"I was lying in a burned-out basement
With the full moon in my eyes
I was looking for a replacement
When the sun burst through the sky
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high
I was thinking about what a friend had said I was hoping it was a lie."
Neil Young

Rupert Giles moved a dusty box from a shelf, then blinked as sun burst into his eyes, painful after the dim of the basement.
He'd been looking for some old journals down here, a search that had taken most of the morning, but the sudden sun made him pause and then, at length, sit down. He took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and let the light warm his face. He wasn't a Saturday person. The whole weekend bothered him actually and he often spent it in the school library. A non-frantic pace didn't suit him and lulls between storms felt heavier than the downpours. What did you do when your entire life was dedicated to something but that something was taking a break?
"Lonely old fogey' flashed through his mind and he smiled. When had he become that? The smile disturbed a drop of sweat on his nose. He wiped it away, then opened his eyes and discovered cobweb and black grit on the back of his hand. Dusty old fogey.
He got up and resumed his search. The journals were his from years ago. Both sets had gone astray, the ones to be given to the Watcher's Council and the others, private diaries that he had decided to destroy rather than worry that someone might read them. A motorcycle rumbled by outside, the heavy throbbing following in its wake shaking the basement floor. He put his hand on a rattling metal shelf, to steady it, then remembered why the shelf was so agile.
A piece of loose brick behind it gave way to his fingers. He reached into the cool, black opening, pulled out the plastic-covered books, then returned the brick and the shelf. He went upstairs, blinking in the noonday sun that engulfed the main floor, plugged in the kettle, and unwrapped the plastic covering.
He had no intention of reading the journals. A crate already awaited those he planned to send on and he'd readied the fireplace for the others. He knew his past well enough and putting his hand-written words on top of his memories seemed a sickly past time but, after he'd started the first one burning, a heady smell in the smoke made him suddenly remember what he'd put in those journals besides ink.
He tried to retrieve the book, then swore at the quick burns to his fingertips. The kettle whistled as the smoulder of high-grade, Amsterdam marijuana filled his living room. Giles debated opening the windows, wondering how developed his neighbours' sense of smell might be. In the end his windows remained closed but there was either no expiration date on Netherlands-grown or his forties-plus lungs had a direct link to his brain. By the time his tea brewed, he'd decided to build a bomb shelter, mix koolaid and scotch, write a story about vampire smurfs, and breed pigeons, and all of it seemed like a good idea. The last rays of sunshine found him laying in his backyard, trying to figure out where to put the pigeon cages. A flash of red sunset caught his eye and he jumped to his feet, abruptly sober as he remembered what happened the last time he laid out in the grass at the end of the day. Jumping to his feet hadn't been a smart move either as his blood sugar bottomed out from the sparse spasm the koolaid had given it. He stumbled through his back door, coughed in the lingering whiff from the fireplace, turned on the cold water tap in the kitchen sink, and lowered his head into it.
"Very stoned fogey', he thought.
Giles settled on the floor in front of the fireplace. In between bites of a peanut butter sandwich, he checked each of his private diaries carefully before sending it to the fire. It was a difficult process. Words, names, phrases crossed his sight, caught by his innate ability to read rapidly and each bringing a memory of differing weight but none of them light. A barber's razor fell from one journal, banging to the floor and opening into the glint of firelight. He closed it carefully, his breath catching at the terrible memory it brought. He'd just put it in the bottom of his weapon's trunk when the doorbell sounded. He jumped, expecting a crisis, but the Buffy Summers he found at the door looked only ticked off, nothing more.
"Is something wrong?" Giles asked, glancing into the dark behind her. "No.....yes.....my date stood me up. Since I have no life, I thought I'd come over here and see if you still wanted me to patrol."
"Ah, yes.....I was going to do so, wasn't I?" Buffy frowned in amusement at him. "You forgot? The next time I forget something, I hope you remember this little incident." "I, ah, got caught up in something," he said as she brushed past him. She stopped in the hallway and sniffed.
"What is that?"
"I have a fire going," Giles replied but she was glancing around curiously. "That's not just wood I smell." Her face suddenly cleared. "Oh. OH!" She stared at him. "Giles!"
He rubbed his forehead. "It was in a book I burned." Buffy eyed him, stunned. "Sure it was." "It was in an old journal that I hadn't opened for years....." he started but she interrupted. "Since when have you ever set fire to your precious books?" Giles looked uncomfortable. "These ones need to be.....um.....did you say you were planning to patrol?"
"The distract-and-change-the-subject technique stopped working on me when I was two," Buffy said. "From my point of view, you've spent the day taking trips through wonderland. All by yourself too. Very un-Giles-like. I think I need to worry." He was never quite sure when she was teasing. "It was a trip I wish I'd avoided." He returned to the fireplace and quickly shoved the rest of the diaries between a chair and the wall. "Would you like a sandwich?"
"Sure," Buffy said, deliberately not looking at the books. When he went into the kitchen, she said, "How about after I patrol, I come back here and make sure you get something more in you than....." She glanced at the plate by the fireplace. "Something more than peanut butter." As she edged one of the diaries out of the pile, she heard him say, "There's no need." "Yeah, you're a grown adult, you're supposed to be looking after me, blah blah blah." She glanced at the diary, flipped a few pages, then quickly hid it in her coat when he returned to the room. "What's that on your sleeves, Giles? It looks like grass." He brushed at it, looking embarrassed. "I was outside earlier." He handed her a plate and a glass of milk, then sat in the chair by the diaries, effectively cutting her off from further sneaking.
She took off her coat, carefully, and sat both it and herself on the couch. She felt a little guilty. Her Watcher was a very private man but every time in the past, when he'd done the disappearing-lost-weekend-denial thing, it meant something bad was coming. She couldn't take the waiting anymore.
She opened the book later under a streetlight, half-expecting, when she popped the cover, for a demon to leap out at her. After all, there had been that Moloch thing. But nothing leaped and the words on the page, written in his restrained handwriting, didn't seem like much of anything to her. Buffy knew he kept journals, that all Watchers did, and she had even skimmed through a couple. This didn't seem to be much different. The date on the cover put it at twenty years before he'd come as her Watcher and the entries seemed to be notations about planetary movement or references to friends. One page looked to be a shopping list. In fact, if it was even possible, he led a more boring life than she did. So why did he want to burn it?
She closed the book, did a quick walk-through of the cemetery, then returned to the streetlight.

Giles put the last of his private journals into the fireplace. He knew he was one out and prayed that no razors would fall in Buffy's lap. She frustrated him but he couldn't, at the heart of it, blame her, not since Eyghon. Since then, they'd agreed to minimal secrets. But he preferred she simply ask him.
He was about to glance out the window for the fifteenth time when the phone rang. Doorbells, phones.....anxiously he picked up the receiver. "Hello."
The voice at the other end caused one of those pivotal moments, the kind that drop unexpectedly into the mundane everyday and change everything. By the time he hung up the phone, he'd forgotten about the journal in Buffy's hands.

"I am making an end to my course
How far is it from?
Walking through the storms
How far is it from?
The beginning of the storm
Take your heart
Take your beloved
Long journey
Heavy through the storm
One day, one night, one moment"
Enya

Buffy turned another page.
Bone and skin of starvation. The wolf was Little Red Riding Hood's orgasm avoidance. When he opened his jaws to eat her, we all knew where his first bite would be. Blood came from bone. Delirium.
She blinked at the odd prose Giles had written immediately after a mundane entry about his university class schedule.
She read it again, then turned to the next entry. Ethan here today. He found the bones. This Watcher business is dismal. I'm sure I'll be crap at it and, frankly, I don't care if vampires kill the whole damn lot of those who insist on fighting outside my window night after night. I raised a demon, a small, petty one, easily banished afterwards. In defiance of my father, tomorrow I will get an earring and bring forth another. The realm is wide open to me now. The next entry was dated a week, rather than a day forward. Ethan wishes to call it rape. I don't argue semantics. It's his own doing, the cause and effect. The punishment no doubt will be mine, an indirect result of my actions even if it was he who did the deed. We took it all to the sea but even the cold salt water steamed. Ethan is afraid of me yet would dare more than I ever could. It's possible to call demons but not angels. Why is that? I am sure the latter exist but where are they? Have I too much blood on my hands for them? I bound the last demon into a rock which Ethan and I sunk into the deepest water our boat could go to. We walked later on the sand and came suddenly upon a monk with cowl and shaved head. We tried to avoid him but he followed some distance, then called to me by my old name. When I didn't answer, he asked me where the girl was and why the water boiled just past the sandbar. Ethan and I ran back to the car and I have just finished half a bottle of scotch without being able to get drunk.
Buffy closed the journal, took a breath, and looked out into the darkness.

Sunday dawned hot and Giles rose to a house sticky with heat, despite the lateness of the season. He showered quickly, drove by the supermarket to get boxes, and returned home to start packing.
He'd expected Buffy all day but either she hadn't read the journal or didn't know how to approach him about it. After dinner, he drove to the lake and watched the tide come in. He walked past the french fry hut, a teenage hangout, idly noting Cordelia's red car in the lot. Then he climbed the rocks past the point, tugging at dead vines for handholds, and scaled the embankment to the old Sunnydale cemetery. No one had been buried here since 1940 and the old Baptist church with the tilted steeple had been long boarded up. He wandered along the headstones, glancing at the names without much interest, then crossed behind the church and into the few acres of old-growth trees left in Sunnydale. The noises of the lake and beach abruptly stopped here. The silence, disturbed only by the occasional buzz of insects, pressed against Giles' ears. He found a mossy, fallen log and sat down, stretching out his aching legs before him. As he looked up to the top of the trees, he wondered how he was going to tell Buffy that he was leaving.

The sun was still well up when he emerged from the trees an hour later, but the fall crisp had finally come to the air and he could smell barbecue smoke from the beach. He was just passing the church when he noticed an old Impala parked beside it and a light on inside. At the front, he found that the two by four's that had graced the doorway were pulled out and set to the side. The door was unlocked. "Hello?" he called and a voice from within answered so quickly that he let go of the door and jumped back, startled.
"Hello!" A man appeared, holding a tape measure and brushing sawdust from his dark hair. He smiled at Giles.
"My apologies," Giles said. "I thought this building was long abandoned but when I saw the car....."
"I just bought the place. My name's Michael Khieri." He extended a hand. "You're British, eh? What part?"
Giles shook his hand. "Devonshire. I'm Rupert Giles." Michael, in the act of raising his other hand to dislodge more wood chips, paused. "You're the Watcher I'm here to replace."
Giles nodded.
"I have your address," Michael said. "I was planning on looking you up tomorrow." He stepped back. "Come on in. I've got some cold beer." When Giles hesitated, Michael gave him another grin and added, "It's Canadian." Giles smiled in return, warming to the other's direct enthusiasm. "Well, then, of course." Michael led the way in, past pews covered with tools, tarp, and wood. He opened a small fridge that hummed just behind the altar, took out a couple of beers, tossed one to Giles, then took a seat on a paint can.
Giles pulled up another can. "Do you plan to live here?" Michael shook his head. "I'm thinking of taking an apartment in town." He bent to put his tape measure on the floor and Giles caught sight of the collar. "You're a priest," he said in surprise. "No, a boring old Anglican minister."
"I wonder what Buffy will make of that." "Is she your Slayer?"
Giles opened his beer. "Your Slayer," he corrected softly. "You're not officially retired yet, Mr. Giles," Michael said. "Do you have any plans?" "I still have my position at the British Museum," Giles answered, regarding the sight of a level perched on top of the altar with some amusement. "It's Rupert." "Rupert," Michael repeated, taking a drink. "It's nice to meet you, by the way. I've read some of your reports to the Watcher's Council on what's happened here. Also those on your Slayer. Why aren't you completely grey?" Giles studied him for a moment, then started to laugh.

"Buffy? Are you up?"
"Yeah, mom!" Buffy called back, not looking up from Giles' journal. "I don't want you to be late for school again." "I'm almost dressed!"
She wasn't, of course. And she was going to be late again, of course, but some things were more important than first period algebra. She heard the front door and her mother's car start up as she turned a page. Child of God, C.O.G. in a wheel.....amazing what I hear in Joni Mitchell songs when I'm high. It will be rather meaningless when I come down. "Who's Joni Mitchell?' Buffy thought.
Ethan and I are the main thing. The rest come and go, put off, no doubt, by how deep we're in. I suppose my father knows I've quit Cambridge. Some communication must have gone home by now. Will he bother to look for me? It's not as though we've spoken much, not since my mother's death. If it wasn't that he's put out money for my schooling, he wouldn't even notice. The only regret I have so far is this damn earring. I have to get some rubbing alcohol. Is it in the wrong ear? Diedre took one look at Ethan and stuck it in the right.
I believe the monk we saw came from the Watcher's Council. We haven't seen him since but Ethan and I have been flat-hopping and perhaps he hasn't been able to catch up. Ethan suggested the train to Basingstoke this afternoon but I'm not sure that's far enough.
(Later)
I write while Ethan sleeps. We don't have a lot of secrets left but I'd like to keep this one. We're in Bristol, surely large enough for our needs, and are bunked in one of Ethan's mate's flats. Ethan found a lovely young woman on the train but I wouldn't go for it and now he's pissed at me. He doesn't understand that magicks leave trails as visible as footprints in mud to those who understand how to read the signs. The phone rang. Buffy picked up the receiver and shoved it between an ear and a shoulder. "Hello."
She scowled. "Mom, I was just going out the door when I heard your call. Ok. See you tonight."
She replaced the receiver, glanced at the clock, then muttered, "Man, am I in deep!" She bookmarked her place in the journal and scooted out of bed.

Giles glanced up as the bell for fourth period rang. "Buffy must be late again,' he thought. Otherwise she would have checked in with him by now. Or else she didn't want to face him.
He'd laid awake most of last night trying to remember what was in the journal she'd taken. The major events she already knew but there were the smaller details, the more private ones, and he was uncomfortable with how far he cared to have her know about them now. Especially since he was going to leave her.
After lunch, he left a note for her in his office, closed the library, and went home to continue packing. It was late afternoon when his doorbell rang. "Buffy.....finally!" he started but Michael Khieri stood on the doorstep. He glanced curiously at Giles. "Buffy? As in Buffy Summers? Have you lost the Slayer before I even get a chance?"
"She's.....uh.....only slightly misplaced," Giles replied and Michael laughed. He glanced at the boxes in the hall.
"Is this a bad time, Rupert?"
"No. I could use a rest." Giles stepped back and let the other man in. "How are the renovations going?"
"I think I'm going to have to break down and call in a drywaller and someone for that steeple." Michael set a bottle of wine down on a table. "I could help you drywall but the steeple is out of my ken," Giles said, stepping around boxes. He picked one up and handed it to Michael. "I was going to send these journals on to the Council but I think you've saved me the postage. The current ones are at the library but I'll get them for you tomorrow."
"Great!" Michael said enthusiastically. Giles regarded him quietly. "Have you ever had the responsibility of a Slayer before?" "Not an active one," the other man said. "I've trained them but always sent them on. I hear Miss Summer's is quite a handful."
"Perhaps," Giles said, "but she is also alive." "To your credit, I guess." Michael glanced up from the box of journals. "To her's."
Michael eyed Giles. "You wouldn't believe what I've been told about her." "Don't prejudge."
"I haven't. I didn't. That's why they chose me." Michael put his box by the door and returned to the living room. "I've no illusions about what kind of hellmouth Sunnydale sits on. I wouldn't have volunteered but I intend to do the best possible. And I intend to keep the Slayer alive."
"And you also intend to preach?"
Michael's smile reappeared. "Everywhere I go, the first thing I do is set up shop." He paused at the sight of a cross nailed up by a window. "For some Watcher's, that symbol has fallen into part of their defence package. It sits in the bottom of a bag next to a stake and a crossbow."
Giles glanced at his duffel bag against a wall. "When can I meet Miss Summers?"
"I, uh, don't know where she is at the moment." Michael turned to him and laughed. "You have lost her." Giles paused, struck by the other's expression. "I saw her last on Saturday. She should be around soon. I.....haven't told her yet." Michael picked a journal out of the box Giles had given him. "Didn't you know it was coming, Rupert?"
Giles shrugged. "No."
The other man glanced at him. "I thought you'd requested retirement. You can always refuse."
Giles sat in a chair and rubbed his forehead with such exhaustion that Michael stopped flipping through the journal to stare at him. "Let me tell you about your Slayer," Giles said at last.

