CHAPTER ONE
Buffy hadn’t slept well, and as if she weren’t tired enough already, the sky was crowded with dark clouds, the air heavy and damp with the threat of rain. It was the kind of day that just made you want to pull the covers over your head and snooze all day. Like a vampire. It was the kind of day when guys and gals too hip to get cancer got all broken up because they couldn’t work on their tans.
Actually, sometimes Buffy thought it would be better if tans hadn’t become as uncool as smoking. It’d be a lot easier to tell the undead from the brain dead.
Resolved to stay awake in first period, she forced her eyes open wider. Backpack over her shoulder, Buffy marched toward school, a little early as always. Well, not always. She was never even on time at her old school, but she was trying to reform. And besides, when she showed early, she got to hang with Willow and Xander for a few minutes before the whole grand delirium of the school day began.
“Happy Halloween!” Xander cried as he caught up from behind.
Buffy smiled slightly as he fell into step with her. “Xander, isn’t Halloween, like, prom night for ghouls? The night when, all over the world, the forces of darkness are set free for their annual block party?”
“Well, yeah, but it’s all costumes and parties and trick-or-treat and—,” Xander began, but Buffy cut him off.
“And where do we live?” she prodded.
“Okay, I get the point,” he surrendered. “But things have been pretty quiet lately, so I figured, why not be a little festive during my used-to-be-favorite-before-I-knew-all-this-stuff-was-real holiday?”
Buffy gave up. “Happy Halloween to you, too, Xander.” She winced inside. The last person she’d offered season’s greetings to had called her a thundering psycho.
Xander Harris offered her a charming, crooked smile and pushed his somebody-get-me-a-comb hair away from his forehead. It seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but by then they had reached the bench where they met each morning. Willow was already there, her nose in a huge, dusty old book. The title was something about arcane rituals.
Xander peered over her shoulder. “Willow, dear Willow, you used to read such wholesome things.” He feigned almost parental disapproval. “Now you’ve just fallen in with the wrong crowd.”
Willow closed her book. “Giles loaned it to me,” she said. “Fascinating stuff, actually. Apparently, there was this sixteenth-century alchemist who—and you guys really don’t want to hear this, anyway.”
Buffy and Xander exchanged innocent looks—Who, us? Not enraptured? But it would be a cold day in a place like, well, here, when they could put anything over on her. She tutored both of them in different subjects, was an Internet commando, and once in a while had to serve as Giles’s translator, when the stuffy British librarian forgot he was speaking to people who hadn’t spent their entire lives locked up in the Twilight Zone library.
“Happy Halloween, Willow,” Buffy said warmly.
“Yeah, trick or treat, chica,” Xander added.
With her long, straight chestnut hair and sad eyes, Willow Rosenberg was every bit as sweet yet, um, inelegant as her name might suggest. But she and Xander were the best friends Buffy had ever had. They knew everything about her, about her being the Slayer, and they stuck by her. In fact, time and again, Willow and Xander put their lives on the line for her, and for the town.
Buffy was the Chosen One. Slaying was her job. Willow and Xander did all the crazy stuff by choice. As far as Buffy was concerned, her friends were a lot braver than they ever gave themselves credit for.
“I don’t know,” Willow said as Buffy and Xander sat on the bench on either side of her. “Halloween isn’t a big deal anymore. I mean, when we were kids, we got to dress up and go trick-or-treating. Once you’re in the double digits, it’s so over. I think I’m in mourning for my childhood, and I’m only sixteen.”
“Clone that,” Buffy said.
“Remember bobbing for apples at those killer Halloween parties your mom used to throw?” Xander asked Willow, and she smiled at him.
The two had known each other their whole lives, and Buffy had only come along this year. But they never made her feel left out, even when they talked about things they’d shared in the past.
“I remember you trying to drown me while I was bobbing for apples,” Willow replied, then turned to Buffy. “It’s amazing the selective memory guys have.”
“Well, you know guys only tease girls when they’re trying to get noticed,” Buffy said, and raised an eyebrow.
“I noticed him when I was, like, five years old,” Willow said under her breath. “I’m waiting for him to notice I noticed.”
