Giles hurried to pick it up. "Keep looking," he told Xander and Anya. He interrupted the second ring.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Hey, it's me," Buffy said. "Sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. I had cla.s.ses and then library time."

"Yes, well, I admire your dedication to your cla.s.swork, Buffy, but Lucy Hanover's warning was a bit ominous, wouldn't you say? This situation with Camazotz requires our full focus."

"I'm on it," she said coldly. "I will save the world, as usual, all right? But there's also this thing called college that I have to do. Look, I know by now I'm not getting this paper done before Monday, so I won't hit any more cla.s.ses today. But give me some breathing room, Giles. I wasn't the one with my girlfriend in town."

Startled as he was by her obvious anger and frustration, Giles hesitated. He wanted to defend himself, to argue that he had not shirked his duties at all while Olivia had been visiting, and in fact it had soured their visit somewhat. But he worried that, stressed as she was, Buffy might see that as an accusation.

"Are you all right?" he asked, as gently as he could.

"Peachy," she replied, but her voice was cold.

"Funny, you don't sound at all peachy. Buffy, one of the first lessons taught to any Slayer is that in order to survive you must learn to adapt, to improvise, to react to any situation fluidly and quickly. In your admirable attempt to create an orderly life for yourself, I fear you may have forgotten that."

"That's what I'm doing, Giles. Reacting. So I'm trying to create order out of the chaos that's been my life since the day I found out I was the Slayer. Is that wrong?"

He sighed. "You live your life in chaos, I'm afraid. In order to combat it, you immerse yourself in it. It's one of the sacrifices you make in exchange for the gifts of the Slayer, the power to keep the rest of the world safe from that very same chaos."

There was a long pause before Buffy spoke again. "I don't know if I can live like that anymore. If I give up trying to make sense out of things . . ."

"Buffy, you know you have my full support in that effort. It's simply that there are times -"

"I know," she replied sadly. "It's fine. I'll work it out. Moving on, now. I left my hand print on w.i.l.l.y's throat last night, but he's got nothing. Heard about the bat-faced vamps, but no word on who they are, why they're here, and where they're hanging their hats."

"Bubkes," Giles muttered.

On the other end of the line, Buffy paused. "You've been watching old reruns ofHill Street Blues again, haven't you?"

"You were moving on?" he reminded her.

"I did a short patrol downtown, cemetery sweep, went by the Bronze. Fashion crimes notwithstanding, not a peep from anything soulless. Did a run through Docktown. Lot of tattoos, none of them bats."

As Giles listened to Buffy rattle off her actions of the night before, he stared at the map on the table and mentally traced the path of her patrol. It ended at Docktown, the section of Sunnydale used as a shipping port for a century. The Fish Tank, where she'd first run into the minions of Camazotz, was on the north side of Docktown, closest to the wharfs where vessels would be moored. The Kat Skratch Club was farther south and another block or two inland.

Both were far from the center of town, which was usually teeming with young life, and almost always ended up the primary target of vampires in Sunny-dale. It was also much closer to the h.e.l.lmouth, which he believed drew them with almost magnetic power. Supernatural creatures in town did not generally stray far beyond its influence.

Docktown. And to the west, nothing but Pacific Ocean.

"Buffy," Giles said, his voice laden with regret. "I'm an absolute fool."

"You tell me this now, after I've been taking your advice all this time?"

"It's got to be a ship," he said. "The new House of Bats, the lair of Camazotz." Giles glanced up at Xander and Anya, who had risen from the floor to come stand by the table and study the map with him.

"It has to be a ship. Somehow they managed not to attract undue attention from customs and the harbormaster, even though they all have that brand on their faces."

"Makes sense," Xander admitted. "But they've got to have someone with a human face doing their nasty bidding. You can't make a whole ship invisible. There's gotta be a record of it somewhere."

On the phone, Buffy echoed his words. "That would explain why I haven't seen any of them in town.

Yet. And even if you're wrong, we're no worse off than we have been. But how do we pinpoint them exactly? Breaking into every ship moored off Sunny-dale is gonna be risky from the getting-arrested perspective, and really time-consuming."

"It might be possible to find what we need through a computer search. Otherwise, I think I may have an idea for a magickal solution. Either way, you should call Willow."

"Why don't I go down and talk to the harbor-master?" Buffy offered.

"You could try that," Giles admitted. "But he'd have no real reason to cooperate, and it would be inadvisable to try to intimidate anyone connected to the local authorities. We need to be prepared to search for them electronically, and mystically. For that, we need Willow."

After Buffy hung up the phone, she stared at it for almost a full minute without moving. Giles wanted her to call Willow. There was no question in Buffy's mind that Willowcould help, but she disagreed with Giles that it was necessary. Even if it meant a little intimidation of the harbormaster, or the ship-to-ship search she knew she didn't have time for, Buffy thought those would be better. Or, at least, a part of her did. The other part recognized that Willow and Giles were probably right. But she feared that possibility.

