by Nancy Holder
“Oh, hi, Xander,” Xander said. “Sorry I don’t have time to be sociable, but I’ve done it again. Bad me. I put off studying in favor of more athletic nocturnal activities, and now I’m up crit peek without a shaddle. Again. Oh, woe is me, my tutor Willow has forsaken me.”
Buffy still didn’t look up.
“See, I can tell you’re nervous about the test because instead of your usual choice of beverage, Mango Madness, you’ve gone with the sixteen-ounce chocolate Quik. Major Buffy comfort food. Y’know, if it was food and not drink. Liquid. Beverage thing.”
Buffy still didn’t look up, but she did respond. “Eat your lunch, Xander.”
“Which means, I guess, that you want me to be quiet so you can study for the makeup math test you have in, oh, thirty-two minutes?” Xander inquired.
“Eat your lunch, Xander,” Buffy said again.
“Hey, no problem. I’m shuttin’ up. I’m good at shuttin’ up. Nobody’s better than the X-Man at shuttin’ up.”
“Shut up shuttin’ up,” Buffy drawled in her best Warner Brothers cartoon gangster voice.
Xander grinned broadly. “See. Now, haven’t you always wanted to say that?”
“Yes,” Buffy replied, finally looking up and fixing him with an amused but frustrated glare. “Thank you so much. One of my life’s great wishes, really. You’re a prince.”
Willow plopped her tray on the table and slid into a chair. “A prince?” she asked. “Somebody kissed a toad and didn’t tell me? I’m always the last to know.”
Xander and Buffy stared at Willow as she started to dig in to the most terrifying meal the school ever served—and they served it once a week—the perversely named vegetarian meat loaf. But it wasn’t her meal choice that had drawn their attention.
“Good God, what happened to you?” Xander asked, bobbing his head toward Willow in that head-bobbing, inquisitive way that he had.
Buffy whacked him on the arm.
“Will, are you okay?” he pressed.
“After a week like this, why wouldn’t I be okay?” she snapped. No smile. No sheepish Willowy self-effacing grin.
“Did you get mugged again?” Xander demanded, shifting into the rescuing-the-damsel-in-distress mode that he’d been trying so gamely to perfect. Which explained the tire-changing thing, he decided. He was not Cordelia’s schmuck boy after all. He was her knight in shining armor.
Willow finally looked up at them. Or at least, looked up at them through the black lenses of her sunglasses. Which she had on. Inside the caf, like she thought she was Courtney Love or some other demented denizen of the rich and famous lifestyle universe.
“Huh?” she asked. “No. Not even. In fact, my wrist is totally fine. Healed up real fast.”
“Not really the concern,” Buffy admitted. “It’s more, well, cosmetic. Look, I’m pretty sure you don’t have a hangover, so what’s up with you?”
Cordelia had walked over and pulled up a chair as they were talking, and now she tsk-tsked and tilted her head in her best imitation of a sympathetic friend.
“Willow,” she said kindly. “I think what Buffy is trying not to say is that you look like a two-dollar hooker who hasn’t made it back to her corner of the alley yet.”
Buffy wanted to defend Willow, but for a moment she couldn’t. Because Willow really did look that bad. Her hair was a mess, clean but uncombed and wildly tangled. She had on a lime green, very fashionable top and purple sweatpants, an offense that should have brought the Fashion SWAT team down on the school the second Willow walked in.
And just when had she walked in? She certainly hadn’t made it in time for first bell. Or even her first class, as far as Buffy knew. And what was up with those sunglasses?
Willow glared at Cordelia, her gaze intense though her eyes were hidden behind the dark glasses.
“How sweet of you to say, Cordelia,” Willow snarled. “Particularly coming from you.”
“Well, excuse me,” Cordy said, flicking her fingers into the air as if she were trying to dry her nail polish. “Aren’t we testy. I was just trying to save you from postapocalyptic embarrassment. See, I always told my therapist that trying to be someone’s friend was just a waste of precious time better spent on self-improvement.”
