“Which would you prefer to lose, your hands or your eyes?” Xander greeted me as I sat down in the caf.

“How is it that you seem to spend more time in my college than I do?” I responded, eyeing the strange brown thing on my plate that was attempting to pass as meat loaf.

Xander reached over me and snagged my jello. “Oh, sure, pick on the ice cream man.”

“Ice cream? That’s new,” Willow commented, looking up from her psychology textbook. “What happened to pizza delivery?”

Xander shrugged. “Turns out they get pretty pissed when you don’t get the pizza there in less than thirty minutes. Ever.”

Willow snorted, but tried to look sympathetic.

I considered. “My eyes. Because then I could still do the whole Braille thing, and really, you’re like totally helpless without your hands.”

“True,” Xander agreed. “Not to mention that it would make things rough during-“ He stopped abruptly. “I have got to get more guy friends.”

Willow rolled her eyes and shut her book purposefully. “You really do. Now be quiet! Buffy and I need to talk about boys!”

“Boys?” I leaned forward. “Willow, is there a boy you want to tell us about?”

Willow looked startled. “No, not for me!” She reddened, and I made a mental note to bug her about that later. “You!”

“There’s a guy with his sights on the Buffster?” Xander asked curiously. “I don’t like him.”

“You don’t even know him,” Willow informed him, slapping him playfully.

“So who is it?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about jumping right back on the dating train after the Parker Incident, but I was still allowed to wonder, right?

“Riley!” Willow said excitedly, shooting a glance toward a nearby table where Riley Finn and two of his fellow TA’s sat together. “He asked about you when you missed class yesterday, and this morning, he came by to see how you were doing…He’s totally into you!”

“Riley, huh?” I peeked at his table. He saw me looking and gave me a quick smile. “He’s a nice guy, I guess.” But you thought Parker was a nice guy, too, I reminded myself. “Kinda bulky, but cute.”

Xander stared at him. “Well, I guess he’s pretty well-muscled and he has a nice smile…” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened in mock horror. “That’s it! I’m out of here before I start painting my nails and watching Oprah!” He bolted, and Willow and I grinned at each other.

“Definitely making progress with him.”

“Yup! But I do kinda feel bad,” Willow reflected. “He hasn’t had a guy friend since Oz. Or Jesse.” Her voice took a wistful note as she remembered them.

I kept silent. I had barely known Jesse; he had gone missing on my first day at Sunnydale, and been summarily forgotten as was the norm in Sunnydale. Oz I had barely begun to get to know when he and Willow had started getting serious, but then he, too, had vanished. I thought back to the previous night and wondered what had really happened to them.

Which reminded me... “Hey, Will? What’s up with that Wicca group you go to?”

Willow frowned. “Huh?”

“Well, do you do, like, magic and stuff? I mean, are you sitting around mixing potions and doing spells? Creating monsters or whatever?”

Willow barked out a nervous laugh. “Come on, Buffy! You know that stuff’s not real! Mostly, they sit around and talk about bake sales and newsletters. If I ever said anything about real magic, they probably just laugh. Or think I was crazy.”

“Right,” I said skeptically. “So, magic, huh?”

Willow peeked up at me. “You’ve never bothered with this before. Why now?”

I raised my eyebrows expectantly. “Magic?”

She sighed, defeated. “Magic.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You think it’s real?” she asked incredulously.

I lowered my voice. “Did you know about Dawn being the Slayer?”

“Dawn’s the Slayer?” Willow half-shrieked. I glared at her, and she lowered her voice sheepishly. “Dawn’s the Slayer?” she repeated.

I nodded. “Apparently. I almost got bitten yesterday.” I made a face. “So you know about Slayers and stuff?”

“Only because of Giles.” Willow frowned. “He’s a Watcher, you know. And he had lots of books on magic in the library…so I used to snoop a little, eavesdrop a little…eventually I just asked him about it, and he explained to me about Slayers and vampires. He didn’t mention that Dawn was one, though!” She shook her head. “Soo not what I expected.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “So what kind of magic do you do?”

“Uh-uh, missy! You’re not just getting away like that!” Willow shook her finger at me. “You said you almost got bitten?”

“Twice.” I shrugged. “Some big guy right outside the Bronze. Then, while Dawn was fighting him, another vampire showed up and scared the crap out of me.”

“And he didn’t bite you?”

I shook my head. “He was too focused on Dawn. Is it wrong that that annoys me?” I wondered.

Willow’s eyes grew large as saucers.

“Right, never mind,” I said hastily. “He was all, ‘I’m gonna kill you on Saturday!’ All cocky and British and sexy…”

“Sexy?” Willow repeated. “The vampire. Was sexy.”

I grinned. “Maybe a little.” I caught sight of Willow’s pale face and groaned. “Will, relax! It’s not like I’m gonna hunt him down and be all ‘I’m helpless against your sinister attraction! Take me now, my black-clad knight with fangs!’ That’s a bad porn movie plot, not real life. He’s dangerous and evil, and I get that,” I reassured her. I reflected on the night before. “Plus, I think he has a girlfriend. He was going to feed me to her.” Willow nearly choked, and I gave her an impish grin.

She growled at me in mock annoyance. “No more joking about dating vampires! Vampires bad!”