Ethan and I were walking by the quarry yesterday when we heard a flute. We couldn't find the musician but the high, mournful notes carried to us as clear as if we were right beside him. Later we heard the chanting of monks but, by then, we were already on our way home.
I killed a vampire outside our flat as we were coming in. Sheer luck, I think, for it surprised us and I hadn't been warned by any trace of vampire activity. I had a stake, an old habit, but the sight of it brought home to Ethan, for the first time, what I had come from and what I had been. Or, should I say, what I am. We have broken more rules than I care to count and have crossed a personal line I had never before considered. Since I will not bring any more women into it, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we turned to each other. Yet, this morning, we spoke neither of it nor of the vampire I killed. I keep waiting but he says nothing. I'm counting fireflies as I write this, drawn as they are by the light and the opportunity of an open window. Ethan is nervous of the window but a pane of glass would make no difference. The undead need be invited in so we are as safe as possible. He wants to move on again but I see no reason to. I have already crossed hundreds of miles without being able to escape anything whatsoever. I might as well brand "Watcher" across my forehead for demons will come to me wherever I go. (next day)
Ethan asked about the name the monk on the beach called me. I said the monk must have confused me. Knowledge of my old name is not something I wish to share . Inadvertently, I crossed twice into portals today while doing other magicks and only realised it when objects around me caught fire. I can now cause almost anything to burn simply by looking at it. Ethan finds this exhilarating but I am worried. Should I dream the wrong way, I will set our bed on fire.

Giles set an empty chinese food container on the floor as Michael poured the last of the wine into their glasses.
"The sun's set," Michael commented.
"Already? Perhaps you should stay here tonight." "I thought the hellmouth had been quiet lately." "Too quiet."
Michael glanced over. "Is that a problem?" "It always seems to be a precursor."
"To what?"
Giles regarded his wine, then emptied the glass. "To anything." Michael didn't look convinced. "I've never been anywhere I couldn't walk at night." "I'm not saying you can't do so here but tonight, can't you feel the hush? The quiet?" Giles asked.
"That's just the buzz off the wine, Rupert. When does the Slayer usually patrol?" "Anytime before eleven."
"Does she check in with you afterwards?" "Not usually." Giles settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. "Before you leave, I'd like to do a couple of patrols with her." "I'll tell her tomorrow then."
Michael picked up his crate of journals. At the noise, Giles opened his eyes and frowned. "It would be safer for you to stay here." "I'm not easily spooked, Rupert."
"Neither am I." Giles stood. "I'll walk you out to your car." Michael frowned. "Good heavens, Rupert, you're going to be leaving me here alone within the week. If there's something that frightening around, shouldn't you tell me what it is?" Giles glanced into the box, then picked out a journal and set it on top. He flashed Michael an uneasy smile. "Something for you to read in bed tonight."

Ethan picked up a woman tonight and invited her into our flat. I arrived home to find them asleep in our bed, both well under the covers. I decided to bunk out on the couch but my movements awakened her or perhaps she hadn't been asleep but simply waiting. I had just closed my eyes when I heard movement in the living room. The hallway light gave only a silhouette but then she spoke and called me by my old name and suddenly I knew just what had been invited in. Since the attack of the other night, I'd worn a cross on a chain around my neck. I pulled it out and she fled. I knew her old name as well but I didn't call her back to me, running instead into the bedroom. Ethan was still alive, barely, but when I lifted him, the two punctures on his neck opened and blood flooded underneath. The doctor at the hospital said he will pull through but looked at me suspiciously when I claimed not to know what happened. I have returned to our flat but the vampire chooses to stay away. A call to a former mate at the British Museum has confirmed the name. Drusilla.

Giles stamped a few books before picking up the phone. "Library," he said. "Can I help you?"
"Rupert, it's Michael. Interesting bedtime story in that journal of yours but I'd like to know the ending. Is Drusilla still alive?"
"She watched you walk to your car last night," Giles replied. He heard the intake of breath at the other end but Michael's voice retained his humour. "Quite a brazen girl, isn't she?"
"That's.....one of her qualities."
"Why hasn't Buffy killed her?"
Giles took off his glasses. "It's a long story." "Which I have to read for myself? No offence, Rupert, but you're wordy. What's her current game plan?"
"Game plan?" Giles echoed, then answered, "Um.....I suppose, hanging about me." "Why you? Why not the Slayer?" At the pause, Michael sighed. "All right. I'll keep reading. Does your offer of drywalling still hold?" "Yes. I'll come after work."
"With your shadow?"
"Do you mean Drusilla? She's quite insane but I doubt she'd approach two Watchers. I also plan on bringing Buffy with me."
"I look forward to meeting that young girl." After Giles hung up the phone, he locked the library and went in search of Buffy. He found Willow and Xander eating lunch in the mezzanine. "Hey, Giles!" Willow called brightly and Xander, with a mouth full of twinkie, managed to grin.
"G-man! How goes it?"
Giles frowned. "Xander." He turned to Willow. "Have you seen Buffy?" The quick look the two exchanged didn't escape Giles. "Has she skipped classes again?" "Well, a few this morning," Willow answered hesitantly. "A few? Does that mean, rather, all of them?" Giles asked. "I'm sure she'll be here soon," Willow said quickly. "I mean, she must have had something important to do. I'll tell her you're looking for her." "Thank you. I'll call her." Giles started back to the library.

Buffy ignored the ringing phone. She was only a little late, right? She glanced at the clock, then jumped. Yipes. "Well, if I'm this late,' she thought, "it's better to stay away all together.' She wondered if her mother would buy the excuse about menstrual cramps again. I was walking back from the hospital tonight when I caught sight of Drusilla just ahead of me. I stopped and waited but she would not come near and eventually I returned to my flat.
(Later)
How does one revoke an invitation? When Ethan gets out of the hospital, we shall have to move. It won't do much for the incoming tenants but I think Drusilla will follow us.
I heard her first in the hallway, calling, "Watcher," over and over. She then started singing a nursery rhyme that ended with the line ".....and every mile I curtsey....." When she finally came into the living room, I was well prepared with crosses, holy water, and a stake, but she only pouted at me and asked why tea wasn't ready. I asked her if she actually drank tea and she said, "You promised me tea, Watcher." I put the kettle on and made a pot of Earl Grey, with a stake in one hand and all the while keeping her within sight. She sat quietly in a chair and poured out the tea for us. It was a bizarre setting and her conversation even more so. We were only short a Mad Hatter to round the evening.
I should have warned her off, at the very least. Instead we drank tea and she talked aimlessly, as though she were simply speaking her thoughts aloud without much notice of me at all. I asked her questions but usually her answers made no sense. She complained often of being cold so I knew it was time for her to feed again. I kept waiting for her to attack me but, for some reason, she didn't. She left after finishing her cup and hasn't yet returned and now I see the sun starting. I should have tried taking her on for I don't know if she's killed her next victim. I don't see any indication of Drusilla's activities in the newspapers but this is a big city and likely she picked someone who wouldn't be missed. All the same, it is my fault. I had her within reach but held my hand. (Later)
She came to the flat and wanted tea again. I refused so she poured water in the kettle and made it herself, all the while telling me that I was a discourteous date. I waited until she was setting the table for tea before reaching for my stake but she was too fast for me. She is very strong despite having the appearance of being in a weakened state. She tied me to a chair with some of Ethan's belts, then sat on my lap and sang lullabies while forcing me to share a cup with her. When I complained that the tea was too weak, instead of getting angry (as I'd hoped) she promised she would try to do better next time, then kissed me. When I again tried to anger her, by saying that I wasn't interested in dating "Ethan's leavings,' she said, "but isn't that what you are to me?' She then asked if I would take her to the tower clock. I said, "right now?', hoping that she would untie me, but she said she wanted it to be our next "date'. She then did something which I shall never forget. She transformed into the demonic part that feeds and kissed me so hard that her fangs scraped the inside of my cheeks. But the frenzy didn't come upon her. Instead of feeding off me, she pulled back enough to cut her own skin with a fingernail and press my mouth against it. She then left, promising she'd return the next evening. It took me over an hour to work the belts off, after which I forced myself to be ill. Will throwing up be enough? I didn't commit to my studies far enough and do not know the extent of the risk. I truly hope, if I do change, someone is merciful enough to kill me.

Giles hung up the phone after hearing it ring futilely for the fifteenth time. If Buffy wished to avoid him, there wasn't much he could do about it. He'd stopped on the way home and knocked at her front door but that had also been ignored. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then picked up the phone again. This time his call was answered.
"Hello?" came the young woman's voice at the other end. "Willow? It's Giles."
"Giles! Hi! Did you get hold of Buffy?" "No, not yet. I need to tell her something very important." He heard Willow's sudden intake of breath and he added quickly, "Nothing like that, Willow. It's.....um.....it's about me. I need to speak to Buffy because I'm going to be leaving soon." "What do you mean leaving, Giles?"
"The Council called me last Saturday. They're sending a Watcher to replace me. He's here already, actually. Buffy needs to meet him and take him on patrol with her before I leave and....."
"Leave for where? When? Giles, why are they replacing you?" "Willow," he said in the steadiest, calmest voice he could manage. "I'm retiring. I'm going back to England to my house there and to my position at the Museum. My flight is Sunday. I need you, please, to get hold of Buffy and tell her to meet me tomorrow morning, first thing, in the library. And ask her, please, to bring the journal of mine that she has. Tell her she needs to show tomorrow, no excuses."
He heard a small, stifled noise at the other end. "Willow?" "I'm sorry, Giles," Willow said. "It's just.....Sunday's so soon!" "I've been moved around quite a bit. It's part of being a Watcher." "But, do you want to go?"
He paused. "Willow, there's not a lot of choice. The Council doesn't make these decisions lightly."
"But why would they do this now? Do all Watcher's retire at the same age and, if so, why didn't you say something before?"
He heard the unabashed hurt in her voice. "Willow, I'm sorry. I truly am. Please, would you get in touch with Buffy?"
"Yes, I'll go over there right now."
"Thank you." He hung up, took his car keys from the hall table, and left. There was no sign of movement at the church. Giles called out, then went inside and walked through.
"Michael?"
The silence and the pews, which were covered with semi-transparent tarpaulin, spooked him. He stepped over a toolbox and a coat and walked into the vestibule behind the altar. "Michael!"
The dust and shadows, thicker back here, looked undisturbed. Giles went through and out the back door.
Michael lay in the grass behind the church in the bright sunlight. "Michael!" Giles ran but the other man jerked up in surprise. "Rupert? What is it?"
Giles stopped and frowned. "Are you all right?" Michael laughed. "You're a nervous man, Rupert." Giles took a breath. "You'll be too after a while. You sure you're ok?" Michael stood. "When I feel the sun on my face, I'm reminded of God. Have you lost your faith, Rupert?"
His tone was so casual that Giles paused at it. "I'm.....I'm not sure I ever had it," he said truthfully.
Michael smiled again, glanced over, then looked again. "Good heavens!" "Excuse me?" Giles asked.
"I'm sorry," the other man said. "I didn't think you owned a pair of jeans, much less that you'd wear them."
"I did offer to help you drywall but I don't have to be so nice." As they went into the church, Michael said, "I notice you're still alone." Giles picked up a hammer. "I've left a severe message for Buffy to meet me tomorrow morning at the library. Where is your drywall?" Michael pulled a covering away from a wall and handed a sheet to Giles. As he opened a box of nails, he asked, "What's the problem, Rupert?" Giles started hammering the first sheet into place. "She got hold of a journal of mine. She may not wish to own up to taking it.....or to reading it." "Why? Your Watcher diaries are certainly open to her." "It was a private journal."
He caught sight of another grin crossing Michael's face. "You have terrible secrets?" Giles knelt to nail in the bottom. Quietly, he asked, "Have you finished the journal about Drusilla?"
"Yes." Michael got another sheet of drywall. "I asked you why Buffy hadn't killed her but I see it's not just her but Spike and Angel as well. Angel's in hell though, isn't he? It seems I heard that or something about Acathla."
"We stand on the doorway here. Nothing's so very far away." Giles finally looked over. "I sincerely hope you have faith, Michael, for if Drusilla is so determined, this church will not stand against her."
They worked in silence after that, Michael positioning drywall and holding nails while Giles hammered steadily. They completed two walls and had just started on the third when a gust of wind made the steeple creak forebodingly. "Can you reinforce it from inside until it's fixed?" "I thought I had," Michael said as he went over to the fridge. Giles sat down with his back against the wall. "Can you tape?" Michael tossed a beer to Giles. "Pardon?" "Tape the drywall," Giles repeated. "Where the seams are. Can you do that?" Michael shook his head slowly. "I know better than to try. I could hold the tape for you." Giles took a drink out of his can as Michael sat beside him. "I'll buy you the best dinner ever." At Giles' glance, he added, "Not enough bribery? I'll buy you enough booze to get thoroughly drunk as well." "Then I hope you're rich."
Michael started laughing. "Every second thing you say absolutely floors me." He took a long swig of his beer, then added, "and every first thing scares the crap out of me." Giles was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he said, "I would give my life for her." "That seems to be both a first thing and a second. She means that much to you?" "I am trusting you with someone who means more to me than my own well-being. What kind of Watcher do you intend to be to her?" "She is the Chosen One. She has to go out there. I can't keep her safe." "You're supposed to keep her as safe as possible." Michael hesitated. "Rupert, aren't you the one who decided to face the Master rather than send her into the hellmouth?"
When Giles didn't answer, Michael said, "That didn't sit well with the Council." "The Council never sits well with me."
Michael finished his beer. "When they sent me here, I wanted to meet you more than her." He stood. "Come on. Let's finish up. I'm getting hungry."