If that were true, a little voice whispered in the back of her mind, then the day might come when she would have to choose between her life as Buffy Summers, and her obligations as the Slayer.

Making that choice would tear her apart.

Buffy wished that she had been more insistent with Giles, that she had told him that they should all just stay there and continue their research. Instead, she knew, she would have to do her best to keep them all safe, yet another responsibility on her shoulders. But she would handle it.

She would.

Reluctantly, she dialed Oz's number.

He picked up on the third ring. "Hey."

"It's Buffy. Is Willow around?"

"She went to pick up pizza."

A surprisingly powerful wave of relief swept through Buffy. Giles thought they needed Willow. Having her around would certainly make things easier. But being the Slayer wasn't about making things easy. If Willow wasn't around, maybe she would be able to send Giles home - tell him they would just try in the morning.

Then she could look into it herself, in her own way. The hard way.

"Buffy? Something going on?" Oz asked.

"Could you ask her to do something for me?" she began. Then she explained to him about the computer search, the little bit of illegal hacking that Giles wanted her to do. It couldn't hurt to have her do that, at least. Sitting at the keyboard was safe.

"I'll try to call later, see if she's got anything."

"I'll let her know," Oz replied. "She'll be glad."

His words carried more meaning, as always, but Buffy did not ask him to elaborate.

Darkness had fallen by the time Buffy made it to Docktown. When she reached The Fish Tank she stood in the shadows of a crumbling apartment house a block or so away and scanned the street. Across from the sleazy bar, she spotted Giles's ancient Citroen parked and dormant. Without the engine running, the thing looked almost abandoned. Though around here it wouldn't have been abandoned for long without being stripped.

Buffy knew better.

As she approached the car she pa.s.sed a narrow alley where a homeless man had built a lean-to against a brick wall out of weathered wood he'd probably torn off the poorly kept docks just down the street, or picked up from the rocky sh.o.r.e beneath them. He noticed her noticing him, and then hissed at something in the shadows behind him. A chill ran through Buffy as she wondered whether he communicated with a creature of real darkness, or something from his fevered imagination. She found that the latter possibility unnerved her more.

Though she continued to move mostly in the shadows of buildings, Buffy picked up her pace. A moment later she stood behind the Citroen. Inside, in the dim light thrown from the guttering neon of The Fish Tank across the street, she could see Giles behind the wheel. He had a greasy brown paper sack of fried clams, French fries, and a can of soda. Not his usual cuisine, but she figured he had to pick something up in a rush. She couldn't blame him. It took her a moment to realize she'd eaten nothing since breakfast, but even now she did not feel like eating. Her stomach felt small and tight as a fist, like it couldn't have fit a single bite.

Later, when it was over. Then she would eat.

Buffy crouched down beside the car and rapped on Giles's window. He started, dropped a fried clam, then cursed about the tartar sauce he'd gotten on his sweater.

He motioned for her to come around the other side. Buffy slid into the pa.s.senger seat beside him while Giles tried to clean off his sweater. When he looked up, he was clearly mystified.

"You're by yourself? What happened to Willow?"

Buffy stiffened slightly. "I called Oz's, but she was out. I explained to him about the computer search, but I'm thinking we're going to have to postpone the magick until morning."

"Did you impress upon Oz the urgency of our situation?"

She shrugged. "Willow wasn't around, Giles. Oz isn't a witch. I guess we can call and see if she's come back, now, but is another twelve hours going to make that much difference? If she does her Internet magic, we may not even need the witchy stuff."

Buffy raised an eyebrow as she regarded him.

Giles cleared his throat and shot her a withering glance. "Twelve hours could make an enormous difference, Buffy. Another night could cost any number of lives."

Buffy glanced out the window at the dingy street. "I'll stick around, patrol all night if I have to. As you know, tomorrow's Sat.u.r.day. So I'll sleep in. Maybe I'll even do some sleuthing in Docktown, come up with something. You guys can keep researching the burning eyes thing, right?"

"Xander and Anya are doing precisely that. I've begun to believe this isn't a separate, undiscovered breed of vampire, merely vampires who have somehow been enhanced by Camazotz. They are following that line of research. However, regrettable as Willow's absence is, we should exhaust all avenues presently available to us in our efforts to locate their lair."

Giles started up the car and put it in gear.

"Hey!" Buffy said, startled. "Look, Giles, I'm serious. You can be of more help with the books. When it comes to patrolling, maybe handing out some b.l.o.o.d.y noses to get the information we need, that's Slayer business, right? I'll start with the harbormaster and go from there. Xander and Anya are probably canoodling back at your place. We're not going to figure out what we're up against with them hitting the books. I stay, make with the fisticuffs. It's what I do. You go, make with the cross-referencicuffs. It's whatyou do."

