Then again, in war, the losers rarely had a choice of how they left the battlefield.

The girl paused for just a moment -- not enough to break stride. She glanced at a small boy walking with his father, out far past his bedtime. Glanced, and passed, although on closer inspection, the tall man beside the boy wouldn't have passed for anyone's father on a day that wasn't Halloween. He wore dark robes that seemed to reach for dust-heavy wind, as if to grasp the dead and contain them.

Still, it was a tense moment; although the man didn't worry at all, the boy held his breath, figuratively speaking, until the girl's attention was caught by the words of the oldest friend present. By about two hundred years. She shook her head slightly and picked up her step to catch up with the friends that had moved on while she hesitated, father and son -- such as they were -- forgotten.

"I told you, Anointed One," the older man said quietly. "Unless she knows what she is looking for -- exactly what she's looking for -- the spell I've cast prevents our detection."

"She looked this way, anyway."

The robed man frowned. "And did not see."

"I don't understand," the boy said at last, staring at her back, at the way the folds of fabric skirted the surface of concrete and asphalt. "The prophecy... she beat it."

"There is no way to defeat prophecy; it is a simple statement of fact."

The boy raised a brow. "You haven't tried reading it lately."

"I'm not a reader, I'm a writer." The man looked at the boy for a moment. "You have great power, Anointed One, but perhaps your reading skills were not as well honed as they might have been." He raised his head; the night had diminished the passing figures until only a white dress could be clearly seen in the distance. "The prophecy was correct. The Slayer did die."

"I know dead when I see it. That's not it."

"Ah, I forget. You cannot see." He lowered his head for a moment, lifting his hands and spreading them slowly, as if his palms were touching a glass wall. Then he blew into the air, and his breath came out in fine mist, as if it were suddenly very, very cold. That mist touched the flat air beneath his palms, and frost, swirling and glowing, thinned out between the man, the boy, and the Slayer.

She was glowing.

At her back, like some bizarre shadow, some outcropping of malignant light trailed after her, arms moving slightly out of sync with hers, long, angular fingers reached for her hair... or perhaps the back of her neck.

"What does it mean?"

"Anointed One, she walked the edge between life and death. She crossed it. Something pulled her back, but... there is a vacuum that surrounds her. Any normal mortal would not have had the strength to return to the living. See?"

The Slayer turned again, and for a moment, her face was as clear as... glass. The light that had followed her pawed at her face; she frowned. The creature that had once been Angelus spoke to her and she lifted a hand, looking through the invisible attacker; the light retreated.

"She struggles with death. There is a possibility that she will still lose."

"And if she loses?"

"Death will take her back. But she is not aware of the struggle."

"Make her aware of it."

"It can be done."

"Good."

"But I require the blood of one who had physical contact with her on the night of her death."

"Any of them," the small vampire said, pointing.

"I'm not a fool. Take one of them, and we will all meet the Master's fate."

Collin frowned for a moment, and then offered his companion the sunny expression of a boy eight or nine years old. He held out his hand to his companion in silence.

Just as he had when he led Buffy to the Master.

The small vampire shrugged. "Not enough."

But the demon mage was no longer listening. He worked for a moment, trading silence for the cadence of stilted chant, trading chant for the motion of hand over the stone surface of a small altar. Then he paused and gestured to Collin. He had tried to choose a working area that would be convenient, but in the end, Collin -- as if he were a mortal child -- was forced to pull a chair over to the altar's side so he could better see what was happening.

"Watch carefully. Timing is everything."

The stone bubbled where the mage passed hands over it, becoming molten, and then becoming a still, slick liquid with an unusual sheen. A very familiar face came into focus as they watched.

She really was a very pretty girl.

"Buffy, have you been listening to a word I've said?"

"Yes?" She looked up from the flat, old book in her hands with a guilty start. Giles walked across the room and very carefully closed the book. It was one of several that he had been forced to relocate to his personal quarters while the school library underwent extensive renovations.

"That would be the right answer, if it happened to contain any truth. If you're worried about the Hellmouth, it's closed. The vampires were only drawn to the school because of the Master and the Hellmouth. There has been no sign whatsoever of vampire activity since that night. I must again point out that you were quite thorough.

"You needn't worry about your absence."

"I am not worried. What makes you think I'm worried?"

"For a start, that's probably the third book I've seen you open all school year."

"So?"

"It's in Latin."

"Latin?"

"And it's upside down."

"Oh."

"Buffy, I realize that it's been a... difficult year. The worst of it is over. The Hellmouth has been closed, thanks to your efforts here. You deserve... well, you deserve a vacation, inasmuch as traveling to a city that defined the words 'road rage' can be a vacation."

"Now. Watch." The man's hands moved over the altar.

She took a piece of paper out of her pocket. "This is my father's phone number. If anything goes wrong--"

"What could possibly go wrong?" He held the folded piece of paper out to her.

She looked at it pointedly. "You want a list? I could spend my entire vacation making one, and I got a C in English this term for 'poor use of imagination.' "

"Uh, yes, well. Maybe I will keep this. As a precaution."

"Good. I have to get going. Dad's going to pick me up at home. It'll be our first summer together. I mean, since their divorce." Her smile stretched, thinned and disappeared. "You know, there's a whole lot of silence going on here. Help me out a bit, Giles."

"Uh, yes, well. I'm certain that you'll have a wonderful summer doing whatever it is young girls do."

"I bet you got a lot of A's for effort when you were my age. If you were ever my age. Don't get killed while I'm gone." She held out her hand.

After a slight hesitation, he took it. "Buffy--"