He nodded toward the three young women. "This is Sophia, and Willow, and our little Quan."

"Fuck you, asshole," Quan snapped.

Andrea raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lips. "You sound like my grandma."

"Are you from Boston?" Willow asked.

"Yeah, I'm a student over at Emcad, you know, Massachusetts College of Art and Design."

"Oh. Nice." Sophia nodded. "Thanks for the info."

"No problem." Andrea held up a hand. "Nice to meet you guys." She headed north along the footpath.

"Are you okay now?" Sophia looked concerned. "You really looked shaky for a minute there."

"Yeah." Willow nodded and tried to put as much conviction as possible into her nod. "I think I just got a little, you know, overexcited and kinda blanked out for a second."

"What happens when you let fucking hicks loose in the city." Quan shook her head. "Can't handle your hot chocolate."

Willow's mouth stretched out in a wide, thin line. "Thanks, Quan. It's good to know you care."

"So… if everybody's good, wanna wander around and look for spooky stuff?" Lucian looked around, wide-eyed.

"I'm… in, if everybody else is." Sophia, hands in the pockets of her jacket, swung toward Willow and Quan.

"I'm fine," Willow said. "I think I'd like to go look at the cemetery."

"Cool. Let's go." Lucian struck out southward, Sophia's arm linked through his.

Quan hung back and fell into step beside Willow. She leaned toward the redhead and whispered, "What the fuck happened to you?"

Willow shrugged. "I don't know, like I said, I got excited or my imagination got the best of me. Whatever, I'm fine now."

"Yeah, well, just don't go-" Quan crossed her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and made her body rigid "-while we're out here. You don't have epilepsy, do you?"

"No," Willow said, her voice short, "I do not have epilepsy… I don't think."

"Then don't do that again. Scared the fucking shit out of me."

Lucian and Sophia were already at the fence surrounding the graves. "Wow," Lucian said, "look at that. Back home a grave from the 1800s is old. Some of these people had already been dead a hundred years by then."

"Yeah," Sophia said, her voice somber, "and the Granary-" she pointed with a mitten-covered hand toward the far end of the Common "-is a hundred years older than this."

"Yeah, yeah, it's really soul-searching, stuck between the softball field and the tennis courts," Quan scoffed. "Real circle-of-life shit. You know, you want to talk history, China was an empire for three thousand years before the Pilgrims got lost and ended up here."

Lucian looked over his shoulder. "Quan, have you ever actually been to China?"

"Not the point, dipshit." The tiny girl scowled. "People been living and dying for a long time. Nothing fucking special about it."

Willow stood with her hands in her pockets and tried not to shiver. It wasn't the evening chill that brought the goosebumps; this cold puckered the skin around her eyes and made her breath sharp in her chest. It seemed to come from within and, as far as she could tell, she was the only one it touched. She tried to swallow with her dry throat as she watched the cemetery, waiting for… what?

Sophia looked up from the plaque posted on the fence. "You know, they don't really know how many people are buried here." She pursed her lips. "It's kind of sad, live your whole life, then no one knows who or where you are."

"Tell it to the ancestors," Quan sniped.

"Yes, Fa Mulan." Lucian rolled his eyes.

"Hey, what did I tell you about that Mulan shit?" Quan raised a warning index finger.

"We can go," Willow said. "I don't know what I wanted to see, but we can go."

"I agree," Sophia said. "Let's not spend a perfectly good fall night in mopery."

Willow stared up at the ceiling. It did not look so much different from the ceiling of her bedroom back in Sunnydale. Sometimes, she would ruminate on that, how she had moved across a continent and changed everything about her life except the ceiling. Maybe you couldn't change the ceiling, maybe there was only one ceiling, and all ceilings were part of it, maybe they were connected, like the ceiling was a wormhole and if you could push through it, you could come out of the ceiling of any room anywhere. Willow pursed her lips in the darkness: Lucian would love that soliloquy.

But…

What if it was true? What if she had moved across a continent to escape something that couldn't be escaped? What if that ceiling loomed over her regardless of her location? Was she trying to outrun something that couldn't be outrun, simply because it was part of her, because wherever she was, it was there, too?

There was a snort and huff from the other bed, then a small, slow snore. Willow smiled into the dark. Another chain of deep thought derailed by the utter artlessness of Quan Bai. Willow sighed and rolled onto her side. She was Willow Rosenberg, she could do anything… including willing herself to sleep.

