Faith can't breathe. Jesus God, she thinks. This is it.

She looks around wildly for Buffy, but the other slayer's distracted, struggling with the door. It always sticks.

Then the vampire is at her back, looming over her. His hand comes down by her neck, and she imagines she can feel her pulse fluttering beneath his fingers.

This is it, her mind repeats stupidly. I'm going to die.

She must have whispered it, because Angel gives her shoulder a little squeeze. "You're fine, Faith. You'll be just fine. You ready?"

"You'd better be," Buffy says. "Cause here I go." She gives one last tug at her dress and slips out the parlor door. They're all waiting in the dining room, and the goddamn Wedding March is already playing.

"I'm going to puke," Faith whispers.

"No you're not." He grabs her hand, threads it through the crook of his arm.

"Fuck! Where's the bouquet?"

Angel plucks it off a chair, thrusts it into her hand. "Onward."

Whatever made her think she could walk in these damn satin shoes? She wobbles on the spiky heels. Angel adjusts the angle of his arm, steadies her, and sweeps her through the door.

Their friends all get to their feet as she enters, and panic surges through her. Then she sees Xander at the altar, stepping closer to the aisle where he can get a better view of her. He breaks into a delighted smile that lights up the room, drops her a wink. Suddenly she catches her breath.

Angel delivers her to the altar and though it's not time in the ceremony for Xander to take her hand, he offers his and she seizes it as they turn to face the minister.

The ceremony was a nice one. Everyone keeps telling her this, which is how Faith knows. She said her part without having to be poked, and that's about all she remembers after Xander winked at her.

After, there's eating and dancing, and Faith has long ago ditched her shoes in some forgotten corner. The minister even stuck around for a while to dance -- Faith spotted her with Wes and later with Angel, but she took off, disconcerted, shortly after noticing her latest partner didn't reflect in the one small mirror they'd neglected to take down. Everyone else is still around.

Faith finds Wes in the kitchen, restocking the fridge with beer, shoving the warm ones to the back and moving the cold ones up front. The cold glow of the fridge light isn't exactly made to flatter. It spotlights the fading line of a scar across his throat. When the hell did he pick that up? And why had the news never made its way to Buffy and her pals?

"Hey, Wes. I was wondering--"

"Oh, I'm afraid I must sit this one out." He looks around at her and smiles. "I came in here for a bit of a breather." He offers a bottle.

"Rather have a Sammy, if there's one left. A Sam Adams. And no, I wasn't looking to dance. I was hoping we could talk."

Wes finds her a Sammy and pops off the top, then gets himself a bottle of something dark and British. "Certainly, Faith."

Kitchen's always the worst place for privacy at a party. Faith gestures toward the back garden, but it's occupied too. "Library's next door." She leads him along the back path connecting the brownstones, punches the key code and ushers him inside. "Not much of a library yet," she says as she switches on the lights, "but Giles and Robin are working on it."

"It's quite a beautiful room," Wes says. She sees that spark of Book Guy lust that lights Giles up in here too.

"Old law office." She drops into a chair. Her natural inclination would be to prop a chunky boot up on the nearest available surface, but the gesture doesn't quite work with the cream satin dress and the now-bare feet.

Wes raises his bottle. "Here's to your new life. I hope you'll both be very happy."

Faith tips her bottle toward him. "Here's hopin.'" She cuts her gaze away from him. "Means a lot, that you'd come."

"Means a lot that you'd ask," he says softly. "You've come a long way, Faith. Anyone can see."

She doesn't know why this makes her a little teary. Too much champagne, probably. "That's a helluva scar you've got, Wes." She touches her own throat. "What happened?"

His face goes curiously blank for a second, like there's some kind of stutter in the thought process. "Demon attack." There's a strange vagueness to his tone, like he's listening hard to catch some distant sound. "Mauling."

Yeah sure. Faith knows knife scars from claw marks. But she only says, "You must've been in bad shape for a while."

"Yes." Still that odd sense of distance. "Quite." He snaps back in focus. "Was there something--?"

"Yeah, actually. About Xander. I'm kind of worried about him."

"Have there been aftereffects from the Hand of Imhotep?"

"No, it's not --" She frowns. "Well, maybe. Xander had a vision during all that. A rerun of a spell cast on him on his wedding day." Wes gives her confused, and she clarifies. "He and Anya, a couple years ago. It didn't come off -- because of this vision, which I guess was It's a Wonderful Life, only everything looked shitty because of him. So the spell flashes back on him, and he has a vision about him and me." She takes a healthy slug of beer. "We're married, I'm vamped. So that one happened right about the time you were here. You and Giles do the spell, everything's fine. Until sometime in September. Then he starts having dreams -- visions. Different futures, he says, just as real as if he's living it. They've been tearing him apart. Giles said there's some kind of connection with certain kinds of visions and some watchers, but he doesn't have the right reference at hand, and we don't even know what's left of the Council's collection, if anything. I figured it couldn't hurt to ask you if it rings a bell." She sees it does; his expression has changed and the voice he's hearing is an inner one, not hers. "I'm thinkin' yeah, it does."

"It could be. I'd have to hear more, talk with Xander about the specific visions."

"Sure. We should have a confab. I'm not -- well, I'm not looking to cut Giles out of this deal."

"No, of course not."

"I just figured two watchers are better than one." Her mouth quirks up in a grin. "Guess I should say 'three are better than two' -- who'd've thought I'd end up hitched to one of you guys. Even if he is all new and not exactly Council-approved."

Wes smiles ruefully. "Not a one of us is Council-approved. Actually, I'd like to talk to Xander about his new career, if he's so inclined. I don't know if I've any wisdom to impart, but experience -- I'd be happy to share what I can."

"I think he'd like that. He loves it, but he's operating at a disadvantage, what with being twenty-three years behind on his train--"

"He's very fortunate. Being born to a calling --" He offers her a smile with some pain behind it. "I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone."

"Well, he'll need you and Giles both."

"Perhaps it's time we formed a Western-Eastern demon hunting alliance. I have quite a wide range of texts available to me from Wolfram & Hart."

Faith scrapes at the label of her beer bottle with her thumbnail. "Wes, you should start to worry when wildass Faith suggests caution. But it kinda skeeves me out, you and Angel mixed up with this Wolfram & Hart shit. I'm not sure I want you bringing them into Xander's thing unless the situation is desperate. Whatever research you'd do, is there any way they can trace it?"

"It's possible, I suppose. But Faith, Angel has been given full autonomy to run the L.A. branch as he sees fit. We've been handed an amazing weapon for our fight, with complete freedom."

His mouth says one thing, Faith notices, while his vibe says another. "Nobody can tell you better than me, there's nothin' like complete freedom to grease the skids to hell."

He nods slowly. "I'll give that some thought, Faith. And I'll see what my memory turns up on the watcher visions. We should get back. It's your wedding night. Tomorrow morn--" a flicker of a smile "-- afternoon -- will be soon enough."

On the way through the kitchen she grabs another Sammy for herself and a Dos Equis for Xander. She finds him in a corner of the parlor, huddled with Willow and Buffy. Just like old times when she'd find them at the Bronze, laughing and easy together on that ratty, ancient couch. A wave of loneliness washes over her unexpectedly, that familiar feeling that she could never be part of this. Funny how emotions imprint themselves on you, even when you should have outgrown them.

One of the beers is lifted from her hand. "Thanks, Faith, you're the best," Dawn puts an extra helping of smarm in her voice.

"In your underage dreams, babe." She snatches the bottle back. "Nice try, though."

She turns back toward Xander and he's getting to his feet. "Excuse me, ladies, I have to dance with my wife." He relieves her of the beers, handing them off to Buffy and Willow, then pulls her into the dining room.

My wife. The sound of these words make her dizzy, in the best possible way. Her husband gathers her into his arms as another song starts up. Giles has taken over the stereo, playing some folkie with a soul singer's voice.

"I missed you," Xander whispers into her hair.

"Wes and I had business," she says. "Tell you later."

Hark now, hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky

She knows this song. It's always made her ache, reminded her of watching the blessing of the fleet each year when she was a kid. Wishing she could go out there into the boundless sea and never come back to her crap town.

Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the mystic

Now she sways in Xander's arms, eyes closed but knowing the people she cares about are around her. They're here for her, for Faith and Xander. Some of them traveled a couple thousand miles. People who used to be her enemies, and now they've come all this way to share the most important day of her life. Suddenly a part of the song that never spoke to her before is piercing her right through:

And when that foghorn blows
You know I will be coming home

You can hear this guy caress the word home, just the way she used to savor a mouthful of cigarette smoke, lingering over its passing. All at once a song that used to be about the ache of longing to leave has turned into a hymn of homecoming. She'd never suspected it could feel like this, being home. She'd never thought home would mean the arms of a man who would never hurt her. That it would mean cracking a joke about a beer with a gangly teenage girl or talking over her worries with someone who took her seriously. She'd never believed it was something she could have.

The song comes to an end and Xander steps back just enough to look into her face. "Hey," he says, touching a fingertip to her tears. "What is it?"

"Ah shit," she says. "Just your basic weepy bride."

"Happy tears?" Xander flicks his tongue at his fingertips. "They taste like happy tears."

It makes her laugh, and some small tension in his face eases. "Of course happy, you dope."

They decide to head upstairs, but first she must run a gauntlet of hugs. They're not quite so hard to accept as she'd thought they'd be, and soon enough she's alone with Xander.

Okay, so the wedding night's not all about fucking like minks. Kind of a surprise, considering the jokes she'd heard her whole life, but she can work with it. They start out heading in that direction, all foreplaypalooza, but it turns into canoodling and talking pretty much all night long.

It's nice.

Xander tells her about the first time he'd thought she was really beautiful -- as opposed to hot. The one school dance she'd gone to. Her hair piled up on her head, the simple black dress (not that different in cut from today's cream satin).

"Huh," she says. "I don't remember catching a vibe from you."

"I was too busy feeling guilty about Cordelia because I was busy feeling horny over Willow. My vibe output circuits were on overload."

"Willow?"

"I was slow on the uptake, but yeah. We never managed to get our timing right."

She's silent for a moment. "She knows more about you than I ever will."

He puts his hand in her hair, cradles her head to his heart. "Much of it non-essential information. The white paste-eating phase. That ugly Barbie incident. Things better lost to the mists of time. And anyway, you know things about me she never will. So when was it for you?"

"When was what?"

"That you noticed me, really."

Faith flicks her tongue at his nipple to distract him. She doesn't want to say, but she won't lie to him.

"Hey, no fair," he says. "I told you."

"Maybe I don't want you to know what a fuckin' remedial I am."

He kisses the top of her head. "It's all right."

She snugs her arms around him. "Wasn't till the swap." She raises herself on her elbow, meets his gaze. "I couldn't really look at you before. Especially after ... things went the way they did. Even before, though. I looked in your eyes and there was way too much feeling there. It scared me. Once I was in there, I could really see you. I'll be the first to say how retarded that sounds."

"No," he says, "I think I get it." He kisses her again. "Plus I'm so much better looking now."

"I noticed that. And modest, too." They both laugh and things turn back to kissing and canoodling for long, unhurried stretches. This is something new for Faith. She and Xander just invoked the Big F-word -- forever. They have all the time in the world to get to the good stuff. And it turns out that all the nibbling and stroking and licking and laughing are the good stuff, too.

She tries to keep it going, keep them both riding on a wave of talk and not-talk. Give Xander a night without visions for his wedding present. But late into the night they lapse into an ebb and flow as sleep pulls at them both. At one point when they're both surging on a tide of wakefulness, she brings up Wes. "When was it he got his throat cut?"

"What?"

"You haven't noticed the scar?" She slashes her finger along her own neck. "Someone cut him, ear to fuckin' ear. Nobody here heard anything about that?"

"No. I guess we could check with Giles, but he'd probably have said something. And it's not like they're best buds."

"Here's the weird thing. I was talking with him earlier tonight, and asked him about it. He said a demon mauled him."

"Well then--"

"You should've seen the way he said it, Xander. He was like -- I don't know, like he was brainwashed or something. All he said was 'demon attack. Mauling.' It was like he went away when he was talking about it." She shakes her head impatiently. "I can't explain what I mean."

"Maybe it's a post-trauma thing. I know from the visions --" his arms tighten around her, anchoring himself. "A mauling can fuck you up bad. In a lot more ways than one."

"It was a knife scar. I'd stake my life on it."

"You're that sure?"

"Remember me? Girl Assassin? I did a lot of knife work for the Mayor." A wave of sadness hits her, makes her take her point farther than she has to. "Remember this?" She takes Xander's hand, places it on her belly, on the scar Buffy made. "I see this every day. I know knife scars."

He leaves his hand there, sobered. "What do we do, then? About Wes?"

"I don't know. It just bothers me. Maybe something'll come up while we're talking about the visions tomorrow -- well, today, technically. He said he'd try to help. Maybe we can help each other."

The party is still going on downstairs, but Jenny's come upstairs with Dawn and Vi and Rona, who snagged a champagne bottle with a couple of inches in the bottom. Each of them holds a bathroom-size Dixie cup out for Rona to fill.

"Think they're doing it right now?" Vi asks.

