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Author's Chapter Notes:
Wanted to again thank everyone for the encouraging reviews. It keeps me going.

Nod to Big Man Brad, aka Curtis, for lending his name to the NY Watcher. Bradley's one of the reasons I started watching Buffy.
It was morning again, and the whole gang, Kennedy included, crowded into the kitchen. It was a rare moment – all of them together as such. They looked like extras from an episode of Lost, with all the dirt and scuffs and bandages. In the hallway, they could hear the indistinct mufflings of Giles on the telephone to New York.

Together though they were, Buffy felt like she lived in a soundproof booth between two panes of frosted glass. She had yet to recover from her encounter with Boadicea and the funerary mask. It was as though she left part of her down in the dark where Boadicea’s body lay. Fortunately, no one seemed eager to press the subject. For that, she was grateful. Reliving it was not something she wished to do in this lifetime.

Dawn sat at the table with Buffy, industriously plaiting her sister’s hair into French braids. Andrew drowsed in the chair opposite. He lay with his head on the table. At the bar, Willow busied herself with list making. Kennedy brewed coffee. William perched on the counter beside the refrigerator, looking beat and reproachful.

“Say,” Xander said. “How about I man the toaster? Nothing says post-claustrophobic’s nightmare survived like frozen waffles.”

“We have blackberry syrup in the pantry,” Dawn said. “It’s Buffy’s favorite.”

Buffy said, “I’m not hungry.”

Willow looked up from her list. “Coffee’s ready,” she said. “Buffy likes her coffee like she likes her men.”

“Dark and bitter?” Xander said, trying to nettle William. And coming up zeros.

“Sweet and blond,” Willow said. She patted William’s knee. He looked away.

It seemed that the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees.

“I’ll just get that syrup,” Kennedy said.

“Step off, Blue Laser!” Andrew shouted, snapping awake. Everyone gaped at him. He wiped drool from his mouth and smiled, sheepish. “Sorry,” he said. “It was a... dream.”

Willow tapped her list with the end of her pen. “Okay,” she said. “I think I have this. There’s good news, and there’s bad. I’ll start with the bad, because that’s what everyone seems to want to hear first anyway. The Deeper Well spell: it’s irreversible.”

Blinks all around.

Dawn said, “Supervamps are here to stay?”

“’Fraid so,” Willow said. “This Priestess of Nyr used her own formidable life force as a catalyst to drain the Old Ones’ power and spread it around to the vampires of the world.”

“So Jill came tumbling after, and the Deeper Well’s gone dry?” William said.

“If we can trust this document, yes,” Willow said.

Dawn fastened a butterfly clip to the end of one of Buffy’s braids, then began on the second. “But this Nyr chick is not the same one that Faith said is coming, right?”

“Different Priestess chick,” Willow said.

“So what about the good news?” Andrew said. “Is there a secret Fount of Power in store for the Slayers and we just have to find it?”

“No,” Willow said.

Andrew slumped.

“But the actual spell text contains a clue that I think is important,” Willow went on. “It mentions a Circle, and when I was doing my astral projections...”

Willow halted. Kennedy froze, syrup in hand.

“Go ahead. Tell them,” Kennedy said.

Willow dived into her notes to avoid Kennedy’s gaze. She said, “During my astral projections, Tara also mentioned a Circle. She said that we should look for a rose, and that it would be the completion of a Circle.”

“Cryptic also goes well with waffles,” Xander said. With thumb and forefinger, he plucked a piping hot waffle from the toaster and gingerly tossed it onto a plate. “Who gets dibs?”

They all looked at Buffy. She looked the palest of the bunch. Considering that Andrew had spent the better part of the previous night bleeding and unconscious, that had them all a bit concerned.

Buffy scanned their faces. “Guys, I’m fine. Okay?” she said, in a weak, wholly unconvincing tone. “I think Andrew should go first.”

Dawn finished the second braid, then patted Buffy’s head. “All done,” she said. “You’re Swiss Miss Buffy.”

Xander put the plate of waffles down in front of Andrew. Kennedy awarded him the syrup.

“So what’s next?” Xander asked, returning to the toaster.

