Chosen

  Willow and Xander walked among the head-stones, talking about what was happening. What might happen.

  Willow told him about her vision back in England only to discover that the same message was being received here in Sunnydale.

  “From beneath you, it devours,” Xander mused. “It’s not the friendliest jingle, is it? It’s no ‘I like Ike’ or ‘Milk: It does a body good.’ ”

  “It’s going to be bad,” Willow told him. “And I wonder . . . will I be able to help? I don’t know what I can do. And frankly, I’m scared of what I can do.”

  “I get that,” Xander told her. “Figuring out how to control your magic seems a lot like hammering a nail.” When she obviously didn’t get where he was going, he added, “Well, at the end of the hammer, you have the power, but no control . . . so you could hit your thumb.”

  “Ouch,” said Willow. “So you choke up. Power, control. It’s a trade off.”

  They stopped talking for a minute. “That’s actually not a bad analogy,” Willow mused. “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.”

  “Right. Ouch,” Xander said.

  “Sorry.” She hesitated. “Xander, being back here . . . I don’t know.”

  “It’ll take time.” He sighed. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  Willow nodded, and walked on alone. A blue sky above, and grass as green as the rolling hills of England, Willow made her way to Tara’s grave.

  She put stones on the headstone, mindful of her Jewish heritage, and said, “Hey. It’s me.”

  Wistfully she traced the lettering:

  Tara Maclay

  Oct. 16, 1980—May 7, 2002

  * * *

  Buffy, Xander, and Dawn lay in closed caskets in the mortuary for over half an hour to kill one vampire the night before Buffy faced a far greater evil: a high school full of high school students.

  The next day it was time to start her guidance counseling job, and she was petrified.

  She did okay with the hostile guy who turned out to be scared, and the guy looking to hit on her by pretending to be worried about being gay, and the girl who kicked some guy’s butt in the parking lot because she was tired of being picked on.

  All in all, she was doing much better at high school the second time around.

  And then . . . Cassie Newton came into her office.

  And Cassie told Buffy that she was going to be dead by Friday . . . almost as if it was no big deal. And no, she wasn’t talking about suicide.

  Buffy was alarmed. “Are you saying you know someone wants to hurt you? Has someone threatened you?”

  Cassie shrugged. “No. I just know next Friday I’m going to die. Some things I just know. I don’t know how. I just do.” She took a moment, then added, “Like I know there will be coins.

  “And I know that you’ll go someplace dark underground.”

  “What do you mean, underground?” Buffy persisted.

  “And I know you’ll try to help. But you can’t, okay?”

  And then she told Buffy to be put on a sweater so she wouldn’t stain her blouse, and left Buffy’s office.

  * * *

  Extremely troubled Buffy told Principal Wood, who tried to assure her that kids said awful things, thought awful things. That didn’t always translate into doing awful things, like committing suicide.

  “Every time there’s a threat like this, we do the same dance,” he told her. “Inform teachers, search lockers, but we can’t know what’s going to happen. We can’t search their brains. We just do what we can.”

  “It’s not enough. I need to fix this,” Buffy insisted. “I don’t usually get a head’s-up before somebody dies.”

  That caught his attention.

  Then Buffy spilled coffee on her blouse, staining it . . . and thought of Cassie, who seemed to know too much about the future.

  So while she sent Dawn to spy on Cassie, she, Xander, and Willow did the research. Cassie Newton had done well in school, had been fine . . . and then, there was a sudden drop in her GPA, absenteeism, and comments about apathy and depression.

  “It’s hard to do homework if you think you’re about to die,” Buffy observed.

  Her medical reports yielded nothing substantive.

  And then Willow asked, “Have you Googled her?”

  And that was when they hit the mother lode. Cassie had her Web site . . . and her own very sad, very death-oriented poetry:

  Xander said, “Poem. Always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.”

  Willow began to read aloud:

  “The sheets above me

  cool my skin

  like dirt

  on a madwoman’s grave

  I rise into

  the moonlight white

  and watch

  the mirror stare

  pale fish looks

  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 who

  will feast.”

  Dawn had walked in while Willow was reading, and reacted when Xander said, “Okay, death is really on her brain.”

  She said, “We all deal with death.”

  Xander shook his head. “This girl isn’t just dealing, she’s giving death a long, sloppy word-kiss. She has a yen for the big dirt-nap.”

  “I don’t know,” Willow said thoughtfully. “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.”

  Xander perked up. “Love poems?”

  “I’m over you now, sweetie,” Willow said gently. “Look, all I’m saying is that this is normal teen stuff. 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.”

  And that was when they located Cassie’s father’s police record. He had a record of violence and drinking.

  Not so good for Cassie, Buffy thought. But it may be what we’ve been looking for.

  Dawn had a different idea.