After Giles hammered in the last nail, they went to dinner as they were - sweat, plaster dust, and all. Michael picked a sports bar in Sunnydale's restaurant section, close to the gallery that Buffy's mother ran, and Giles, returning to their booth with fish and chips and a scotch, said, "Curious thing."
Michael opened the malt vinegar. "What's that?" "A chap at the bar just asked me out."
Michael shrugged. "Didn't you know this bar was here?" "No, but the question is, rather, how'd you know?" Michael smiled. "I have a network." After he passed Giles the vinegar, he added, "I guess I misjudged. If you want, we'll just eat and go." Giles paused in the act of cutting up his fish, then paused again as a round of cheering erupted from the direction of the big screen television where a soccer game was being shown. "Misjudged? Based on what?"
Michael abruptly sobered. "I am sorry. I'll take you somewhere else afterwards." Then he looked up and caught Giles' amused look. "Rupert, you bastard!" "Englishmen eat wherever the Scotch is good, Michael." After they ate, they played a game of pool, then wandered out on the patio. The noise of the sports fans was considerably less raucous here. In the dim that overlooked the city lights, couples at the tables kissed and those at the railing did a little more. Michael looked out over the dark city and commented, "I'd hate to know what's going on down there right now."
"It's been quiet lately."
"So you say."
"Who's spooked now?"
Michael shrugged. "Do you have a pager in case Miss Summers needs you?" Giles nodded.
After a few more minutes, Michael said, "What type of work will you be returning to at the Museum?"
"Ancient relics. My specialisation is in archaeology. There's a working site right now in Sri Lanka on which I've made an inquiry."
"Already? You're really looking forward to retirement." Giles paused. At his expression, Michael added, "Well, it sounds it." "Maybe I am," Giles mused.
"It seems I'm not the only one who plunges in. Rupert, you're not the least bit as the Council described you."
Giles turned to him. "And how was that?" When Michael opened his mouth, Giles suddenly cut in. "No. Don't."

"I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run,

 I took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun....."
                Charlene

I told Ethan about my taking in Drusilla's blood. It frightened him obviously, for he edged away from me when I told him. Assuring him that I had spent the morning in the park, in the sunlight, didn't seem to make much difference. He has asked me to find another flat for he refuses to return to ours when he is discharged from the hospital. I can't blame him but I would rather quit the city altogether than move to another building.
(Later)
Drusilla followed me on the way home from visiting Ethan, singing all the way. She has a curious range of songs, mostly ones a mother would sing to a small child in order to get that child to go to sleep. Drusilla did remember about the tower clock - does it have some significance to her? I told her that we couldn't make it to London tonight and that she'd have to make do with the sights in Bristol. After I stepped across the threshold of the flat, I sprinkled holy water on the floor. She regarded it in sudden fury, changing into her demonic face. I am truly in danger with her and think, perhaps, the best course would be for me to start for home tomorrow and lead her towards Rachel, my father's Slayer.

Due to a train delay, unusual as that is (could there be something behind it?), I am stuck in Basingstoke again and could only find a room over a pub. As anyone can be invited into this place, I will need to spend the night outside or risk Drusilla killing an innocent man simply out for a tipple. After this entry, I plan to hide this journal and go out to face her.

What a terrible evening. It is now morning, I have not had any sleep, and am watching a ray of sunshine approach me at this table. Will it burn me? Will it kill me? What is Drusilla's game and has she truly left as she said? I stayed always within sight of groups of people last night but it wasn't enough. She caught me unaware and dragged me into someone's back yard. I yelled but to no avail - the windows were all dark and no car was in the driveway. She laughed at my scream, then asked if I wanted to play. I asked what type of game, as well as other questions, but she would only answer with a soft whisper of, "Watcher, Watcher." Then she literally picked me up and threw me to the ground. I landed quite hard on my back, then she knelt on top of me and kissed me, again with those loathsome fangs. She drew blood from me as well, enough to make me dizzy but not enough to kill me. I told her I was tired of being her prey and to just kill me and be done with it. She said, "You're not my mouse. You're my lover." She then called me by my old name but it sounded obscene coming from her mouth. She opened my shirt and my trousers, then bunched up her dress and rubbed on me. I was sickened by this point and the fact that she is dead and cold to the touch made it worse. All through it, she kept calling my name, over and over. That I was unaroused made no difference though, for she achieved some kind of satisfaction from it. Afterwards, she bent down to my face and I thought she meant to kiss me again. I closed my eyes and turned my head away. She said, "Watcher, are you afraid?" Unfortunately, her question infuriated me. I opened my eyes but found, not her face over me, but her sex. She hissed and a sudden gush of blood out of her vulva soaked me, getting into my eyes, nose, and mouth. And thereby did she cause me to take more of her blood. The ray of sunlight is but an inch from my hand as I write. Will it burn? I am too tired to care anymore.
Though I vomited as much as I could afterwards (to her obvious delight as she laughed every time I retched) it was not enough. There is a difference. I can feel her, sense her, somewhere within me and somewhere outside. Drusilla and I are joined, linked in a way I do not understand. If I sense her, no doubt, she senses me. Wherever I go now, I will put those around me in danger. The sun was too hot and I have pulled away. Dear God. There is a catholic church down the block. I will go and ask for the priest.

Buffy looked through the window of the library doors. Giles, exactly as she ever knew him, stacked books in a cart, his movements slow and precise. She glanced at the journal in her hands, then pushed open the doors and went inside. He looked up at her entrance. Without expression, his eyes dropped to the journal, then returned back to her face, and his soft English voice asked, "Do you wish you'd never taken it?" She put it on the table in front of him. "I'm sorry." He picked it up, regarded it silently for a moment, then, with a sudden, violent motion that caused her to jump, he grabbed a chunk of it and ripped it from the spine. He moved to the counter and she heard the shredder start. "It stops at the part with the priest." Giles destroyed the rest of the pages, then the spine. "What happened afterwards.....wasn't pleasant."
"Do you still feel her?"
He nodded once. "Yes."
And then she couldn't take the tension anymore. With a sudden movement of her own, she whirled and cried, "Why are you leaving me?" "Buffy....." he started but she shook her head. "The truth, Giles! Merrick died. Now you want to leave. What am I? The Slayer nobody wants?"
"The Council has decided it's time for me to retire. It's not you." He finally did look up and the look in his eyes, though muted, was sad. "Buffy, as Slayers go, you are the strongest and most compassionate I have ever met."
Buffy blinked, then sat, head down. Giles stepped towards her but she shook her head. "But is it something I've done?"
"Good Lord, no. Buffy, no. It's not you." "Is it you?"
She lifted her eyes to find him regarding her worriedly. "It's my age," he said. "That's all." "Merrick was older than you."
"Merrick had been retired. He was sent in an emergency. Both the Slayer and Watcher before you died and then the hellmouth opened." He took the seat beside her. "This next Watcher is unusual."
"It seems they all are."
"Buffy, his name is Michael Khieri and he's an Anglican minister." "A what?"
"He's setting up a church, the old Baptist church by the beach." "An actual minister?" Buffy glared at him. "And if I refuse?" "It's out of your hands."
"I don't get a choice? Why not?"
Giles took a moment. "Buffy, please give him a chance." She studied him, then said, "You want out. You want to go!" "No, Buffy."
"Then refuse!"
"Buffy....."
"Giles! How come you say no to me but never anyone else?" She flew to her feet and paced away. He watched her circle the table. "Buffy....." he tried again but she was too angry. "No!" she retorted. "There's nothing you can say because you're not willing to say you won't go! Giles, we were getting to all the places where we could, I don't know, finish each other's sentences and stuff. We shared, you know? We told each other things we didn't tell anyone else and doing that made me feel, oh damnit Giles, it made me feel safe!" "And yet you stole my journal rather than ask me." And the moment it came out, he knew it was too much. "Every time you stop talking, something really, really bad happens!" Buffy said in a quiet, hard voice, a voice he'd heard only rarely before. "Are you going to tell me what crisis is coming now or will I have to get that from my new Watcher?"
"He'll be at your house at seven tonight to patrol with you." She started towards the door. Just before she got there, Giles said, "Buffy, I think something is coming. Drusilla has started to come back around me." "No doubt you want to get out well beforehand, Giles." "No, I....." but she was already gone and the door was swinging silently behind her.

Michael found Giles in the back yard, standing at the edge with his hands behind his back, looking over the empty lot that lay back there. "Do you know how long I knocked?" But as Michael came up beside the other, the smile dropped from his face. "Rupert?"
"Buffy will be expecting you at seven." "I know. I got your message." Michael frowned. "Rupert....." "I think, before I return to the Museum, I'll go to Bristol and see if someone I once knew is still there."
"People don't die in Bristol, Rupert. They just fall into the sewers and float away." Michael took Giles' hand. "Come here. Come feel the sun on your face." He led him to a spot between the fence and a pine tree where cones fell onto a litter of reddish needles that was hidden from passing view. "You don't have a date with that guy at the bar, do you?"
Giles managed a laugh, then he kissed Michael, feeling the other man's lips soft under his. Michael pulled him down to the pine needles, kissing in hunger and running his tongue along Giles'. Giles kissed back in despair and with a fierceness he'd long forgotten. Michael undressed him enough to get to him, brushing his mouth along the ruffle of blonde hair on Giles' chest until the latter started to moan. "Rupert, do you cry out in an English accent when you come?"
"What, I should tell you and ruin the surprise?" He arched up at him and Michael groaned. They opened each other's pants, both heavy and aroused. Giles felt Michael's hands encircle him as he reached under the waistband of Michael's underwear. Everything touched, rubbed. Michael moved on him and the peak he hadn't reached with anyone else for oh, so long rushed at him so suddenly that he groaned and came over Michael's hand and his stomach.
".....too soon....." he tried but Michael only smiled and let go himself too, falling into orgasm and shooting ropes of semen into Giles' mess. Afterwards, when Michael had stilled on top of him, Giles closed his eyes as the sun blinded him.
"Rupert, do you want to go inside and do more?" "Yes." He felt the other lift up stickily, then a kiss on his stomach where both their semen lay. He opened his eyes right into Michael's. "Hurry, Rupert. Let's go inside and I'll make you so hard, you'll beg. Then you can do the same to me."

"Still the warmth flows through me and I sense you know me well No luck, no golden chances, no mitigating circumstances now It's only common sense, there are no accidents around here I am willing, I am ready, I believe
Lay your hands on me....."
Peter Gabriel

Willow opened the door to find a tall, dark-haired man on the step. "Hello," she said.
He smiled at her, a gentle smile, an easy one, but one that crossed his face so fully that it wrinkled small lines around his deep, blue eyes. He looked at her, then made the judgement of who she wasn't quickly. "May I speak to Miss Buffy Summers, please? I'm Michael Khieri." Willow stepped back to let him in. "I'll take you. I'm Willow Rosenberg, Buffy's friend." She led him to the kitchen where Buffy waited tensely, an untouched cup of tea before her. Michael paused at the doorway. "Miss Summers, how wonderful to finally meet you." "Mr. Khieri," she said quietly. She turned her head away but the feel of his persistent, steady gaze remained.
"Would you like anything?" Willow asked. "The kettle's still hot and there's also pop." "No, thank you. I've just had dinner at Rupert's house." Michael moved around the table until he was back in Buffy's sight. "Miss Summers, it will soon be dark. Should we go?" "Sure, if you want." She shrugged and got up. Michael waited by the table. She was out of the kitchen and down the hall before realising that he hadn't followed. Buffy came back, met Willow's confused look, and said, "I thought we were both going."
To Buffy's surprise, Michael laughed. "Of course but I'd rather we go together. I don't want to spend the evening three blocks in your trail." Buffy paused, then picked up a bag from the doorway and threw it to him. "Giles always carried the weapons."
Michael caught it and if he felt the force behind the throw, he gave no sign. "What do you have in here, Miss Summers?"
"Stakes. A crossbow. Holy water. Crosses. Stuff." "How many stakes?"
She tried to stare him down. "Is this a test?" "Drusilla may be out tonight. She's been keeping an eye on me." "She doesn't usually bother me. She's got the hots for Giles." To her satisfaction, Michael lost his smile. "I don't know what you mean by that but Rupert will be indoors tonight. We, however, will not. Do I need to worry about you?" When Buffy hesitated, not sure how to answer, he turned to Willow and asked, "How will you get home?" Willow looked back nervously. "Is something going to happen tonight?" "A change of Watchers never happens quietly," Michael said. "I'd prefer that Miss Summers and I see you home."
"My dad's coming to pick me up. He should be here any minute." Michael's smile returned. "I'm very happy to have met you, Miss Rosenberg." Then he went out of the kitchen. Buffy, after a shrug to Willow, followed. "Be careful," Willow called, then glanced out the window.

"I can tell by your face that you're looking to find a place To settle your mind and reveal who you are, And you shouldn't be shy for I'm not gonna try to hurt you or heal you or steal your star Open your eyes, get up off of your chair, There's so much to do in the sunlight, Give up your secrets and let down your hair and sit with me here by the firelight. Why think all about who's gonna win out? We'll make up our story as we go along....." Carole King

Giles looked up from a box he was packing and frowned. He kept hearing the faint sounds of running water and had gone so far as to walk through his house once already this evening, looking in vain for a tap he'd finally decided didn't exist. But the sound was louder now.
He walked through the living room and hall, then stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up into the dark of the second floor. And heard the taps go off.
He took a stake out of an umbrella stand by the door and walked up, taking no care to disguise his steps. At the bathroom door, he paused, listening to the faint ripples of water moving against the sides of the tub. Then he opened the door and turned on the light. Drusilla lay in the bathtub, black hair floating on the water. "It's so warm. I've been so cold," she murmured. "But not warm enough. Watcher, make the water hot for me. Make it boil."
Giles didn't move from the doorway. Stake raised, he asked, "Why are you back?" She opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Watcher, Watcher." He glanced at the cross hung futilely on the edge of the mirror. "How did you get in?" "You let me in."
"When?"
She laughed. "When you took my blood. Where you go, my own, so do I. Who is that man who comes to your house? I don't like his eyes. He sees nasty things." "He is a man of God and the Watcher who will send the Slayer for you." But she wasn't listening anymore. Splashing the water happily, she said, "I want a boat, a yellow boat with a brown smokestack."
Giles considered his options and decided he had none. "I had a boat," she whispered. "But a little boy filled it with rocks and it sank to the bottom of the sea." She sat up. "Watcher, why do you cry?" He knew better than to try and reason with the mad yet her words made him pause. Something about them were familiar. Then she turned her eyes up to his and the anger in them made him think he should have run long ago. "Who is that I smell in your bed?"
Though his arm was starting to ache, he kept the stake raised. "Vampyr, get thee gone." "But you call. I hear you." She rocked in the water, sending it splashing out onto the floor. "When my mommy cried, we could hear her all through the house, but your crying is only in my head like a dark wiggling worm."
Giles lowered the stake. "Damn....."