“Well put,” Xander teased. But of course, teasing Cordelia was only fun when she noticed. Which at this moment—sigh, like so many others—she didn’t. Or she didn’t care, which, since it was Xander, was likely.
“You’re right,” Willow told her. “You could use some time on self-improvement, Cordelia. Maybe then people would stop mistaking you for Barbie’s sister Skipper turned crack-ho.”
Buffy smirked. She couldn’t help it. She almost burst out laughing, in fact, and probably would have if not for the look on Willow’s face. It wasn’t the triumph she expected to see there—she had, after all, just trounced Cordy in the insult category—but a look of such contempt that for a moment, Buffy thought Willow was going to hiss up a cat fight.
Instead, Will stood up abruptly enough to knock over her chair, then turned and stormed from the cafeteria, leaving her food and her friends behind.
“Wow,” Cordelia said. “What’s gotten into her? Sharpen those claws. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” She reached for Willow’s tray. “Guess she’s not going to eat her tofu.”
Xander slapped her hand. “Now cut that out!”
Cordy shot him a wounded look, but Buffy barely registered their exchange. She was watching Willow go.
“What is your talk show topic?” Cordelia sneered at Xander.
“Did you look in the mirror and strike yourself blind or something?” Xander snapped at her. “I’ve known Willow my whole life. She’s been my best friend since … just since. Something’s obviously really bothering her. She was so un-Willowy. It’d be like you wearing the same outfit to school twice.”
Cordelia blinked. “You think it’s that bad?” she asked worriedly.
“It’s that bad,” Buffy said, and they gave each other uh-oh looks.
“What do we do?” Xander asked.
“Give her some space, I guess. Try to talk to her, no pressure, and not all together. Ask Giles to talk to her,” Buffy said, rattling off the ideas as they came into her head. “I think maybe getting mugged had more of an impact on Willow than we thought.”
“Like post-traumatic stress disorder or something?” Cordelia asked.
Buffy cast a sidelong glance at her, faced with the realization once again that Cordy wasn’t nearly as thick as she usually seemed. Well, not entirely. Sometimes.
“I’ll talk to her,” Xander said.
“Yeah,” Buffy agreed. “I’ll try to get her to open up too.”
Cordelia whistled, eyes searching the blank, whitewashed walls for something to look at. Lips puckered, she stopped whistling midnote and rolled her eyes.
“All right!” she said. “I’ll try too.”
“That’s my Cordy,” Xander said with pride. “Always thinking about others.”
But none of them saw Willow again that day, and Buffy was so caught up in the Math Test from Hell that she didn’t even think about trying to talk to her until she was on the way home.
Sometimes Buffy had company when she was on patrol, scouring Sunnydale for something unnatural that she could return to nature. Giles might come along to lecture her on becoming a better Slayer, hang on to her big bag o’tricks, and hand her a stake when she needed one. Other times, when she didn’t think it would be too much of a distraction—who was she kidding?—whenever he wanted to come along, Angel prowled the night with her.
Also, there would be big smoochies during Angel-prowling nights, as Xander so quaintly put it on occasion. Very big smoochies.
“I could use a little distraction, right about now,” she muttered to herself.
It was quiet, and a little chilly, and Buffy thought it would have been nice to have Angel around, or Giles. For different reasons, of course. She wondered if she ought to bring homework
with her sometimes. She could sit under a streetlight and study if it got slow, just sit and wait for something inhuman and vile to attack her. Kind of like sitting in front of Greg “The Octopus” Rucka in bio.
“Deep sigh,” Buffy whispered.
She slung her bag over her shoulder and started for home. On the way, she got kind of sidetracked and wandered over to the Bronze. Once she got there, though, she only stood on the curb outside looking at the door. It was possible Angel was there, inside. But if she went in, and he was in there, she wouldn’t be in any kind of rush to get home.
Home. That place they named homework after. Where that work intended for home was usually done. And Buffy was way behind.
Tomorrow night, she thought. She’d see Angel tomorrow night.
