Victor Hugo
Buffy had spent the next four days in bed. She hadn’t even been aware to begin with where that bed might be. She’d slept a lot of the time. Although the dreams had continued to haunt her sleep, and doubts continued to gnaw at her, she’d slowly begun to feel stronger. Her sister had brought her breakfast each morning on a tray, Buffy pecking at it unenthusiastically while Dawn sat beside her, prattling away about the progress Giles and Xander were making in establishing the new Council.
Giles’ priorities on reaching England had been to re-build the Council of Watchers, to establish a safe haven for all of the new Slayers and to search out any information about what having so many Slayers might mean to their future. In fact he saw these goals as woven together and of equal importance. He realised the new girls would need to be quickly located and identified, then offered support and training in a secure environment. It was critical that they were helped to adjust to their new powers and reach their potential. To do this Giles knew he would need to gather and utilise any and all Council resources that had escaped Caleb’s destructive reach.
Luckily, not all of the Council employees had been in the Central Office when the explosion ripped through the building. Various personnel, from secretaries to clerks to junior Watchers and even two members of the Senior Board had been away from the office that day, whether sick, on leave or at some meeting or appointment elsewhere.
And of those that had been at work, several hardy, and extremely lucky, souls had survived, trapped and injured in the rubble, but eventually rescued. A few, of course, had taken the opportunity to walk away from Council employ for ever, some of the older survivors retiring and a few administration personnel finding employment in less risky fields. Yet all up, nearly 40 assorted staff from Central Office remained, ready to carry on their work once new offices were set up.
Safe also were the Watchers in training. The Watcher’s Academy was a small elite college, set in the rural town of East Grinstead, only 30 miles south of London on the A22. The land and buildings had been purchased and founded in 1609 from funds bequeathed to the Council by the recently deceased Head of Council, Thomas Sackville. The tutors and their students, some 24 young men and women had been spared the First’s annihilation. Young and fit, they were nevertheless none of them out of their training and all without any real experience.
Giles was of course the oldest surviving Watcher on active duty, and clearly the most experienced. The First’s minions had exacted a heavy toll on the Field Watchers scattered around the world. Many of course had survived, but most of them were younger graduates themselves, often on their first assignment. Several were still traumatised by the violent deaths of their protégés; traditionally potentials survived the waiting years, studying and training alongside their Watchers until they were either called or the end of their teens knocked them out of contention.
But those that were fit and able were keen to be part of the new organization. Giles had also considered contacting several Watchers he’d known over the years that had resigned, often because of a clash of philosophy with the previous Board. Wesley Wyndham-Pryce immediately came to mind.
Personnel then, although seriously depleted in terms of experience, were available. Next he needed to find somewhere to set up the Central Office and a property on which to establish the new Slayers’ Academy. The old offices had been situated in Chancery Lane, in the heart of London’s Legal District. Unlike many tenants in this highly desirable commercial area, the Council had actually owned both the building and the land. The building itself had been fully insured and the claims were already being processed. But rebuilding could take a number of years.
In the meanwhile, a decision to set up temporary offices in one of London’s less expensive suburbs, possibly south of the Thames River, would not only save money but also allow them to re-establish immediately. Giles had contacted several well-known commercial property realtors while still in California. By the time he and Xander had touched down at Heathrow, they’d had a list of some half dozen possibilities. Before the end of their first week in London they’d selected a suite of offices in Bromley, signed a two-year lease and had organised the surviving office managerial staff from Central to get the premises ready for a return to business in a week’s time.
Finally, Giles had needed to find a suitable location to establish the new Slayers’ Academy. He required a property that was large enough to permanently house the Hellmouth survivors as well as the staff needed to run such a place, and potentially board hundreds of slayers while they were put through their initial instruction. It needed to be situated close to the London offices but be in a remote setting that would ensure privacy and the extensive grounds needed to accommodate large groups of young women on training runs and exercises. Access to conference facilities and a fitness centre were also important considerations.
Inside of a week full of numerous phone calls, further meetings with realtors and financiers, and rushed trips around the Sussex countryside, Giles had managed to sign an agreement to purchase Ashdown Park Hotel, an extensive country house and estate located in Wych Cross, only ten minutes drive from the Watchers’ Academy in East Grinstead, and half an hour from Gatwick Airport.
