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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part VIII

It was mid-afternoon. The weekend had been long and uneventful (the last weekend the world would ever see? no, she wouldn’t let that happen), and normally it would be time for Cordelia to catch up on such homework as she hadn’t already completed. She might not be a Willow-level intellect, but association with the other girl had taught her some useful study techniques, and her pride wouldn’t allow her to fail even in classes that didn’t really matter to her.

The scheduled faculty conference, however, took away any urgency that might have been there. She put in about an hour of homework and study; she probably could have slid by just on that, but she would have all of Monday to polish any rough edges and finish any needed class prep. For now, she was just counting the hours till dark, when she could go seeking Angel — Angelus — and either kill him or get further information from him.

Or both.

There was also the matter of awaiting news from Giles on the results of whatever vote they would hold after endless and mostly pointless debate. Once she had word, she would need to contact Amy and Jonathan: to tell them the plan was a go, to tell them it had been nixed by the in-group, maybe to tell them that they (and she) would need to find a way to make it work even without Giles and Willow. Till then, there wasn’t much she could do … except maybe rest her eyes, just for a second …

“A binary key,” Buffy said. She was standing by the window next to Cordelia’s bed, pulling back the curtain to let the sunlight stream in while she looked out. “Can you believe I actually remember what binary means? Like the launch keys in those underground missile silos.” Her eyes met Cordelia’s, but they were focused somewhere else at the same time. “Put in both keys, and turn, and the world starts to end. I couldn’t help myself — hey, comatose here — but you should know better.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Cordelia protested. “Everything stopped working when our plan — yes, that’s right, our plan — went down the tubes. I’m trying to gather it all back together, but everyone else is pulling in different directions.”

“Bringing down the curtain,” Buffy agreed. “Hickory snickory snock, the answer’s in the dock.” She held up the Sunnydale snow-globe. “But you’re looking at it backward,” she went on, turning the object one way and then another so the Slayer could view it from different angles. In her hands, it began to glow with an orange-gold light. “See?”

Cordelia shook her head. “I don’t understand what that has to do with —”

Buffy screamed, high and wordless, and hurled the globe at Cordelia’s face with all her strength.

Cordelia was on her feet, swaying as she gripped the door frame. No Buffy. No snow-globe, nor wreckage of one. The curtain was undrawn, and the light outside had a subtly different quality.

Another one. God, was this going to happen every single time she closed her eyes?

She shook it away. Grip, get a grip, she couldn’t afford to lose it now! ‘Bringing down the curtain,’ vision-Buffy had said. Even in Slayer dreams, some things were ambiguous, indecipherable, or even truly random, but this one had seemed to carry actual meaning. Enough, at least, that she couldn’t afford to risk ignoring it. Besides, there was still the matter of time to kill before nightfall.

Cordelia pulled together a few just-in-case supplies, checked the fading raccoon-eyes one more time, and went to see Buffy.

It was the first time since Black Tuesday that Cordelia had been to the Revello Drive house during the day. As she pulled up out front, she could see Joyce Summers’ Jeep in the driveway … but this was a Sunday, so she had already known that Buffy’s mother would be here. It didn’t matter. She’d been dodging this long enough. She schooled her expression, set herself inwardly, walked to the door without faltering and rang the bell.

She had thought she was ready, but it was still a shock when Joyce answered the door. Cordelia’s dealings with the other Joyce, the other-universe Slayer, were still less than two weeks behind her. That woman had been every bit as marked by grief at the loss of her daughter … but her daughter had died, and she had an enemy to fight, and vengeful determination had brought a purpose to her life even if the purpose held no meaning for her. The woman before Cordelia now could have been fifteen years older than Slayer-Joyce. Her face sagged, her shoulders slumped, lines of weariness radiated outward from her eyes and mouth. Even without the memory of other-Joyce’s tigerish vitality, the change would have been startling; with it, the contrast was horribly emphasized.

“Hello,” she said, with a smile that clearly required effort. “Cordelia, isn’t it? You’re one of Buffy’s friends.”

“Not much of a friend,” Cordelia said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Summers. I should have come by a long time ago.”

“You’re here now,” Joyce said. “That’s what counts. Why don’t you come in?”

Never give an invitation like that except in the daytime, Cordelia wanted to say, but the warning would have raised questions she couldn’t afford to answer. She stepped inside, saying, “I hope I’m not bothering you. It’s just, it’s been weeks now and I feel so guilty —”

“I understand that you were with Buffy,” Joyce said. “The day she was … attacked.”