Buffy peered at Michael from her perch on a headstone. "What are you doing?" He glanced over. "Pardon me, Buffy?"
"You just keep walking around and around and around." He shrugged, ignoring the frustration in her voice. "I've never liked sitting around." She took a breath. "You know, a lot of this slaying stuff is.....waiting." He stopped at a headstone and said, "This poor little one was young." "It's actually a lot of waiting in silence." "Buffy, why do so many of your friends know who you are?" "I think it had something to do with wearing an "I'm-the-Chosen-One' tee-shirt." He came up in front of her. "I understand you're not happy with what's going on but you've been through a change of Watcher before." "A loss of Watcher," she corrected. "And now I'm losing another and for no apparent reason."
"Rupert's retiring," Michael said.
"I've been on the front lines longer than he has and no one thought to offer me the handshake and gold watch. Do Slayers even get to retire?" "It's my intention that you shall."
"Yeah? That was Giles' promise too and now he can't even be bothered to stick around and see if it actually happens."
"He's been told to leave."
"Well, it sure means a lot that a man who defied a few dozen prophecies and stood up to the Master himself is so cowed by a few old men in a boardroom." "I don't think you know too much about the Watcher's Council," Michael said softly. Buffy stared him down. "I know he stood up to them before." "And they punished him by sending him to hellmouth upon hellmouth and by leaving him on his own to deal with Drusilla, year after frightful year. And that's just what I know about." Michael finally sat, though not on a headstone. He crossed his legs and sat in the dirt by the fresh grave they were waiting at. "Buffy, the Council retires for any number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the Slayer." "Meaning it has something to do with the Watcher?" Michael shrugged. "I don't know in this case. It may be something he's done or something he hasn't yet done. You have to realise that there is a reason, somewhere, and a very good one. The Council takes this type of decision so seriously that all the members must vote upon it." "I'd like to know why. I'm going to find out why." Buffy sounded so vehement that Michael eyed her worriedly.
"Buffy, the Council---"
"Not the Council," she said. "Giles. He'd know!" "But I thought you'd already asked him." "I did and he lied to me. So I'll ask him again. You've spent time with him. Weren't you curious?" she demanded.
Michael shook his head. "I don't have the right to know. It's not my place-----" Just then the ground exploded. Before he had time to react, Buffy leaped off the headstone and kicked the newly-arrived vampire into the air. The vampire sailed up, then plummeted down onto Michael. He saw it coming and the half-second of stunned expression he was allowed before it hit him was quickly replaced by a yelp, then a choke in the following cloud of ash. He jumped up but Buffy was back on the grave marker, looking as if she'd never left it. Not even out of breath, she said casually, "Are we just about finished here?" Michael stared at her.
"Mr. Khieri?" she persisted.
"Um.....sure....." He managed a nod. "I suppose we are." "Good." Buffy paced off towards the cemetery gate, leaving him wide-eyed in the settling cloud of dust.

Buffy grabbed the phone before it finished its first ring. "Giles?" "No, it's Michael. Are you looking for Rupert?" "I was hoping he'd gone out to meet you," Buffy said. "I've paged him." "I have the pager now." Michael heard a mutter that sounded like a curse. "Maybe he went to a pub or is off saying goodbye to some friends. Is his car there?" "No," Buffy said, "but the kettle boiled dry and the bathtub's filled with cold water." "I'll be right over."
"I'd rather....." Buffy started but he'd already hung up.

Michael arrived to find Buffy sitting on the front steps with the headset of Giles' phone in her hands.
"Any word?"
She shook her head.
"Is there a rule that one of you always has to be missing?" he asked as he went past her into the house. He glanced around the hallway, then went up the stairs and into the bathroom. "The cross is gone," he commented.
Buffy peered over his shoulder. "Which particular cross of the hundreds he has around here?"
"The one on the edge of the mirror," he said, eyeing the tub. "There's water on the floor. Someone was in here but they didn't use any soap." He pulled the plug, then went into the bedroom and opened the closet. "Some of Rupert's clothes are gone. There were sweaters at this end."
Buffy studied him for a long moment. "How would you know that?" "I was up here before," Michael said, without any hint of embarrassment. "In his bedroom?"
He gave her a quick look as he brushed past her to return down the stairs. "Buffy, put two and two together and then move on."
She followed more slowly. "You and Giles?" "It happens every day between people."
"Not to Giles," she managed.
Michael paused at the entrance to the kitchen. "Even to him." He gestured at a hook on the wall. "His car keys are gone. It looks like he simply packed and left but he didn't tell me he was going anywhere. I thought he was planning to stay in. As for the tub and kettle....." He said. "He had time to grab a few clothes but not leave a note." "And he's real big on notes," Buffy said. "He could have forgotten the kettle," Michael tried. "And the tub?" Buffy shook her head. "I know Giles and this is not like him. Something happened." She frowned. "Didn't you say earlier that Drusilla had been around?" "She's been keeping tabs on me," Michael said. "Anyway, Rupert wouldn't have invited her in."
"Do you know anything about her?"
"I've started reading some of Giles' journals and I knew of her before." "She and Giles once exchanged blood. Did you know that?" Buffy asked. A startled look crossed his face. "No, I didn't." Buffy took a breath. "A long time ago, she got, I don't know, obsessed about him. She managed to get him to.....you know. He made himself throw up afterwards but it wasn't enough and he had to go to a catholic priest. The priest did what he could but Giles said that he can still sense her. The last thing he said to me today was that he thought something was coming because she was hanging around him again."
"Perhaps something more than his retirement....." Michael mused. "Maybe," Buffy said, "but that's your department. You're the Watcher so you're the book guy. I can go looking for her but you're the one who's supposed to tell me what's going on. Is there some special undead fall fair coming?" "There's no significant date coming up that I know of. His current Watcher diaries are at his library. I'll go get them."
"Drusilla used to be partial to an old mansion, one of the relics that the Sunnydale Historical Society stuck a plaque on. I'll check that out." They left the house after checking to make sure every door and window was locked. At the front sidewalk, Michael asked, "If your friends Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Harris find out that we don't know where Rupert is, will they go looking for him?" "Yes."
"Then don't tell them."
Buffy blinked. "You mean, lie? Say that some exotic dancer took a shining to tweed and took off with him?"
"They don't have any reason to ask, do they?" "Willow's planning a farewell tea for him." "Buffy, you're the Slayer and I'm the Watcher. We're supposed to keep them from danger, not lead them into it." Michael looked down the street, then at the houses around them. Someone was playing country music and a faint smell of hamburgers on a barbecue came on a breeze. "Until I get my bearings here, give me as few people to worry about as possible. I'm going to the library, St. Mary's church, then back here." "Why St. Mary's?"
"I know the pastor there."
Buffy looked confused. "And he can help us?" "He can pray for Rupert." Michael got in his car. "Do you need a ride?" She shook her head, still looking askance at him. He paused before putting the car in gear. "Why is it that a little place the size of Sunnydale has forty-three churches yet I can't find a single person who believes in God?" After he drove away, Buffy slowly looked up at the sky.

Giles turned at the sound of footsteps in the aisle behind him. An elderly man, dressed in black and holding several prayer books, said politely, "Excuse me, sir, but there is a vampiress on the front steps who says she is your wife." "In the ways of her people, she might very well be," Giles said tiredly. "I am very sorry I led her to the temple, Rabbi. I had hoped to go farther tonight." The man put on his glasses, peered more closely at Giles, then smiled. "You are a Watcher, yes?"
Giles nodded. "If you wish me to leave, I'll do so right away." "Stay until morning, at least. Do not venture out until the sun returns." "That wouldn't do me any good. I'm trying to lead her away." Giles held out his hand. "I'm Rupert Giles."
The Rabbi took it and held on to it with a warm, firm grasp. "I am Rabbi Singer. You wish to lead the vampiress away from where?" "The hellmouth at Sunnydale. Something will soon happen there." Giles rubbed his forehead.
Rabbi Singer nodded. "I've been wondering. The sun has been too bright lately and there was a heat wave."
"Also the tides went off kilter. I may be wrong but it feels like the build up to Jeddah's Dance," Giles said. "Drusilla, the one on the steps, is very strong. I don't want her there. I stopped in here for a breather but I need to go back out." Rabbi Singer nodded. "Come, see this, please." He led Giles to a room farther in the temple, beyond the altar. Giles paused in the doorway. This was obviously an office, the only difference being a table in the centre upon which lay several cloths. He glanced at the Rabbi. "What should I be looking at?" "Those are prayer shawls. One is mine. Look." He pointed at them so Giles stepped forward. He caught sight of a stain, then another, and then a peculiar smell. "It smells and feels like blood. It can't be and, yet, here it is," Rabbi Singer said softly. "There are five shawls. We were wearing them last Saturday, during prayer, and they were fine when we put them on. My assistant, a young Rabbi, cried when he saw it, when he felt it. We all felt it." He looked back at Giles. "Who is left in Sunnydale?" "The Slayer and a new Watcher, an Anglican minister. He, apparently, has a lot of faith." "He has faith and you have the vampiress. It does not seem equitable. Why does she follow you and claim to be your wife?"
"I don't know why she hounds me," Giles said, rubbing his forehead again. "She has from the first. As for the other, I once swallowed some of her blood. I've done everything I can but I think the poison will be with me until my dying day." He sighed. "And maybe beyond." He was interrupted by a high, angry wail from outside. "I'll be right out, dear," he said to the window.
"She will kill you, that one, when she tires of you," the Rabbi said, looking out into the dark. "Quite probably, but I hope to take her with me." "Yet you lead her away from the Slayer." Giles met the elderly man's eyes and saw, not accusation, but sadness. "I was told to. I had better leave now, in case someone should walk by." "One moment, Watcher." The Rabbi returned to the altar and took a black cloth from the top of it. He spread it out on the altar, folded it precisely, then kissed it and reached up to drape it around Giles' neck. "If you called to her by her old name, could you bring her within these walls?"
"She may soon be able to come in without being called, if I remain here," Giles said. "My assistant is not far away. The three of us, we could bind her, yes?" "If we weren't successful, then she'd always be able to come in here." "You have doubts?" Rabbi Singer questioned, though not unkindly. Giles gently touched the prayer shawl around his neck. "I think it was one of the reasons I was told to leave." He shook the Rabbi's hand once more. "Thank you." He left by the same door he'd entered, where the steps were. Drusilla wasn't there but he didn't bother looking for her. He walked slowly to his car, got in, and waited.

"Now is the place where the crossroads meet Will you look into the future?
Where on your palm is my little line
When you're written in mine as an old memory? Never never never say goodbye to my part of your life....." Kate Bush

Willow's voice sounded incredibly hurt. "Giles left without saying goodbye? But we were going to have a tea, with scones."
"I thought Giles was too stodgy to be impolite," Xander said. "I actually found a recipe for scones. I made them myself," Willow added. Buffy looked down at the school cafeteria fish sticks she wasn't eating. "He left without saying goodbye to me too."
"Did he leave a note or a letter or anything?" Willow persisted. Buffy put her fork down. "No."
"How do we know he left?" Xander asked. "Because he's not there," Buffy said, somewhat irritated. "You mean, the house is empty, the moving people have come kind of left?" Xander pushed.
"Some of his clothes are gone. His car is gone." After a moment, Willow asked softly, "But what about his books?" When Buffy didn't answer, she started to look more worried than hurt. "He did or didn't take his books?" "Didn't," Buffy said reluctantly.
"Then he's missing!" Willow burst out. "He's gone as in no one knows where!" She stared at Buffy. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"I didn't want you to get all wigged. Mr. Khieri's looking for him." "But he doesn't know Giles," Willow said. "That's not entirely true," Buffy mumbled. "He doesn't know Giles the way we do," Willow said. "And he doesn't know Sunnydale," Xander cut in. "The way we do," Willow added. "When did you know, Buffy? Because we've been here when we could have been looking."
"I spent all last night looking," Buffy said, pushing her plate away with a sudden, violent gesture that sent the fish sticks toppling to the floor. "I don't think Giles is in Sunnydale anymore so there's nothing you could have done." "We can't just hang here," Xander started but Buffy shook her head. "Drusilla's here. She's been keeping an eye on Giles and that means something bad. You guys can't be dealing with her."
"We've dealt with her in the past," Xander said, eyeing Buffy intently. "She killed Kendra."
"Do you think she.....did anything to Giles?" Willow asked in a hushed voice. Buffy shook her head. "He packed a bag and drove. She didn't take him." There was a long moment of silence. Then Willow said, "We have to do something." "No, we don't," Buffy said. "I do."
"We do," Xander said. "It's always been us." Willow stood. "Let's go to Giles' house. Maybe he left a note but you just didn't find it yet." At Buffy's look, she added, "Xander and I have to help. You know that." "You have English in twenty minutes," Buffy managed. "We have English in twenty minutes and we just won't be there," Willow started for the cafeteria doors.

Michael Khieri glared at Willow, Xander, and Buffy. "I'm driving you back to school." Willow crossed her arms over her chest and raised her head defiantly. Her voice, however, was not quite as resolved. "We've known Giles a lot longer than you. We know Sunnydale." "I have his journals," Michael said. He turned to Buffy. "I thought we agreed....." "I got through the morning without telling them which, quite frankly, is a lot longer than I thought I could go, Mr. Khieri," Buffy shot back. "Was it the tub in the bathroom upstairs that was filled?" Xander asked. Buffy nodded. "The water in the tub was cold when we got here." Willow went up the stairs, Xander on her heels. Buffy waited, looking at Michael. "Well?" she asked at last. He took a long breath. "If you're going to be wilful, at least use my first name when you're doing so."
"Uh huh." She gestured at the pile of Giles' journals on the kitchen table. "Did you find anything?"
"Rupert's been worried for a couple of weeks and it wasn't just that it was quiet. Did you know the tides changed at the beach?" Michael opened one of the books. "He also made mention of a Watcher named Riordan Alexander. I have those journals myself in a box at the church."
"St. Mary's?" Buffy asked.
"My church," Michael said. "Mr. Alexander was among the first settlers here." "And?"
"And what?
"What did he have to say?"
"I don't know. I haven't read his diaries yet." "Why not? You're the book guy. What have you been doing?" "Reading Rupert's diaries." At her look, he added, "When I tell you that the tides changed, I can do so in two words. Rupert needs three pages." Thinking about the journal she'd taken, Buffy said uncomfortably, "He doesn't like to leave anything out in case someone might need to know it someday." Michael glanced upstairs. "Do you hear water?"

Willow and Xander were standing outside the bathroom door. Buffy heard the tub filling. "Planning on taking a bath?" she asked. "We're recreating the conditions," Willow said. "You know, when Giles came up here. What else did he do that we know of?"
"Um, he took the cross off the edge of the bathroom mirror. Then he went into his bedroom, packed a few sweaters, grabbed his car keys, and left." "But left the kettle going?" Willow shook her head. "Maybe he didn't take a bath." "He didn't have time to," Buffy said. "There was no soap in the water." "Or maybe he never meant to. Maybe somebody else was in the bathroom which was why he grabbed the cross that was in there," Willow said. "Someone else....." Michael echoed, looking suddenly worried. "Someone like....." He opened the door and they saw it.
"Giles' note," Xander said.
In the steamed mirror, in Giles' handwriting, was "21st widens. Dru and I left.'