"Oh, they're totally doing it," Rona says, the voice of authority. "It's their wedding night. But they do it all the time."

Jenny crosses her legs, hunching over the bag of chips she brought with her. They're green, supposedly guacamole flavored. Why would anyone think this is better than actual guacamole?

"My room's right below theirs," Rona continues. "We could go and hear 'em going at it if we want." She moans and screeches, presumably in imitation of Faith.

"Guys --" Jenny's voice comes out sharper than she meant. She raises her head. "He's my watcher. Do you mind?"

Rona and Vi exchange a look and a shrug, but she gets the undercurrent. They think she's a party-pooper. Rona leans over and whispers something to Vi, who squeals behind her hand.

"They should move on top of Giles's room," Vi says. "He's old, he probably wouldn't even notice. They could use a new bed, too. Squeeka-squeeka-squeeka--" She and Rona collapse into giggles.

"You guys are almost as bad as ballplayers," Jenny says. And her old teammates had been trying to gross her out.

"Jenny's right," Dawn says. "And he's my friend, too. Chill it a little."

"Whatever." Rona drains her paper cup. "I'm going down for some more cake. How about you, Vi?"

"Sure." They pick their way over Dawn's long legs. The door closes on more squealing. Jenny's glad she hasn't moved into the hacienda, though sometimes she feels a little out of the loop. Too much of this crap would seriously get on her nerves.

Dawn listens for a moment to the footsteps in the hallway. "They're not even going downstairs. They're going to Rona's room to listen."

"Have some of these before I make myself sick." Jenny tilts the chip bag toward Dawn. "I don't even like them."

"Vi and Rona?"

"Well, I meant the chips."

Dawn takes them, starts munching.

Jenny lies back on the floor, propping her legs up on Dawn's bed. "They both looked so wonderful, didn't you think?"

"Vi and Rona?"

"A.L. and Faith." Jenny giggles, suddenly taken with a riff from an old song she'd heard at the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame. She sings it, loud and raucous, playing air guitar: "Da da da da da da Vi and Rona."

Dawn shrieks. "Oh my god! We need to write some lyrics!" She tosses the chip bag aside and rummages around for a notebook, then she and Jenny huddle together to write a new set of words to fit "My Sharona."

On second thought, Jenny thinks maybe she'd like living here fulltime.

Maybe it's the champagne, or it could be the disgusting green chips. Or maybe it's just sleeping in a bed that's not her own, which is something Jenny's father blames for a variety of aches, moods, nightmares, etc. Sharing Dawn's bed, aware of the ticking of the alarm clock, the street light that pierces the curtains, she finds herself restless. She tries not to move around a lot so she doesn't wake Dawn, but that just makes her feel more twitchy. When she finally does drift into sleep, she falls into a dream.

There's a black-haired girl fighting with Faith. It's daytime, though, so she can't be a vamp. A.L. walks into the backyard and watches impassively, blood running down his face. After a moment he says, "I can't stick around for this. I've gotta go." A white haired woman tugs at his arm. He turns and walks with her from the shade of a tree into bright sunlight, and bursts into flame.

Faith's wish for their wedding night doesn't come true. They both drift off as the sky begins to lighten, and when she next emerges from the deeper waters of sleep, she can tell he's caught in a vision.

She's only seen him in the middle of a vision once. That had been a bad one, jerking him bolt upright in bed. This time, she's not so sure. His breathing has changed, and he jerks his head restlessly away from her. Tentatively she reaches out, places her hand over his heart, fingers splayed as wide as they'll go. She wants to transmit her presence to him, in whatever dreamlife he's living at the moment.

Skin on skin.

She hopes that counts for something.

When he wakes he's quiet, thoughtful, but he doesn't seem haunted. Xander draws her to him and she curls up beside him, her head on his chest. His fingers skip through her hair as he murmurs, "I had the craziest dream."

"Tell me."

"Dreamed I got married to a beautiful woman --"

She swats him. "Putz."

"That was only the first miracle. I also exchanged several friendly sentences with Angel. Like I said, it was a wild--"

"Fuckin' paste-eater."

"Oh, low blow. Less than 24 hours, and she's fighting dirty."

"Once I find out what you did with the Barbie, that goes in the repertoire too. C'mon, tell me. You had a vision, didn't you?"

"I did," he says softly. His gaze is so far in the distance she knows he's gone completely inside.

She places her palm on his chest again, just as she had during the vision.

"I was -- hurt," he says slowly. "I couldn't get a sense of how bad, I must've been in shock. It was night and I was lying on wet grass, and there was pain but I couldn't exactly locate it. There was a girl kneeling over me. Yelling something, but I couldn't put it together in any way that made sense."

"Not Jenny or one of the other girls?"

Xander shakes his head. "She was new. Black hair, lots of makeup." He touches his eye. "Serious raccoon thing going."

"A vamp, you think?"

"Don't know. She was pale enough."

"You wanna make this all a little vaguer, Harris?"

"Who you calling Harris, Harris?"

"Hey, hands. We're havin' a serious -- hands --"

"We've got to start acting like newlyweds, or they'll make us turn in our union cards."

She gives in then, gives herself up to his hands and lips and the heat of his skin. Whether the visions are right or not, there's no telling how long they'll have this. Not being who they are, doing what they do.

Take this moment. Your first morning together as a married couple. This is here. This is now.

They get the powwow going in the library after lunch. Giles and Wes are there, and Angel, who has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of the supernatural shit himself.

The watchers sit on one side of the mahogany table, Faith and Xander on the other. Angel leans against one of the bookcases a safe distance from the big windows. Faith starts to rise, says "Let me get the shutters," but Angel stops her. "I'm good," he says.

She's glad someone's good. Xander doesn't look all that hot. He's perched on the edge of the pricey wooden chair, spreading his fingers wide then pulling them into fists, then stretching them out again. His rigid posture is nothing like the boneless slouch she remembers from library sessions in the years when she first knew him.

"Well then," Giles starts. "Let's begin. Xander, why don't you fill the others in what you told me."

"No," Faith says abruptly. "Not here." They all look at her like she's a mental case. "Well, just look at us a minute. He's sitting here like he's about to give a deposition or something, you're all over there looking like you're ready to pounce. It's a great room for some things, but not this. We're not lawyers, we're friends trying to help each other out. Let's sit down in a room that reminds us of that."

"Where do you suggest?" Wes asks. "The main house --"

"Isn't the most private, I know. There's a lounge." Faith leads them to a room upstairs, scattered with chairs and a couch, with a small kitchenette in the corner. She sets up the coffeemaker while the others find seats. "Don't think I'm doing this because I'm the sole chick in the room. If this is a two-pot discussion, someone else is making the next."

She turns back to them, immediately happier about what she sees. They've arranged themselves for conversation, not some adversarial exchange. Xander hasn't achieved bonelessness, but he's more relaxed.

As Faith seats herself on the couch next to Xander, Giles smiles. "That was a very wise suggestion, Faith. I'd never have seen it myself."

She laces her fingers through Xander's, and he takes a breath and says, "All right. Let's get on with it." He lays it all out for them: the original vision on the day of his non-wedding to Anya, the flashback when the Hand of Imhotep was having its way with him, and the nightly visions since his trip to California. At Giles's gentle prodding, he gives detailed, unflinching descriptions of each one. The only sign of agitation is the hand that grips hers ever tighter.

Hard to believe she'd ever doubted his heart, even when he was a gangly boy. This is the man who'd waded into any fight as a kid, even knowing he'd likely get his ass kicked. He looks grimmer than he did back then, wading into this one. He describes every future he's lived: vamped, mauled, a widower, a father, a drunk at his best friend's funeral, a watcher whose slayer is in the ground. For that last one, he tips his head back and squeezes a few eyedrops into the artificial eye. His face is shielded by his hand, his head still tilted back, but she hears the struggle to keep his voice even as he talks about sharing another woman's bed for meaningless comfort.

"What's the point of them?" He sits upright and rubs at his eye with the heel of his hand. "They can't all come true. If they're supposed to be warnings, they're doing a piss-poor job of letting me know how to avoid the latest Fate of the Week -- or night. Seems if I change one thing to head off something bad, I'm just as likely to wind up in some other shitty future."

"Has any part of them come to pass?" Wes asks.

"No. Wait, that's not true. I saw the wedding."

"Did things happen exactly as you saw them?"

"No. For one thing, I was still recovering from this demon mauling that never happened." Faith sees the slightest shadow pass over Wes's face at these words. Xander goes on: "But some of it was the same. Some of what Giles said, the dress Faith wore. Angel was there, but didn't walk her down the aisle. The minister was the same, but that's because I knew her in -- that other world, or whatever you'd call it. She's a chaplain at the hospital. That's how real these visions are -- I knew I'd liked her those weeks I'd spent at the hospital. They're not just isolated flashes, I feel the history of where I am."

"You engaged her to perform the ceremony because you knew her from the vision," Wes says.

Xander nods.

"Your vision created the future," Angel says. "In a small way."

Xander blinks, startled. "I guess it did. So Giles said he remembered hearing something about this kind of vision. That there've been watchers who have them. Most of the Council's histories must be confetti over London by now, or buried in Sunnydale. How do we trace these stories?"

Giles says, "It may be that Robson --"

"-- We don't," says Wes. "Not through the Council."

Faith sees a flash of irritation in Giles, quickly suppressed. "Why wouldn't we?"

"The details have been expunged from the histories," Wes says. "This is a subject I researched on my own a fair bit, in the months after I was sacked from the Council. The visions are all connected by one factor. Every single watcher who had them was considered a renegade. The fact of their existence still remains on the record -- as a warning, I suppose. But their identities and their fates are unknown -- and their diaries were burned."

"God, what a waste," Xander says. "You could just tear out the three pages I've written on, burn those, and give the rest of the book to the next watcher."

She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand, and he tightens his grip on hers.

Wes rises and pours coffee into four stoneware mugs, carefully carrying them two to a hand to the coffee table. "Angel?"

"No. Thanks, Wes."

Wes turns back to retrieve spoons and sugar and powdered creamer. "Well, it certainly makes it more difficult to uncover the threat. We're not even certain how long these watchers were plagued by the visions before they fell from the Council's good graces."

"What are you hinting at, Wes?" Faith asks. "You saying they all go crazy after a while?"

"I'm merely thinking out loud, exploring." He spoons creamer and sugar into his mug. "We just don't know."

She takes the jar from him, tips it into her own mug. "But you're using words like 'threat.' This is the Council we're talking about. Whose idea of rehabilitating me was sending out a wet works team. Who locked Buffy in a shithole with a crazy vampire, after taking away her slayer strength. Since when does anyone in this room take the Council at face value?"

"Faith makes a valid point," Giles says. "In the absence of the actual histories, we have no way of evaluating the lore passed down by the Council."

"What other sources are there?" Xander asks. "Who else might have reason to keep track of this stuff?"

Angel shifts in his chair. "I'd be surprised if Wolfram & Hart hasn't taken an interest. Wes has an enormous number of texts at his disposal."

"I don't like it," Faith says. "Not unless things get desperate."

Xander cradles his mug in his hands. "Me either. I don't like these people mixed up in our business."

"'These people' is us, Xander," Angel says. "Wes. Me. Other good people you haven't met. We've been fighting evil, same as you."

"Then why are you going to work every morning at the International House of Evil?" Xander asks. "I'm not trying to jerk your chain, Angel. I want to know."

"We -- well, we won. We backed them into a corner, and they ceded the L.A. office to us."

Faith snorts. "I can picture that." She gestures to herself and Xander. "If we're you, and the other ninety percent of the room is the corner you've backed them into. I've met these fuckers. I've worked for them. They don't give up anything they're not going to get back tenfold."

"I haven't met them," Xander says, "but I trust Faith. They already pulled strings to get Faith out of prison, clear her record. That's enough of a debt. Let's keep them as a last resort, if that."

"I must agree," Giles says. "Let's try every other means we can first."

"Then we need to brainstorm, come up with persons with a possible interest in Council history," Wes says. "Or in the renegade watchers."

"I'll check in with the coven in Britain," Giles says.

"And we could get Willow on it," Xander suggests, "see what she can hack into."

"There are inquiries I can make back in L.A.," Angel offers, "totally apart from Wolfram & Hart."

They throw out a few other ideas, each volunteering to undertake some of the research. Once the ideas start drying up, Xander looks over at Angel and Wes. "Tell me about Cordy. Someone told me she had visions. Is that what put her in a coma?"

"No," Angel studies his hands closely for a long moment. "Another fight with evil. We didn't come out so well on that one."

"They weren't the same as yours," Wes says. "If you're wondering. Hers were sudden, unpredictable. She'd be struck with a piercing headache, assailed by images. She literally collapsed from them."

"They took a lot of interpretation," Angel adds. "Completely different from yours."

Xander nods. "Okay." He shrugs. "I'm sorry I can't talk to her about them anyway. Who'd have thought we'd end up with so much in common?"

Faith rubs her hand over his back. "I think we've had enough of this for now. We need to set a time to get together with what we find out. Anything really significant, though, and phone calls are made, right?" She rises during the general assent, and Xander stands too. He's practically weaving on his feet. "I made the coffee," she adds, "so one of you guys is on cleanup."