  “I’ve got this case cracked wide open. I got the perp fingered. I told you about Mike Helgenburg, right? The one that keeps asking her to the dance. I’m thinking, who likes to be rejected?”

  She thought of her spying mission, where Cassie and Mike had been quite together, talking about tattoos and stuff. Mike had really pushed her to go to the Winter Formal, but she wouldn’t do it.

  The spying mission had turned into her own personal getting-acquainted mission, when she had discovered that she liked Cassie very much.

  Mike hid it well, but I’m sure he’s pissed off at her, Dawn thought. Homicidally so.

  But Buffy and Xander were already out the door and on their way to Cassie’s dad’s house.

  * * *

  When the reached the front door, Buffy rang the bell and muttered, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer would break down the door.”

  “And Buffy the Counselor?” Xander asked.

  “Waits,” Buffy said impatiently.

  Phil Newton didn’t want to let them in. But when Buffy mentioned Cassie, he do so grudgingly . . . and The First words out of his mouth about Cassie did not endear him to Buffy.

  “So is she screwing up her grades again? Because she’s not the sharpest apple in the barrel.”

  He had been drinking; his words were slurred. Buffy saw the open bottles and pressed her case.

  “Frankly we were worried that you might drink too much and hurt Cassie.”

  He was outraged. “You come in here in the m
iddle of the night, into my home, and start accusing me of beating on my daughter? Did Cassie’s mother put you up to this? ‘Cause I pay my support, okay? She just wants to take away the one weekend a month I get to be with my girl.”

  “Which is when?” Buffy asked.

  “What?” He was confused.

  “Which weekend is it?”

  “I . . . I just had her last weekend.” He took a breath. “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?”

  “Not unless my ex-wife gets a personality transplant.”

  That’s crosses him off our list then, Buffy thought.

  They left shortly thereafter . . . to find Cassie in the driveway. She used her car security remote, which let out a little beep. Buffy and Xander both looked at her as she approached them.

  “It’s not him,” Cassie told them. “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.”

  Xander asked bluntly, “Are you talking about killing yourself?”

  “No, of course not,” Cassie replied.

  “Then fight. Try,” the Slayer told her.

  “There’s no point.” Cassie sounded patient, almost detached. “I told you.”

  “This doesn’t sound like someone who really wants to live,” Buffy accused her.

  “You think I want this? You think I don’t care?” Cassie began to cry. “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.” She sniffed, smiling sadly, looking scared.

  “I have this friend, and it would be fun to go with him. Just to dance and hear lame music and wear a silly dress and laugh and stuff.” She sniffed again. “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 going to 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.”’

  Buffy said firmly, “You will. Cassie, you will. You just have to tell us what you know. You have to tell us everything. Please, help us.”

  “I can’t,” the other girl replied, just as firmly. “I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but something out there is going to kill me.”

  * * *

  Not on my watch, Buffy thought, as she read every piece of Cassie’s poetry that she could find, looking for clues. Xander helped, and Willow and Dawn, everyone reading her work, absorbing her cadence, reading of her pain.

  And speaking of pain . . .

  She went to see Spike, who sat in the basement, immobile, trying to keep out the voices. He was lost to her in madness, out of his mind with penance for hurting her. Buffy was the only girl he could think of.

  And so she left him, as he struggled to find his peace.

  * * *

  Principal Wood had the lockers searched. And Buffy grilled Mike Helgenburg, who happened to be walking by her. Turned out he wasn’t very pissed about much except getting a “B” in Egyptian history . . . and that he was thinking of asking Dawn to go the dance.

  Buffy was offended. “You’re asking my sister, and she’s your second choice?”

  Then behind her, as Principal Wood and the security guard opened another locker, coins rained from the locker onto the floor.

  Lots of weird coins, which Cassie had mentioned to her . . .

  . . . so she took the locker’s owner into her office.

  “I want you to tell me what this is, and what this has to do with Cassie Newton.”

  At first he protested his innocence.

  At first.

  * * *

  Dawn and Cassie left for the day with the hordes of other students. And Dawn fessed up that she had started out befriending Cassie to help Buffy find out more about her.

  “And look, she was worried and now I’m worried and I’m not pretending at all,” Dawn told her. “I really wanted to be your friend.”

  Cassie chuckled. “You are my friend.” And then she touched Dawn’s shoulder and said, “Listen, Dawn, whatever happens now, it’s not your fault, okay?”

  Then Dawn got distracted by a big dork named Peter who pretended he was asking her to the dance, only to make fun of her . . . and the next thing she knew, Cassie was gone.

  * * *

  The followers of Avilas gathered that night in the school library and began the rite that would bring them riches. In their red robes, their sacred coins ringing their ritual fire, the red-robed figures were giddy and up. Keith had set up a cool booby trap. No one was coming in . . . and nobody was getting out.

  Then Peter dragged in their sacrifice to Avilas . . . the girl Cassie Newton, bound, gagged, and terrified.