"It's a very extraordinary scene
To those who don't understand
But what you have seen you must believe If you can
If you can....."
Michael Nesmith

Buffy glanced around the school library. It bothered her to be in here without Giles. Xander, in the stacks, and Willow, at the computer, had been extraordinarily quiet, the atmosphere affecting them too. Buffy couldn't even hear them breathing, just the rustle of pages and the muted clicking of the computer keyboard. They'd had to wait until the assistant librarian had gone before coming in, something else that bothered Buffy. At least they weren't in here with the new Watcher. He'd gone to his church after a futile request that Willow and Xander go home. Buffy couldn't take anymore. She jumped up and went over to Willow. "Anything?" "Nothing special about the 21st so far except that the PTA is having a fundraising chocolate bar sale."
"Oooh. Almond clusters," Xander commented. "Caramels this year," Willow said.
"What about that Riordan guy?" Buffy asked. Willow nodded at the screen. "Old county records show that he settled here in 1782, bringing with him from England a girl referred to as his ward. Her name was Leah Samuels. She died in 1798 at the age of eighteen. It was called death by misadventure then, but I'm thinking that she was Riordan's slayer." Xander looked over. "Did she die October 21st, 1798 by any chance?" "Yes. Why?" Willow asked.
He came over and plopped a book in front of them. "It was the same date that something happened called Jeddah's Dance."
Buffy glanced briefly at a sketch representing several winged, naked creatures dancing in a meadow before reading, "Jeddah's Dance, thought to happen every two hundred years at the site of a rumoured battlefield where the armies of Quisling the Plucky and Graol the Unclean supposedly met." She didn't dare look up but heard Xander's chuckle, covered by a cough when Willow elbowed him. "The clash, which raged from sunrise to sunset without an advance by either side, ended when the angel Jeddah, in answer to the prayers of the people in the village nearby, came out of the sky and landed upon the earth. The force of his descent was so great that an earthquake rocked the field, opening the ground and swallowing both armies whole. Quisling appealed to Jeddah, demanding the return of his army. Graol also appealed. Jeddah decided that, for a single day every second century, Quisling and Graol may meet again, at the earth's centre, to continue their battle. Their fighting supposedly causes earthquakes, changes in tide, and lunar eclipses at the earth's surface." Buffy sat up on the table. "Wow, Xander, Very Giles-like. We give you the date and you find the book." "Yeah, Xander," Willow chimed in. "Way to go." Xander coughed again. "Actually, Giles left this book open on his desk." Buffy patted him on the shoulder. "It doesn't cheapen it for us." "Now we just need Riordan Alexander's journal so that we can find out what to expect. The 21st isn't all that far away," Willow said. "If Giles were here, he'd stand near the end of the table, take off his glasses, and do his famous stuttering-professor lecture." "He'd be on his second or third lecture by now," Buffy mused. "I wonder where he went," Willow said. "What does that mean "Dru and I left'? It's not like they would pack their luggage and reserve a flight." "He left and she followed," Buffy said. "Left for where?" Willow asked. "And why hasn't he phoned us or sent a message or something? What's preventing him?"
Buffy felt a sudden chill. She hopped off the table. "I'm phoning Khieri." She'd just gotten to Giles' office when she heard the library doors and her name being called. "We found something," Willow said as Michael came in. "Something called Jeddah's Dance that's due to happen on the 21st." He blinked at her. "Yes, that's what I came to tell you. There were, supposedly, two armies....."
"We know, that met and fought blah blah blah," Buffy said. Michael closed the book he was holding. "You know about the earthquakes, the tides.....?" "And the eclipses," Buffy said.
"And all about Quisling the Plucky," Xander added. "And the chocolate bar sale." "What we need from you is what to expect and have you heard from Giles yet?" Buffy returned to her chair at the table.
Michael took a seat, still eyeing them. "What we can expect are earthquakes and more tide changes and, no, I haven't heard from Rupert." He quieted. "What was in Riordan's journal?" Willow asked finally. "We know his Slayer died during the last Jeddah's Dance."
"She was killed by a vampire," Michael said. "Well, there's a surprise," Xander said. "You don't have anything else?" Buffy asked. "Apparently not," Michael frowned.
"But it still doesn't make sense," Willow said. "Giles wrote "21st widens'. What does that mean?"
Michael glanced at her. "Oh," he said suddenly. "I'm not so far behind after all. On October 21st, every second century, all the hellmouths change which causes intense demon activity. Some of them shrink and some of them--" "Get bigger?" Xander asked.
"Widen," Michael nodded.
Buffy sighed. "Why are we always on the wrong hellmouth?" "Young Leah asked the same thing," Michael said. "In 1798, this hellmouth widened after many centuries of shrinking. An army of demons invaded the town." Willow and Buffy exchanged wary looks.
"And how many people in the town died?" Buffy asked. Michael's voice lowered. "Pretty nearly.....all of them."

"I used to have demons in my room at night Desire, despair, desire
So many monsters....."
Annie Lennox

Giles laid his Dhammapada on his lap and closed his eyes.  He heard voices behind him.....a 
child.....no, two children.  A lower voice sounded, their mother he decided.  The voices passed 

close by him but he let them go to the edge of his consciousness. The comment of the one child - "Look at that man sitting in the mud!" - barely reached him. He hadn't phoned, hadn't checked, hadn't left any message other than the one in the mirror. He was going the direction he was supposed to at the speed he was supposed to. He was doing everything he'd been told.
And when have I ever done that before? he wondered. He'd passed a phone booth earlier and had actually put his hand on the receiver. It was only the realization that Drusilla could know, would know, would take what he knew out of his brain in a second. In the space of a heartbeat, he would increase a thousandfold the danger to those he had left behind.
She followed him steadily, angrily, a bare moment behind, and where she followed, so did others. It was not him that she wanted but that which he had - the knowledge of a Watcher. She followed because she could, because he couldn't stop her, because her mark pulsed in every blood cell moving through his veins.
He'd left the phone on the hook because he knew Buffy had to rely completely on Michael. If she didn't, if he interfered, if he put her between them, she would hesitate and she would die. So Giles had left the booth, opened the Dhammapada, and settled down here where there was mud and trees and a road in sight but no phone. The children and woman went out of hearing. He opened his eyes, lifted up his book and turned a page awkwardly. He wasn't used to doing everything with one hand, especially his right hand as he was left-handed. After a few minutes he forgot and took his left hand out of his pocket to brace himself as he edged over to a grassy area. The abrupt, burning pain reminded him. He winced, pulled his arm up, then glanced tiredly at the bloody imprint of a hand in the mud beside him.

"That's going to fall," Xander said.
Michael glanced briefly at the steeple but didn't say anything as he went into his church. Willow and Buffy followed them in. "So this is an Anglican church," Willow said, looking at the gleaming pews. She sneezed into the hush, then added, "Sorry, it's the smell of paint but you did a really nice job of drywalling." Michael gave her a quick look. Buffy, a few pews ahead, paused at the sight of a journal with familiar handwriting upon the cover. Willow came up beside her. "I didn't know his middle name was Eric," she said, again in a quiet voice.
Buffy abruptly turned away from the book and said loudly, "So, what's the plan?" "Exactly," Xander echoed, "because I'm not real excited about this horde of demons thing." "How many is in a horde?" Willow asked. "I'm guessing lots," Buffy said.
Michael opened a book that had been beside the altar. "I'll sanctify the graves and mausoleums but Mr. Alexander's journal specifically said "invaded', which means the demons came from outside."
"Sanctify?" Xander questioned.
"I'll bless the ground," Michael said. "That should keep what's in, in." "You can do that?" Willow asked. "Keep the vampires from rising?" "It will work for a while, at least past the 21st." Xander frowned. "So why didn't Giles ever do that?" Michael looked uncomfortable. "He doesn't believe that he can." "He's not a minister. It's not a permanent solution anyway," Buffy said defensively. She noticed Xander glance between her and Michael. "Invaded doesn't have to mean from outside. It could mean from underneath," Willow mused.
"That's why he's going to do that thing with the ground, Will" Xander said. "I don't mean the graves," Willow said. ""Invaded' could refer to demons from inside the hellmouth itself, the Old Ones."
"Here it is," Michael said, referring to the open book he was holding. "Mr. Alexander mapped the exact location of where the hellmouth opened. From his diagrams, I'm sure we can do the same, then judge how far larger it will go. Buffy, you'll go to the widest point and I'll take the next widest."
"Fun and games," she commented as she flopped into a pew. He glanced at her quickly. "We'll do the best we can. I have a map of Sunnydale which should help." He pulled a rolled-up paper from inside the altar and spread it out overtop. Xander came up beside him. "Hey, I can see my street." Michael handed him a protractor. "Hold this, please." As he bent over the map, he said, "Whether the demons come from outside Sunnydale or from within the hellmouth makes no difference, really. The worst will occur at the hellmouth's actual location. If we can keep a handle on the situation there, we should be able to spare this town the most of it." "We as in all of us?" Willow asked.
"We as in Buffy and I," he replied.
"Xander and I can do stuff," she said.
"You and Mr. Harris will stay home."
Willow opened her mouth but Buffy cut in. "He's.....right, Will. This whole thing sounds bad. Extremely bad." She was aware that Michael raised up enough to eye her but she ignored him.
Michael took the protractor back, measured, then started drawing on the map with a red marker. Willow came up to the altar in time to see him finishing off a large triangle. "That's the hellmouth?" she asked.
"Currently," he said. "I expect it will widen where it's easiest to do so, which would be at the larger part here." He tapped the marker at the point of the triangle that had the largest angle. "That's right under us," Xander murmured and, involuntarily, looked down. Willow pointed at the longest side. "This is over a mile. You and Buffy can't keep an eye on it."
Michael straightened and said softly, "We'll have help." "Help that's not Xander and I?" Willow asked, sounding hurt. "This is not for either of you to do," he said. "Will, I guess we're just the civilians here," Xander told her in a tight voice. "Giles never pushed us away," Willow said, meeting Michael's eyes. "What you think of as being pushed away, I think of as protecting," he said softly. "What type of help are we going to have then?" Buffy cut in, still not looking up. "I've contacted two Catholic priests, a Presbyterian minister, a Rabbi, and two Buddhist monks. I'm also meeting with a few more people tomorrow." "And these guys are going to do what, exactly?" Buffy raised her head. "The minister is a woman and they're going to stand along the perimeter." "And do what?" Buffy persisted.
"Whatever they can."
"Which Rabbi?" Willow asked. "Because my Rabbi is somewhat old and frail." "Rabbi Westheim. He's young," Michael replied. "What do you mean, whatever they can?" Buffy asked. "Can these people fight?" "There are other means beside physical," Michael said. "Buffy, when you're fighting vampires, do you think you're doing so alone?" "I don't see anybody else in there staking." Michael took a breath, then came around the altar to stand in front of her pew. "Buffy, you were destined to be the Chosen One. Did you never ask yourself, destined by Who?" When she didn't answer, he added, "What I believe is a real thing. If it were otherwise, the Council would never have sent me here, especially not now, at this time." He glanced at Xander and Willow, then turned back to Buffy. "The first thing I want is keep the people in this town safe, and that includes Ms. Rosenberg and Mr. Harris. The second thing is to keep you safe, as safe as possible. Rupert was very insistent on this and it's what I promised him. It's also what I promised myself. I know my ways are not the same as Rupert's. It would not have been my first choice to come between a Slayer and her Watcher but I've told you as plainly as I know how that this was the Council's decision and they must have had a very good reason for it." "I don't doubt your priorities and, no, your ways aren't Giles'. However, his ways worked," Buffy said. "We kept this town safe when the Master forced a second harvest and we thwarted so many prophecies that they must be rethinking that whole Codex thing. Yet Giles is told to leave just when a dance is coming up. What is want is to know why. Why was he told to go and you told to come?"
"I don't know, Buffy. I've been wondering too," Michael admitted. "But I don't have the right---"
"You did have the right," Buffy said. "Furthermore, you were the last one with Giles. You could have asked."
"He's a very private man."
"I think you crossed his private line." Behind Michael, Xander and Willow's faces changed from apprehension to confusion. They didn't see his face change.
"You're angry at me," he decided. When she shook her head, he asked, "You're angry at Rupert?"
"I'm angry at everybody," Buffy muttered. Michael kneeled on the pew ahead of hers and waited until she met his gaze but the blue eyes she looked into were inexplicably sad. "Buffy, if you stay angry at me, we won't have a chance."

"We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance well they're no friends of mine We can go where we want to, a place where they will never find We can act like we come from out of this world, leave the real one far behind....." Men Without Hats

The lantern flickered. Giles glanced at it apprehensively, then across the shadowed room to a cot where Drusilla lay, had lain still and unmoving for over four hours. He'd bounced a wadded paper off her leg a while ago without any effect. Not even a breath disturbed her.
But her eyes.....
She faced him, head resting on one bent arm and her eyes, narrowed to long slits, stared at him.
Whenever the lantern light moved, her eyes glistened but didn't break their gaze. He didn't know if she was asleep or awake.
It was, he decided, the most unnerving thing she'd ever done. The lantern jumped again and he checked his watch. Two hours until sunrise, at least. He wasn't sure if the oil in the lamp would hold and the candles that had smoked and blown out at Drusilla's entrance refused to relight. He moved them outside the circle he'd drawn around himself, careful not to disturb the chalk and salt, stretched a little, then picked up a book. After a few moments, he whispered, "Dru?" Nothing.
"Drusilla?"
His bladder ached but he didn't dare leave the circle and the spell that bound it. Out loud, he started to read.
"Those who hear Gautama are always wide-awake, their thought on the teaching day and night. Those who hear Gautama are always wide-awake, their thought on the body day and night. Those who hear Gautama are always wide-awake, their thought on harmlessness day and night. Those who hear Gautama are always wide-awake, their thought on cultivation day and night."
He paused at the next line but she still hadn't moved. "What mirth is there, what joy, while constantly burning? Shrouded in darkness, why not seek a light? Better than one who recites a hundred verses of meaningless lines is one verse on hearing which one becomes calm." He looked over and asked, "Shall I go on?" And the eyes still watched him.
"All right then," Giles said, forcing a brisk tone. He picked up another book and continued, "Hear my cry, oh God. Give heed to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to Thee, when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for Thou has been a refuge for me. A tower of strength against the enemy. Let me dwell in Thy tent forever. Let me take refuge in the shelter of Thy wings."
In answer, he heard a sing-song voice whisper, "So I will sing praise to Thy name forever that I may pay my vows day by day."
Startled, he looked over. The lips moved, the eyes glistened, but she remained still, stonecold and quiet.
"Dru," Giles said nervously. The words had sounded foul coming from her and reminded him uneasily of the one exorcism he'd seen, an exorcism that had failed because the priest had been empty inside.
An exorcism that had ended in blood.
"I've had better evenings," he said at last. He adjusted his glasses and said, "Oh Lord, I call upon thee. Hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to Thee! May my prayer be counted as incense before Thee, the lifting up of my hands as the evening offering. Set a guard, Oh Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who do iniquity and do not let me eat of their delicacies."
"For my eyes are toward Thee, Oh God, the Lord. In Thee I take refuge. Do not leave me defenceless," she said softly,
Giles looked over at her, then took off his glasses and wiped his wet cheeks.

