by Various
“Shut up. I think it’s plenty creepy.” She instantly regretted that. “Sorry. Little bit cranky.”
“ ’S’Okay. Maybe it’s like jet lag. Losing three years probably does that. Or maybe it’s gaining three years, depends how you look at it, I guess.”
They walked in silence for a few steps, deep in thought.
“You tried reaching her?” Willow asked.
“I told you. Only like a dozen times. There’s no answer. Maybe she’s still in the present—I mean, the future.”
“Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Xander, even if she’s still in the . . . even if she wasn’t sent back like us, she still exists in this time. I mean, it would just be, like, high-school Buffy. She’s got to be around.”
“So where is she, Will?”
“I dunno. Let’s hurry up.”
Xander and Willow moved along the residential Sunnydale street. They walked fast, as if something was on their trail. Which maybe it was. When magick happens and the world goes wonky, it was often good to make oneself in to a moving target. Because sometimes something evil was watching.
* * *
A tree stood in front of the Summers house. And stretching away from the foot of the tree was its dark shadow. Other things in the yard had shadows too. The mailbox had a shadow. So did the tennis ball abandoned there by the neighbor’s spaniel; it had a little shadow. But if you looked close, you might notice that these weren’t quite as dark as the tree-shadow. The tree-shadow was very dark. When the wind moved the branches of the tree, the shadow moved too. At exactly the same time. Until it didn’t. Until it twitched. Until it shifted on its own. Until it turned its attention to the house. Until it thought. Now. I will move now.
* * *
Buffy was vaguely aware that she’d been sleeping through the ringing of the phone. And some part of her mind was a little pissed off that no one had been picking it up. House full to burstin’ with people, after all, Willow and Dawn and Giles. The place was a commune. Then it registered that it didn’t feel like a house full of people. Not this morning. Maybe it was slayer-sharp senses picking up different acoustics from different furniture, or a different pattern of air moving through the halls, or a different scent from different human bodies. Or maybe it was just because she knew really well what it felt like to be alone.
Then there was a sound. Outside. The front porch. Someone or something was at the front door.
Buffy was on her feet immediately, lunging for her weapons in one smooth motion. But her weapons chest wasn’t where she left it and she ended up slamming her hand into the nightstand. Crappity-crap!
She found the weapons chest, unable to take the time even to wonder why it was there, against the opposite wall, where she used to keep it. She grabbed a stake and flew for the bedroom door, down the stairs, even as the front door began to swing inward. Out of time.
Buffy launched herself down the stairs, stake braced in front of her.
She came to a rest with the tip of the stake pressed against her mother’s chest.
Joyce looked frightened and startled. Buffy looked back. At her mother. Who was obviously completely alive.
There were a thousand things Buffy wanted to say to her, to ask her. Are you real? Will this last? Can I tell you much I love you? She opened her mouth, half-wondering which of them she was going to hear.
“Were you at the gallery?” That wasn’t one of the ones she was expecting to pick.
Frowning, Joyce moved the stake away from her heart. “Yes, I was. The alarm went off and the company called me. False alarm. We don’t open till ten, so I figured I’d head back here, grab a shower, and maybe get impaled by my teenage slayer daughter.”
Unsure what else to do, Buffy nodded, wondering if she looked as freaked out as she felt.
* * *
Willow was still aware of a pressing instinct to hurry, but right now that was out of the question. Right now there was more of a need to do this. To stand next to Xander and stare open-mouthed.
“There it is,” she heard him say, very softly. “Then. Now. You know . . . before it blew up.”
Sunnydale High. Not an unsafe charred hulk left damaged by a Mayor-snake, then devastated by a Mayor-snake-killing explosion, but a solid building that looked like it would stand forever. They stood and looked up toward the main entrance. Around them students crowded and swarmed, hurrying to get inside before the bell.
“It looks smaller,” he continued. The building, the parking lot, the bike racks. “Even the buses.”