She and Xander do a fade.

Jenny and the other girls are in the backyard of the middle brownstone, cleaning and polishing the weapons after a lesson. Her muscles are sore, but in a good way, a way she's missed since she stopped playing ball. Maybe Buffy or Faith will work with her more if she asks. As she wipes down her blade, she considers whether she should approach one of the slayers directly or discuss it with A.L.

She needs to talk with him anyway, about her dream, but she hasn't seen him all day. Faith either, for that matter. This is not something she mentions to Rona or Vi.

Rona works next to her, muttering to Vi in what's been a long litany of gripes. "Maintenance lessons, my ass. Buffy just expects us to do her work for her. Why should she clean her own weapons when she's got us?"

"You're totally right," Jenny snaps. "Why should she clean her own weapons? You know, back when there were knights, they never took care of their weapons or horses. They had squires who did that. But they had been squires themselves, back when they were boys. That's how they learned. So Buffy and Faith are the knights of this world now. Us too, but I know I've still got a lot to learn. If I'm fifty and still cleaning their weapons, I won't mind, because I'll still be learning from them."

Rona opens her mouth to shoot back a response, then closes it. After a moment she grudgingly says, "I hadn't looked at it that way."

Jenny backs off a little. "It hasn't been that way, not till now. Maybe --" this whole idea blooms in her head as she speaks. "Well, we aren't made to work together. There never has been a 'together' -- it's always been 'one girl in all the world.' It's not natural for us to cooperate. But it's better, if we can get it right." She feels like a dork coming out with two big speeches at once, so she shuts up. The mood's been broken, at least, and they continue working, quiet now.

"Here comes the bridegroom," Rona says after a while. "Whoa, he looks like he's been rode hard and put away wet."

"A.L.!" Sheathing her short sword, she hurries over to him. He does look tired, but not wedding-night tired. She'd just leave him alone if the dream hadn't scared her so much.

He dredges up a smile. "Hey, Jenny."

"Could I talk to you? It's kind of important."

A.L. rubs at his left eye. Always from the outer corner toward the inner; Jenny's noticed that. She can tell the last thing he wants to do this minute is be watcherly, or have any kind of conversation.

"I wouldn't bother you now, but it's about a dream. You said sometimes they're prophetic, and sometimes you can keep them from happening."

"Absolutely. Good call. Feel like a game of catch?" Another smile, this one a little realer. "Winter'll be here before we know it. We should get in as many as we can."

He likes talking things over this way, but it scares Jenny. Not that she minds chasing down his errant throws, but she's afraid she'll hurt hurt him if he misjudges a ball. She's thunked him more than once.

"You never seem that into this," he says, leading her into the back garden of the main house. He pops into the coatroom off the kitchen for the ball and gloves he keeps there, hands her one of the fielder's gloves. "Why's that?"

She takes a breath. "I -- you could get hurt."

"This is good training for me. I could get hurt a lot more if something blindsides me one of these nights. I'm learning to compensate. You're learning not to throw so hard you leave stitch marks on my flesh."

Jenny has had to learn to throttle back on the slayer strength. Most of the time now she gets it right.

"And you're getting a lot of practice fielding bad balls. This is good, I like this." He slips on the shades he wears whenever they play catch, and starts backing away from her. "So tell me about your dream."

"It's hardly a game of catch. It seemed real short. I was in the backyard, watching Faith fighting with this black-haired girl." Thwap! Nervous as it makes her to fire a baseball at A.L., she loves the sound of horsehide hitting leather. "It was daytime, so she wasn't a vamp, I know that much. Then you came outside and said you had to go. There was blood running all down your face." Thwap! "This woman with white hair was tugging at your arm, so you went. As soon as you walked out into the sunlight, you went up in flames." Thunk! A solid chest shot, like rapping a watermelon with the pads of your fingers. "Oh god, A.L., I'm sorry!"

He's got this queased-out look, the same as he had the time she mentioned dreaming him with a scar down the left side of his face. That time he'd bolted, left her family's house and fled the whole state of California. Now he stands there, absently rubbing where her throw hit him, then he slowly bends to retrieve the ball.

"That's the whole dream," she says.

"How did I look?" He settles back into the rhythm. Thwack! "Did I seem like a vampire?"

"No. You were you."

"What do you remember about the white-haired woman?"

"Her hair was really long. Straight. She was wearing some kind of flowy looking dress. Something old, or like she was in a play. Things happened pretty fast. That's about all I got before she dragged you out into the sun."

Thwack! Jenny realizes he is getting better at this, learning to read moving objects, even without depth perception. His throws are still a little squirrelly, though.

"Okay. What about the black-haired girl?"

"Short hair, kinda choppy. Lot of makeup, really gothy -- the clothes too."

"You said she was fighting with Faith. Sparring, or the real deal?"

She has to lunge to reach this one, but she snags it. "I'm sorry." She fires the ball back. "I couldn't really tell."

"Don't feel bad. I couldn't figure the deal with her either." Her throw goes high, and he sno-cones it.

"Nice," she says of the catch. "What do you mean?"

"I saw her too. Last night in a vision. Helps to know she's not a vamp, since it was night in mine." He fields her throw, then pounds the ball a couple of times in the pocket of his glove. "You mind describing this whole thing again? I'd like Giles and Wes to hear it too."

Does she mind? That's not half what she'd do to stop something bad from happening to her watcher.

The goth girl shows up in Faith's dreams, too. Damn tiring dream -- one of those endless chase dreams, only Faith is the pursuer, not the pursued.

It's a wicked rugged chase, forcing her to scramble over walls, up rocky slopes, through vegetation that lashes her legs and branches that pull at her hair and whip against her face. At first the terrain feels familiar -- not exact places she knows, but it feels enough like Cleveland. Gradually the landscape changes to something utterly alien. Humidity that seems to tug at her body the way mud sucks at your shoes. Trees laden with heavy-scented blossoms. Shanties crowded together on a hillside, filled with people who abandon their own activities to chase her, uttering the word sanguma as she runs past. She loses sight of the goth girl as she claws her way up the rocky hill, her lungs burning, heart about to explode. Faith makes it to the top, but everyone who's been chasing her is already there. The black-haired girl is there too, crying. She stands at the edge of a cliff, a breathtaking view of the sea behind her, and a woman -- she's white, like the girl -- tenderly brushes the hair back from her eyes. "You know we love you. We have to protect you from the sanguma. You'll understand later." The girl sobs. "No, mommy. Please." The woman kisses her on the forehead, then flings her off the cliff.

Faith falls with her.

She sits up in bed, gasping for air. Beside her Xander struggles out of sleep, sits up to enfold her in his arms. "It's all right, baby," he murmurs reflexively. "It's just a dream."

"We've got to find her, Xander. We've got to help her. She's one of us."

"Sanguma," Wes repeats softly. "That's rather worrisome."

"Great," Xander moans. "That's Standard Brit Understatement for 'Oh god, we're all going to die.'" He's driving Angel and Wes to the airfield where their corporate jet waits, and Faith's tagged along to see what else she can learn.

Wes smiles. "Sorry. I lost my head. There's nothing apocalyptic at stake here, but your slayer -- and I'm certain you're right that she is a slayer -- could be in grave danger."

"What is this sanguma thing?" Faith asks. "Some kind of demon?"

"It's a term that's used in Papua New Guinea to refer to sorcery. There are many different shades of meaning -- this is a country with over 700 languages -- but often what's meant is some form of attack sorcery. Causing one's enemy to fall ill and die, for example."

"So somebody's out to kill her with this magic," she says.

"I suppose it's possible. I fear a much more likely scenario is that she'll be accused of sanguma herself. This sort of accusation has been on the rise there, often in the wake of a natural death. Murders of persons suspected of sanguma are becoming more frequent as well."

"Witch hunts," Angel says.

Wes nods. "Exactly."

"So we need to find this girl," Xander says. "The sooner the better."

He's so determined to protect his slayer -- even one he hasn't met yet. Faith wonders, for maybe the thousandth time, how she'd underestimated him so badly all those years ago. "You said this word narrows it down to this one place," she says. "That's good, right? Where is New Guinea, in Africa?"

"Oceania. Just north of Australia," Wes says. "I traveled there some when I was younger. It was not an easy place to move about in even then. The climate has changed considerably, making things even trickier."

"Then we get help," Faith says. "We've dreamed about her -- Xander, Jenny and I. She's one of ours, and we're not leavin' her in danger."

"Agreed," Wes says, and there's such warmth in his voice that she turns to look at him, but she can't hold his gaze. You've come a long way, Faith. Anyone can see. "I may still have contacts there. I'll see what I can learn."

Everything's hurried after that. Xander brings them to the corporate jet, and quick goodbyes and hugs are exchanged before the twilight becomes full day.

They sit in the car, watching the Wolfram & Hart jet take off, its vapor trail turning pink as the sun climbs above the horizon. Faith rubs her hand over Xander's thigh. "Well, babe, you ready to take on another slayer?"

His grunt doesn't sound like much of a yes. "We have to find her first."

There's enough time for a shortened run once they get back, and a stop at Starbuck's. They've hit the morning rush, so there's a line.

"Why don't we sit on the deck instead of heading back right away," Xander suggests. "These people are all grabbing theirs to go."

Faith slips her arms around him from behind. "I could grab a little something."

"Hey now," he yelps, but he doesn't do anything about her hand. "See something you like?"

"There's a tasty looking muffin," she murmurs into his ear. "Behind the counter. He's new, I think."

"Hey," he protests again. "No muffins. You're a married lady."

"You're half right." She nibbles at Xander's ear. "He's got all that pretty silky hair, pouty lips and long dark eyelashes."

"I have eyelashes."

Faith loves him all indignant. "That ain't all you've got." She gives his ass an appreciative squeeze just as the new barista turns to take their order.

The kid matches Xander stammer for stammer during their transaction, and gets Xander's order wrong, reddening to the roots of his hair as he makes a few more stabs before finally calling it off right.

When Xander brings their coffees over from the pickup counter, he says, "I didn't happen to put my eye in backward this morning, did I?"

"He was checkin' you out, wasn't he?"

"It was more than that. He was eying the eye." He sips and makes a face. "And they still got it wrong."

"I thought you'd gotten over the eye thing."

"I am over it. He was definitely giving it the hairy eyeball. Not to be confused with the stink-eye."

Faith props her feet on a nearby chair. "Paranoid."

"I know from hairy eyeballs. He was giving it." He retrieves their scone from the bag, breaking it in two and setting her half on a napkin. "What if we got Willow on it?"

"What, you want to curse him for the hairy eyeball?"

"Finding this girl. Some kind of locator spell."

"Doesn't she need more for that? Like something that belongs to her? Or a lot less distance?"

"I don't know," he admits. "She can tell us what she needs."

"You think she's up to it? When that asshole Finch got you, and she was working so hard to find you -- well, she was looking pretty beat up by time you came back. Nosebleeds and migraines and that."

He looks at her, surprise flashing across his face.

Faith shrugs. "She's important to you. So I guess she is to me, too."

"I'll ask her. And I'll make sure she's honest with me."

"You wouldn't believe the weird," Rona says. "She made Faith look like the poster girl for normal."

This is what Jenny gets for asking Rona and Vi about Xander's history -- what little they know. You'd think they were international experts on the subject from the way they act. They'd been ignoring her during their run on the CSU campus, and she got tired of feeling like a fifth wheel. Next time she'd just keep her mouth shut and deal. Or put on a burst of speed and leave them in the dust.

"She used to be a demon," Vi says. "That's what I heard."

"Her special power must have been telling people way more than they wanted to know. She would actually tell us about doing it with Xander."

"I don't believe you," Jenny says flatly.

"They did it in the kitchen one time," Vi says. "I went down for ice cream in the middle of the night, and they were going at it right on the floor."

"Knock it off." She tells herself not to react. They're like her old teammates -- once they get a rise out of her, they never stop. But she can't help it. He's her watcher.

"That was a spell," Rona says. "I'm sure of it. Because everyone was doing it that night. Faith and Robin Wood were going at it too, everyone in the house could hear that."

"Willow and Kennedy kicked everyone out of their room."

"I think they all got some, except for maybe Giles."

"God, can you imagine Giles having sex?"

"And Andrew. Of course, he's going to die without ever getting some."

"Unless he and Giles --"

Vi and Rona dissolve into shrieks, and Jenny hits her limit. She picks up her pace, surging past them. She knows they'll mindlessly follow, so she leads them through the ginkgoes, getting a good gulp of fresh air to hold until she's well past the trees herself.

"Judas!" Rona says. "What smells like puke?"

"Gross!"

After Jenny stops laughing, she lets them catch up with her again. They're almost back to the hacienda when Rona says, "There's that creepy little guy again."

"Which one?" Jenny asks.

"The white guy," she clarifies. "See? Hanging out on the stoop over there with those guys. He's been watching the house."

Jenny hasn't noticed him before, but she sees the intensity underneath his casual facade.

She's going to make sure A.L. knows about this.

Willow leans back in her chair. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong. I'll try again." She starts to gather up her scattered supplies on the dining room table.