Xander turned to Willow. "Do you feel like we've been kicked out of the club?" "No.....Buffy wouldn't.....well, yes, Buffy kind of did but she wouldn't....." she stumbled. "All she said is that it wasn't safe."
"Will, it's never safe but what I'm hearing is that we're supposed to sit out on our lawn chairs on the 21st and let the demons hop in and slaughter us." "That's not what she said," Willow tried. "But it's what the new Watcher said and did you see how fast she jumped the fence to him?" Xander asked.
"No, I didn't," Willow said, though her ground was still shaky. "Willow, get off the fence."
"I'm not on the fence. Xander, it's not like we have a lot of choice." She frowned, then asked, "That comment she made about Mr. Khieri crossing Giles' personal line.....I wonder what she meant by that. There's something going on that I don't understand." "There's always something going on that I don't understand," Xander said. He regarded his sandwich, then tossed it back in his lunch bag and dug out a bag of chips. "Do you think Giles is still alive?" Willow asked suddenly. Xander stopped eating. "He may not look it but he can take care of himself." But his tone was subdued.
"If he died, would that Watcher's Council let us know?" "Those old men don't seem to be the most organised group around." Xander tossed his lunch in the garbage. Willow handed him hers to throw in as well. "Since Giles hasn't called us and since we don't know which way he went, there's not a lot we can do." "I'm not so sure," Willow mused. "Maybe we're just not looking in the right spot." Xander looked over at her and, slowly, grinned. "You look like you have an idea." "Well, I just think that if we're not supposed to be officially involved in this hellmouth widening thing, we can do something else instead." "If looking for Giles involves some serious class-skipping, I'm all in," Xander said. Willow leaned across the table. "Giles wrote in the mirror because he had no time and it was the only thing available. Also we're pretty sure that he hasn't retired but was told by the Council to leave."
"It means he was probably also told by the Council not to call us," Xander tried and Willow nodded.
"Not to call us by phone anyway," Willow said. "He's risked his life for Buffy, for all of us, time and time again. He cares so I can't see him just leaving without having some means of keeping tabs. All we have to do is think like he would." "Go for it, Will."
She blinked. "Pardon?"
"He's book-guy. You're book-girl. So, start smoking." After a few minutes of silence, Xander said, "I'm not seeing any smoke." Willow shook her head.
"Ok, I'm going to set up a picture," Xander said. "You're a forty year old man in tweed." Despite her mood, she smiled.
"You never smile," Xander said immediately. "You're too stodgy. You might almost smile if, say, someone comes into the library and actually borrows a book." "A book on British History?" she tried. "That would be reaching for the stars," Xander said. "Now, listen. You're stodgy, you're tweedy, you never go without a vest."
Willow laughed. "Xander, that's not Giles." Xander made a face. "We do go in the same library, don't we?" Willow gave him a look, then closed her eyes. "He's forty. He's English. He's very restrained but that doesn't mean passionless. He doesn't like technology." "Or anything that beeps," Xander interrupted. "He likes the old ways, tea and crumpets and books and....." Willow opened her eyes. "Books on demons and prophecies and magic." "That's because he's a Watcher. That's half the library." "Not the spellcasting books and those are only on the shelves in his office," Willow said. "Any time I did even a little spell, Giles knew. Once I did this teeny little chant on a Friday, nothing else for the whole weekend, yet on Monday he still gave me the "why-do-you-insist-onexperimenting -so-near-a-hellmouth' talk."
"Really?" Xander asked.
"It was sweet actually. He started out all severe and ended up hanging on every detail," Willow said. "It was like he missed when he used to do stuff like that in his teenage years." She lost her smile. "He said that spells are visible, that if you know how to look, they can be like beacons or flares."
They were quiet for a moment, then Xander asked, "Do you need a telescope?" "What I need are those books."
"The new librarian cleared out his office. She put up posters of kittens." "Librarians would sooner poison little children than throw out books," Willow said. "Giles' books are somewhere." She paused, then added, "Kittens? Really?" Xander sighed.

Buffy looked out the window for the twentieth time in ten minutes, then sighed and sat down on the couch. From this place she could see the front door, some of the stairs, the back door, and part of the kitchen. While it was the best place for sentry duty, it was the worst place for viewing constant Giles-reminders. Books sat on the coffee table and floor, his jacket still hung on the coat rack and, behind her on the kitchen counter, were an open canister of tea and the case for his glasses. He'd done a good deal of packing and boxes sat neatly by the front door. Buffy didn't know which was worse - the sight of his possessions left to be packed or the realization that most of them were.
She heard Michael come down the stairs. "I just can't find it," he said. "Is it that important?" she asked.

"I think so. Rupert must have thought he'd given me all of his journals but there are five weeks missing. In the diary right before, he talks about a hellmouth he was assigned to in Australia that decided, out of the blue, to get bigger. Five weeks later, he mentions that it was not a pleasant time, typical Rupert-understatement, but says nothing else." He glanced at the boxes by the door. "I'd go through that if it wasn't such an invasion of privacy." "Not that we haven't invaded it enough already," Buffy said with a shiver of remorse. Misreading her, Michael said, "Sarcasm isn't going to help us." "I wasn't talking about you," she said peevishly. "Any only a guilty person would have taken it that way."
"Guilty?" He frowned at her.
"We've made Willow and Xander feel useless." "How they feel doesn't bother me as long as I know I'm keeping them safe." When she didn't say anything more, he persisted gently, "And?" "Well, you broke that adultery commandment." "That's between Rupert and I. Why does it bother you, Buffy?" "It doesn't bother me. It surprises me." "He's a grown man."
"He's Giles. You don't know him very well. Actually, maybe you do." Buffy shook her head. "It's so.....out of character."
"Is it?" Michael sat down on a chair and ran a hand through his hair. "An awful lot has happened in a short period of time. I think we're all.....falling by the wayside." When she looked over at him, he added, "Before I came, I heard more about Rupert than about you and I truly thought he was set to retire. After I met him, I hoped he might retire close to here or, at least, spend some time. You're not the only one feeling surprised." Buffy eyed him for a while, then said, "Willow knows Giles' books and where he keeps them better than, well, us."
Michael smiled at her and, as a peace offering, said, "If I ask very nicely, do you think she would come and help us look for that journal?"

"I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going....." Joni Mitchell

"You follow a dangerous path, child," Rabbi Singer said, though kindly, as he looked at Willow as though he'd never seen her before. "Does your father know you're here?" It took all of Willow's courage and memory of Giles to say, "No, my father doesn't, Rabbi, but I'm going forward."
"How did you get this far?" he asked.
"Giles cast a protective circle in the street outside, just a little bigger than I think a car would be. He came this way."
"If you are so sure, why do you ask me to confirm it?" Rabbi Singer studied Willow, then glanced at the boy who stood silently at the door. "I can find where he's cast spells but I can't read, as yet, how old they are." "He was here six evenings ago."
When her Rabbi quieted, Willow persisted shakily, "Alone or with something else?" Despite her voice, she met his eyes. Impressed at a quality he hadn't before suspected in her, he answered, "He was with something I fear might kill you, child, should you follow." "I can't let him face it alone," Willow said. "With Xander and I, it's three against one." "Against much more than one."
"I know she's strong but---" Willow started but Singer interrupted. "He didn't leave those magicks for you to find. He has many night creatures in his wake now."
"How many is.....many" Xander asked suddenly, stepping forward. "At least ten have passed here," Rabbi Singer said. "The Watcher means to attract all that he can."
"All the more reason why he needs us!" Willow cried. "He's trying to pull them away from the hellmouth before Jeddah's Dance, isn't he?" Rabbi Singer blinked at her. Unhappily, he said, "Must you take into yourself so much of this type of knowledge, child?"
"I've already bitten off more than I can chew so I might as well keep going." The elderly man studied her uneasily. "Let the Watcher do what he is meant to do." "Not alone. I'm going to do what I can. It would be a sin for me to do less," Willow said, not defiantly, not angrily, but quite firmly. Rabbi Singer paused and was quiet for so long that Xander was just turning to go when the old man said, "I will do two things. I will give you, young Willow, all I can to protect you and the boy."
"Thank you," she said, all that she dared say, fearing that the shakes would come back into her voice.
"And then," Rabbi Singer added, "I'm calling your father."

Giles parked his car at the edge of a beach, got out, and started walking across the sand. Though the sun was bright, the ground was cold and the water angrily beat itself into white foam against the shore, casting filth and dead fish at his feet. He closed his eyes for a moment, seeing the sun red through his eyelids, then opened them and looked underneath the water.
A mile offshore, he saw what he wanted, a current that circled in upon itself, swirling green and wilful and the wrong way in the tide. Giles glanced up and down the beach to make sure he was alone, then turned back to the current. He tested it tentatively, speeding it up slightly, then slowing it down and sending it flowing in the same direction as the water around it. It responded easily, too easily, actually, as though it had been waiting for him. Giles distrusted both the overly-angry and the overly-helpful. He withdrew from the current but it fell back into its own rhythm again, stubbornly pushing against the weight of the ocean around it. He watched it for a while, then opened his jacket enough to withdraw a small vial from a pocket. A sudden wind snapped him before he could close the buttons again and he blinked at the stinging tears that rushed into his eyes. He didn't need to see anymore, however, for what he had left to do.
Speaking the water chant, Giles lobbed the vial as far as he could. It splashed, then sunk outside the current's reach. When it bobbed to the surface, it was even farther away. As Giles called the chant again, the vial jerked, then skimmed the water towards the green. It hovered for the barest goodbye, then plummeted below the surface as if grabbed from below. He sent something else into the ocean, a package wrapped in plastic. Then he returned to his car, pausing outside the door to empty the icy sand from his shoes. He preferred hiding things closer to him but had to give in to the logic that nothing in his immediate vicinity was secure anymore.
He turned on the car's heater but sat shivering as the first red wisp of sunset crossed the sky.

"If you can just get your mind together, then come across to me We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea....." Jimi Hendrix

"I don't do rooms by the hour. This is a clean establishment. Besides, you two are clearly under age." The shabbily-dressed, aramis-reeking man behind the motel counter eyed Willow and Xander with a high degree of hostility. Willow felt Xander tense up beside her and put a hand on his arm. "We're not here for rooms. We're looking for our daddy."
"Uh huh," the man said. "You sure look like brother and sister. Look somewhere else, kiddies." He turned his attention back to his magazine, the New York Post. Willow glanced between it and the rather voluptuous pictures of women which adorned the walls, then said, "He's my half-brother." "Father has a way with the women," Xander chimed in. "We think he's on another honeymoon but we really need to find him because, if he doesn't pay the rent soon, the landlord's going to change the locks." "Go live with your mother then."
"We don't know where she is," Xander said. "Where either of them are." Willow started to cry but it didn't impress the motel manager. He simply turned a page in his magazine. "We just want to know if dad and our new mom are still here," Xander said. "His name is Giles."
"Then look at the register. What the hell are you bothering me for?" The man shoved a large, brownishly-stained book across the counter. "You mean, all we had to do was ask?" Xander whispered to Willow who shrugged. They skimmed the entries for the past week, then Xander added, "He's not here, Will." "But I'm sure I sensed something from that room at the end," Willow looked over the pages again. "He must have used a different name." She glanced up and asked, "Please, sir, I just need to know if my daddy's still here. He's tall, English." "Tweed suit," Xander added. "Maybe with our new mother who has long, dark hair....." He paused when the manager abruptly looked over at them. In a tight voice, he questioned, "That English guy was your dad? Look, kids, go find your mother, or your mothers."
"He was here?" Willow asked.
"Was and gone, both of them. He was polite enough but her," the manager frowned. "I've seen a lot of nasty goods but I've never seen anything like her. I almost turned them away." "And they're gone," Willow sighed.
"Two days ago. She made some crack about poking out my eyes with those long nails of hers and damned if I don't think she might try it, neither. I didn't want to give them the room but I wasn't going to argue with her, you know. Anyway, he seemed ok and there wasn't a peep out of them all night but then, the next morning, it's only your father checking out and paying fifty dollars extra, 'for the damage to the carpet' he says. I called a guy across the road to go in the room with me because I didn't know if she was still in there or not. She wasn't but that was blood on that carpet. I swear it was. Lots of it too. If they show up again, I'm calling the cops." He shoved a phone across the counter. "Call your mothers."

Buffy approached Michael cautiously. What he seemed to be doing, to her point of view, was trying to tan his face while mumbling some kind of poem. "It's rather late in the season," she said, "though I think I still have some SPF 25." He took a moment to respond to her. She heard 'Amen' and, embarrassed, said, "Oops. Sorry."
"What did you find?" he asked.
"Nothing. I don't know which way Will and Xander have gone but I know they've gone after Giles."
"We don't have time to follow them. Don't worry, Buffy. Heading away from here is the right direction and Rupert will keep them safe. We can trust in that." "Did you find Giles' journal?"
Michael shook his head. "We'll have to do the best we can without it. I've gone through Riordan Alexander's diaries again and I think I have a pretty fair idea of what to expect. It's not going to be pleasant but we have a lot of help. Actually, I think we have enough people that I can stay with you."
"Just stay out of my staking range."
"You stay away from the edge. I can't predict how far the hellmouth with widen." He sat on the front steps and opened a map of Sunnydale. "I've sanctified most of the graveyards. The rest I'll get tonight. We'll skip training so that you can go home and rest." "You mean no patrol?" Buffy eyed him suspiciously. "I get the night off?" "To rest," Michael insisted.
"Of course."
"Let Rupert take care of them, Buffy. I need you here." "I know."
"Buffy."
"Don't nag." Buffy started for the road, then called, "Happy sanctifying!"

Xander frowned at Willow. "Anything?"
She opened her eyes long enough to say, "I'm not sure." He looked at her tense face and shook his head. "That looks painful." "Sssh," she whispered. After a few minutes, she said, "I smell salt water." Xander sniffed futilely at the air. "I smell that wino we just passed." "The ocean! I think Giles has gone to the ocean!" "He's gone surfing?"
"Wait. He told me something once....." Willow rubbed her cheek. "I remember once he said that water was his strongest asset. I didn't know what he meant at the time but we had been talking about drawing power from outside yourself. My thing's the moon." She opened her map. "If we find a bus that goes down Highway 13, we can get to the beach by tomorrow." "Do you have any money left?"
Willow opened her purse. "I've got twenty." "Enough for fare and a gourmet feast at Burger Bin. Hello triple pickle deluxe." Willow refolded the map. "Xander, do you know what day it is tomorrow?" Seriously, he said, "The big two-one."
"Giles must be planning to do something at the beach, something major. It's where he's leading Drusilla and all the other ones that are following." "Hopefully it consists of tying them all in sacks and drowning them." Xander held out his hand and helped her to her feet. "Come on, Will. Triple pickle. It will help hone your Willow the Teenage Witch senses."