“I think we should tackle the scrolls Giles brought up from Boadicea’s tomb,” Willow said. She checked Buffy for reaction to the Slayer’s name. When she didn’t respond, Willow continued. “Given their location and proximity to her final resting place, I think they must contain vital information.”

“Good,” Buffy said. “That’s... good.”

Kennedy knelt down beside the table. “I can cover your classes today,” she said, quietly. “You look like maybe you could use the rest.”

This unexpected show of compassion on Kennedy’s part brought Buffy back to Reality-ville.

“No,” Buffy said. Her brows crinkled. “I really am fine. I need to be with the girls now. I need to be there.”

William slipped from the bar. Before he could tempest from of the room, Giles stepped under the archway into the kitchen. They could tell by his even-more-sober-than-usual expression that the conversation had not gone well.

“I just got off the phone with Embry in New York,” Giles said. “It appears that Faith and Wood left three weeks ago, in pursuit of this Priestess. They hit a snare in New Orleans involving a Berithi demon and an imploding salt dome. Wood wound up in a hospital. Embry was sure they would return home after that, but then...”

“Faith didn’t give up. She continued to track the Priestess,” Buffy said. “Did Embry have any idea where they were headed?”

“No,” Giles said. “And there’s more. The Watcher assigned to the school in New York – a young fellow by the name of Curtis Logue – he’s committed suicide.”

“What? Why?” Buffy asked, standing up too fast. A laser show of sparks sprayed across her field of vision. She gripped the edge of the table to steady herself.

“I mean to find out,” Giles said. “I’m going to New York. I’ve booked a flight for this evening. Andrew and Willow, I’ll need you to take charge of the research here. Are you up for it?”

Andrew gagged on a bite of waffle, then swallowed it down. He clapped a hand over his heart and said, “It is my finest day. Andrew Wells, Watcher Extraordinaire.”

“And I’ll just go get ready for school,” Dawn said, then added, hopefully, “Unless?”

Buffy pointed into the hallway. Dawn stomped off.

Willow said, “Do you really have to go? I mean, New York: it’s on the other side of the Atlantic. And there is so much work to do here. And I’m fairly certain in a city like that you will have to use that charmy necklace thing I gave you.”

Giles looked genuinely touched. “You all have gotten along just fine without me in the past,” he said.

Buffy drifted from the kitchen, weaving between them like a ghost.

“Buffy?” Giles said.

She made no remark, but slipped up the stairs. When they heard the door close, Xander rounded the breakfast table.

“Okay,” he said, hush-voiced. “So not liking the traumatization of Buffy. It’s almost like she’s back from the dead again again.”

William lowered his head. “It’s exactly like she’s back from the dead again,” he bit out. “Put her in a grave is what we did.” He flicked a seething glance at Giles.

“It was necessary,” Giles said, hiding behind his Watcher facade.

“You have no idea what you put her through,” William snarled.

“No more than you ever have...” Giles said, coldly.

William lunged at him. Xander was there to hold him back.

“Hey! Hey,” Willow shouted. “Not a time for scrapping among... house mates. Okay? We need to be cool.”

“Cool like Fozzie,” Andrew said.

William shrugged free and left them.

Giles was shaken. He removed his glasses with trembling hands and made a mess of trying to clean them.

“Giles?” Willow said.

“Actually, there is something more,” he said. “Harold Damas...”

“Archival architect guy,” Andrew pitched in.

“Yes,” Giles said. “He referenced a kind of Compendium of Prophecies. It is supposed to reside in the archive, but I have begun to doubt its existence.”

“A Compendium? Like a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book for prophets?” Xander asked.

“It was a hobby for him,” Andrew explained. “Yeah. Some guys collect toys or stamps. The whole entire Damas family liked to collect together and edit prophecies.”

“You Watchers,” Kennedy said. “Very, very dull bunch of guys.”

“Yes, well,” Giles said. “Search through the scrolls. Andrew, go through the boxes in my office. I know there are more recovered volumes in the basement. Leave no page unturned. If you find this Compendium, seek out any reference at all to the Shanshu Prophecy.”