"No," Xander says emphatically. "Three tries is putting yourself through enough."

"Xander, I'm fine."

But even Faith can see she's not fine. She can't help wondering if the spells Willow did to find Xander in prison broke her somehow. Not that Faith's going to be the one who suggests it.

Kennedy sets a mug in front of Willow, filled with that wicked nasty tea she takes for the magic headaches. "How do we keep ending up with Sandusky?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Willow says. "It takes a helluva wind to blow the atlas from Oceania to Ohio."

"Especially since the windows are closed," Buffy says.

"Maybe Wes's contact over there will tell us something," Xander says.

"Who knows how long that'll take," Faith says. "I say we sift through the other clues in the dreams. There's a chance they could lead us to this girl. What about the white-haired chick that showed up in Jenny's dream with the goth slayer? Xander, did you see her in yours?"

He shakes his head.

"Me either, but she could be important. Jenny said she pulled you out into the sunlight and you went up in flames, right?"

"That's how I remember it."

"What else about her?"

He rubs at his left temple. "Jen said she was wearing a long dress, something old-fashioned."

"Maybe it's Willow," Kennedy suggests.

"Me?"

"Yeah. The moment the spell took hold, Willow's hair turned totally white."

"It did? You never said anything," Willow says.

"Well, things got a little hectic after that," Kennedy points out. "And next time I saw you, it was back to normal."

"Wouldn't Jenny have said so if it was Willow?" Faith asks.

"You know how dreams can be," Kennedy says. "Nothing's ever straightforward. And slayer dreams are even more on crack."

Buffy asks, "Where is Jenny?"

"Out running," Xander says. "We can check with her when she gets back."

"There's something else it could be," Buffy offers. "When I got the scythe. The woman who gave it to me had long white hair, and wore a long toga kind of thing. She said she was the last of an ancient order. That they've been watching the watchers."

"That's wild," Faith says. Hope surges in her for a moment. "Maybe -- shit. You told us Caleb killed her, right?"

"Yeah." She fingers a sage bundle on the table. "When I think of all we could have learned from her...."

"That fuck," Faith says. "I wish I could dig him up and kill him again."

"Get in line," Xander says. "So we're out of leads?"

The front door bangs open, a gust of cool air riding in with Jenny, Vi and Rona. Jenny approaches the group at the dining room table, while the other two head downstairs, talking and laughing, to forage.

"Hey, Jenny," Xander says. "Can you tell us your dream again, the one about the goth girl? In fact, if we all three tell it over again, maybe we can shake something loose."

"Sure, in a minute," Jenny says. "But I thought you should know -- there's this guy who's been hanging around watching the house. Creepy."

Buffy and Xander both rise and head for the parlor window, where they peer out at the group across the street.

"Which one?" Xander asks.

"The white guy in the horrible shirt and that weird hat."

Faith comes up behind them and checks him out too. He looks like one of those losers who hang out at the track.

"Vi and Rona say he was out there yesterday, too."

Jenny doesn't even get the sentence completely out of her mouth before Buffy's storming out the door and across the street. She gets a handful of shirt and hauls him to his feet, then marches him back to the hacienda. His legs can barely keep up with how fast she manhandles him up the stoop.

Buffy hurls him into one of the dainty little chairs that came with the hacienda, and he cracks a weird smile, oddly calm. This guy's been seriously worked over by the ugly stick, and the smile just makes him homelier.

"Slayer," he says like he's greeting an old friend. "Long time no see."

"What are you doing here, Whistler?" Buffy snarls.

"Can't a friend drop by to see a friend?"

"Who is this guy?" Faith asks.

"Not a guy," Buffy says. "He's a demon."

Faith edges closer to the mantle with its brass candlesticks. "You want to tell me why we're not killing him?"

"He helped me once," Buffy says reluctantly.

"And for this you rumple the shirt." He straightens his clothes like they're from some fancy-ass English tailor instead of the 25-cent bin at Vinny's. "Not just you. I set Angel on his path, too. Before you knew him. You wouldn't want to know; he wouldn't want you to." He flicks his gaze toward Faith. "You saw, though. In your little stroll down memory lane. Desperate times."

How does he know about that?

He catches Xander's eye then. "You played a part too, in that Acathla business. You've shown a little talent for the balance thing yourself."

Xander looks as weirded-out as she feels. "Is there some current apocalypse you're here about, or are you hosting the revival of This Is Your Life?"

"I'm here for the same reason as before. Things are out of whack on a cosmic scale."

"And we're supposed to fix it?" Buffy asks.

"Actually, you caused it. All those little sisters you made."

"I've only got one sister, and I didn't --"

"He means the slayers," Willow says softly.

Whistler turns his gaze on Willow. "That was some impressive work there, Red. You threw your rock into the pond, and the ripples haven't stopped spreading yet. Found a way to impact the world without ending it."

Willow's mouth falls open. "How does he --"

Buffy bends over Whistler, hands gripping the arms of his chair, in his face like a TV cop. "So tell us what you're doing here. I swear to god, if you bring any harm to these girls in the name of balance, you're gonna see how unbalanced your world can get."

He leans back from the onslaught. "Hey, I'm not here to hurt anyone. I came to bring you one of your strays. The one you've been looking for."

"What is it you're after?" Faith demands. "Money? Favors?"

"I'm just doing a job," the demon says. "Same as everyone else here."

Intuition tells Faith that's not precisely the truth -- but it also says his agenda might not be evil.

"They might not have sanguma in Sandusky, but that doesn't mean this kid's not in a bad place." He looks at Willow, who's dumbfounded. "That's right, Red. You haven't lost your touch."

Faith can hear the difference in his voice. How he sounds talking about their misplaced slayer. She sees it in his eyes then, how very much this is not just a job to him. He cares about this girl, wants to save her. Demon or not, ugly or not, she wishes Whistler had been around for her when she ran off the rails.

"Her name is Kallie," Whistler tells them. "She needs you to be quick. But more than that, she needs you to be careful."

"I don't like it."

"I know, babe."

"She's my slayer. I should be the one to go."

After the dozenth repetition of this conversation, Faith says, "I know what you need. Let's go to the Flats and kill something."

"No," Xander says immediately. "Not there. Too many visions of bad stuff happening there."

He's told her. Visions of herself vamped, or him, or the both of them. Of Jenny dying at his hands (fangs). Not to mention that the freaky fortune teller works that neighborhood, too. "That's why you should go. It's just a place."

"How do we know it's not the hellmouthiest part of the hellmouth?"

Faith brings out the big guns. "Don't be such a pussy."

*

"I hate the Flats," Xander mutters as a pack of drunken frat boys shoulders past them.

She hauls around to face him. "We're together. We're fine." She seizes his hand and places it over her heart, presses hers to his chest. "See? Two heartbeats. You can't let the damn dreams interfere with your life. You've said it yourself. They show so many different outcomes that there's no way of knowing which one of 'em is true -- if any of them are true. We live our lives the way we want to live our lives -- that's how we beat this."

He nods. "You're right." She sees how hard he's trying to feel it deep inside. "You're right."

She leans in for a kiss, just to remind him what they have to protect.

"Get a room," says a smartass as a group of college boys separates to flow around them, and his buddies laugh.

Xander flies back from her, his eyes wild with panic. "No no no no no. We have to go, we have to go now."

"It's okay, we'll go back to the car. You're fine, babe, just breathe."

"We have to go now."

She takes his hand and lets him lead her (half drag her) back to the car. They lock themselves inside where he sits clutching the steering wheel, trembling. "Tell me," she says. "Something set you off back there. What was it?"

"'Get a room," he says. "In two of the visions I've had, we were kissing right there in that spot, and someone said 'Get a room.'"

"What happened then?"

"We went into an alley. You staked me or I staked you."

"Just because you saw it, that doesn't mean it'll come true."

"We're married. That came true, pretty much like I saw it."

"It came true because we made it. We wanted it."

His hands are still clenched around the steering wheel as he struggles to even out his breathing. Stupid idea, making him come out here. Better to suffer through him pacing and muttering about the plan to get this Kallie to the hacienda than to put him through this.

"That stuff Whistler said to you -- what was all that about?"

"What?" Xander's still so deep in his panic that she might as well be speaking Chinese.

"Something about setting someone on his path."

This time it sinks in. She can tell because his expression closes down. "Meant nothing to me."

"So we're back to that?" Faith demands.

The question throws him, pulls him completely from the thoughts that were haunting him. Good. That's what it was meant to do.

"What?"

"This bullshit where you don't tell me things. Things you don't think I can handle, don't trust me with, whatever."

"It's not that."

"Sure."

"It's not. This isn't about you, it's me. Things I haven't told anyone."

"I'm not 'anyone,' Harris. I'm your wife."

He rubs his brow over the left eye. "Faith, you don't understand."

"Then it is me." She's almost enjoying this too much. If it weren't for the reason she's hammering away at him...

"There's something I did. A long time ago." He's white-knuckling the wheel just as badly as in his panic over the visions.

"Can't help you there," Faith says. "I've never done anything that keeps me awake nights."

A flicker of a smile. "It's something that could change how people feel toward me. How you feel."

"I've never hurt anyone or pissed them off, either."

"I get the point." He flashes her a brief glance, then goes back to studying his hands on the wheel. "This stays between us."

"Of course. You don't even have to say."

Xander nods. "Back when Angelus was loose. The year before I met you. Willow found the spell to reinstate the curse and give him back his soul. We didn't have a lot of time, he was hellbent on ending the world, and he found the means to do it. That Acathla thing Whistler mentioned."

"Go on."

"I went to help Buffy. She was going to rescue Giles and have it out with Angelus. Willow was in the hospital after her first attempt at the spell, but she wanted to try it again. I was supposed to tell Buffy when I found her. Tell her to stall, buy some time, and maybe the spell would work."

Faith waits for a long time before he speaks again.

"I never told her. I had a chance, and I nearly did, but instead I said, 'Willow said kick his ass.' You know the story from there. The spell worked, but it was too late. She had to kill him to keep the world from ending. Angel spent a hundred years or so in a hell dimension because of me, and Buffy suffered her own torment, knowing she'd sent him there. That's what Whistler was talking about."

"Do you know how many times I've tried to kill Angel?" Faith asks. "I've got you beat, hands down."

"I didn't try. I killed him."

"B. killed him."

"She wouldn't have had to, if I'd done what I was supposed to do. I put her through that. Still to this day I wonder if she'd forgive me if she knew." He gives her another sidelong glance. "I know he's important to you, too."

She reads the question in this statement, and rubs her hand over his leg. "You heard what the demon said. You helped put Angel on his path too. Without those years of suffering, he might not have made the choices he did. One of those choices was trying so hard to save me. Who's to say we'd be sitting here this way if you'd delivered your message. Hell, who's to say the world would even be here. I've met Angelus. If hope had created the slightest hesitation in Buffy, he'd have capitalized on it. You made your decision and you can question yourself on it a million different ways, but there's no way of telling. Like Whistler said, ripples in a pond."

He takes her hand in his and draws it upward to press a kiss in her palm. "I can't believe how lucky I am to have you," he says, his voice roughened by emotion. "I don't deserve it."

She says it in a rush, because it's the only way she can. "I say the same thing to myself, every morning. Now -- what do you say we head to the cemetery and kill something?"

She normally sleeps like the dead, but she's gotten attuned to Xander's movements beside her, and somewhere in the night she surfaces to wakefulness when he bolts up in bed beside her. Quickly he slips out of bed and out of their room, closing the door softly behind him. A sliver of light appears at the crack under the door from the bathroom across the hall. Faith decides to give him a few minutes to pull himself together before she goes to him, but she drifts off, and when she awakens the light is out but he's not in bed next to her.

Muttering a curse, she switches on the light and rises to go to Xander. She finds him down in the kitchen, hands cradled around a mug of tea. "You do have the Watcher gene," she says. He gives her confused, and she adds, "Tea as the cure-all."

"Right." He's still lost in his thoughts, though.

"Bad one?"

"Yeah. About the new girl this time."

She slips around behind him, kneading his shoulders. The muscles are so tight he gasps as she digs in. "Tell me."

"Aren't you getting sick of this?"

"Babe, I never had this. It's going to take a long damn time before I'm tired of it."

He leans his head back against her body. "There wasn't much to it, yet there was a lot. Chaos. Giles and I were being hauled off in handcuffs. It was night, so all the girls weren't there, but Vi was. She was being taken off by Social Services. The new girl -- Kallie -- she was. Her family had come to take her back. She was crying, begging to stay. She'd been beaten up. Not just knocked around, but really beaten."

"By them?"

"No, no. It had happened on patrol. I just --" He reaches up to swipe at his left eye. "Shit. How do I keep her safe?"

Faith presses her thumb into a knot at the base of his neck. "You do the best you can."

"Was that what Wes did for you?"

Her hands cease their work. "Maybe it was. Anyway. It's just another vision, that's all. No realer than any of them."

"Maybe. I hate not going."

"I know, babe." She knows he sees the wisdom behind it, though. To put this girl's religious nut aunt at ease, there has to be a patriarch. Show her Xander, and she'll think temptation. That's the special talent of people like that -- they see sin wherever they look. "Giles knows how to pull this off."