The buildings and grounds were luxurious and with over 100 bedrooms and suites, it would be easy to accommodate a large number of slayers. Its well-appointed meeting rooms and fitness facilities made it an ideal choice. It would be ready for handover in just under two weeks and would initially need little in the way of conversion. The only thing it would take was money – millions of pounds in fact.
But, as Giles had long suspected, the state of the Council’s financial resources was very, very healthy indeed. The organization was after all very old and had employed over the years members of many of England’s oldest and wealthiest families. It had become common practice over the last three or four hundred years for retired Watchers to bequeath quite considerable sums of money or extensive property or investment portfolios to the Council on their deaths.
One of the largest departments within Central’s office had been their financial division, charged with the responsibility of managing the Council’s investments and administering the payroll of all Council employees and the expenses involved in running such a large international organization. Thankfully, both the chief accountant and his secretary had been attending a meeting with investors in the City the day of the blast. Their survival had meant that financial matters had remained largely unaffected.
Within days of the explosion at Central, Giles had arranged pretty much unlimited access to funds in order to locate the surviving potentials, transport them to Sunnydale, and house and feed them at Revello Drive. Those funds had also paid for the living and transport expenses of the survivors since the Hellmouth battle. And at a hastily organised meeting comprising the two surviving Board members, four other senior Watchers and Giles, called on the day after he and Xander had landed, he had been granted interim Chairmanship of the Council. Giles was now the Head Watcher.
Buffy, of course, had known none of this, wrapped up as she was in her own misery. By the time she, Willow and Dawn had joined the rest of the crew living at the modest Hotel in East Grinstead, Giles had been rushed off his feet. He had already secured both properties and put managers in charge of both projects. He had officially appointed Xander as the Director of new Slayers’ Academy. His first responsibility was to get Ashdown ready for Slayer occupancy in under a fortnight. Initially this required little beyond converting a dozen of the larger suites into bedrooms and living space for up to four singles, maximising space for the crowded days ahead – a task which perfectly utilised Xander’s organisational and constructional skills.
Giles had put Willow in charge of organising the research centre at Ashdown, with Dawn as her assistant. The two girls spent the next two weeks ordering and arranging furniture, computing and copying equipment, purchasing and storing basic magical equipment and ingredients and unpacking and shelving the precious volumes, compendiums and grimoires of a magical or supernatural nature, some from Giles’ own home collection, others rescued from the ruins of either the Magic Box, or Central’s offices.
Andrew’s responsibility was to set up a comprehensive security system, complete with close circuit cameras, wireless alarms and motion detectors. The basics were already in place but he was charged with upgrading it to a more extensive system.
Faith and a still semi-convalescent Robin were in charge of the training rooms. The hotel already had an impressive array of exercise rooms including a well decked out fitness studio, a sauna, massage room, spa and pool. Their main focus then was to set up and damage–proof the gymnasium with training mats and gear, and order and arrange secure storage for a range of weapons fit for an army of warriors.
Kennedy and the other young slayers were asked to organise and furnish the new slayer suites. They had to purchase 48 single beds and the appropriate bedding and coordinate these with the décor and furnishings in each of the twelve suites. It was time for the girls to shop!
This meant that Buffy had been left very much on her own over the following fortnight. Dawn popped by each morning, and Willow often dropped in at night to share some success or other from her day. Kennedy and Vi had even turned up one afternoon, asking about her preferences in colours and fabrics and mattress firmness.
Of Giles and Xander she had seen very little at all, except for brief visits on the weekends. She had still been bothered by the dreams at night and by the constant yearning hunger for Spike’s presence during the day. She’d felt empty, part of her missing. Although she felt his absence so keenly, she still couldn’t accept he was really gone. In some ways he still hadn’t felt ‘gone’ but maybe that had been because of his desperate nightly pleas.
She’d taken to going for long walks each afternoon, out into the countryside surrounding East Grinstead. As she walked Buffy had tried to keep her mind clear, not yet been ready to start too much soul searching. But she had felt that it was time for her to begin to join the land of the living again.