"Today I don't need a replacement
I tell them what the smile on my face meant My heart going boom, boom, boom
Hey, I said, you can keep my things
They've come to take me home....."
Peter Gabriel

A noise bothered the back of Buffy's mind, had been for a few minutes. She pulled off her headphones and leaned over the edge of the tub enough to see outside. A second later, the headphones dropped to the floor. "Oh my God," she whispered. She stood, feeling the water slide coldly down her legs, then checked her wristwatch.
3 p.m.
Outside the window it was pure black.
A sudden tornado rush of wind screeched so loudly at the window that the glass trembled. Buffy scrambled for her clothes, trying to tug them on over water and soap. The glass banged again then cascaded in on her in a slicing, silvery spray. She sucked in her breath as pinpricks of blood appeared in the bubbles on her legs. She snatched the rest of her clothes and tumbled out into the hallway just as the bathroom mirror slammed open and broke into a cloud of crystal. Her first thought was of Giles, then of Angel.....both out of reach. Finally she thought of Michael. She laced her shoes with shaking fingers, paused to take a deep breath, felt her composure return, then went into her room for her weapons. The phone was ringing before she got her knapsack zipped.
"Hello? Michael?"
"Buffy, I'll be there in a few moments. Are you ready?" "Yes."
"Good. Hang on, I'm coming."
She passed the television on the way out, tuned to a station where a frightened newswoman stuttered over the top story of an eclipse and hurricane both arriving in Sunnydale at the same moment. The satellite picture behind her wavered as a booming rumble of thunder sounded. Outside, in the black-blue gloom, Buffy peered through cold mist until the headlights of Michael's car pulled up to the curb.
As she jumped in, he gently touched her shoulder and asked, "Are you all right?" She nodded. The warmth of his hand blazed just a little less than the blue eyes. To her startlement, he smiled. "You're going to be just fine, Buffy. I've seen how strong you are. Ignore the thunder and noise and all the meaningless banging. As long as we can keep the hellmouth closed, you won't face anything you haven't faced a hundred times before and defeated." He put the car into gear, then gave her another brilliant smile

Xander found Willow's hands in his as the sky opened overtop of them. "We have to find shelter!" she cried through the shriek of a thunderstorm. Xander looked frantically around but the beach, being such, was barren sand and very pissed-off ocean. The bus stop they'd walked from was three miles back. "Do you think this is from the hellmouth or is it just a storm?" Willow asked, her voice barely reaching above the noise.
Xander shook his head. "The hellmouth's back in Sunnydale." He noticed a dark area behind her. "What's that?" He pointed and she whirled around, squinting through a sheer wall of rain.
"Cliffs!"
They started running, their steps awkward on the uncertain ground. The dark area turned out to be a small area somewhat protected by the overhang of a bluff. They flattened themselves against the rocky wall and, after several gulps of air, Xander said, "I can't see Giles coming here, not in this storm."
"But this is the place, I'm sure," Willow said, "and it's the 21st. He has to come. What time is it?"
Xander shook his wrist, trying to clear the condensation out of his watch. "Seven-thirty, I think. Oh, damn. Goofy's lost an arm." "No, there it is," Willow said, her head banging Xander's as she leaned over. "Seven-thirty. Sunset is due at seven-fifty."
Xander eyed the black sky. She frowned. "Well, technically, that's when it is. Giles is probably on his way here now."
If Xander heard the shudder in her voice, he didn't comment on it. "If Giles doesn't come, we're going to have a lot more than the storm to worry about once night comes." "I have a stake," Willow fumbled in her backpack, then pulled out a piece of wood. "It's kind of wet."
Xander took it, then sat down with his back against the cold rock. Willow huddled against him but she'd only just gotten comfortable, as comfortable as she could, when she felt him tense. "Xander?"
"What's that?"
She peered out over the beach, then sucked in her breath sharply. "I hope it's just a guy walking his dog."
"Will," he whispered. "That's not a dog." Two shapes shuffled by the water's edge, edging slowly through the tempest. Behind them, several more shadows appeared, walking with the same, slow gait. One passed close by them and a sudden flash in the sky revealed two jagged fangs. Xander's grip tightened on the stake but the shadow moved past, leaving a strange single trail in the sand to be battered by the rain. "Whew," he said in her ear. "Do you smell that?" Willow drew in a breath, then recoiled from an odour that seemed to be equal parts dog faeces and burning hair.
"What is it? Them?" he asked but she shrugged. Something approached out of the black, peering at them, walking askew but quickly. Xander raised the stake but jumped at the sound of a high screech above the thunder. Whatever had seen them lost interest. It turned and flitted towards the sound. Willow plugged her ears as the scream pierced a higher octave. "What is that?" Xander yelled.
Even though she was pressed against his side, he could hardly hear her. "Drusilla, I think," she yelled back. "Come on!"
She took a step forward, then swayed as the horizon tilted. Xander, trying to grab her, lost his balance as well. They fell forward onto earth that opened to receive them.

The hellmouth opened. For all of Giles' lectures and descriptions Buffy had never understood the meaning of those three words.....until now. It opened not only to disgorge but to receive. Coming through the trees, limping over the streets, crawling through backyards and brush, the dead and the monstrous came. They came to the hellmouth.
Her arms ached. She'd killed so many that the grit in the air hovered like low-laden clouds. She could barely see Michael a few feet away, could barely hear him through the deep, rolling resonance of an angry underground. Every groan of earthquake sounded like a whale with diarrhea, painfully excreting bursts of foul gas and slimy matter. They came for Michael, sensing the Watcher. They came for the others, their ears bothered by the prayers chanted at the edge of the maw. But they came for the Slayer especially, the brightest beacon in the fog of the dead. For every one she killed, another came, and another, dead, cold, diseased and brutal. She kicked rotted legs out of hipbones, punched chunks through clammy grey stomachs, drew black blood until it coated her arms in a slick, sticky film. And still they came.
She killed a corpse with three heads, noting tiredly the three consecutive expressions of surprise that appeared, before shouting, "Michael, I've never seen things like this before! What are we--?"
But just then the ground under her feet heaved and spewed. As she started to slide down, something grabbed her from behind. She raised her fists, then saw the blue eyes and let Michael pull her clear.
"The hellmouth?"
"Getting bigger," he said grimly. They both fell under another tremor. From her new vantage point, flat on her back, Buffy saw the flat white steeple of Michael's church loom out of the blackness.
"Michael, the steeple's falling!" Buffy looked over at him but he was raising up and eyeing something at ground level. She followed his gaze, then sat up abruptly herself. From seemingly right underneath the church, a tentacle the size of a child's arm pushed out from the dirt.
"The old ones," Michael managed.
She tugged at his sleeve. "Come on. It only gets bigger." She struggled up on sore legs, then yanked him back to his feet. "Under my church?" he cried angrily.
"Why not under your church? Just because you're dead, it doesn't mean you lose your sense of irony. Now come on!"
She grabbed his arm and pushed him ahead of her.

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have known And are about to step out into darkness Faith is knowing one of two things will happen - There will be something to stand on
Or you will be taught how to fly....." Richard Bach

Throngs of shadowy demons had passed Xander and Willow, drawn towards something neither of them could yet see. The two of them tiptoed around the mass, Xander with his stake raised, keeping between the demons and Willow. But the shadows weren't interested in them and hardly noted their presence. Whatever beckoned them from the water's edge took all their attention.
Xander spit sand from his mouth, turned to Willow, then noticed that she was limping. "Will?"
"It's ok. I fell on a rock." She went to say something more, then paused, looking past him. "Xander, the ocean....."
He glanced quickly, then really looked. "The ocean," he repeated. "Is on fire," Willow whispered.
"Wow!" Xander took Willow's hand and stepped towards it. Dancing flames rode the waves, burning without smoke, crisply snapping ions out of the air and crackling in bursts of orange and red. Some fire hopped onto the sand, weaving like seals dodging sharks, and where they landed, demons hissed and backed away angrily. But mostly the flames came to dance in a circle around a tall, lone figure at the edge of the shore. Xander stopped. "Bad guy or good guy?" Willow looked over his shoulder and shook her head. "I don't know." "If it's a bad guy, we don't have a hope in---" Xander silenced when a whirl of white caught his eye. The white turned out to be a dress, then the rest of the woman came into view, her long hair whipping back from her face as she ran full-tilt through the mass of vampires on the sand. "Drusilla." Xander sucked in his breath, then nudged Willow away. "We have to go." "But we need to---"
Xander looked back. Drusilla was running straight at them. "We don't need to anything," Xander started. And then, over the wind, came a single word. "Baloldalim."
Drusilla stumbled.
"BALOLDALIM!"
"Giles," Willow said.
Drusilla halted so abruptly that she fell. When she rose, Xander saw her face change, the fangs extending, but she was turning to look behind her. She opened her mouth.
And screamed.
It seemed to Xander that he would be deafened. Even the wind seemed to stop, held back by a thrust of powerful sound wave. He'd once accidentally set off a firecracker under his nose and the detonation had deafened him for half a day, but this was worse, the difference between a pop of gunpowder and the explosion of a sun. Even Willow cried out in pain, hands pressed against the sides of her head.
"BALOLDALIM!"
The person in the circle of fire stepped forward and Xander blinked at the glint off familiar glasses. Giles simply stood, as he had so many times in the library, hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket, head bent a little on the side, his expression as quiet and restrained as ever. He was only a few hundred yards away from Xander and Willow, but Drusilla and a hundred hundred vampires were in those yards.
"WATCHER!" Drusilla shouted at him and the demons at her feet cringed. In the silence that nothing, not even the ocean's waves, dared break, Giles said, "Baloldalim, I am calling you. Come to me." "You think you can control me by that old word?" Drusilla seethed. "Be careful I don't use your true name and call you! What do you honestly think you can do here alone?" "I'm not alone," Giles said, but he was turning, not towards Xander and Willow, but to the water. The waves crested again and the flames resumed their dance. From somewhere far offshore, Xander and Willow saw something appear in the water, bobbing within the flames. Then it came towards the shore, slicing through the water like a small schooner. It deposited itself at Giles' feet. He opened the plastic covering and brought a book out into the firelight. Then, as if he was at home in a comfy corner, he opened the book, adjusted his glasses, and started to read.
Xander tried to edge forward, stopped when a demon snapped at him, and retreated with Willow against the side of a big boulder. "What's he doing?" Eyes wide, she managed, "I don't know. Some kind of spell, maybe. I don't know the language."
"We've got to do something. We can't leave him standing alone in the midst of all that." Xander looked around the bare beach but Willow grabbed his arm to keep him still. "Xander, I don't know what we can do that won't result in our immediate death. Besides, it looks like Giles has a plan of some sort. I don't think we should distract him." "Well, I hope it's a better plan than the one he had when he decided to attack Angel with a piece of burning wood. All those weapons in his house and he chooses a stick. Afterwards we spent the night in the emergency ward waiting for a doctor to see him. Remember?" Willow wasn't listening to him anymore. Frowning, she said, "It is a spell. Actually, it sounds like several of them, one on top of another." "Buffy has the sense to use a rocket launcher when she's outgunned but bookman sticks to his herbs. Damnit!" Xander breathed out in frustration. Giles paused to turn a page and a vampire near him raised a hand full of claws, but he merely continued reading in a steady tone. The demon spit, then backed away. "You are too old, Watcher," Drusilla said. "You are too old for a young man's games. Can't you feel how tired you are, how long it has been since you felt well and strong? Your eyes dim, your heart slows, and you wish nothing more than to sleep. Sleep, Watcher. Lay down and close your eyes."
Without breaking the rhythm, Giles said, "Come to me, Drusilla. Athair ar Neamh, Dia linn, m'anam, mo chroi, mo ghlir, moladh duit, a Dhia." "Does the husband call his wife like she is one of his cattle?" Drusilla screeched back. Inexplicably to Willow, Giles only smiled, then continued, "Fada an l, go smh, fada an oich', gan ghruaim, aoibhneas, thas, gr moladh duit, a Dhia. Walk to me, baloldalim." Drusilla jerked forward. "You have nothing, Watcher. Your home is far away, your family gone. Friends, there are none and the Slayer has left for another. Your work is ending, your life empty and barren. All the years you have put in and you are left with nothing at all. Your life was a waste."
"I have you," Giles said. He turned another page and continued his spellcasting. Drusilla, being forced to walk nearer and nearer to him, picked up a stone and threw it at him. It bounced off his shoulder with didn't break his words. "Moraim thu o la go la. Moraim thu o oich; go hoich'." "Elszakitanim," Drusilla said, in such a quiet tone that Willow wasn't quite sure at first that she'd heard anything.
Giles paused for the barest fraction, then resumed reading. "Elszakitanim," she repeated, a step away from him now, the fire under her dress fizzling out as if touching water.
Giles rubbed his forehead. His voice lowered until Willow could hardly hear it. A demon behind Drusilla grinned and stood, released from the spell. Drusilla took the final step. Giles looked at her and silenced. "Elszakitanim, my husband." She touched his cheek with a fingernail and a dot of blood appeared.
She smiled.

People screamed on the streets of Sunnydale. They ran, dodging one person, hitting another, shoving each other clear of doorways and any other structure that looked as if it would stand through the shaking earth. Buffy, amazed and thoroughly unsettled by it, ran the triangle of the hellmouth with Michael, checking on those who guarded the perimeter. As they neared the library, she found herself fighting off not only demons but the panic-stricken people themselves. A tenacious woman required both Michael and Buffy to dislodge her grip on Buffy's sleeve as she cried and jabbered about the earthquake. "Why is it that demons congregate at certain places but not others?" Buffy asked. "It's like there are a lot of parking spaces but they'd prefer to fight over the handicapped spots." Michael paused to consult the map on which he'd drawn the hellmouth's dimensions, then clicked off the flashlight. "You might not like my explanation." "I'm not liking the whole night. I don't think you can add much to it." "I think it has to do with our people." Buffy frowned. "Well, the two monks and the rabbi we just passed were okay but that priest by the parking lot seemed to have a demon bug-light somewhere. Are you telling me that vampires really hate rosary beads?"
"It's not the faith. It's the person." Michael paused as Buffy staked a vampire, then said, "I'll wager that Father Corsini, up ahead, is doing fine. I worried about including Father Rehan, though. He's always had.....more than a few doubts." "Not this again," Buffy mumbled. "Sometimes you sound like Pat Robertson asking for donations."
"The hellmouth has not budged where the monks and rabbi are but Father Rehan's seven feet away from where he started."
Buffy sighed. "Michael, please do me a favour and lose the tape measure."

Xander was going forward, hundreds of vampires or no. He took a step, then felt himself yanked back.
"Whoa. Where'd you get that arm?"
Willow turned her attention away from Giles long enough to say, "You can't just brazen your way through. We need a plan." After a moment, she added, "We need Buffy." "We need a flame thrower."
"We need to find a way to let Giles know we're here," Willow said. "Will, Giles is half a second away from being Drusilla's after dinner mint," Xander said. "We need to go now."
"And make two more after dinner mints?" Willow asked. "That doesn't help. Xander, force isn't going to do it. In fact, we don't have any force. We need to think." She started going through her pockets. "Do you have a match?" He checked quickly, then said, "Ha!"
Willow glanced at it dubiously. "Do you have a match that isn't wet?" She turned at the sound of Giles' voice.
"Dan y dwr, taweluch sydd, beneath the waters, it is silent," he said, reading from his book again. He faltered when Drusilla drew more blood from his cheek and licked it off, but managed to add, "Dan y dwr, galwaf I, beneath the waters I call you." "You can't kill me, Watcher. You are too old and tired. You've done your best but now it's time to give in."
"Nid yw'r swm gyda fi, there is no company with me," Giles said, not looking at her. "Dan y dwr, taweluch an byth, beneath the waters, silence for ever." "Ssh," Drusilla whispered. She ran her tongue down the side of Giles' neck and Xander started forward in horror at the line of blood that appeared. "Come and rest with me, husband. Don't you want to stop now? Haven't you given much more than anyone could?" "Dan y dwr, galwaf I, beneath the waters, I call you." Giles put the book down. "Nid yw'r swm ddim fwy gyda fi, the sound is no longer with me." He opened his hand, palm up, towards the ocean. Xander saw something small bob up to the surface, then get carried by a wave to the shore. Giles reached for it, then held it up in front of Drusilla. "You don't have any power left, Watcher," she said, ignoring the object in Giles' hand as she opened a vein in his neck. "You are coming to where I am." "No, I don't have any power. I never did," Giles said quietly. "But what I offer does." Xander, caught between a demon and a hard place, raised his stake, but paused when the flames around Giles abruptly extinguished. There was a long moment of utter dark, then the waves caught fire.
All of them this time.
The ocean blazed. It scorched right up to the clouds and steamed in huge billows to the sky. The beach grew so suddenly and so fiercely bright that Xander saw there were a lot more demons than he thought on the sand.
Fortunately, they were all trying to hide. Drusilla looked around warily. "Watcher?" Giles ignored her to open the vial in his hand. Then he took a step into the water. "Husband, what do you do to me?" she demanded. Giles tipped the vial until a drop of something fell into the water behind him. "Our blood, Drusilla. Yours and mine. Our bond."
She made a grab for the vial but Giles stepped out of reach and emptied it completely into the ocean. Then, softly, he said, "We go together." He waded in, a trail of blood in the water behind him. Drusilla screamed as the ocean swept in, gathering her and dragging her after Giles. Another wave crashed, this one tumbling into the demons nearest to the shore. Then came a third so deep that it reached to where Xander stood. He yelped in pain as the boiling water swirled around his feet and scrambled onto the rocks, reaching down to pull Willow up after him. "Giles!" Willow yelled as the full realization of what he was doing hit her, but her voice was lost in the shrieks of the dead as ocean overwhelmed the land.