"And what, I'm too dense?" He really gets to be a pain in the ass when he loses too much sleep.

Faith pulls a chair up and sits beside him. "Your feelings are deep, Xander, but they're not hidden. They flash across your face, even if it's just for a second. It's one of the things I love about you, but it makes you a lousy person for this job." She sees the look that crosses his face, proving her point. "Not for the whole watcher gig, for crissakes. By now you should know I think this is what you were meant for. I'm talking about getting her out of that house. These people have to believe we're just like them, that their niece isn't going to get any dangerous new ideas. You're still her watcher, the second she walks through that door she's your slayer."

"Yeah," he says, his voice full of doubt.

"Part of this gig is letting go, learning to trust. Yourself, your slayer. Your colleagues. I know you know that; we've talked about it enough. Just consider this good practice."

"You're right." This time he almost sounds like he means it.

"You know I am. And you know, when I'm the fuckin' voice of reason twice in one day, it's not such a good sign. So how about shapin' up, Harris?"

A ghost of a smile. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She deposits herself on his lap, nibbles at his ear. "Now what do you say we go upstairs so I can fuck you blind?"

That teases a grin from him. "This is your lucky night. You've already got a head start."

All it takes is a split section of distraction, and Jenny's slammed down onto the ground, hard. "Ow ow ow."

"Sorry," Rona says. "You okay?"

"Jenny," Faith yells. "Where's your goddamn head?"

"Sorry." Taking the hand Rona holds out to her, she scrambles to her feet.

"What a total bitch," Rona says under her breath.

Jenny lets her annoyance flash on her face because she knows Rona will assume it's about Faith.

"Take a break," Faith says. "Fifteen minutes. Not that any of you deserve it today."

Snatching up her towel and water bottle, Jenny walks over to Faith. "I'm really sorry. You're right, I was totally distracted."

Faith looks at her strangely, and Jenny waits. "What do you think I'm gonna do, make you run laps?"

"If you think I should --"

Faith's dimples come out of hiding, and Jenny would swear she's suppressing a laugh. "You are so fuckin' earnest."

"You can be tough on me. I'm used to working hard. I'm not used to screwing up." She decides to try on a little toughness herself. "I didn't come here to dick around."

Faith gives her a warning look. "Language."

Jenny just doesn't get her sometimes.

"I'm not surprised you got knocked on your ass. Your intense-face was missing, the whole session. So what's your deal?"

Maybe Jenny shouldn't tell her. She hesitates for a moment, then goes ahead. "It's A.L. I've never seen him like this, all quiet and pacing around."

"I know. He hates waiting on the sidelines when something big is happening. Been that way ever since I've known him."

"You think Mr. Giles and Buffy will get her out okay?"

"I hope so."

Jenny does too, but her feelings are far more complex than that. Things are about to change forever -- it won't be just her and A.L. anymore. She feels selfish for wishing that didn't have to happen so soon. From Whistler's account of things, this new girl needs to be rescued. But it's a lot of pressure for A.L., with everything else he's going through. "He looks so tired all the time," she says. "Do you think they'll figure out why he's having those dreams?"

"If anyone can, it's Giles and Angel and Wes. Listen, why don't you go find Xander and the two of you play catch. It'll give him something to do with his jitters, and you two can talk about it."

"Okay, thanks." Faith isn't nearly the hard-ass she seems like, especially when it comes to A.L. Jenny searches through the brownstones for him, eventually finding him in the library, surrounded by boards and tools. "Oh. You're busy."

"Just puttering. Keeping myself out of trouble. What's up?"

"Faith thought I should find you for a game of catch. Same reason. But since you're already --"

"No, that sounds great." He neatens his workspace. "I was kind of rushing the construction here. It's not exactly bookapalooza yet."

"What's that going to be?"

"A cabinet for Giles's special collection. Rare books, or dangerous ones. I should move this to a more private space to work on it. I was just now deciding I'd like to make it really nice, surprise him with it."

"That's so cool. Let me help you move it." She helps him gather his materials. "Where to?"

"That's a good question. Our room's way too small; Faith would kill me. I think there's a corner of the basement in the main house where I could set up a space."

Over his protests she picks up an armload of boards. "Don't baby me, A.L. I'm a slayer, after all." She leads the way down the stairs. "The back way?"

"That's good, yeah." They carry his stuff through the narrow hallways and down the back stairs. "That change we talked about. It's almost here. How are you doing with that?"

Jenny has a fleeting impulse to lie to ease his mind, but he's her watcher. She's not going to insult him by holding back. "I'm nervous. Suddenly I have to share my watcher. I don't know anything about this girl. What if I don't like her? What if I do, but she doesn't like me? Stupid, I know."

"No, it's not. They're reasonable worries. We have a chemistry. That's important to a team, and all kinds of things can change that balance." He sets down his load in a corner of the basement. "Here's good. That's another thing you could talk over with Buffy. She was the one and only Slayer when I met her, and then she drowned. In the short time before she was resuscitated, another slayer was called, and she eventually showed up in Sunnydale."

"Faith."

"There was a girl before her. Kendra. But both times when a sister slayer showed up, Buffy felt a twinge of jealousy. People were fascinated, you know, especially with Faith. Buffy felt left out of things for a while. So I'll tell you up front, don't hesitate to come talk to me about things. You want to get your glove?"

"Wouldn't take any time at all to set your work area up," Jenny says. "Move this stuff over to that corner, bring that old table over here. You could use that as a workbench, couldn't you?"

A.L. clears off the table, tests it. "It's a little wobbly, but I can fix that."

"Let's bring it over, then." They each lift an end and shuffle awkwardly with the table between them. "To tell you the truth, I'm nervous myself," he tells her. Who knows if she'll like me, either?"

"Come on, A.L.," she scoffs. "Who could not like you?"

He grins. "Have you got a day or two?"

She doesn't believe it. She points out a bent nail in the top of the table that could scar his work, retrieving his hammer to pry it free. "We should sand the whole thing down, don't you think?"

"That's a fine idea. But I thought you were looking for a break, not slave labor."

"I don't think it's officially slave labor if I suggest it."

As A.L. rummages in his tools for the sandpaper, he says, "You must know a woodworker."

"My granddad, back in Wisconsin. You can't even think about starting to work unless the workbench is swept off. That was my job."

"What kind of work does he do?"

"His main thing is birdhouses. But not the sappy birdies-and-flowers ones. They're cool. He's got some in a few art galleries."

"No kidding. I'd like to see some one of these days. Sounds like you miss him a lot."

"I do. We're a lot closer now, though, so we'll probably get out there. Plus I'm not tied to baseball season. You know, you should find a tarp around here somewhere. Keep your project covered in case Mr. Giles comes down here."

A.L. smiles. "Another good plan. I'm going to have to make you my right-hand woman."

Relieved, Jenny returns his smile and digs in with the sandpaper. If she just makes herself indispensable, this will all be okay.

Xander is younger than she'd thought from the dreams, around the same age as Betty's brother Daniel. His shoulders are as unbelievably broad as the streets in Cleveland, as the aisles in the supermarkets everywhere in the States. It makes him seem somehow even more American than other men Kalindi's seen here. His hand engulfs hers, feeling strangely dusty. He smells faintly of wood shavings.

He withdraws his hand, brushes at it with the other. "Sorry. I was sanding down a table and I guess I forgot to wash up. So, you must be tired. Hungry too, I bet. Do you want to freshen up a little?"

"Xander," Buffy chides, "she didn't just get here from PNG." The affection in her voice is plain to hear.

"From where?"

"P.N.G.," Buffy says more slowly. "Papua New Guinea. Kalindi was telling me everyone over here just says New Guinea, and it's like the number one pet peeve of everyone who lives there. They say the whole thing, or PNG."

He nods. "Nothing worse than a peeved slayer, I can attest to that. So PNG it is. And do you prefer Kallie, or Kalindi?"

"Kalindi." She remembers her manners. "And it's nice to meet you."

"Same here." He turns and gestures to the three grand old stone houses before them, the one with the dolphin-pool blue door in the center. "So this is it. Slayer Central -- or, as it's come to be known, the hacienda. Would you like the grand tour?"

Xander leads her into the center one. "This is where the living quarters are, though we may have to expand as more Slayers come."

She knows she's staring like some kind of poor relation, but she can't help it. It's the most beautiful thing she's seen. The wallpaper is so ornate, with flowers and scrolled lines, and the furniture looks like something out of a fine home from the past.

Xander catches her gawking. "Oh. Yeah. It's a little ..." His voice trails off. "The stuff all came with the house. There hasn't been any time to change things."

Kalindi can't even imagine what kind of opulent place he must have come from to feel embarrassment at such palatial surroundings. She bites back her exclamations, not wanting to make things even more awkward.

"Where is everybody?" Buffy asks.

"Dawn thought things would be a little less overwhelming if Kalindi had a little time to acclimate before the hordes descend."

"You mean Andrew."

Xander grins. "He's already made a cake." He casts a glance back at Kalindi. "Oops. I probably wasn't -- well, act surprised."

Once Mr. Giles and Buffy disappear to tend to their own business, Xander takes her through the upstairs, showing her closed doors and saying names that mean nothing to her. "And Dawn's room. I'm thinking she'd be a good roommate for you while you're getting used to things."

Kalindi nods. She'd be hard-pressed to think of worse than the ones she's had recently.

"Jenny -- she's the other slayer I'm in charge of -- she lives with her parents at a house not far from here."

"Her parents know what she -- is?"

"They do. Sometimes that's the case, sometimes not." He leads her up another staircase and points at some doors. "Willow and Kennedy are there, Buffy's here, and this is where my wife and I sleep." This door he opens to her, revealing a small, spare, irregularly-shaped room overlooking the back garden.

"Your wife -- the dark-haired one who fights with you?"

He gets kind of a strange look on his face, and she hastens to correct herself.

"Training, I mean."

"Oh. Yeah. That's Faith." His expression sharpens with interest. "You dreamed about us?"

She nods. "At first it was all disjointed and hard to understand. Then after Whistler came, he gave me dreams that were just like being there with you, only you two didn't see me. It was like I was sitting in on your lessons. That's how I learned to fight."

"Wow. I'd like to hear more about that, about everything. It's a nice day, would you like to sit out in the garden out back?" Xander leads her outside, and they sit on a bench near a wild tangle of flowers. "I've been getting all rhapsodic about the turning leaves and the smell of fall in the air. It's my first fall, really."

"I've only had a couple," Kalindi tells him. "When my parents were on furlough we'd go to Sandusky for a year."

"Tell me more about the dreams."

She starts out by describing the first of her lucid dreams, the one in which Whistler took her on a tour of Port Moresby at night, and she killed -- except she didn't -- her first vampire. "After that I started going out for real, but then I got angry with Whistler and made him go away. That's when I started watching you train with Faith."

"Whistler seems to have a talent for piss-- uh, making people angry. What happened, why did you make him go?"

"One night we found my friend Betty. She told me he's a demon. She was right, wasn't she?"

"According to Buffy, yes. But he's not evil, she says. Not strictly. Or good. He's supposed to make sure there's balance between the two."

She's quiet for a long time. Xander seems perfectly comfortable out here, but Kalindi feels herself start to shiver.

"What was your friend Betty doing out at night?" he finally asks, in such a way that she's sure he's guessed the answer.

"She got turned into a pukpukman -- a vampire." She hugs herself, trying to stay warm. "She grabbed me and bit me, and said she was going to turn me into one too. I almost let her, too, then Whistler called out to me and I pulled myself away." Kalindi's content to end the story there.

"And you got away."

She nods.

"How?" He asks so softly she's almost not sure she really heard.

"I put a stake in her heart," she whispers, and then the shivers overtake her.

Xander curses softly. "You're freezing, aren't you? You should have said. I should have noticed. Let's go inside." Ushering her into the kitchen, he wraps her in an old jacket that's hanging by the door. "Do you drink coffee? Tea?"

"Do you have any Milo?"

"I don't even know what that is," he says.

"It's a chocolate drink. You can have it hot."

He rummages in the cupboards. "There's Ovaltine. Is that close?"

"I don't know."

"Let's find out," he says. As the milk heats up, he says, "It's a lot warmer than this, where you lived."

Nodding, she tells him, "I was on the equator. It could get up to thirty degrees, year 'round, sometimes klostu forty."

"Ah. I will assume that's hot. I'm sorry, I should have thought of that."

"It's okay. I've been here a while. You'd think I'd start to adjust. My aunt didn't let me go outside much, though."

A flash of anger crosses his face, and she remembers the first dreams of him, when he still wore the eyepatch and she was a little scared of him. He busies himself pouring the hot liquid into two mugs. "Careful," he says as he hands her one. "It's hot." He sits at the table with her. "When I was your age, one of my two best friends in the world was named Jesse. Right about the time I first found out about vampires, he got caught by some. They set up a trap, using him as bait, to get to Buffy. She went, of course, it's her job. We thought we were in time, but they'd turned him." He sips from his mug, and she follows suit. It's very sweet. There's so much sadness in his eyes -- even, it seems, the false one. "He was the first vampire I ever killed." He drinks again. "Long way of saying I'm sorry about what happened to your friend. I'm sorry you had to do that."