Willow shuffled down the hallway, bath trolley in hand, hair dripping onto the towel slung over her shoulders. She turned her shoulders slightly to let Cat Tompkins pass. The redhead was glad she was in and out of the shower before Cat; there was one person on every floor who insisted on being more comfortable with nudity than the average student, and on this floor that person was Cat. When the spring came, Willow fully expected the other girl to just walk to the bathroom naked save for the towel she would tastefully drape over one shoulder. The redhead pushed open the door to her room just as Quan poked her head out from beneath the covers. The small girl crawled out of her bed as Willow faced the mirror and began to comb her hair. Quan stumbled as she stepped on the hem of the robe that she pulled from underneath a jumbled assortment of T-shirts.

"Watch out," Willow said. "Cat's already in the bathroom."

Quan grunted as she struggled into her robe and grabbed her bath caddie. "Cat's showin' her kitty, huh?"

Willow paused her grooming. "Classy."

"Hey, every inch of my ass is classy," Quan growled. Her hand grabbed the doorknob when a scream pierced the air. The girls exchanged glances, then almost collided getting out the door. The hallway was lined with heads poking out from dorm rooms, all looking in the same direction at a girl running away from the bathroom. Willow ran toward it, no mean feat in fuzzy slippers; Quan trailed her. The redhead hit the door with both hands, slamming it open. Three young women were plastered to the far wall, backlit by the frosted glass windows at their backs. Cat Tompkins's back was pressed to the tiled wall lining the area containing the shower stalls.

"Got-damn, girl. Cover yourself with a washcloth or something." Quan frowned and shook her head. Willow barely heard the exchange; she stared at the row of mirrors above the sinks. A cloud of condensation was fading the droplets at the edges trickling down the glass. As the fog faded, Willow struggled to make out the rapidly disappearing letters sketched into the mist.

I'm here.

The redhead turned to the other girls. "Did it say 'I'm here'?"

The sharpness of her question seemed to shock the other students. One finally nodded. "Yeah. That's what it said."

Willow glanced at the now perfectly clear mirror. "Okay, tell me what happened."

The young women exchanged glances. Cat spoke from behind Willow. "It got cold, really cold, all of a sudden, then the mirror fogged up and… and…"

"And the writing appeared." One of the other students finished the thought.

Willow nodded and turned back to the mirror. "Quan, what are you doing?" Her roommate was on tiptoe, leaning over the sink, her mouth wide open as she exhaled aggressively.

Quan dropped back on her heels. "If somebody writes on the glass with their finger, making it fog up again shows the writing. Everybody knows that." Quan jerked thumb toward the glass. "That fucker's clean."

At that moment the door opened and Tori Keating entered. Tori was the hall RA, a junior CS major and all-around very enthusiastic, very up-beat person. "I heard screaming. What's wrong?"

There was a beat, then one of the three girls by the wall said, "There was writing on the mirror."

Tori looked at the water-spotted glass. "There isn't anything there now. Did you erase it?"

"No." A second young woman spoke up. "There wasn't anything there when we came in. It appeared."

Tori raised a hand. "I'm confused. Someone came in here and wrote on the mirror? Do you know who it was? Was it a threat?" Willow shot a hard look at Quan, who stood behind the RA. The tiny girl rolled her eyes and clamped her mouth shut. Tori stepped over to the mirror and looked at it.

"No," the first girl said. "There was nobody here but us, and the writing appeared after we were in here."

"It just said 'I'm here'," Cat offered.

"Uh-huh." Tori turned her back on the mirror. "Well, there's nothing there now, so why don't we all get to class and I'll call Campus Police and have them look into it. They may want to talk to you, so be aware of that. Uh, is everybody okay? Anybody hurt?" There was a general shaking of the heads in answer. "Okay, let's get on about our day." Tori grinned. "And remember, you are at MIT, the home of the overengineered prank. This will probably turn out to some guys on the third floor."

The three previous occupants of the bathroom picked up their caddies and left. Tori looked at Willow and Quan. "You guys okay?"

"We're fine," Willow said. Quan shrugged.

"Good." Tori turned to Cat. "Since there's no one else in here, I'll wait outside the door until you're finished, just to be safe." Cat nodded and went into the shower area.

Back in their room, Willow dressed in black tights and a short purple jumper over a pine-green long-sleeved T, then threw on her jacket. "Don't be late for class," she said.

"I'll be there in plenty of time. At least twenty seconds before the bell." Quan pulled on a black turtleneck and combed her fingers through her thick black hair.

