At night in a mortuary in Sunnydale, Buffy, Xander and I hopped out of three coffins with flashlights.

"Hey," Xander told us.

Buffy jumped slightly. "Sorry."

"33 minutes," I told them.

"Since when do we go through all this trouble for one lousy vampire?" Xander asked. "Excuse me, one lousy potential vampire?"

"Vampire by vampire," I told them. "It's the only way I know how."

There was a knocking sound from one of the smaller coffins. We walked closer to open it.

Dawn was inside, fairly cramped, gasping for air, getting out. "I think this thing has a freaking child lock on it,"

"Shh," I told her.

"You know, I'm not the shortest one here," Dawn told us. "I don't know why I had to be in the kid coffin."

"Look, I know it's our job..." Buffy trailed off.

"No, no, I'm sorry," Xander told us. "I wanna help. I guess I've been a bit stressed out lately. I'm sorry  I took it out on you."

"No big," I told them. "Been kinda stressed myself."

"Well, the whole Willow sitch is not unstressifying," Dawn told us. "I mean, she's here, but not 'part of the gang' here and hopefully not 'under my feet here in another time dimension' here."

"There's Willow," Buffy told us. "There's the looming humongo bad. And it's a school night. I should be home in bed, cuddled up to my insomnia, and worrying about how I'm gonna mess up tomorrow."

"You'll be fine," I told her. "You'll be a great counselor."

"It's my first week actually talking to the kids," Buffy told us. "What if their problems are all weird and tricky?"

"I think you underestimate your familiarity with the world of weird and tricky," Xander told her. "This job's perfect for you."

"Check out perfect me," Buffy told us.

I walked toward the casket containing a dead woman, with them following, shining the flashlight in the dead woman's face, inspecting her, the potential vampire. "Taking my sister on an educational outing to the--"

"Dead body," Dawn finished.

"I don't know," Xander told us. "Amateur opinion here, but she looks dead. I mean like natural causes dead."

"The paper said she had unusual cuts and contusions on her neck," I told them, shining the flashlight on the dead woman's neck, and right below her pearl necklace there were two puncture wounds that had been stitched up.

"Maybe she cut herself shaving and then died naturally of embarrassment," Xander told us.

Buffy handed her flashlight to Xander.

Dawn frowned. "She looks... peaceful."

The woman opened her eyes, shifted like a vampire. "I am not peaceful."

"That, I can help with," I told her, taking out a stake, plunging it into the woman's heart, turning her into dust. "I always thought closed caskets were more tasteful anyway."

I closed the lid to the woman's casket.

~~~~~~~

Willow, Xander and I were walking through a park the next day, talking about Buffy at her job.

"I bet she's giving them great advice," Willow told us.

I nodded. "Absolutely. Those kids are lucky to have Buffy looking out for them. I just wish she believed it. She's still stressing over the whole 'dropped out of college, not actually qualified' thing. Plus, the salivating Hellmouth underneath her, and the whole..."

"From beneath you, it devours," Xander finished. "It's not the friendliest jingle, is it? It's no 'I like Ike' or 'Milk: it does a body good'."

"I know," Willow told us. "It's gonna be bad. It's gonna be real bad. And I wonder will I... well, if it comes--when it comes, will I be able to help?"

"I think so," I answered.

"I don't know," Willow told us. "I don't know what I can do. I mean, frankly, I'm--I'm scared of what I might do."

"Yeah, I get that," Xander told her. "Figuring out how to control your magic seems a lot like hammering a nail." Willow and I exchanged a confused look. "Well, uh, hear me out. So you're hammering, right? Okay, well at the end of the hammer, you have the power, but no control. It takes, like, two strokes to hit the nail in, or you could hit your thumb."

"Ouch," I told them.

"So you choke up," Xander told us. "Control, but no power. It could take like ten strokes to knock the nail in. Power, control. It's a tradeoff."

"That's actually not a bad analogy," Willow told him.

"Thanks," Xander told her.

"Except... I'm less worried about hitting my thumb, and more worried about going all black-eyed baddy and bewitching that hammer into cracking my friends' skulls open like coconuts," Willow told us.

"Right," I told her. "Ouch."

"Sorry," Willow told us. She hesitated nervously, sadly. "Zoey... Xander, being back here... I don't know."

"It'll take time," I told her. We sighed, stopping next to the opening of the cemetery. "Are you sure you're ready for this?"

Willow nodded, walking away without Xander me, walking by herself past many graves, before stopping at Tara's grave, putting a handful of rocks on the headstone, kneeling in front of it. "Hey." She touched Tara's name on the headstone. "It's me."

Xander and I watched her sadly.