“Yes,” Cordelia admitted. “I wasn’t there when she got hurt, I showed up a few minutes later. But I was the one who drove her to the hospital.”

Joyce nodded, the polite smile of greeting somehow softer now, more genuine. “Then you don’t have any reason to feel guilty,” she told Cordelia. “You saved Buffy’s life. If she had any chance at all, it’s because of you.”

It was as if all the air was being sucked out of the room. “I should have gotten there sooner,” Cordelia heard herself saying. “I should have been with her, if I had only been there with her —!”

“We can spend our entire lives chasing one ‘if only’ after another,” Joyce reproved. “I’ve done too much of that myself. Don’t you start. You did the best you could, and that’s all anyone can ask of themselves.”

Again Cordelia held back the words: They can ask for better results. Aloud she said, “Well, I kept thinking of coming by, and finally I did it. You’re still keeping her here, right?”

Joyce nodded. “Buffy’s father pays for someone to stay with her during the day, Monday through Friday: usually a home care attendant, but an actual nurse once a week. She doesn’t need any more than that, she’s really very healthy except for …” She visibly stopped herself, forced the smile back into place. “Her room is upstairs. I can show you the way, if you want to visit with her.”

The funny part was, Cordelia did need Buffy’s room pointed out to her. For all the times she’d been there, she’d never before approached it from the interior of the house. Joyce led her to the bedroom door and opened it, then stood next to her looking in. “I can stay with you if you like,” she told Cordelia. “It unnerves some people … the silence, I mean, Xander never comes here without Willow to keep him company. Or I can go back downstairs if you’d prefer to visit privately.”

“I appreciate it,” Cordelia said. “I think I’ll be okay by myself. Silence doesn’t bother me.”

Joyce nodded and moved away, and seconds later Cordelia could hear her descending the stairs. She closed the door, pulled out the chair from the little writing desk, and sat next to Buffy’s bed.

“So,” she observed. “A lot has happened since the last time I was here. Sorry I didn’t have much to say last night, I guess I just run out of conversation now and then. And it’s not like you hold up your end … at least, not while I’m awake.

“Look, if you keep trespassing in my dreams, could you at least give me a clear message? I appreciate your little news-flash about the world starting to end, but hey, got that memo already. Why tell me something I knew? And if you had more to tell me, why not say it plain? ‘Bringing down the curtain,’ yeah, that doesn’t take much interpretation but what’s a binary key? Answer’s in the dock — which answer, and which dock? And shouldn’t it be AT the docks, not IN? If you think I’m going to cruise the whole waterfront without even knowing what I’m looking for … well, I might, I guess, but right now I’ve got more pressing business.

“So, Angel tells me Spike’s gearing up to destroy the world, and he’s spooked enough — Angel, I mean — to want me to help him stop it. ’Cause, right, he’s all big on the altruism. Now, you don’t have to tell me I can’t trust him, I’d sooner trust Harmony … but the thing is, I think it’s really true about him hating Spike and wanting to mess him up any way he can. Some kind of alpha male rivalry deal, I guess testosterone keeps on pumping in a guy even when his heart stops. And, little as I like the thought of working with Angel — he’s escaped his destiny as the world’s biggest dust-bunny for way too long already — I have to say, helping him kill Spike just means one less enemy to deal with, right? …

“… even if he’s probably thinking exactly the same about me.”

Cordelia paused. Buffy made no reply, of course, no sound beyond her own breathing.

“Now, I finally got Jenny’s spell translated, and I turned it over to Giles. And I brought in Amy Madison — following in her mother’s footsteps, if you can believe it, only with a lot less of the crazy — and Jonathan Levinson, they’re supposed to help Giles with the spell if he agrees to it. First, though, he’s got to put it in front of the others, see if they’ll okay the idea, and that’s what worries me.

“They don’t … I don’t think they’re seeing things straight. I mean, they look at all the pieces but the only ones they can see are Angel and me and you. He and I were together, and us being together turned him into something else, and then he did this to you. Me, him, you: cause, action, effect. And that’s true, I know it’s true, but it’s like they’re stuck on that point. They didn’t like me having a vampire boyfriend, and then my vampire boyfriend turned evil, and when I give them a spell to cram a soul back into the monster, I just know they’re going to think it’s all Cordy & Angel 2gethr 4evr. Never mind that we could nail Angelus long-distance, not even have to find him first; no, it couldn’t be anything but self-centered Cordelia trying to get her hooks back into that broody hunk o’ man-flesh.