She spun on her heel, started for home, and then stopped short. A weird feeling very like the graveyard sensation from the night before ran through her, and she turned to peer into the darkness of the alley next to the Bronze.
Three of them, two guys and one very innocent-looking girl with short, dark hair. Buffy was the wariest of her. It was like high school: Sometimes the ones you expected the least of really surprised you. If only her teachers’ expectations of her would sink a little more, she’d be the pride of Sunnydale High.
“See, that’s what happens to my grades,” she said aloud, letting her bag drop to her side. “I have the best of intentions about my homework, but something always comes up.”
Their faces were hideous, feral, and they snorted like animals as they stepped out of the alley and began to spread out to surround her. Buffy slid a stake from the bag, then dropped the bag to the sidewalk.
“Hello, procrastination,” she said, and smiled.
“And a good evening to you, Slayer,” the girl growled. “I hope you’ve enjoyed it, ’cause it’s going to be your last.”
“Thanks for caring,” Buffy retorted. “You’re so sweet.”
“Oh, not at all,” said the second, a balding-type guy, moving around behind her.
Buffy turned, switching the stake from hand to hand, trying to keep them in her field of vision. They made a semicircle and they moved in unison, creeping right, then left. Very drill team. Very weird.
“We’ve been waiting for you for hours,” said the third, dark-skinned and heavyset. “We’d almost given up hope of killing you tonight.”
For a moment, Buffy felt that sensation again, and an additional chill at the realization that they’d been waiting for her. Not out hunting for fresh blood. Just hanging out behind the Bronze, waiting for the Slayer to come by.
Vampires weren’t generally known for their patience.
Buffy shook it off, slapped the stake into her right hand, and smiled. “You’d almost given up hope,” she said with mock sympathy. “Now here I am, what you’ve been waiting for, and all I’m going to do is break your hearts.”
Her face changed then. A sneer—almost cruel—twisted her mouth.
“Oops, my bad. I meant stake your hearts, of course.”
Baldy leaped at her, and Buffy acted. She threw her leg out toward him, lifted her left hand to grab him by the shirt front and toss him at the heavyset one on her right.
That was her intention, anyway.
But she never got hold of him. Baldy stopped short, stood up, and simply smiled at her. Buffy knew instantly what had happened. They had set her up. Big Boy was rushing in from her right, and the girlish bloodsucker was already reaching for her hair. Buffy was extended in the wrong direction, off balance.
The girl snagged her hair, hissed, bared her fangs. Big Boy barreled in from the right.
Buffy fell backward and the girl came with her.
“Oh,” Buffy said. “A wise guy. Remind me to kill you later.”
Big Boy thundered past the spot where she’d been standing and nearly flattened Baldy with his bulk. Buffy threw a foot up into the girl’s stomach and tossed her over her head to land in the street. Cars passed by now and again on the cross street, but nothing turned down toward the Bronze.
Fine with her. Nobody reporting back to her mom or the school that they saw her fighting in front of the club on a school night.
The girl was quick, though. Even as Buffy was getting up, she was rushing at Buffy again.
“Well, if you insist,” Buffy sighed, and sidestepped, kneed her in the stomach, pulled her up by the hair, and staked her.
She exploded in a blast of ashes. Buffy didn’t have time to appreciate her demise, however. She sensed Big Boy and Baldy behind her, and took off into the darkness of the alley.
They gave chase.
Morons.
A battered Chevy was parked in the alley. Buffy jumped onto the hood, then the roof. The two vamps got on either side of the car, and their smiles told her they figured they had her trapped.
“Now we’ve got you,” Big Boy snarled.
“Y’know, I can see where you might have a hard time getting an actual date, but this is taking things a little too far, don’t you think?” she asked. “Of course, I’ve heard the Internet is fertile territory to meet that special someone if you want them to love you just for your brains.”
“I’ll love you for your heart, Slayer, while it’s sliding down my throat in ragged pieces!” Big Boy screamed, and swiped at her legs.