Willow turned to look. “Xander, that’s the special education bus. It is smaller.”
“Oh . . . right.”
“Oh my God! Look! Over there.” Willow jabbed him in the ribs hard and pointed, picking one figure out of the crowd. A blond head shone among the rest. Not Buffy, someone else.
“Ow! Who? Oh, Harmony.” Xander squinted at the girl who would be turned into a vampire. Soon. She was bitten during the graduation melee. It felt strange seeing her, knowing what was going to happen.
“In the sunshine. How strange is that? She has no idea . . .”
Xander looked blankly at Willow. “So, do we, what? Do we warn her? Are we here to like, keep that whole thing from happening? Like a Quantum Leapy thing? Or, you know, not?”
Willow turned and headed for the main entrance. “I don’t know. But I bet Giles will. Maybe he’s even like us, you know, from the future or whatever, and he can help us figure this out.”
* * *
Willow and Xander walked through the halls, making their way to the school library. Xander kept being distracted. His old locker. The fliers on the walls. The display case in the hallway, the one with that cheerleading trophy that always gave him a funny creepy feeling. The halls were emptying as students made their way into their homerooms. That’s what Larry was doing when Xander saw him. Larry was a football star, and he was one of the many students who would die at the upcoming graduation ceremony. Xander got the strangest feeling watching Larry disappear into a room and close the door behind him, like he was watching Larry die right then. He shuddered.
“This is really weird, Will. I don’t like this. It’s like we can see what’s gonna happen to everybody.”
“I know. I used to think I’d love to be able to see the future, know all that stuff. But not if it’s like this.”
“You there!” A familiar voice rang out behind them. “Why aren’t you in homeroom, you nasty little vagrants?”
Willow looked back, knowing already who it was. Principal Snyder, every scant inch of him. He would also die soon, swallowed whole in front of the entire student body. Willow and Xander stopped and gave in to the unique and sad experience of being lectured by a ghost.
“Let me see your hall passes!”
* * *
Buffy looked at the waffle iron and tried to figure out if the waffles were done. She was pretty sure the light was supposed to go on. Or maybe it was supposed to go off. It was definitely one or the other. She tried to remember if the light had been on when she poured the batter on. Maybe it was and then the light went off and she didn’t see it. Or maybe not. “Mom?”
Joyce entered the kitchen. “What? Haven’t you left for school? Oh, Buffy.”
Buffy looked at what her mother was looking at: bowls and spoons on the counter, some spilled waffle batter, and the uncooperative waffle iron which was starting to smoke a little around the edges. No matter what Mister Light said, they were probably done. Really, really done.
Joyce hurried to rescue the waffles while Buffy tried to explain.
“I was trying to make you something nice for breakfast. You know, for us to have together before you have to go back to the gallery. And I knew waffles were your favorites. Are your favorites. I promise, I promise so much that I’ll clean up the mess.”
Joyce was using a fork to try to scrape a half-raw, half-scorched waffle off the surface of the waffle iron. “Buffy, you really should’ve asked me about this. Did you even grea
se this thing at all?”
“Um . . . grease it?”
Joyce sighed, exasperated. “Sit down over there, out of my way, and let me fix this.”
Buffy sat.
“Aren’t you going to be late for school?” Joyce asked.
“There’s lots of time. They pushed first period back a half-hour this week.” The lie came easily, and it made Buffy feel like a criminal. So few sentences, a finite number of sentences she’d ever spoken to her mother. How many of them had been lies?
She watched in silence as her mother moved around the kitchen. Cleaning up Buffy’s mess, making food for the two of them to share, humming softly. The humming wasn’t a song. Anyone else might call it tuneless. But, with a jolt, Buffy recognized it as her mother’s own particular tunelessness, the same little nonsong she always hummed to herself. When she died, the nonsong would go with her. Buffy let the tears fill her eyes. She wasn’t going to lie about that, about the tears. If Mom saw, she saw.