All at once, she finds herself struggling not to cry. Suddenly overwhelmed by everything, Kalindi says, "You know, I am really tired. Do you think I could rest before everyone comes?"

"Of course," he says, but she's sure he sees through her. He tells her she's welcome to take her Ovaltine upstairs and he grabs a small packet of biscuits for her as he accompanies her out of the kitchen. "In case you get hungry too." He shows her back to Dawn's room, where Mr. Giles has deposited her bags. "Welcome home, I guess."

"Thanks," she says.

But beautiful as it is, it doesn't feel any more like home than anyplace else she's been in the last few weeks.

Everyone's trying to tone it down at dinner -- even more so than they did for Jenny's parents when she first came. Still, Kalindi sits at the end of the table looking fragile and overwhelmed. There's a word Faith can almost remember from some old book she'd read in prison -- like an invalid, that's it. "Maternal Instinct" is never going to be Faith's middle name, but she feels for the kid.

Andrew, apparently, has enough maternal instinct for the both of them. Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed one of the seats next to Kalindi, and has been dishing up food for her, leaping up to refill her water glass and fussing in general. She doesn't seem to mind, so nobody's stopped him.

The fragility thing is misleading, though. The more Faith watches her, the more certain she is that Kalindi's just as intense as Jenny, only in a different way. She can't wait to see how that intensity plays out. One of the reasons she doesn't have much use for Vi and Rona is their total lack of that. She wonders sometimes if the Slayer Fairy hit a couple of wrong houses, because before that she'd been damn certain that was a key feature of the slayer makeup.

Maybe it wasn't the fault of whatever forces made them potentials, though. Maybe it was them -- Buffy and Willow and all of them who'd made slayers out of potentials, forcing them like flowers. If they'd left things to fate, the two of them might never have been called. They're responsible now, all of them; they can't just recoil from the girls they don't like and leave them on their own. One of the books Faith read in prison was Frankenstein, and once she'd gotten past the old fashioned language, she'd found it hard to put down. She'd been surprised how much she'd felt for the creature -- to be made and then abandoned, rejected. She identified far more with the creature's anguish and murderous rage than she had with Victor's grief and terror. Tough shit, pal. If you think you can do better than God, there's no point making yourself a capricious and uncaring god. Been there, done that. She wouldn't do that to any of the slayers they'd made. She sure as shit wouldn't go easy on them, but she wouldn't kick them to the curb.

Xander, though, he wasn't going to have an easy time of it with his two girls. Poor bastard.

He turns to her, craning his neck because she's on his left. His smile catches at her heart. "What was that little laugh about?"

She offers him a smile in return. "Oh, nothin'."

The conversation surrounds Kalindi like a school of bright tropical fish, quick, darting in every direction while she lumbers along like a giant sea turtle. She barely starts to follow in one direction before the next topic takes off in another. Though she answers direct questions, she's mostly content to sit back and listen, letting herself be coddled by Andrew.

He seems to have the idea that she's fresh off the boat from PNG (and she'd bet he hasn't the faintest idea where that is). Each food he serves to her as if it's for the very first time, slowly naming each in a loud voice as if she's a deaf auntie. "These are the potatoes we call mashed."

"For god's sake, Andrew," Mr. Giles finally splutters. "Kalindi does speak English. She's an American."

"I knew that," he says quickly.

"It's all right," Kalindi assures them. It's not just politeness that leads her to say so. This is the first time since the malaria that she's been fussed over in this way. The first time in ages that she's felt safe. Belatedly, she remembers her manners. "Everything tastes wonderful."

"We kind of scrambled to pull it all together," says the tall girl with amazingly long and shiny chestnut hair. Dawn. "I think we should have an official welcome dinner that isn't mostly convenience foods."

Xander laughs. "Right. Like the meal you all made for me and Faith. I seem to remember Tater Tots and Rice Krispy treats being two major components."

"Hey, mister," the redhead says -- Willow. "There was a very nice salad of mixed field greens too." She reacts to a nudge from the dark-haired woman beside her. "And cheese biscuits made from scratch."

"True enough," Xander says. "And that was, actually, one of the best meals of my whole life. Great idea, Dawn. We'll make it official. How about a few days from now, when Kalindi's had a chance to settle in?"

There are bursts of chatter from everywhere around her, and Kalindi settles back into her chair, watching everyone. Dawn's been welcoming, which she's grateful for. Of the other new slayers, Rona's the one she liked on first sight. It has more to do, Kalindi knows, with her slight resemblance to Betty than with any actual first impression. Rona contributes a few remarks to the general conversation, but mostly she and the girl next to her exchange comments in low voices. It's too early to tell for sure, but it looks like they have a wanlain of two; time will tell whether Kalindi can break in on it.

It could be they formed such a tight little clique because they feel like outsiders. Almost everyone at the table, it seems, has known each other forever. According to Xander, he and Willow have known each other since they were six. They were in high school when they met Buffy and Dawn and Mr. Giles, and Faith has threaded through their lives off and on over the years. Though they make every effort to include Kalindi and the other new slayers, there's still a certain amount of shorthand in their speech, even in the looks that pass between them. They're a family, which is how it should be. But it's a little lonely from the outside.

She watches the other late arrivals, trying to gauge how to find your way inside. The girl who nudged Willow -- Kalindi can't think of her name, only "cheese biscuits" -- seems to have used those elbows to make a place for herself in the group. Rona and her friend have formed their own insider's circle. Xander's other slayer, Jenny, is a little harder for her to read. She doesn't exactly seem an insider, but she and Xander have an ease between them; she's the only one who calls him A.L. Of the whole group of newcomers, she'd guess it's Andrew who feels most like an outsider. His manic attempts to please are exhausting to everyone around him -- they would be to her, if she weren't too overwhelmed to do anything but relax into his care. She's made that kind of effort to please and appease, to be good enough, and she knows it's exhausting for him, too. She feels sorry for him.

When dinner is over, Kalindi tries to help clear the table, but Xander stops her. "Just this once, we'll let you off the hook. Why don't you go unpack, get settled in a bit. Then when it gets dark, we'll go out slaying."

While the girls -- and Andrew, but Faith has to admit she considers him one of the girls -- are busy with kitchen and laundry chores, she steps out into the back yard. It's peaceful out here with the flowers and the trees, a good place to settle her thoughts. Strangely, though, coming out here always fuels her desire for a cigarette. That strong sense memory, she supposes, of being let out into the yard when she was in the joint. First thing you do, you fire up a cigarette. She takes a breath of crisp autumn air instead, and heads for the bench in the middle of the garden.

Not long after she seats herself, Buffy appears in the garden. "Mind if I join you? I brought you a beer."

"Just so happens 'I brought you a beer' is the password of the day." She accepts Buffy's offering and scoots over on the bench. "I tell you, B., I can't get over you in your Christian School Lady getup."

"Me either. Last time I dressed like that, I was asking a banker for a loan. Except then I left off the ginormous cross."

"So how was that? Trying to convince this religious nut that you were just like her?"

Buffy takes a healthy slug of her beer. "Tightrope doesn't begin to describe. It was worse once I got there and saw Kalindi. How hard she had to struggle just to keep some kind of hold on herself. They wanted to strip away everything they didn't approve of. Just knowing how much was at stake -- it was almost paralyzing."

"Bet they loved Rupert, though."

"They believed him, I know. But I suspect they thought they'd get someone a lot more televangelist. Much as he bugged you back in the day, with all his attempts to create structure, he's never totally pulled off the authoritarian bit."

Back in the day. B.'s tone is light, unaccusing, but the memory pierces her. So many missed chances back then. Not only hers -- she's done enough thinking in the joint and beyond to be past the all my fault stage. She owns most of it, true, but Rupert and Wes missed some moments too. She'd responded when crazy Gwen Post had pretended to care about her, and to Mayor Wilkins' actual affection for her.

"Weirdest damn thing happened to me today," Faith says. "Speaking of putting on a self that isn't who you are. I found myself telling Jenny to watch her language."

"Whatever possessed you? And I do mean a literal possession -- this is the hellmouth, after all." There's a sly humor in her voice, her crooked grin, which erases any sting from her words.

"Channeling the mayor, I guess. He was funny about things. Wanting me to stop cussing. Drink my milk. Like a dad off of TV Land, except for the wanting to become a demon and eat everyone in Sunnydale."

"That's what he was to you? Like a dad?"

Faith laughs sharply. "What, you thought we were fucking?" The lack of an answer serves as Buffy's answer. "Believe me, I'd have been totally immune to him if that's all it was." Just as she'd been immune to Xander's attempts to help her. "He nagged me about what I ate, got me out of that shithole of a motel. He wanted me to believe in myself, that I could be more than I dreamed possible. Shit, B., I didn't have any armor against that."

Buffy looks away from her then, but Faith catches a glimpse of the sadness on her face. "No. I can see how you wouldn't." B. licks her thumb and rubs at a black streak on her shoe. "I guess that's one scar that never fades."

"I thought you had an old man."

"I did. I do. But once I left L.A. he started doing a fade from my life. He never even came when Mom died."

"Shithead."

"Yeah," B. says softly.

"Buffy --" Faith draws up her courage. More than ever, she wishes she had a cigarette. "I want you to know I'm sorry for what I did to your ma." The gathering dark makes Buffy's features less distinct, and that makes it easier. "She was good to me when I came to Sunnydale. I remember spending Christmas eve with her, going out into the snow together. Even after I did what I did, when I took your body and we were standing there after the cops left, and she said to me -- to you, she thought -- that she hoped I'd get help. I'll never get a chance to say to her that I'm sorry, to tell her that it meant something to me that she didn't seem to hate me. I should have said it to you a lot sooner. I think about her. When I heard, I asked the chaplain to light a candle for her."

"Thanks, Faith." She scratches at the label on her beer bottle with her thumbnail. "It means a lot to know people haven't forgotten her. I miss her every day."

Faith nods. It isn't as frequent with the Mayor, but it's powerful. It's something she can't share, and no one will ever come to her and say he meant something to them. She looks up at the sky. "Moon's comin' up. What do you say we round up our baby slayers and get to killin' evil things?"

Faith waits in the car with Kalindi while Xander talks with Jenny. God, had Faith ever worn such a serious and earnest face? Sure as hell not at that age. Maybe long before that, but probably not. The girl nods, and Xander favors her with a smile before she goes off to join Buffy and her patrol group.

Xander settles in behind the wheel. "All set?"

"Completely," Kalindi says. "It's so amazing to go out vampire hunting without having to sneak out."

"So how did Whistler get you started? Did he take you to the cemetery to get the fledgelings while they're rising?"

"No, we never did that. He just took me out. We walked around the city."

"The bad parts of town?" he asks.

Kalindi laughs. "The whole city is the bad part of town, after dark. There's a lot of crime. Sometimes he did take me around Paga Hill, where it's not exactly recommended to go even in the day. So anywhere we go is fine."

"Where do you think?" Faith asks. "Around the clinic?"

"Let's not go full tilt to the roughest part of town. We want to observe, not toss her to the wolves. Let me think." He gets so quiet that she has a good idea what he's thinking before he says, "Maybe the Flats."

"Xander --"

"No, it's okay, Faith. It's a good middle ground, I think." He casts a glance toward Kalindi in the back seat. "It's not that rough, as neighborhoods go. But it draws a lot of vampires. There are a lot of bars down there, so the tourists and college kids go there to get trashed. It's kind of a fish-in-a-barrel scene for vamps."

As he drives toward the waterfront, Faith fills her in on how to make a vamp. "Fashions from two decades ago used to be a clincher back in Sunnydale, but it's a fuck of a lot harder -- sorry, heck of a lot harder -- here in Ohio. Spot a t-shirt for some ancient metal band, and seven times out of ten you've got a live body inside. Did that trick work for you in PNG?"

Kalindi shakes her head. "Pretty much everyone in the city wears the same things. T-shirts and trousers, t-shirts and sarongs. A lot of times they were donations from overseas churches. I did see a white man in a fancy suit once who'd been turned into a vampire. Someone probably thought it was funny, since he was the sort of person who wouldn't have been on the streets in the day, much less at night."

"People don't even go out during the day?" Xander asks.

"Some don't. They drive their cars from one compound to another, all fenced in with razor wire."

"How'd you learn to find your way around?" he asks. "Whistler?"

"I already knew the city. I was a Hashman tru."

"A what?" Faith asks.

"A harrier. The Hash House Harriers?"

Xander looks just as blank as she probably does.

"It's like a club for runners. We ran all around the city, sometimes over really rough terrain. I used a lot of what I learned when I started slaying."

Faith stifles a yawn. Wicked wholesome. Xander finds a space and they walk down to the bar district. Kalindi walks on ahead of them, all decked in her club girl getup. She's got a few approaches at the ready. Asking for directions to a club, asking for a light.

"I don't like this," Xander says abruptly. "It's too early, too many people out. How are we going to keep an eye on her?"

"We shut up and keep watching," Faith says, but she pats his ass to let him know she doesn't really mean it.

"Hey. None of that."

"So what'd you tell Jenny?"