Willow was scribbling in her notebook. “Shanshu,” she said. “Got it. Anything else?”

Giles studied each of them with a sense of knotting trepidation. He said, “Take care of each other. I’ll return as soon as I can.”

~*~

Willow shared a tendency with Einstein in that she blocked out certain things when she was really deep in thought. For instance, she was upstairs, in the hallway, going over her notes, when Kennedy tried and failed to catch Willow’s attention. And she was in the bedroom, on the bed, still going over notes, when Kennedy pounced her.

Willow squealed.

“I like that noise,” Kennedy said.

Willow sat back up. “Kennedy. I don’t think now is a good time.”

Kennedy removed the notebook from Willow’s grasping fingers. “Now is the right time,” she said. “What I have planned will only take a few minutes, but the effects will last all day long.”

Willow kept her body upright. “Kennedy,” she said, plaintively.

Kennedy laced her fingers behind the small of Willow’s back. She stared at Willow in a way that drove out other thoughts – once more Einstein-esque.

“A ‘no’ answer is not an option,” Kennedy said, firm in many ways. “This will be good for both of us.”

Willow felt herself getting bendy. “Hmm. Hands in good places,” she whispered. “What’s gotten into you, to make you so... with the emphatic temptiness?”

Kennedy leaned close to Willow’s ear, easing her backward as she spoke. “Something happened, made me realize you’re worth fighting for.”

“And you didn’t know that before?” Willow asked. Her eyelids slid closed involuntarily.

Kennedy slowly worked the buttons on Willow’s blouse. She said, “I knew it, Willow. Just didn’t know I did.”

~*~

“You’re dressed,” William said.

Their bedroom was dark. In the absence of light she was a creature of quicksilver and shadow.

“I am,” she said. It seemed every syllable she spoke caused her pain.

“You’re going?”

“Yes.”

William crossed the room. He welcomed the lack of brightness. Gave him a chance to shake off the venom he harbored toward Rupert. Gave him a chance to be with her, without looking at her.

“Please stay,” he whispered. He touched his thumb to the cusp of her collarbone. When she did not shy away, he lay his palm over the hollow of her throat.

“I can’t. I have to tell the girls. I know what we have to do,” she said. “We have to find Thellian. And I have to kill him.”

~*~

Xander considered himself on this side of things. Yeah, he had lost an eye in the epic battle against the ultimate evil and most of his friends possessed super powers, but he was Mr. Conventionality.

Play by the rules.

Look both ways when crossing the street.

Punch the time clock at 8 a.m. and not a minute late.

He had seen enough of the real-life jeebies to make Vincent Price duck and cover, but at the end of the day, he was glad to call himself the straight man. Even if it meant that when push came to shove, it usually shoved him.

And yet...

Here he was in traffic on his way to work, with the nagging feeling that something felt not right. He had watched this movie on cable a few nights back, before the whole Mines of Moria extravaganza at the archive. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but it had the girl who played Rachel on Friends in it, and the ending had really cheesed him off.

The movie was about this girl who lived in the middle of Boredsville, and at the end, she had a choice that could change it all. On the left, she had a wild, messy, exciting kind of life with this boy she kinda loved. On the right, she had day-to-day zombification at the local Safeway. She chose the dull. It spun him completely. He went to bed thinking, why would anybody actually choose that?

Yet here he sat, in traffic on a Monday morning, getting ready to wedge his Volvo between an articulated lorry and a tourist bus.

He thought, If I take a left at Waterloo Road, I can head in to the site and continue my very important work on the ATS (Ancient Text Storage – a name he coined himself and was very proud of). But if I take a right and cross Waterloo Bridge, I can swing by Go Ask Alice to check on Maya.

Even though Maya had now thrown him out of her shop twice.

Even though Maya bore all the earmarks of a book that had long lost its table of contents.

He still thought about her, and when he did, his knees went wonky. Xander knew wonky knees had to mean something.

The light changed from red to green. Xander Harris had a choice to make. Left or right.

Maybe it was the Holden Caulfield overtones that got him. Xander clicked on the turn signal and turned right onto Waterloo Bridge, not having the inkiest inkling how such a small decision could change his life forever.





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