Buffy knew there were things she should do. She should call Giles and say “Hey, I’ve been sent careening three years backward in time. How ’bout you?” She should round up Willow and Xander and Anya and Tara. No, no, Anya and Tara aren’t my friends yet. But she should round up Willow and Xander and they should figure this out—find out why it happened, what the threat was. Kill it. And go back to the right time.
The right present. When Mom is dead.
Joyce was making omelets. Buffy watched, marveling at how easy she made it look. Where did her mother get that grace, the ability to make things look easy? Back in the present, Buffy was running a household now—trying to, anyway. She never felt graceful, never felt able. She’d had her mom in her life for such a short time, and she’d never really appreciated her, not this part of her anyway. Maybe this was a gift. A chance to do it again, do it right.
A thought occurred to Buffy. “Um . . . Mom? Where’s Dawn? Did she go to school?”
Joyce looked up from the omelet. “Dawn? Who’s Dawn?”
* * *
A bird flew over Sunnydale. Its small shadow hopped and glided along the ground. Over streets and sidewalks. Over lawns. For a fraction of a second it crossed the Summers’ front yard. The shadow flicked from a corner of the driveway to a corner of the house before it leaped to the roof and on over the town. And while it crossed, almost too fast to be seen, something rode with it, skittering along the ground to the deep shade of the bushes at that corner, near the front door. The something dark was moving closer.
* * *
Finally free of Snyder, Willow and Xander burst into the library, startling Giles, who was just crossing the room with a thick book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
Xander slumped with disappointment. “It didn’t happen to him.”
“How can you tell?” Willow asked.
“Well, just look at him. Look how young he looks. His skin is much tighter. This is Giles from three years ago.”
“Xander, we all look young. If our skin was as old as his we’d be tighter too! These are our bodies from three years ago, remember?”
“Oh yeah. So maybe it is him.”
They both turned and stared at Giles. After a second Willow realized something.
“If it happened to him, he would’ve said something by now.”
“Mmm.” Xander nodded in agreement.
Giles cleared his throat impatiently, which made them both jump.
He spoke. “Oh yes, absolutely. If it had happened to me I would undoubtedly know what in the bloody hell you two were on about and then perhaps I wouldn’t be watching you stare at me like an exhibit in a bloody wax museum.”
Willow blushed. “Oh.”
“Sorry,” Xander mumbled.
“It’s possible we’re not thinking too clearly right now, Giles. I mean, I was asleep and then I woke up and there were pajamas and my old house and Oz was there . . .”
Giles shifted his weight to the other foot, taking it all in. “Hmmm. Yes. Again, I’m sure I’d be extremely understanding if I, well, understood. One of you, for God’s sake, tell me what’s going on.”
“Time travel.” Xander explained. “For us, last night was November 8, 2001. And today we’re partying like it’s 1999.”
“Extraordinary.” Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them as he sat down at the library’s central table.
Willow and Xander followed him to the table.
“You believe us, right?” Xander asked, anxiously.
Giles met his eyes. “Yes, yes, I do, actually.”
“Um . . . can I ask . . . why?” Xander asked.
Giles thought a second, then said, “If you live on a Hellmouth and you question the unlikely, I find that it just slows everything down.”
“We thought maybe it happened to you, too,” Willow volunteered. “But I guess not.”
“No, no, it certainly did not. What . . . have you talked to Buffy?”
“No.” Xander turned a chair around and straddled it backward. “We tried to call, but there’s no answer.”
“We walked past her homeroom on the way here and she wasn’t there either. So I guess we know a little more . . . nothing. We know nothing.” Willow had tugged the ends of her long sleeves over her hands, twisting them nervously.
“Hmm, yes.”
“But we’re okay,” Xander said hopefully. “I mean, we’re not injured, and, you know . . .” He shot a glance at a nearby patch of floor, “The Hellmouth looks like it’s neatly shut. It could be worse.”