  “It’s nothing personal,” Peter told her as her eyes bulged above her gag. “It’s just that you have this death-chick suicide vibe going.”

  On his cue, the brothers extinguished their candles . . . and Peter brought a huge cleaver up against Cassie’s throat. As he intoned the ritual, one of the followers jumped to her feet and unfastened her robe.

  It was Buffy.

  “Okay,” she told Peter. “That is going on your permanent record.”

  He came at her, and she dropped him hard. As he lay writhing on the floor in agony, she shook her head at the lot of them.

  “Do you know how lame this is? Bored teenage boys trying to raise up a demon? Sorry it didn’t show. I’ll bet it’s because you forgot the boom box playing some heavy metal thing, like Blue Clam Cult. I think that’s the key to raising lame demons.”

  Despite his pain, Peter smiled triumphantly and said, “That lame demon?”

  Buffy turned.

  The demon, Avilas, towered over her. He was actually quite impressive, with scaly brown demon skin, muscles, horns, and fins, and a strange, circular indentation in his stomach.

  Buffy grabbed up the cleaver and threw it at Avilas. It cut into his chest, but he didn’t even grunt. Then he threw Buffy across the room and yanked the cleaver from his body, tossing it on the ground.

  Peter grabbed it and went after Cassie. Buffy kept the volume up, but the demon was getting the better of her. It had her down. . . .

  . . . and then Spike appeared, a torch in his grasp. He pressed it against the demon’s back, and it roared in fury and pain.

  “Here to help,” Spike said. “No hurting the girl.”’

  “Untie her,” Buffy told him, taking over the demon battle. The other followers began to scatter and flee, sensing that the battle was going against them, as Spike crossed to Peter and hit him. The chip jolted him with pain. He did it again and again, each punch forcing him to hold his aching head. But he kept on.

  “Who are you?” Peter demanded, bloody and reeling.

  “I’m a bad man,” Spike replied.

  Then he knocked the bastard out.

  Buffy rammed the torch into the hollow in Avilas’ abdomen, and the demon went up in flames.

  With the sacrificial knife Spike cut Cassie’s hands free and yanked the duct tape off her mouth. She was crying, but she forced herself into composure long enough to say, “She’ll tell you. Someday she’ll tell you.”

  The other demon worshippers had run away. Buffy and Spike had no more work here. They prepared to leave as Peter crawled toward the charred remains of his demon god. “You can’t be dead,” he groaned. “Where are my infinite riches?”

  As if to say, “bite me,” the demon did just that: it reared up and chomped Peter on his shoulder. The it collapse, shattering into so many charcoal briquettes.

  “Help me! Please! I’m bleeding!” he shrieked.

  “Sorry,” Buffy said coldly. “My office hours are ten to four.”

  Triumphantly Buffy walked Cassie toward the main exit doors of the lib
rary.

  “It’s all okay now,” she told Cassie, add wryly, and with great kindness, “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

  Then she opened the door . . . triggering the cool booby trap of demon-worshipper Keith. It was a cross-bow, and it let a bolt fly . . . but Buffy caught the bolt just in time to prevent it from shooting Cassie in the forehead, which would definitely have killed her.

  “See?” Buffy broke the bolt in her fist. “You can make a difference.”

  With great tenderness Cassie pushed a strand of hair out of Buffy’s face.

  “And you will,” she said.

  Then she took one sharp breath and collapsed to the floor.

  Dead.

  * * *

  Memento mori.

  The Summers home was once more a place of grieving. Buffy, Dawn, Willow, and Xander sat in the living room in silence, until Willow finally spoke.

  “How’s her mom?”

  “Okay,” Buffy replied. “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 repeated. “Then it was fate.”

  “I think she was going to die, no matter what, wasn’t she?” Xander observed quietly. “Didn’t matter what you did.”

  Racked with guilt, Buffy murmured, “She just knew. She was special. I failed her.”

  Tears rolled down Dawn’s face. Poor Dawn, who was so young, and had suffered so many losses. “Uh-uh, no, you didn’t,” she managed through her sobs. “You listened and you tried. She died because of her heart, not because of you. She was my friend because of you.” She added brokenly, “I guess sometimes you can’t help.”

  “So what then?” Buffy asked her friends, asked the walls, asked her own heart. “What do you do when you know that? When you know that maybe you can’t help?”

  * * *

  In the morning, Buffy got up, got dressed, and went to her office at the high school.

  It didn’t matter if you knew that you couldn’t help.

  You had to keep trying.

  Chapter Five: “Selfless”

  U.C. Sunnydale

  Death had come to over a dozen young men, bloody death, and excruciating.

  Anya’s work here was done.

  She had wreaked terrible vengeance at the fraternity house on the U.C. Sunnydale campus. Corpses were strewn everywhere, their hearts torn out.