“I loved those parties,” Xander went on, oblivious to Willow’s comments. “I always used to win the pumpkin-carving contest. Big fun.”
He sighed. “You’re right. Halloween sucks now. Even the horror movies on cable aren’t as fun anymore, even since . . .” He hesitated. “Ah, ever since—”
“I know,” Buffy said, sighing. “Ever since I came to town. I feel the same way. My mother and I used to watch all the classic fright flicks together and gorge ourselves on popcorn and leftover Halloween candy. Somehow I’ve lost interest in the movies. Now we just gorge ourselves.”
Buffy felt a drop of rain on her arm and was about to mention it when Willow tapped her leg.
“Wicked witch and winged monkey at ten o’clock,” she murmured.
Buffy looked up to see Cordelia and her fan club about to pass by. Cordelia paid no attention to them, but Aphrodesia Kingsbury was with her, and Buffy glanced away as the girl spotted her.
“Well, if it isn’t my stalker,” Aphrodesia sneered. “I told them all about it, Buffy, so don’t try to deny your after-hours bipolar wig out to anyone on campus.” She glared at her. “Isn’t there some kind of medication you’re forgetting to take?”
Before Buffy could respond, Xander snapped angrily, “Careful, Miss Twenty-Five-Watt. I wouldn’t make Buffy mad if I were you.”
“Xander,” Buffy hissed, and Willow elbowed him in the stomach.
“Excuse me? Are you threatening me?” Aphrodesia said, zooming in like a heat-seeking missile on Xander. “Because my sister’s fiancÉ is in law school, and, like, he told me he would serve anybody I asked him to.”
“You know, I’d love it if he served me. I can’t seem to get my own waiter’s attention and we don’t even have menus yet,” Xander mocked. “Good help. Hard to find. So.”
“Oh, you people are so . . . not,” Aphrodesia said, wrinkling her nose as if she’d smelled something nasty. “You two.” She nodded toward Xander and Willow. “It’s like Cordelia says. You’re just run-of-the-mill losers. With a lot of effort, you might actually evolve into primates. But not if you loiter with Buffy. Her weirdness is like some brain-eating virus, and it’s seriously infected your chances for a normal social life.”
By then, Cordelia and the rest of her crew had moved on, and Aphrodesia spun in a huff to follow.
The three of them were quiet until the others were out of earshot. Then Willow turned to Xander with her eyebrows raised.
“What?” Xander asked.
“Miss Twenty-Five-Watt?”
“Well, Aphrodesia’s not very bright,” Xander explained. “Twenty-five-watt. Get it?”
“Got it,” Buffy and Willow said simultaneously.
“Who writes your stuff?” Buffy asked, and the girls laughed together.
“Well, I thought it was funny,” Xander mumbled snippily.
“We’re just kidding, Xander,” Willow said. “You know we love you.”
“Good thing, or you’d both be in deep can’t-say-that-on-television,” he replied menacingly.
“Witness our trembling,” Buffy drawled.
“I have that effect on women,” Xander announced.
“So,” Willow said, “you guys both coming to the Bronze tonight?”
“The masquerade! Wouldn’t miss it!” Xander said excitedly. “I’m going as Indiana Jones.”
“Oh, I’m so not surprised,” Willow said. “You’ve dressed in that stupid hat every Halloween since you were nine.”
Xander stared at her, horrified, and Buffy stifled a laugh to save him from further embarrassment.
“If adventure has a name, my dear, it’s Xander Harris,” he said proudly. “Well, actually, it’s Harrison Ford, but women confuse the two of us all the time.”
They stared at him.
“Okay, it’s happened a couple of times . . . once . . . okay, never, but we have kind of the same hair color,” Xander explained. “Brown. And my mom thinks I look like him. I suppose you two have a better costume idea for me?”
“I’ve got one, but I’ll tell you later,” Willow said cryptically. “It’s a surprise for Buffy.”
“For me? I’m an extreme no-show tonight,” Buffy protested. “It’s the Slayer Super Bowl.”
Willow and Xander both frowned at her. For once, no snappy retorts. She was almost insulted, but then realized their silence was skeptical comment enough. Both of them knew that she’d been bored out of her mind the past few weeks.
“Okay, I am majorly sorry to have to blink and miss the...