Giles was startled, and his nerves were thin. “Xander! Time has been disrupted! Something very powerful did this for motives we can hardly begin to guess. The Slayer hasn’t been located. She may be in danger. We all may be in danger. And on top of this it’s starting to look like the Mayor is up to something—”
“Giant snake on graduation day,” Willow said simply.
“What?”
“It’s okay. We kill it.” Xander supplied. “Blow up the school in the process.”
“So you might want to start getting your favorite books out of here.”
“Stop it!” Giles was on his feet now, almost shaking with alarm. “Stop! It’s vitally important that you not tell me any more about the future!”
“Oh. Okay.” Willow nodded. “You don’t want to influence it. I get that.”
Xander nodded too. Then stopped. “Wait. I don’t get that. I mean, we know stuff that could really help you right now. And it’s not like, oh no, if we influence the past we change our present, because, frankly, there’s a lot of problems in our present and a little changing might be, you know, just what we need.”
“No.” Giles was firm. “It’s too risky.”
“Um, Giles? I’m kinda with Xander on this one. I mean, I don’t get the what’s-so-risky.”
Giles cleaned his glasses again. “Well, any knowledge of the future could affect me in unforeseen ways, my choices and emotions. For example, if I know that we will defeat the Mayor, then perhaps I don’t work as hard to make it happen.”
“You might take it for granted,” Willow supplied.
“Yes. Just knowing the outcome might make the outcome fail to happen, you see? And, for another thing, we have no way of knowing if you’re from this future.”
Xander thought he was following along pretty well, but that part threw him. “What?” he asked. “Which future?”
“The events you remember, they might have happened on a different timeline from this one, making your information dangerously misleading. Or they may not have happened at all. Perhaps someone has magickally implanted three years of false memories into your brains, although that’s a stretch.”
“Ooh. Not really a stretch,” Willow said, thinking it through. “It’s kinda like what the monks did with Dawn.”
Giles looked at her. “What monks? Who’s Dawn?”
Willow and Xander exchanged a look.
Xander cleared his throat. “Um . . . I guess that’s one of the things, one of
the things we’re not supposed to tell you about.”
Giles looked at the two of them searchingly. Obviously curious, but resisting. After a moment he went on: “Well, one thing is certain. We have to find Buffy. We need her, and she may be in some kind of danger. If something sentient did this, then it did it with a purpose.”
* * *
The darkness at the corner of Buffy’s house lay flat against the ground. Sometimes it rippled at the edges, agitated by the closeness of its goal. She was in the house, on the other side of the door. It didn’t know her name. It didn’t even know she was the Slayer, although it sensed the power. All it knew was that it had to do this. It had to clean it all up. Put things right. Others would clean up the rest of the Violators. They were probably closing in on them now. But that wasn’t its concern. It just had to get rid of her. To start to put things right.
The knowledge of its closeness to its goal made it bold. It rippled itself forward, creating a shadow where none could be, on the unshaded stoop—a deep stain of shade. It pushed forward, elongating, reaching for the door. It inched itself forward, slowly.
It was paper thin. Thinner. It slipped under the door without effort. It did not know what effort was.
It was inside the house.
* * *
Buffy stood at the bathroom sink. She stared at her own reflection, the reflection of how she’d looked three years ago. Her hair had been lighter that year, and her face a little younger, more unformed, still half child. It was distracting, leading her mind down paths of choice and regrets. She shook her head, looked down, and gripped the edge of the sink, trying to force herself to think.
She had her mother back. Alive. Buffy wanted to cry with joy at the very thought. She had her mother.
But she lost her sister.
But she had her mother.
Buffy heard her mother downstairs now, crossing the entryway from dining room to living room, probably looking for her purse, her keys, getting ready to head out to the gallery again. And Buffy knew she should go to school. She’d ducked her mother’s question earlier with a lie, but now it was clearly time to leave. She needed to seek out her friends anyway, talk to Giles, start working on making her way back into the future . . . except that the future wasn’t necessarily where she wanted to be.