"Don't get too close, this shore is cavernous and cold A marbled ocean of steaming ghosts
Alive, in my soul
I'd rather hide than fight you stealing my soul A haunted ocean is cavernous and cold
I am where the fearing dwells
Cavernous and cold....."
Delerium

Willow cried against Xander's shirt, wracking sobs that shuddered both their bodies, hard sobs that seemed hotter even than the ocean that boiled all around them. Giles was gone. Drusilla and the demons had been swept clean, and the water, slowly ebbing now, showed no trace of the hundred who had stood only moments before. The fire riding the waves slowly waned into blue embers. Xander felt something bob against his foot. He reached down in the dark and fished out a large, sodden book. "Will," he said.
She blinked, then reached for it. "Rupert Eric Giles, Christmas Creek, Australia, November 22nd to December 27th, 1978." She opened the cover and water gushed into their laps. "My God, Xander. He waited twenty years to....." Her voice caught. A small flame appeared in Xander's hand. "My match does work," he said, as he bent over the book. When the match burned down, he flicked it into the water and added, "Most of the writing's gone, Will."
She closed the cover, then set it carefully on the rocks behind them. She wiped her eyes, then paused and asked, "Xander, what's that?" Across the water, in a shaft of moonlight, a bulge of water swirled against the current, a green vortex spinning quietly in upon itself. "A whirlpool or a sandbar," Xander offered. "Wait here." He took off his jacket and eased into the water. ".....I guess this is how lobsters feel....." he whispered to himself as the strikingly hot water closed around him.
He started swimming towards the green water, twitching every time a wave spiked him, and tried not to think of what might be in there with him. He paused outside the green, but it only spun slowly. He reached a hand into it, then jerked away at the sudden cold.
"What is it?" Willow called.
He raised up enough to yell, "Don't know." He reached into the water again, then swam into it.
It moved him in a slow circle but didn't seem inclined to do anything else. He went around twice and was just swimming out to return to shore when his foot brushed against something. He abruptly recoiled. He felt another bump and, shakily, reached down. There was something there. Something rough moved across his palm, moving with the slow turn of water. Something he couldn't see. ".....oh shit oh shit oh shit....." he muttered, then reached down, took hold, and pulled it up. He had hold of a tweed jacket. It came up first, then the top of a head and, finally, the face. "Giles!" Xander cried, shaking the other as well as he could in the water. He felt under the chin, then remembered that he didn't know where to look for a pulse. "Giles!" he shouted again then, frantically, started swimming. Willow jumped in to meet him. "The water's starting to clear," she shouted, pointing at a bit of sand by the rocks. They dragged Giles onto the shore, laying him on his back. Willow tilted his head and started CPR.
"I'll go see if anybody's on the road," Xander said, scrambling up the rocks to the highway. He glanced desperately up and down the road, but it was dark and empty. He had just started back down when he caught a glint of silver. He squinted, then caught the reflection of fender off a small, old, gray car. Giles' car.
There was nothing useful in the car but the trunk opening was on the dash. In it, Xander found blankets and a flashlight. He ran, then slid back down to Willow. "There's no one around." Xander started wrapping the blanket around Giles, then paused when Willow suddenly sat back on her heels. "Xander, I can't.....I think it's too late....." "Just keep going," Xander said. "We'll get him to a hospital. Would his car keys be in his pocket?"
As he started searching, Willow bent back down. "He'd have water in his lungs," she gasped between breaths.
"Then we do this, right?" Xander rolled Giles on his stomach and, with his fists, pushed against his back. Willow joined him, pumping furiously until Xander thought she'd break Giles' spine.
Finally Xander gave up. He was just reaching for Willow, to get her to do the same, when Giles' arm jerked against Xander's leg. Giles lurched once more, then retched and flooded the ground with green water.
As he started to cough, Willow cried, "Thank God. Giles, wake up!" "Found them!" Xander held up the keys. "Come on, Will. Help me get him to the car."

"Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip Is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see

  Break the chains of your thought and you break the chains of your body too....."
                Richard Bach

Father Corsini raised his head from his hands at Buffy's approach. "Our Slayer," he said in a gentle voice and managed to give her, of all things, a smile. "How are you this morning, dearest child?"
"I keep finding new bruises," Buffy tried to find a comfortable way to sit on the bench beside him. She glanced at him, then blinked at the sun streaming off his blonde hair. As welcome as the sun was this morning, it was way too bright. "Michael and I split up just after midnight and I haven't seen him since. How'd we do?" The smile faded. "Some of us just barely hung on. Some of us.....failed. I know of three that died."
"I know of a minister," Buffy said. "I tried but---." Corsini took her hand. "No one could have done more than you, Miss Summers. You did far more than any of us dared hope. The second was Father Rehan, dragged into the hellmouth by the old ones. Rabbi Singer tried so hard to hold him, but couldn't and became the third." A fire truck went by, followed by an ambulance. Around Buffy, a few people walked as if in a daze, wandering through the rubble of the streets. "It will be put down as an earthquake," Corsini said. "And life will go on." He stood. "I should take you to a hospital, have a doctor see you." "You mean, see both of us." Buffy stood painfully as well. "I need to find Michael first." As they started down the street, Buffy continued, "It was strange." "Jeddah's Dance?" Corsini asked. "But you have been through other events such as the Harvest."
"But this lasted so long and I thought we weren't going to win it. There were so many demons. I've never seen so many at once before. We were losing ground." Buffy took a deep breath. "We were losing everything but then, it was like, all of a sudden, we were winning. I don't know what changed though."
"Would that have been just past one?"
"Yes. You noticed too?"
Corsini nodded. "It was as though something came and swept over us." He paused then, embarrassed, added, "I'm a man of God who has never before said act of God but I can't think of anything else it could have been."
They stopped at a corner while another ambulance went by. When the siren faded, Corsini said, "I walked the perimeter of the hellmouth at sunrise and it's smaller. I'd have to check but it seems we've pushed it back more than it's been for the past three hundred years." He smiled at her again and said warmly, "To your credit, Slayer. You've done very, very well." Buffy felt a flush go through her but said, "Before I start breaking out the cigars, I'd rather find out what happened just after one. When was the last time you saw Michael? Do you think he might have gone back to his church?" "I haven't seen him since he was with you. I hope he didn't return to his church alone," Corsini answered. "There was an old one there." Buffy frowned, then started walking faster.

Willow watched some nurses go down the hall. "What time is it now?" Xander shook his watch, then dropped it on a table. "Goofy has no idea. Despite all those cartoons of him sailing, he apparently doesn't like to get wet." She glanced over at him, then managed a small smile. "You look sunburned." "After making tea for forty-some years, Giles is very good at making water boil." Xander leaned forward. "That doctor has been an awfully long time." "I'm sure it'll be ok," Willow said, though not firmly enough to convince herself. "Giles was starting to come around when we got here." "Dad was starting to come around when we got here," Xander corrected. "Mother's dead, there's no one else to call, so they have to come speak to us." "I wish they'd hurry."
A little while later, a nurse came up to them. "Are you Rupert Giles' children?" Willow and Xander jumped up. "Yes. Is he ok?" "He's going to be just fine. Sometimes when people get water in their lungs, they're at risk for pneumonia, so your father has to stay here tonight so we can keep an eye on him. You can take him home tomorrow. Do you want to see him?" Giles was sitting up in his bed, pulling at the hospital gown's neck. He turned at their entrance, then said. "I wondered who they were." "Giles?" Xander asked.
"The doctor told me that my 'children' were waiting down the hall." "We have to be next of kin of they won't let us stick around," Willow said, kissing his cheek so happily that he stared at her in surprise. He glanced at Xander, then asked, "Are you sunburned?" "I went in the water after you," Xander said frustratedly. "It was pretty hot." "Good Lord, Xander." Giles eyed him for a long moment, then said softly, "Thank you." He tugged the gown from the bandage on his neck once more, then asked, "How did you find me?"
"We followed you," Willow said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "How?"
"We found your note in the mirror and Willow said that making spells was like making footprints. She was able to follow you," Xander replied. "And we found that you and Drusilla had quite the honeymoon."
Giles rubbed his eyes and said uncomfortably, "It wasn't a honeymoon." "Well, motels, wild parties, major damage to a carpet Sounds like a honeymoon to me," Xander said, but silenced at the severe, sober expression on Giles' face.. "I am grateful to you, Xander, but I hope that rescuing me did not affect what I was trying to do."
"Drusilla and all the demons were killed," Willow said. "Xander and I saw them drown." "That was a small part of it," Giles said. "What was the big part?" she asked.
"It had to do with the hellmouth in Sunnydale. You haven't heard from Buffy, by chance, have you?"
Xander shook his head. "There was a tv in the waiting room. All it said was that there was an earthquake. Buffy and Mr. Khieri had some kind of plan anyway. They had all these priests and ministers that were going to line up along the sides of the hellmouth." "He drew it out for us on a map," Willow added. "A big red triangle. The library was right in the centre."
"The hellmouth is not a triangle," Giles said. "Did it say on the news if anyone died or how bad it was?"
Willow shook her head. "We didn't hear. That's when the nurse was talking to us but it didn't sound too bad."
Giles leaned back against the pillows, looking worried. "Giles?" she prompted.
"If it must be a shape, then the hellmouth is a rectangle," he said, "and it's potential size included quite a bit more than Sunnydale." Willow and Xander exchanged a look, then Xander questioned, "How big are we going here?"
"I was at the fourth point, on the beach," Giles said. "What I planned to do had nothing, actually, to do with Drusilla. That she.....accompanied me made it more difficult but I still had hopes I wouldn't fail. I hope I haven't failed." "You hope you haven't failed at what?" Xander persisted. Giles took a breath. "Closing the hellmouth." Xander opened his mouth, shut it, then finally found something to say. "Close it? Is this, like, something maybe you could have done before?" "I don't have the power to close the hellmouth, Xander. I'm just one person," Giles said. Xander put both hands to his forehead and exclaimed, "I'm getting seriously confused." "I don't have the skill or the means," Giles said. "I only had one thing I could offer, one thing I hoped would be enough."
"And what was that?" Xander asked.
Before Giles could answer, Willow said softly, "Your life." Giles nodded. "But it was not given."
"It very nearly was," Xander said.
"I don't think that's offer enough." Giles quieted and the other two did as well. Finally, he said, "Xander, Willow, my wallet is in a duffel bag in the trunk of my car. Would you, please, take some money and phone Buffy, phone your parents, Michael, the school, anybody. Buy newspapers. Get some answers somewhere, please." "Ok." Willow hugged him again, then got off the bed. After she left, Giles said, "Xander."
Xander paused at the doorway.
"I didn't know you and Willow were on the beach. I'm very glad you weren't hurt." "It certainly turned into demonville there," Xander said. "For you to go into the water, knowing what was there and how far out I was," Giles paused, then added, "Xander, you're a very brave man." Somehow Xander managed to get more red. "No problem. You put on a hell of a light show, G-man," he said and went out the door.

"I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you, Lord
But it takes so long....."
George Harrison

When Xander and Willow returned, they found Giles dressed in jeans and a shirt and standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back. "You're supposed to stay overnight, Giles. You nearly drowned," Willow ventured. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"I went down the hall for a cup of tea and I wasn't going in that gown." Giles glanced at the newspapers Willow laid on the bed. "What did you find out?" "That the Starbucks here charges thirty cents more for a coffee than the one in Sunnydale," Xander complained.
"You should have bought yourselves a decent dinner," Giles said, picking up a paper. "We had five doughnuts each," Xander said. "That's pretty decent." He sat in a chair and continued, "A few of the older buildings fell in Sunnydale but nothing else. The earthquake didn't bother anyone quite so much as the eclipse that came just before it. Apparently every news show has a psychic guest star on." "My parents are pretty upset with me," Willow said. "No doubt," Giles said as he opened another newspaper. He caught the awkward silence that ensued and glanced up. "What is it?" Willow and Xander exchanged a look, then Willow said, "Three people died. One of them was my Rabbi."
"I'm sorry," Giles said, but Xander and Willow still looked uneasy. "And?" Giles persisted. "One person's missing," Xander said.
Giles put the papers down. "Who?"
"Michael Khieri. Buffy can't find him," Willow said. Giles sat down on the edge of the bed, looking very tired. "He wouldn't have ditched her, would he?" Xander asked. "'Cause we didn't really know the guy."
"He wouldn't have left her," Giles said. "I had no doubt about him." "You didn't really know him either though, did you? He only showed a week before you left," Xander said.
Giles looked down, then said quietly, "I knew him." He paused for a moment, then said, "Buffy's alone there right now."
"I don't know about that," Xander said. "When I was talking to her, she kept breaking off to talk to a Father this and a Father that. I think she was in the Vatican. But I did find out that the hellmouth is still there, but smaller though." "You managed to do something," Willow said. "But still there," Giles murmured and she nodded. He suddenly stood and gathered the papers. "Let's go."

Buffy scaled the last few feet of brush and hoisted herself on the bluff overlooking the water. She couldn't hear the music from the chip shack up here or see if there was anyone taking a walk on the cold beach. There were only seagulls and salt breeze and sunshine in the trees.
She walked the path to an abandoned cemetery, crackling brown and orange leaves under her running shoes. She'd seen his car and knew he'd be up here, but she wasn't really prepared for the sight after all.
In front of a white object thrust out of the ground, Giles stood silent and unmoving, a tall figure in a long coat, head bent to the ground. Buffy paused on the path, unsure if she should intrude. Without turning, he asked softly, "What class have you chosen to miss now?" "None. My study period got moved. I saw the 'closed for filing' sign on the library and figured you might be here."
She came up beside him and looked at the white monument, a large, tilted cross fastened to the top of long boards that disappeared into the ground. "There was an old one underneath," Buffy said. "When the hellmouth started to get smaller, it must have taken what it could back down with it. Michael was so angry that it would invade

his church.  He....." She trailed off.  A seagull flew high overhead, calling faintly.  "Giles, what 
is it about Watchers?  You all seem to be.....suicidal."

"No. We're just," Giles paused, then said, "stubborn." She glanced up at him, seeing for the first time the drawn lines, the grey, and the tired eyes. "There's an awful lot I don't know about you." He turned to her. "Then, start asking me." The wind picked up. Buffy took his arm and said, "Come on. Let's get out of here." He glanced at his watch. "If we hurry, you just might be on time for your algebra class." "Not in your car, I won't."
"Buffy, though you will never likely appeal to the good side of Principal Snyder, if indeed he has one, you do need to start trying a little more with classes and school functions. In fact, I hear the P.T.A. is having some sort of a fundraising sale. Caramels I believe." "No," Buffy said firmly.
"School spirit, Buffy."
She took a long breath. "No, Giles. I remember what happened the last time you ate some of the school's candy."
There was an awkward pause as they started back down to the beach. When they got to his car, Buffy said, "Giles, this secret-identity thing is a crock. So many people seem to know." He smiled as he opened the door for her. "Well, Buffy, you didn't think we were here alone, did you?"

(end)

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