"That we were going out with Kalindi to evaluate her. Kind of like scouts. And that she'd probably be less nervous this first night with less of an audience. She was fine with it."

"Smart, putting it in terms she understands. She still has that mindset. She wants coaching. Wants to work harder than anyone. Including me, for fuck's sake."

Xander laughs. "She's gonna keep us honest. Hey -- Kalindi's got a nibble."

She's showing an address on a scrap of paper to a tall guy who keeps moving into her personal space, and she keeps stepping back. He's sheepdogging her right into an alley. Faith and Xander angle toward its entrance without being too obvious about it. Faith practically has to tackle him to keep him from wading in to rescue Kalindi. "She's fine, babe, she's doing great," she murmurs.

A few punches, a kick, and the vamp is dust.

"Terrific job, Kalindi," Xander says.

"What knocks me on my ass," Faith tells them, "is that kick. That's my kick. I taught you that, babe."

"I saw it in my dream," Kalindi says. "The whole lesson."

Faith hopes the training was all she was dialed in for.

"Can I do more?"

He seems a lot less tense now. "Have at it."

Kalindi uses the club girl act to reel in and dust another couple of vamps. Faith starts getting itchy to kill one of her own. A bar door blows open, a gust of a song carried along on the beer-scented air.

Cupid, draw back your bow...

"That's it," Xander suddenly says. "Let's pull her out."

"What the fuck? It's early, she's doing fine."

"It's enough for tonight."

She would swear he's having another case of the wimwams over the visions. "Just tell me."

"I told you. It's enough for now." He shakes her hand off his arm and starts in Kalindi's direction, but as he passes the incongruously new agey doorway of a psychic's parlor, the woman inside the storefront calls out, "Xander."

Startled, he turns in her direction.

"I've been hoping I'd see you again."

"I don't have time," he says shortly.

Faith can't figure out what happens next. The woman reaches toward him, brushing her fingers against his jacket sleeve. Xander does nothing but keep walking, yet you'd think he'd shoved her. She stumbles back into her doorway, slamming her shoulder against the doorjamb, but she doesn't seem to notice. "I have to talk to you," she murmurs, but Xander keeps walking.

He breaks in on Kalindi and a matching goth girl who's pondering the scrap of paper. "We're done," he blurts.

Kalindi's confused. "But I was just --"

"We're done," he repeats, as abruptly as he'd spoken to the psychic chick. "Let's go."

Kalindi shrugs to the other girl, then follows.

Yeah, Harris. Way to handle your slayer. Give her more of what she's gotten used to.

He marches past Faith as if she's a stranger.

Well, later for this shit.

"You go," Faith calls after him. "I'll get a cab home." She was already plenty ready to start killing something before this. She stalks down the sidewalk toward the goth girl Kalindi had been working. "Fuckin' A, I know that's why I got married."

"What?"

In response, Faith punches the stake into the girl's chest, watches her explode into dust.

It occurs to her maybe she should talk to the psychic chick, ask her what she wanted Xander for, but she needs to kill a few things first. But by time she's left dust piles in a couple of alleyways, the storefront is closed, so she calls a cab and heads back to the hacienda.

He's asleep by then, sprawled all over her half of the bed as well as his. In sickness and health, yeah, but that minister hadn't said anything about rampant assholism. She seizes him by an ankle and drags him over to his own side.

He comes awake, flailing. "What the hell?"

"You were all over my side." She yanks her clothes off, drops them to the floor.

He says nothing for a moment. She can feel him gauging her mood. "How'd it go after we left?"

"It went."

"Faith, I know I pulled us out of there really abruptly, but--"

"Later, all right?" She jerks a long t-shirt over her head. "I'm tired." She lies down, back to him, and pulls the covers over herself.

The mattress dips as he props himself on an elbow. "Faith -- You remember when we got married, what the minister said about not going to bed angry?"

Sure. Now it's Faith's fault. "You want someone sweet and forgiving, why don't you go to bed with her."

He stays at there looking at her for a moment, then she feels the mattress shift as he lies down again. He always does that. Accepts a brush-off as final. So much easier than making one more effort.

It takes her more than an hour to drop off, and she can feel Xander lying awake beside her. But finally she's sleeping hard when she's torn out of a dream by Xander thrashing and yelling. Rolling off the side of the bed, she comes up with a weapon, but there's nothing in the room with them. Heart pounding, she switches on the bedside light and takes him by the shoulder. "Baby, wake up. It's a dream, just a dream. You're fine, you're right here."

He gasps like a swimmer saved from drowning. "Vision. Not a dream."

"Tell me. What did you see?"

There's no humor in his sharp laugh. "Nothing. I was completely blind."

No wonder he's freaked. She pushes the hair back from his forehead. "You're sure you weren't just in some dark place?"

"I was blind. There was pain. And blood and -- fluid -- running down my face."

"It was a dream, babe. Just the PTSD." He hasn't had a nightmare like that in a while, but there were plenty of them right after Sunnydale.

"I can tell the difference. This was a vision."

"Doesn't mean it'll come true. You've had so many different ones --"

He cuts in. "Look. I just can't talk about this now." He tosses aside the covers. "I'm done sleeping. I'm going downstairs."

"You want me --" She doesn't have to finish the question. She can see he doesn't want her.

"Faith, I want to be alone."

He closes the door softly behind him, but it might as well be a slam.

When Faith wakes in the morning, Xander's still not beside her. She's half tempted to head out on her run without looking for him, but she's too worried for bullshit games. Making her way down to the kitchen, she finds Kennedy, who tells her she's been hearing carpenter-like noises from the basement.

Faith heads down, and finds him lost in his work, bent over a work table. "You up for a run, or are you gonna stick with this?"

Startled, he lifts his head. "It's seven already?"

"You look like shit. You haven't slept since you got up?"

He shakes his head. "Faith -- I'm sorry. I know I keep saying I'll do better, then we go through this all over again."

"Yeah, well. It's the one fight to have when you're havin' more than one."

"What?"

She waves her hand. "Nothin'. Something my ma used to say." Only she'd been reciting some old beer ad.

He throws a tarp over his work, puts away his tools. "Let me grab a few bucks, and I'll treat you to coffee. I'd like to talk to you about this."

He doesn't seem inclined to talk much before then. She lets him have this time sort his thoughts, not think about things, whatever the hell it is he's doing. No more than a handful of words pass between them on their run, all of them concerning their route. Even once they're in the order line at Starbucks, there's no need to discuss their order. It's always the same.

The muffin is behind the counter again. He seems more at ease than a couple of days ago, joking with the baristas, chatting with the customers. There's some vibe he gives off that she can't quite figure. Once Xander steps to the counter, though, he's back to the stammering, barely competent wreck he was the first time they saw him.

"He's crushin' on you," she says once they find their seats on the deck. "That's what it is."

"No way. It was you making him stammer like that. He just stared at me because he couldn't look upon your blazing beauty. Because if he stared at you that way, I'd have had to ask him to step outside and settle this like men."

"You are so fulla shit."

"It's been said."

She breaks the maple scone apart and gives him half. "C'mon, babe. Talk to me."

He talks to her.

Tells her about the vision where they both stalked the frat boys and club girls, while some bar band played that same old song.

Tells her about his three previous encounters with the psychic, the first time in Sunnydale. It pisses her off that she's just now hearing this old news, but she bites back a sharp remark. Let it go. He's telling it now.

"I think maybe you should talk to her," she finally says. "Maybe she can help you sort out the visions -- aw, shit, listen to me. Tellin' you a fuckin' fortune teller might help. Still. It's probably a crock of shit, but it can't hurt to --"

"No. She freaks me out."

"She freaks you out because she's been right. And doesn't it freak you worse that you're seeing all these different fates without knowing which one's real?"

"No," he says emphatically. "I plan to stay the hell away from her."

"You didn't see her face when she touched your arm. Like she'd seen something already."

"Standard fortune teller crap. 'I have a message from the spirits.'"

Well, which is it, Faith wonders. This psychic knows too much or it's all a fake? She doesn't for a minute believe Xander's coming down on the fake side. He tears off small pieces of his scone so there's more scone in the crumb pile he's creating than he's actually managing to eat.

"I think it's worth a shot."

"No."

Time to change the subject. "How was Kalindi last night on the way home?"

"Quiet. I think she's going to take a while to figure out."

"You're probably right, but here's a tip for you. She might've been quiet because she thought she'd done something wrong. You hauled her out of there like you had a giant bug up your ass." This startles him. "Be Mr. Uncommunicative with me, that's one thing. I'll chew you a new one and we do a reset. But I'm guessing she's not a kid who'll challenge you. If you don't talk to her, she'll come up with her own theories, and they might get her hurt."

"I hadn't even thought."

"Tell me something that's news." A movement catches her eye, and she glances over to her left. The muffin has come out for his break, and he's screwing around with a fresh pack of cigs. She watches him peel off the top of the cellophane, then open the foil. There's something delicate about his movements; nothing delicate, though, about the craving for nicotine that surges through her.

"You about done with that?" she asks Xander.

"Almost."

The kid moves toward them then. "Excuse me -- could I get a light?"

Faith still carries a Bic -- never know when you might need to light a vamp on fire -- and she flicks it for him. He hovers for a moment after his smoke is lit, seeming to want to add something to his thanks. Under the table, Faith gives Xander's leg a there's your boyfriend poke with her toe, and he reaches under and smacks her on the knee.

"Well, thanks," the muffin says again, and moves off to a table. He's not watching them, but she can feel him not watching them.

"Let's blow this joint," she says.

Xander bends the bakery paper into a U and funnels the scone pieces into his mouth. "You can't possibly expect me not to touch that line, can you?" he says, brushing the shower of crumbs off his shirt.

"Touch whatever you want," she offers. "But you've got to catch it first." She takes a flying first step off the Starbucks deck and hits the pavement running.

There's no communal breakfast in the morning, just come on down to the kitchen and make yourself at home. Except she's not at home. She doesn't know where anything is, and she doesn't even recognize some of the packaged stuff she eventually finds.

She holds an imaginary conversation in her head while she rummages. Good morning, Kallie. How'd you sleep last night?

Since it's an imaginary dialogue, she can say how she really feels. In Pidgin, if she wants, and who's to complain? Mi na bin slip, longpela taim. And then I had bad dreams.

She puts some water on to boil, then tries the refrigerator. Good old recognizable orange juice. She pulls that out and some milk, and as she rummages in another cupboard her heart leaps when she finds a jar of Marmite. She sets that out too, and moves on to searching for bread. Pop Tarts are all she's found by the time Andrew comes down to the kitchen.

"Good morning, Kalindi. How'd you sleep last night?"

"Pretty well, thanks." A lie, but it doesn't really harm anyone. Still: "It took me a while to get used to the traffic sounds."

He bustles to the counter where she's collecting her finds. "Oh, you don't want to eat that." He seizes the jar of Marmite. "This belongs to Mr. Giles, and he gets upset if anyone gets into it. Though once you've tried it, no problem there. It's really nasty stuff." He opens the lid to offer her a sniff. It makes her hungrier. "Same deal with the Jaffa cakes -- they're off limits too. Though they actually taste pretty good. Mr. Giles is a hard one to figure out that way. Anyway, he usually keeps those in his room."

The kettle whistles and she pours water over the teabag she'd scavenged.

"Why don't I make you an omelet? Since it's your first morning and all." Andrew's already pulling out a pan, so she says yes. "So, your first official patrol. How was it?"

"It was good." Kalindi's voice quavers a little, so she covers it with a yawn. "I killed three vampires."

Andrew cracks an egg into a bowl, then fishes around in the yolk for pieces of shell. "Oh, that's really great for your first time out."

"It wasn't my first time out," she says a little snappishly. He's being so nice to her, and she can't even keep from spilling her irritation onto him. "I mean, I've gone out patrolling plenty of times. Just not here."

"That's what I meant," he says quickly. "It's good for any night, really. I mean, sometimes even Buffy only gets one or two." He wipes his fingers on the dish towel.

Well, she'd thought it was good, and Xander had seemed to think so at first, but something about the way she'd been working on the other goth girl had made Xander march in and pull her away. She'd gone over it half the night, but she couldn't think what she'd done wrong. She mulls it over some more while she eats, only half listening to Andrew's chatter. When other girls start congregating in the kitchen, she's grateful to be pulled out of her thoughts, and when Buffy tells them it's time to start training, Kalindi's relieved to be pouring her energy into physical activity.

Faith joins them a while later, quietly taking a place next to Kalindi as Buffy takes them through a set of exercises. It's like nothing Kalindi's done before, slow and studied movements that almost seem like a ballet.

"Have you ever done tai chi before?" Faith asks her. To her questioning look, Faith adds, "This."

"Oh. No. Is it anything like yoga?"

"Something like that. With a little martial arts thrown in. Only I wouldn't look to use this stuff in battle unless you're planning to bore your enemy to death, because it's all pretty much like this."

Kalindi has never done yoga, either. She knows it's become a huge craze in the States, because she's heard her aunt Meg talking about how it's Satan's trap to fool people into joining a false religion. God loves all His children, according to her aunt, yet everything in the world He made is a trap to destroy them. "I like it, though."