~~~~~~~

Buffy had come to my house where Xander, Willow and I were after her job because she said that a student named Cassie told her that she was going to die Friday night, and she said she had seen how it happened with weird coins and so on, and told Buffy that she was going to get a stain on her shirt, and later on, she did. So Buffy was freaking out about Cassie dying on Friday, so much that she was having Dawn keep an eye on her at school.

"Cassie's records all show the same thing," Buffy told us. "Good grades, good kid, then all of a sudden, not so good grades, absenteeism, comments about apathy, and depression."

"So, the question is, what changed?" I asked.

"Right," Buffy answered. "If she did have some sort of a psychic vision, that would explain it."

"Do you really think this girl is some kind of precog?" Willow asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Buffy told us. "I told you about the shirt, right?"

"Buff, you spilled a cup of coffee," Xander told her. "I'm not saying you don't have Slayer grace, but it's not the first time."

"I mean, maybe, just maybe, you're trying so hard to help, that you're seeing paranormal when there's just normal," Willow told her.

"Maybe," I told them. "But maybe not."

"Want me to check her medical records?" Willow asked.

"Her doctor already sent them," Buffy told us, holding up the files.

Xander took the files from Buffy. "Let me see that. Strep throat. Ear infections. Yeast infections." He put the file down awkwardly. "None of my business. No real info here."

"Have you Googled her yet?" I asked.

"Zoey, she's 17," Xander told me.

"It's a search engine," I told them, typing Cassie's name on the laptop. "Okay, let's see what 'Cassie Newton' pulled up. Hey, look. Check this. She's got her own site."

"A day and a half of researching, and we finally try looking up her," Xander told us.

Cassie's website was artsy and eccentric. The graphics resembled a collage of words cut from magazines pasted together, and the site was dedicated to poems and such.

"Wow, that's a lot of poems," Buffy told us.

"Poems, always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil," Xander told us.

Willow started to read one of the poems. "The sheets above me cool my skin like dirt on a mad woman's grave. I rise into the moonlight white and watch the mirror stare. Pale fish look back at me. Pale fish that will never swim. My skin is milk for no man to drink. My thighs unused, unclenched. This body is not ready yet. But dirt waits for no woman, and coins will buy no time. I hear the chatter of the bugs. It's they alone will feast."

Dawn walked into the room.

"Okay, death is really on her brain," Xander told us.

"We all deal with death," I told them.

"This girl isn't just dealing, she's giving death a long, sloppy word-kiss," Xander told us. "She has a yen for the big dirt nap."

"I don't know," Willow told us. "I mean, a lot of teens post some pretty angsty poetry on the web. I mean, I even posted a melodramatic love poem or two back in the day."

"Love poems?" Xander asked.

"I'm over you now, sweetie," Willow told him.

Xander smiled. "Love poems."

"Look, all I'm saying is that this is normal teen stuff," Willow told us. "You join chat rooms, you write poetry, you post Doogie Howser fan fic. It's all normal, right? Let's see what other sites there are."

Willow took the laptop from me to type away.

"You guys are way off track," Dawn told us. "I got a hunch on this one."

"Oh, wait, no, here's something," Willow told us. "No, that's Philip Newton."

"No, that's her dad," Buffy told her. "Open it."

"Guys, I'm telling you, I got this case cracked wide open," Dawn told us. "I got the perp fingered. I told you about Mike Helgenberg, right?"

"Uh, that's the guy that asked her to the dance?" I asked.

"Right," Dawn answered. "The one that keeps asking her to the dance. I'm thinking, who likes to be rejected? Nobody. I'm thinking, some people can't handle the rejection. I'm thinking that--"

"Hey, I got something," Willow told us. "Whoa, drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. There's a lot of charges here."