"Whatever," Willow responded. "I've got to get to Philosophy." The course was actually entitled 'Problems in Philosophy' and she totally loved it. It was taught by Dr. Jessica Potter, who had endeared herself to the redhead on the first day of classes, when she announced, "Yes, my name is Dr. Potter, and if any of you ask me about Quidditch or the golden snitch, point your pencils at me and intone 'Expelliarmus', or ask which house I belong to, you will not only fail this class, I will see to it that you are expelled, your transcript burned, the ashes buried, and the ground sown with salt. Any questions?" She had made this declaration in a rich London accent, and Willow had decided on the spot that this woman would be her role model, although Willow would never be able to achieve the thick chestnut hair, prominent cheekbones or square jawline, and Willow's nose would always be sharper than Dr. Potter's, but the teacher had brown eyes and Willow's green irises were ringed with brown, so, close enough.

The teenage witch entered the lecture hall and took her usual seat: third row, fourth seat in. The first week had been sort of a sorting maneuver, but the class had soon settled into an impromptu seating chart. Willow took out her used copy of the Norton Introduction to Philosophy (already well-annotated by previous students) and uncapped her pen as Dr. Potter entered stage right. The teacher planted her feet shoulder width apart and stuck her hands in the pockets of her wide-legged black-and-white pinstriped trousers. Willow also loved Dr. Potter's fashion sense. Today the rest of the teacher's outfit was a black moleskin vest with a gold watch chain and a shirt of blinding white with wing cuffs.

"Good morning." Dr. Potter's voice was clear and bell-like. "Remember that your first paper is due in three weeks. Now, I hope you have all done the reading because today we are beginning to wrestle with the problem of evil." She paced across the stage, hands still in her pockets. "Mankind has been wrestling with this problem, the question of evil, for millennia, probably since Og the caveman was asked why he bashed Bog the caveman over the head with a rock." She pivoted on one heel and walked back the other direction. "So, what's the first question in our little drama?" She stopped and faced the class, firmly anchored to the stage, hands still in pockets. A low murmur rippled through the room.

Willow raised a slow hand. Dr. Potter turned toward her and crossed her arms. "Yes."

"M-Maybe… was it wrong of Og to hit Bog?"

"Excellent observation." The teacher flashed a dazzling smile. "Right to the quick. Was it wrong for Og to whack Bog? If so, why?" She suddenly uncrossed her arms and spread her hands wide. "So, first principles… was it wrong and, if so, why? Are actions wrong in one context but right in another? Does evil, in fact, exist?"

"Sure. Yeah." A couple of voices sounded from the back of the hall.

Dr. Potter nodded. "Let us proceed from there, the assumption that, a priori, evil does exist in the universe. If so, does that mean that good also exists?" There was a rumble of assent from the students. "Well then, are they fixed categories or are they mutable?" She scanned the room. "So, I see I've stumped you. All right, let's get to the reading that we may pluck some of the thorns from this rose."

"Excellent observation. Perhaps notions of good and evil are too arbitrary and the Western tendency to sort into one of these two categories is inferior to the notion of duality, of equal and balanced opposing forces without the need for the moral judgment of good and evil. Thank you. Well stated." Dr. Potter nodded her head as she paced the stage. "In fact, as we are nearing the end of today's time together, I want to piggyback onto that concept. You are enrolled at one of the finest engineering and science universities in the world." She flashed her dazzling grin again. "I might add that I'm contractually obligated to say that. Now, have you, at this august institution of higher learning, come across the hypothesis of dark matter? Some of you, about half. Well, the term 'dark matter' was coined in 1933 at Cal Tech, boo hiss, then twenty-five years ago dark matter was 'proven' to exist." Dr. Potter offered air quotes. "How was this proven? Anyone know? Yes, you, way in the back. Correct. We have not seen dark matter, but it should or must exist because of gravitational effects that cannot be explained unless more matter exists than we can observe. We see the effects and postulate from there. Very well. Then, last year, Michael Rauner at the University of Chicago created the term 'dark energy' to explain why the universe behaves as it does. You see, every time that we think we have a neat and tidy explanation for the cosmos, we find exceptions, sometimes very large exceptions. Even Einstein had to propose the cosmological constant, which turned out to be unworkable, yet the universe does work." Dr. Potter tipped her head to one side. "For certain values of 'work'." She crossed the platform in measured, confident strides. "And when we realize that our hypothesis cannot explain what is observably happening, we modify the hypothesis or toss it in the bin and create another. Anyway, here is the thought I want to leave rattling around in your heads today to start us off in our next session… if the universe, which we can measure and observe, requires an unseen force that we cannot measure or detect but which we believe must exist to explain why our world does not either explode or collapse, how much more difficult the task of defining a truly abstract concept such as 'evil'." She raised her hand. "Good day." Willow shoved her textbook into her backpack next to her notebook with seven new pages of notes. She practically shivered with the giddy realization of new knowledge. This was certainly better than Sunnydale High.