"Me too," Faith answers. "It lets you slow your mind down a little, gets it out of the way."

Maybe that's the source of her aunt's problem with this kind of thing. According to her -- and to hundreds of sermons Kalindi had heard her own father preach -- you have to keep an iron control over your mind at all times, or Satan will use any opportunity to exploit your weaknesses.

"You're doing great picking this up. If you ever get thrown off, just watch B. Or Jenny."

Faith moves off to start correcting some of the other girls, and Kalindi settles into the slow rhythm of these movements, enjoying the way it makes her body feel alive and whole. She hasn't even noticed Xander's entrance into the courtyard, not until he softly says her name.

"I'd like to talk to you for a while," he says quietly.

"Sure," she says, heart suddenly hammering. This is it, where he tells her it's not going to work out, that she has to go back to live with her aunt. Except her aunt will never let her stay there again. She wonders where they'll make her go.

He leads her through a gate into the fence, into the garden where they'd talked the day before. "Let's head inside. How are you doing with the temperature out here today?"

"A little chilly. I think when I move around more, it'll be better."

He nods, holding the back door open for her. "Still, it's getting time to finish the indoor training area. This is probably the last of the good weather." Pleasant enough chat, but it doesn't mean anything. She braces for bad news as he gestures to a chair in the kitchen. "I wanted to talk to you about last night."

"I thought so. I'm totally willing to change, just let me know what I did wrong." She hates the note of desperation that creeps into her voice. It's something she's cultivated over these last months as first her parents rejected her, then her aunt.

"Hey, whoa." He runs a hand through his hair. "Faith warned me, but -- Kalindi, you didn't do anything wrong. You did a terrific job. I'm the one who did something stupid. When Giles gets all watcherly, he makes tea. Want some tea?"

It looks to her like he needs to be bustling, so she says yes, please. He puts the kettle on the flame, and gets out a tea tin. "I want to apologize. I got all weird, and it had nothing to do with you." He looks a little tentative at the whole tea-making ritual, which for some reason sets her at ease. "I don't know how much, if anything, Buffy and Giles told you about the watcher thing in general, about me specifically. I get these visions. Which is not a regular watcher thing, we haven't figured out why I have them. They're not visions of the future, exactly, but of a whole lot of possible futures. All contradictory. A bunch of them were in the Flats. Maybe you remember that Faith asked if I was sure I wanted to go there. So last night I heard a snatch of a song that was in one of the visions. I wigged, and all I wanted was to get out. That's why I was so abrupt."

The kettle whistles and he fusses with the tea things.

"I'm relieved it wasn't me, but I'm sorry they're so upsetting. Can you stop them? Do you want to?"

"Oh, I want to. They don't seem to have any use beyond freaking me out. The only thing I've tried just made me have more of them. Do you like this strong, or weak?"

"Somewhere in the middle. Did --" She doesn't know if she should ask this, it seems so selfishly motivated when this is something that makes him suffer. But she can't help it. "Did you ever see me in a vision?"

"Just one. Before we realized you were a slayer. Faith and Jenny had slayer dreams about you, too."

"Slayer dreams?"

He stirs the tea around in the pot, then pours her a cup through an ornate little strainer. "Milk or sugar?"

"No thanks."

"Do you ever have weird dreams? Lots of flashes of things that make no sense -- usually full of demons and vampires."

Kalindi nearly spills her tea. "Yes! Right after the change happened, when I was getting over the malaria, I had lots and lots of them."

"Sometimes they're prophetic, but you have to decipher them. Come to me if you have one, we'll try to figure out what it means."

She blows on her tea, takes a sip. Tea isn't his strong suit. "Is that what yours are like?"

"Not at all. They're like -- like living another life. It's completely real while it's going on. Sometimes I know some history, sometimes I don't. We need cookies, I think." He jumps up from the table and starts to rummage in the cupboard.

Time to change the subject, she thinks. "Tomorrow's Sunday."

"Yeah. Fig Newtons looks like it. Anything chocolaty is gone five seconds after the first crinkle of cellophane." He opens the package and sets it on the table.

"When -- well, what time should I be ready for church?"

Xander blinks. "Church."

She takes a cookie just to give her nervous fingers something to do.

"I thought Giles -- Didn't he tell you -- He did say this isn't really a religious school, right?"

"Of course. I just -- I still thought -- well, I don't know." Maybe he's had some kind of vision about church. She can't think of any other reason why he'd look so uncomfortable. "That's okay," she says.

"No, no," he says, a little too forcefully. "We'll find out. There's got to be churches around here. Somebody's got to be playing those damn bells at the crack of dawn on Sundays. I mean -- I'll ask Giles."

"Okay, thanks." But truthfully, she's sorry she asked. She's afraid she'll never fit in here -- or anywhere, for that matter. She finishes her cookie and washes it down with some tea. "I'd better get back to training."

"That's probably best. Get all caught up with the others."

He lifts his own tea mug and blows on the steaming liquid, but she could swear she catches a fleeting glimpse of relief on his face.

"I don't get it," Xander says. "She can do whatever she wants now."

He's invited Faith in on the routine he and Giles have developed when she wasn't watching. Toward late afternoon while the girls are training, the two of them sit down and talk through whatever's on their minds. That's how Xander describes it, but she suspects it's more often Xander mulling over things that have come up between him and his slayer -- slayers, now -- and asking Giles's advice. And just as she'd thought, there's tea.

"Then there shouldn't be a problem," Faith says. "She wants to go to church."

"That's just it," Xander says. "What is it, that Stockholm thing? I mean, we rescued her from those people, and she wants to go right back."

"It's a great deal more complicated than that," Giles says. "'Those people' are not all there is to the church."

Xander looks doubtful, but he evades the point. "But they're all she's had experience of, I'm betting on that."

"You may well be right."

"Okay, then. The church -- as she knows it -- fucked her up. Well, that's harsh. Let's say it tried. I don't understand why she'd even want to give it another chance."

Giles stirs the leaves around in the teapot, releasing their fragrance into the room. "'They fuck you up, your mum and dad,'" he murmurs. "'They may not mean to, but they do.'"

"What?" Xander asks.

"It's Philip Larkin. From a poem I quite fancied when I was a young man with very little interest in poetry otherwise. Forgive me if this is too personal, but I know your relationship with your parents wasn't a happy one."

"No."

"But you loved them, as much as they would allow it. It would have meant a great deal, even after everything, to have their approval, yes?"

Xander nods, not meeting Giles's gaze.

"Many people who've been damaged by the church have a similarly conflicted relationship. There's still love, a wish for reconciliation. Sometimes it's even possible."

"Anyway," Faith adds, "her beef's not with God, it's with those people, that church." Both look at her with startled expressions. "What, you think I don't know any God types? In the joint I worked in the kitchen with a woman who sang in the prison gospel choir. I learned there's a few like her who aren't fuckin' hypocrites. Learned a few other things from her, too."

"It's an excellent point." Giles pours tea and hands her a cup, then does the same for Xander. "It's important that we support Kalindi in whatever she needs in that respect. She's faced enough change -- and rejection. She needs to feel secure again."

"Okay. Okay. That makes sense." Xander sips at his tea. "So where's the nearest church, anyway?"

"Honestly, Xander, that's not how you go about it. That would be like -- like -- help me out, Faith."

"Like buyin' the first used car you walked up to on the lot. Churches got various makes and models, too. Maybe she's a Lincoln girl, maybe she goes for Kias. You ask her, you try out a few."

"Me?" He gets a look on his face like there's a dead toad steeping in his cup. "I am so not church-guy."

"You can break into a crypt, demon bar, vampire nest, no problem. Church you can't handle?"

"Something of a problem, yeah. Guys with collars, even more."

"Babe --" She reaches out to put a hand on his arm, but he jerks away, getting to his feet to stand staring out the bay window. Anger surges through her. "Here's what you don't do. You do not pull away from this girl, make her feel like she wasn't worth saving. Are you in this gig just when it's sort of fun and you have a slayer you bond with over baseball, or are you a full-time watcher who's there when it's painful for her, and even more for you? Cause if you're gonna draw back from Kalindi, you're no use to her at all, and you might as well have left her with that bitch aunt of hers."

Well, that sure as fuck gets a reaction. Xander whips around from the window, anger sparking off him. Giles goes red and speechless. His mouth is moving, but nothing comes out.

"You wanted my insight, well maybe you got more than you bargained for. But that girl is part of me, a piece of what I am. I owe her something. So do you. Deal."

Giles finally finds his voice. "Faith, I --"

Faith gets to her feet. "Sorry, Rupert. I'm talked out for now." Heading down to the basement in the next brownstone over, where the training area's half set up, she knocks the shit out of the heavy bag, until she can barely lift her arms.

Jenny tries to relax her stranglehold on her stake. Stay loose. Stay focused. Not so easy to do, with everything she's got on her mind.

A.L.'s her number one worry. That actually makes her feel a little guilty, because you'd think her dad should come first. In fact, that's the whole problem in a nutshell with her dad -- the fact that she's putting the slaying ahead of the plans she and her dad had for her life. Putting A.L. ahead of him. It's kind of true. She relates to A.L. as a coach, trusts him to do what's right for her. He actually consults her before he decides -- her dad used to do that, too, but now that he doesn't approve of what she wants...

So she's worried about Dad, sure. He hates Cleveland and he hasn't even tried to find work here. He gets more and more short-tempered with Jenny and her mom, always on the edge of sarcasm even when he's supposedly in a good mood. So she's worried, but his major problem is he's being a jerk.

A.L. on the other hand.... He's actually trying to deal with his problems, trying to put a good face on things. But he looks worse every morning when Jenny arrives at the hacienda. This morning it didn't look like he'd slept at all. There was weirdness over dinner, too. He and Faith looked like they'd had a fight or something. Mr. Giles was acting all tense -- tenser than usual -- too. Though why would he be reacting to something between Faith and A.L.?

Jenny finds a fresh grave, heaped with flowers. She's developing a theory about which graves are most likely to hold a fledgling. Sudden, untimely death seems to produce the kind of outpouring of shock and grief evidenced by huge amounts of flowers. Most of the vamps she's seen tend to be on the young side. So this one seems like a likely candidate.

A.L.'s walking on ahead with Kalindi. Jenny'll wait to see if this one rises, then catch up to them once she's dusted it. She has to admit the whole Kalindi thing is on her mind, too. Her first night out with A.L., she got to go to the Flats, while Jenny was stuck here waiting for the vamp water to boil. Okay, yeah, to be totally fair, Kalindi has racked up the time in the field. She's been going out since May, in a city that apparently makes Cleveland look like that Disney village down in Florida. By comparison, Jenny's just a rookie.

A.L. took her out today, too. She just happened to overhear an exchange between Giles and A.L., which is how she knows where. He took her to the hospital, though as far as Jenny can see, she's fine. The most unlikely goth girl Jenny's ever seen -- her manner and her look are completely at odds -- but there's nothing visibly wrong with her.

Jenny does a couple of neck rolls, then stretches out her triceps. A hard night of staking makes her feel it there, no question. Though she'd take a hard night of staking anytime over a hard night of standing around waiting for a bunch of flowers to wilt. This is just boring as --

Holy crap.

She hears shouting, and then a man in a Budweiser shirt runs full-tilt across the lawn. She doubts he's a vamp -- people don't bury their dead in a Budweiser tee -- and he doesn't have that radar that draws him toward the living, since he doesn't even notice her.

Before she can decide whether to trail him or keep the dead flowers company, she sees a couple more runners appear over the rise. One of them yells something like "on back," and they go belting after the Budweiser guy.

And then there's --

Oh, shit. There must be a dozen of them.

"A.L.!" she yells, just as loud as she can. Well, if he can't hear her, he'll surely hear them as they go thundering after their prey.

As she launches herself after them, she sees Rona and Vi closing in, flanking them from the other side. They'd been in another part of the cemetery, so this chase must've been going on for some time. Jenny yells for her watcher again, gaining some ground on the slower runners. One of them catches sight of her and slows his pace, startled. As she tackles him and brings him down, he howls in indignation, and as she raises her stake --

"Hey, what the fuck?"

His heart hammers under the bunched up t-shirt fabric she has in her fist. What is this?

"What the hell are you girls doing?" his friend demands, just before Rona takes him down. Now the runners are all veering back toward them. It's more than a dozen, maybe twenty.

"No no no no stop!" somebody is hollering. A girl. Kalindi. "Everybody stop!"

"Freeze!" A.L. yells. "Everyone!"

It's the weirdest sight. Jenny and Rona with their stakes raised in midair, a woman in the pack of runners clutching Vi like she's caught a shoplifter.

"What the hell is going on?" demands the guy in the Bud shirt, who's looped back around to join his pursuers. "Who are you people?"

"Could ask you the same," Rona says.

"They're hairier," Kalindi says. Which makes no sense. A couple of them are pretty shaggy, but that's got nothing to do with anything. She speaks to the Bud guy. "You're on hash, right?"

"Yeah." He doesn't look stoned, and why would he just admit that to some girl in a graveyard?

Vi shakes off the woman who's caught her. "What are you talking about?"

"It's a club," Kalindi tells them. "The H