"Her dad's a drunk?" I asked.

"A violent drunk?" Xander asked.

"We'd better find out," Buffy told us. "I have his address right... here. Got your keys?"

"Yeah," Xander answered.

Buffy, Xander and I were about to leave.

"Guys, I'm telling you, I'm liking Mike Helgenberg for the perp," Dawn told us. "Let's collar him before he lawyers up."

"Look, you keep an eye on Mike and Cassie, okay?" I asked. "We'll talk to Cassie's dad."

Dawn nodded. "Okay."

Buffy, Xander and I walked out of the house.

~~~~~~~

That night, we were standing at Philip's front porch, ringing the doorbell.

"Buffy and Zoey the vampire Slayers would break down this door," I told them.

"And Buffy the counselor?" Xander asked.

Buffy sighed. "Waits." I rolled my eyes, impatient. Philip opened the door, but not the screen door. "Mr. Newton?"

"That's right," Philip answered.

"I work at your daughter's school," Buffy told him. "I need to talk to you."

~~~~~~~

We were now sitting inside.

"So, is she screwing up her grades again?" Philip asked. "Because she's not the sharpest apple in the barrel."

"She's got some problems," I told him. "But it's, um, it's kind of you we wanted to talk about."

"What about?" Philip asked.

"We know you've been picked up by the police a couple of times," I told him. "We wanted to know if you still..." I looked over at the counter top, cluttered with bottles of alcohol. "Drink a lot."

"What's that got to do with Cassie?" Philip asked.

"Frankly, we were worried that you might drink too much and hurt Cassie," Buffy answered. "That's all."

Philip nodded, getting angry. "Oh. Oh, I see. That's--that's all. You just come in here in the middle of the night, into my home, and start accusing me of beating on my daughter? That's all?"

Buffy looked guilty. "We just wanted to make sure that Cassie's--"

"Well, that's a lie!" Philip told us, slurring the words. "Who told you this? Did Cassie's mother put you up to this, 'cause I pay my support, okay? To the dime. She just wants to take away the one weekend a month I get to be with my girl."

"Which is when?" Buffy asked.

"What?" Philip asked.

"Which weekend is it?" Buffy asked.

"I--I just had her last weekend," Philip answered. "Look, I may not be the greatest dad in the world, but I don't beat up my daughter."

"So, you won't be seeing her this Friday, then?" I asked.

"Not unless my ex-wife gets a personality transplant," Philip answered.

"Okay," Buffy told him.

"Okay what?" Philip asked. "Okay now you'll get out of my house?"

"Yeah, we will," Buffy answered.

We stood, walking outside, seeing that Cassie had just pulled up in her car.

Cassie used remote keyless entry system to lock her car, making it beep, looking at us. "It's not him. He's not the one who does it. Thank you for trying, but I probably shouldn't have told you anything. You're making such a big deal out of it, and I want it all to just go away."

"Are you talking about killing yourself?" Xander asked.

"No, of course not," Cassie answered.

"Then fight," I told her. "Try."

"There's no point," Cassie told us. "I told you--"

"This doesn't sound like someone who really wants to live," Buffy told her.

Cassie started to cry. "You think I want this? You think I don't care? Believe me, I want to... be here, do things. I want to graduate from high school, and I want to go to the stupid winter formal. I have this friend, and it would be fun to go with him. Just to dance and hear lame music, to wear a silly dress and laugh and stuff. I'd like to go. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to do. I'd love to ice skate at Rockefeller Center. And I'd love to see my cousins grow up and see how they turn out, 'cause they're really mean, and I think they're gonna be fat. I'd love to backpack across the country, or, I don't know, fall in love, but I won't. I just never will."

"You will," Buffy told her. "Cassie, you will. You just have to tell us what you know. You have to tell us everything. Please, help us."

"I can't," Cassie told us. "I just know it's gonna happen. I don't know why, and I don't know how, but something out there is gonna kill me."

~~~~~~~

The next day, Friday, at Buffy's house, Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn and I were gathered around the dining room table, frantically researching for a way to try and save Cassie, with a lot of papers on the table, yearbook, plus the laptop. Willow was looking at a picture of Cassie.