Giles shot her a brief, sidelong glance, one eyebrow arched curiously. "Buffy, I have been on patrol with you dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. Why are you so insistent upon excluding me? After all this time you cannot possibly be worried about my safety."

"I'm not," Buffy said dismissively.

"Well, that's a comfort, I suppose."

Buffy glanced away, then up at him again. "I'm worried about mine. You've told me yourself, Giles, that traditionally Slayers operated alone. They didn't have friends around like I do, people they could rely on.

They also didn't have lives outside being a Slayer. Well, I do, or at least I'm trying to. If I'm going to lead two lives, I've got to work twice as hard at both. For the Slayer, that means I take the responsibility of being the Chosen One, of my duties, on myself. I was Chosen, no one else. Sometimes it sucks, but I have to learn not to rely on anyone else but me. One girl in all the world, remember? That's what you told me when we first met. Not 'one girl in all the world and her Watcher and her best friends and their boyfriends and girlfriends and whoever else we happen to pick up along the way.'

"It's on me, Giles. You go. I stay."

"Everyone needs help sometimes, Buffy. That's why Slayers have Watchers in the first place," Giles argued, gazing at her with obvious concern.

"But The Powers That Be don't choose Watchers. Just Slayers."

Giles removed his gla.s.ses and let them dangle from his fingers as he considered her words. At length he looked over at her again.

"Now is probably not the time to argue the point, Buffy. But have you forgotten what I said about threatening the harbormaster? I tend to think that, particularly if he's not involved, the local authorities might be a bit agitated. We'll drive over there, and I'll speak to him first. If he seems suspicious, then perhaps you can have a go at him."

Buffy started to argue, but Giles was obviously determined. She also had to admit to herself that it would be better if he approached the harbormaster first. Not that she was happy about it. But there was little she could do except go along with him.

For the moment.

There was still a light burning in the harbor-master's office. Buffy had argued the point again, but Giles had insisted she wait in the car. Contrary to what she was trying to prove, Buffy could not do everything.

Case in point, he was certain that the harbormaster would be much more likely to have a conversation about his work with an adult than a teenage girl.

He parked the Citroen a block and a half away and walked down to the office. It was a small building, not more than two or three rooms, overlooking the ocean, appropriately enough. The hours were posted on the door and it was long past official closing time, but Giles took the light on inside as a good sign.

There was no bell, so he rapped lightly on the door. Just when he would have rapped again, the doork.n.o.b rattled and then the big oak door was hauled open.

"What the h.e.l.l do you want?" growled a bearded, gray-haired man with a cigar jutting from between his clenched jaws.

Giles stared at him. The man was almost a caricature of what he imagined a harbormaster ought to look like. He tore his eyes away, though. The last thing he wanted was to offend the man with such improprieties.

"You're the harbormaster, I take it?"

"Do you see the time?" the man demanded.

"Indeed I did, sir. But if I might have a moment. I'm an . . . investigative journalist and I had a few questions about recent goings-on here in Docktown. Gang presence, to be precise." The harbormaster narrowed his eyes and puffed on his cigar, regarding Giles with great suspicion and likely more than a touch of xenophobia.

"You're British," the man said.

"Yes."

"What the h.e.l.l does a Brit want with poking around Docktown asking questions? What business is it of yours what goes on down here?"

Giles hesitated. He had been afraid that this would not work, but it was not as if the man would have believed him a police officer, or answered questions if he had told the truth.

"As I said, sir, I'm an investigative journalist working for theL. A. Times and I'm looking into recent gang activity here," he insisted. With nothing to lose, he pressed on. "Apparently there has been a spate of violence by a group of ruffians with a very distinguishing mark. They all have a bat tattooed on their faces."

"Hrrrm," the old man grunted. He scratched his beard and puffed on his cigar. Then he let out a blast of smoke that swirled around Giles's face and nearly made him retch. "What'd you say your name was?"

"Robert Travers."

After another moment's thought, the harbormaster rolled the cigar around between his teeth and then nodded. "Might be I've heard something about that. Might be one of the dock rats I know's even seen something. You payin' for information?"

Giles smiled. "Of course."

The old man's eyes narrowed. "You just stay right there while I make a call."

"Absolutely. I'm at your service."

The old man closed the door.

Gulls cawed overhead in the darkness. The sky was a bit overcast, with very few visible stars. A car horn beeped far off and it drew Giles's attention to the road. So few cars down here this time of night, though he could hear a truck rumbling nearby. Metal clanked as the rise and fall of the ocean rocked the floating docks just down from the harbormaster's office.

Time went by.