Buffy leaped again, did a somersault, and came down behind him.
“Isn’t that an oh-so-lovely image,” she said, and staked Big Boy through the back. Harder that way, but if a girl worked at it, the end result was the same.
Poof.
Baldy stared at her across the roof of the Chevy.
“You could run,” she suggested.
“I would be killed for my cowardice if I ran,” Baldy growled. “In any case, I’m not afraid of you, little girl.”
He leaped up onto the roof of the car, where she’d stood only seconds before. Buffy grabbed the Chevy’s door handle and pulled. It was unlocked. She opened the door and hopped in, slamming the door just as Baldy shoved a hand in after her. She heard the snap of his arm bone and the howl of pain as he withdrew the arm.
Buffy slammed the door again. But she didn’t try getting out the other side. Just sat there behind the wheel. Well, just a little closer to the middle of the car. Baldy shattered the window with his working fist a second later, and then his face appeared in the broken window.
“Boo!” Buffy said, and punched him in the face.
Baldy slid off the roof, scrambled to his feet, and stared at her through the broken window.
“Scared of me now?” she asked.
“Get out of that car!” he roared at her.
Buffy smiled slyly. “No.”
Baldy came at her and grabbed for the door handle, and Buffy shoved the stake through the broken window and into his chest.
“You didn’t say please,” she told him as he exploded into dust.
The adrenaline pumping through Buffy as she made her way home felt good. There was a certain Rocky Balboa–ness about being the Slayer, though Buffy would never confess that exhilaration when she was bitching to Giles about her life.
But that feeling was overshadowed tonight. Completely eclipsed by the dread that was beginning to weigh heavily on her. It was racing around her mind and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to be getting much sleep that night.
These vampires weren’t that much harder to kill than most of the others she’d taken on. But they were more focused. They’d waited around for her. They’d set her up at the start of that fight, as if they could predict what her first move would be. Actually, they had predicted it.
And when she’d told that last one to run, what he’d said in return had creeped her out.
“I would be killed for my cowardice.”
Which meant someone had sent them after Buffy. Someone organized. Someone she hadn’t already killed.
On the night after the night of the graveyard weirdness-thing.
Not good.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After a refreshingly uneventful weekend—relatively uneventful—Buffy let out a vast Monday-morning yawn as she walked into the library and said, “Many vampires. Much homework. Vampires slain. Homework somewhat less than attacked.”
She sighed. “So sign me up for remedial you-name-it, call my mom, and explain to her why I’m flunking unflunkable classes, such as PE.”
“Hmm?” Giles asked, looking up from one of his oh-so-dusty books. Buffy reflected that so much of her life revolved around dust. Inhaling it during research sessions, and creating it … out of dead vampires.
Giles smiled, pushed up his glasses, and closed his book. “Good morning, Buffy. You were saying there was a lot of activity this weekend?”
“Vampy only,” she answered, mentally ticking down a list of things that had not happened: homework, the Bronze, big smoochies from Angel.
“Well, yes,” he said, as if that were the only kind that mattered. Easy for him to say. He was not flunking being a librarian. Which raised some questions: How did people know if you were doing a good job? Check to see if the books were shelved in correct alphabetical order?
“‘Well, yes,’” she repeated. “Only, these vamps were different from the vamps of yore.” She perched on the study table and swung her legs, half-admiring her heeled boots, which were new—a product of a Saturday afternoon mother-daughter bonding ritual called “hitting the mall.”
“These were organized vamps, like there’s another leader in town,” she informed her Watcher. “Had some nasties Friday night. Another pair last night. No trouble, but it was kind of freaky.”
“Really?” His brow crinkled. With both hands, he set the book down on the table. Dust rose off the cover like fog off the ocean.
“Really.” Buffy leaned backward and peered into the stacks, on the lookout for her best friend. “Speaking of demons, Willow was a big no-show all weekend. She didn’t show up at the Bronze and hasn’t returned my phone calls. Plus, she isn’t in school today. No one’s seen her. That spooks me a trifle.”