~~~~~~~

I went to see Spike in the basement of the high school, looking around for him, finding him crouched on the floor, walking toward him, waving to try to get his attention, but he didn't respond, snapping my fingers, sighing. "Spike, what are you doing?"

"Nothing," Spike answered. "If I don't move, if I don't think, if I don't listen to the voice, then I won't hurt... much."

"I need to ask you something," I told him.

"What?" Spike asked.

"There's a girl, she's in danger, and she needs your help," I told him. "Now, time is running out. It's Friday, the day Cassie said she's going to die."

Spike seemed to be hearing something else again, looking around at something I couldn't see. "I can't. I can't hear you."

"Is there something evil in the school?" I asked. "Down here, maybe? Spike, please, do you know anything?"

Spike sighed defeatedly. "Yes. There's evil, down here, right here. I'm a bad man. William is a bad man."

Spike started punching himself in the head.

I grabbed his wrist to stop him. "Spike, stop it. What did you do?"

"I hurt people, Zoey," Spike answered. "And I will pay."

I sighed, kneeling in front of him. "Spike, you are paying. You suffering, because you got back your soul. It's okay. I wanna help you, and I wanna help Cassie, but both of you have to want to let me help you. Please, do you know anything specific?"

Spike shook his head. I felt literal pain to see him hurting so much, sighing, standing, turning to leave.

Spike looked up. "Don't--don't leave me." I turned to him. "Stay here, and help me be quiet."

I looked at him sadly. "I think it's worse when I'm here."

I walked away.

~~~~~~~

Buffy had found out a student had the same weird coins that Cassie had described in his locker, so she found the boy and asked him who was going to hurt Cassie. We found out that a group of boys were going to try to sacrifice her, and Buffy called me in to help her stop it. Boys that included names like Peter, Mandel and Keith.

Buffy and I were pretending to be robed figures with the boys in the library as they were trying to sacrifice Cassie, wearing the hoods over our heads to keep hidden.

"All present?" Peter asked.

"All present," the boys answered.

Peter went to light a nearby torch with his candle, pushing his hood back. "Then we begin." Mandel giggled. "Mandel, shut up."

"Sorry, dude," Mandel told him. "It's--it's just so cool. I mean, we're gonna be rich."

"Keep your shorts, all right?" Peter asked. "We have to do the ritual if we wanna score. Oh, Keith, did you take care of the fire exits?"

"Yeah," Keith answered. "Anybody tries to bust in here's gonna get a nasty surprise. I set up this booby trap my cousin Ben always used to do--"

"Then nobody is getting in," Peter told us, pulling a blindfolded, bound and gagged Cassie from behind a bookshelf and into the circle. "And nobody is getting out."

"Dude," Mandel told him.

Cassie was whimpering through the duct tape on her mouth.

Peter pulled off Cassie's blindfold. "This is our sacrifice." He picked up a large cleaver. "It's nothing personal. It's just that you have this death-kick suicidal vibe going. I figure if you disappear, everybody will just assume you threw yourself in a river somewhere. Extinguish." All of the robed boys holding candles licked their fingers and pressed them to the candlewick to extinguish the flames. "All mighty Avials... please accept our sacrifice. Please appear before us, oh mighty soldier of the dark. Please appear before us, and grant us with infinite riches, and we will pay you with our sacrifice. We kneel before you with the gift of flesh."

Buffy and I stood, unfastening our robes, dropping them to the floor.

Buffy looked over the boys. "Okay, that is going on your permanent records."

Peter stood. "Wait, this is--the counselor, and Dawn's sister. What the hell are they doing here?"

Mandel pointed at the boy that had told Buffy about this. "I--it was his idea."

Buffy ran to help Cassie out of her binds.

Peter and I circled each other.

Peter was still holding the cleaver. "Back off. Get back! Get back, you stupid bitch!" I kicked Peter in the face, making him fall. Peter stood, yelling, coming at me with the cleaver. "Aw, you're gonna die!"

I ducked the cleaver, kicking Peter in the crotch, making him fall to the ground and drop the cleaver. "Do you know how lame this is? Bored teenage boys trying to raise up a demon? Sorry it didn't show. I bet it's 'cause you forgot the boom box playing some heavy metal thing, like Blue Clam Cult. I think that's the key to the raising of lame demons."

Buffy looked behind me. "Zoey, lame demon behind you."

I turned to face the demon Avilas behind me. He was six feet fall with a curved horn coming out of either side of his head. He had scaly brown demon skin, very muscular, with fins jutting out from his shoulders, a circular cavity where his abdomen should have been.