“So I’ve seen,” I murmured, thinking about the ones I’d met. The one I’d spoken to.

He really had been sexy.

--

It was Friday, and I was heading back to the dorm, grumbling to myself. The kickboxing class I had decided to take had been disappointing, to say the least. After my encounter the night before, I was ready to start beating people up and breaking boards in half, or whatever you do in kickboxing. But all the instructor had shown me was stretching and breathing exercises. I wanted to kill things already!

I whined to Willow about it after I showered. “How am I supposed to stake vampires by breathing at them?”

Willow grinned. “Well, it’s not something they can do, right? Make them all jealous!” I gave her a dubious look. She sighed. “Not a funny-Willow day. Got it.”

I ran my fingers through wet hair. “Have you seen my brush?”

Willow focused on it and floated it across the room to me. I took it. “Thanks.” Then I realized what she had just done and my eyes widened. “Whoa!”

“Magic!” Willow said happily.

“Right.” I stared at the brush in my hand. “Whoa.”

“It’s all about emotional control,” Willow explained. “Plus, obviously, magic.” She grinned.

“So what else can you do?” I asked. It was weird that Willow had had this whole life that I’d never known about. First Dawn, now Willow…

A thought occurred to me. “Does Xander know about all this?”

Willow laughed. “Xander? He thought that it was another one of ‘Willow’s weird hobbies’, just like you did. No magic at all. Only Oz had any idea, and that-“

“Oz?” I said skeptically. “He believed in all that?”

Willow blinked. “Right. Um…Oz is a werewolf.”

“A what?” That I hadn’t been expecting.

Willow nodded. “He’d been having a lot of trouble controlling it, and then it kinda…ate someone. Plus this guy was hunting him. So he left.”

“Oz ate someone,” I repeated blankly.

“The wolf ate someone,” Willow corrected me swiftly. “It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t stop it, not during the full moon.”

The phone rang then, and I picked it up hastily, ready for a distraction from this new disturbing piece of information. “Hello?”

“Hi, Buffy.”

“Dawn?” I asked, my eyebrows wrinkling in confusion. Dawn was calling me? This was new and kind of weird.

“Yeah,” she sighed heavily. “Look, I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t tell anyone about the whole Slayer thing.”

I bit my lip. “What? No! I’m not stupid, Dawn. Or crazy, which is what people would think if I told them about vampires and really, what kind of idiot do you think I am-“ I was babbling, and Dawn detected it.

“Who’d you tell?” she asked wearily.

“Willow. Just Willow. And she already knew most of this stuff. Just not about you being the Slayer.”

“Willow?” Dawn paused to listen to someone in the background. She returned a moment later, sounding relieved. “Giles says Willow is fine.”

“Cool.” I relaxed. “So, ready for Saturday?”

“What’s happening Saturday? Is that Mom’s birthday? Because I totally remembered! I just haven’t gotten a present yet, but that’s because I’m looking for something perfect and-“

I laughed. Ah, yes, the Summers babbling gene. None will be spared... “No, Dawn, the vampire from that night? He said he’d kill you Saturday?”

“Oh. Spike,” Dawn said flatly. “He got bored. Tried yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” My heart lurched. Is Dawnie a vampire? Do they talk on phones? “What happened?”

“Parent-teacher night.” I could hear Dawn’s scowl over the phone. “Spike apparently got bored. Attacked the school with an army of vampires, tried to kill us all…”

“But you stopped him,” I finished.

“Actually, Mom did.” Dawn laughed. “Bashed him over the head with one of those in-case-of-fire-break-glass axes when he was a second away from killing me. It was kinda cool.”

I grinned. “Well, Mom’s kinda cool. She knows about the vampires?”

“She knows about gangs on PCP,” Dawn corrected.

I made a face at that. “Did I actually used to buy that?”

“You once spent a night trying to convince me that they were filming a monster movie in Restfield after you took a shortcut through the cemetery,” Dawn reminded me.

I smirked. “Oh, please. Like demons are more believable.”

Dawn laughed, and then grew serious again. “Buffy, you need to be careful. Spike’s the real deal. He’s killed two Slayers already, he’s a master vampire…Angel says-“

“So who is this Angel guy?” I asked curiously. “You talk about him a lot. Isn’t he the one who used to tutor you in history?” I frowned in understanding. “He didn’t tutor you in history, did he?”

“You’re such an idiot, Buffy,” Dawn snarked.

“So, you’re free tomorrow now?” I asked, an idea occurring to me. “Not being killed?”

“Unless Spike gets bored again,” Dawn said cautiously. “Why?”

“I want to meet this ‘tutor’ of yours. Patrol with you, the works.” So what if my kickboxing class hadn’t taught me anything? I could still try my hand at beating on vamps…

“You are not patrolling with me!” Dawn said, annoyed. “You’ll just get in the way!”

“I’ve been kicking your butt at everything my whole life!” I retorted. “I can handle these vampires!”

“Not since I was Called!” Dawn shot back. She sighed heavily. “You can come meet Angel. That’s it.”

I cheered inwardly. One down, one to go…

Caught up in my success, I didn’t notice until Dawn had hung up how well the two of us had gotten along during that conversation, compared to our usual sniping.

I was too busy trying to decide what to wear when I invariably went patrolling the next day.