~~~~~~~

I picked up the cleaver from the floor in front of Peter, throwing it into Avilas' chest, but it didn't phase the demon at all. I lunged toward the demon to throw him across the room.

A boy named Kevin looked at Peter. "Dude, help!"

Avilas took the cleaver out of his chest, throwing it back on the floor near Peter, running toward me. I ducked, kicking the demon in the chest, making him back away.

Peter grabbed the cleaver, going after Cassie.

"Buffy!" I told her. Buffy kicked Peter away from Cassie as he tried to slit her throat with the cleaver.  While I had been distracted, Avilas grabbed me and threw me into the bookcases, making me fall, stepping onto my chest to crush my ribcage, lungs and heart. "Ow." Buffy was helping Cassie. Avilas suddenly heard something, turning behind him to see Spike (with normal, slicked back hair) standing behind him with a torch to the demon's back, roaring. "Spike?"

"Here to help," Spike told us. "No hurting the girl."

I used the distraction to push Avilas' foot off my chest, making him knee himself in the chest, making him back away from me, spinning up to a standing position. Spike tossed me the torch. I caught it, spinning it around, jabbing it into the demon's abdomen cavity, making it screech in pain.

Spike turned to stop Peter from attacking him, punching him, but caused himself pain as the chip took affect.

"Who are you?" Peter asked.

Spike punched Peter. "I'm a bad man."

Spike helped Buffy cut Cassie free.

I used the torch to catch the demon on fire, burning him alive.

Cassie looked at Spike. "She'll tell you. Someday, she'll tell you."

I dropped the torch, walking toward them. "Are you okay?"

Spike stood, walking toward me.

Buffy inspected Cassie's hurt arm.

"Uh-huh," Cassie answered.

Peter crawled toward the crispy demon. "You can't be dead. Where are my infinite riches?" Avilas jumped up, biting his shoulder, making him scream in pain. "It bit me!"

I used the torch to burn the demon the rest of the way to death, making it explode. Spike shielded me, while Buffy shielded Cassie from the explosion.

"Come on," Buffy told us.

The four of us were about to leave Peter in the library.

"Help," Peter told us. "Help me, please! I'm bleeding."

"Sorry," Buffy told him, not sorry at all. "My office hours are 10 to 4."

Buffy, Cassie and I walked down the main room of the library, toward the doors.

"It's all okay," I told her. "I hope you're not too disappointed." We walked to the main door. When Buffy opened it, the booby trap triggered a crossbow to shoot an arrow at Cassie's head. I caught it before it hit Cassie between the eyes. "See?" I broke the arrow in half. "You can make a difference."

Cassie looked at us admiringly. "And you will."

Cassie started to breathe heavily, collapsing to the floor, to our shock and horror. Buffy and I knelt down to help her, trying to keep her alive.

"Cassie?" Buffy asked. "Cassie. Cassie, no, come on. Cassie, Cassie."

We couldn't help her, couldn't save her, as she died in front of us, horrified.

~~~~~~~

We were at Buffy's house the next day, talking about what happened.

"How is her mom?" Willow asked.

Buffy sighed. "Okay. As okay as... she told me that her family had a history of heart irregularities, but she never told Cassie."

"Cassie didn't know?" Willow asked. "Then it was fate?"

"I think she was gonna die, no matter what, wasn't she?" Xander asked. "Didn't matter what you did."

"She just knew," I told them. "She was special. We failed her."

Dawn was crying, shaking her head. "Uh-uh. No. You didn't, 'cause you tried. You listened, and you tried. She died 'cause of her heart, not 'cause of you. She was my friend because of you. I guess sometimes you can't help."

"So what then?" Buffy asked. "What do you do when you know that? When you know that maybe you can't help?"

None of us knew the answer, and all of us were sad about what happened, but knew that we couldn't have done anything to save Cassie.