“Amy said maybe his soul is free now. That I’d be punishing him if I brought him back. I don’t like to think about that … but I’ll do it, if it’s a way to win.

“… They’ll come around. No matter how much they blame me, they can’t ignore how big a deal it would be to take Angelus off the field. Yeah, they’ll go for it; I just don’t know if they’ll decide fast enough to beat out Spike’s Acme Home Apocalypse Kit. And if I tell them about that — if I even mention that Angel suggested we work together — they’ll shut out everything else I have to say.

“If he was telling the truth, he’ll hunt me out again tonight. If he was lying, if it’s a set-up, he’ll find me just to see if I bought his pitch. Either way, I’ll be seeing him. Maybe I’ll kill him. Maybe we’ll kill each other. Or maybe … Just the thought makes me gag, even if it is to save the world, but maybe I’ll actually wind up going in with him against Spike.

“If you have anything you need to tell me, now’s the time. Now, or before I go out on patrol, I’ll take a nap just before sundown in case there’s some urgent message you need to deliver. Because there may not be much time left. If Spike is close enough to zero hour that Angel is coming to me for help, we may only be a day or so from Good Night, Earth.”

Heartbeat, breathing. A living presence in the room, but no sign of awareness. Not that Cordelia had expected anything else, but she’d had to come see.

She went out of the room, closing the bedroom door quietly behind her. Joyce Summers met her at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m glad you stopped by,” she told Cordelia. “I’m glad that Buffy still has friends who care for her.”

“We do,” Cordelia said. “We always will.” She wasn’t a hugger, but she found herself wishing she could comfort the older woman. “I’ll come back when I can,” she said at last, and left.

*               *               *

The pre-patrol nap did indeed bring another dream, but Buffy wasn’t featured. “You are trespassing,” Drusilla told Cordelia primly. She was sitting at a tea-table, china dolls in old-fashioned dress occupying the other three chairs. “Reading the leaves, that’s my estate. You haven’t the proper license.”

“Don’t go whistling up your barristers yet,” Cordelia shot back. “Slayers were doing that vision thing long before you chewed your first clump of locoweed. You’re the one wearing last year’s shoes.”

“Shoes and gloves must match,” Drusilla said in reply. She drew a massive metal gauntlet onto her right hand. “And a lady must wear gloves to a formal tea.”

Another voice came from behind Cordelia: “Whom the gods would destroy, and then some.” Cordelia turned to look; it was Amy, lounging back on a low couch and studying a bunch of grapes she held by the main stem. She wore a sleeveless white dress, belted at the waist, with sandals on her feet and a garland in her hair. “Not that any of the crowd from Olympus dropped that on her. And don’t bother calling on merciful Zeus.” She plucked a grape and popped it into her mouth. “It won’t be him tossing thunderbolts.”

Cordelia tried to ask, Who, then?, but a discordant jangling drowned out the words. She wheeled, looking to find and smash the source of the noise and it was her phone, she was in her bedroom and her cell phone was ringing. She snatched it up, flipped it open. “What?” she said. “I mean, it’s me, yes, what?”

After several seconds of silence, Giles’ voice came over the line. “Cordelia, are you quite all right?”

Cordelia shook her head. “Sorry, disoriented, you just woke me up. So what’s the word?”

“I have presented your proposal to the others,” Giles said to her. “We have discussed the matter in its various aspects, but would like to clarify certain points — with you — before making a decision.”

Cordelia thought for a moment. “Everybody’s at your place right now?”

“Yes, we are.” It had been a reasonable guess; though some meetings still took place at the SHS Library, the focus seemed to have shifted over this weekend to his apartment. “If you could —?”

“On my way,” Cordelia said, and was heading out the door even as she flipped her cell phone shut.

‘Before making a decision’ meant they hadn’t made one yet. During the drive, Cordelia marshaled her arguments even as she considered the elements of her most recent dream. It had seemed more arbitrary and meaningless than most — along with being more brief — but Drusilla’s presence definitely hinted at psychic forewarning, and Amy’s comment about thunderbolts certainly caught the attention. The big problem was that further dreams weren’t really giving her further information; more, yes, but it all remained unconnected, nothing tying to anything else. Like someone reaching into your closet without looking and tossing you clothes at random, one garment after another without you ever getting two pieces that could be made to match …

It was hard to concentrate. The buzzing in her head was stronger: not the Slayer tingle, the kind of background static that came when she’d been pushing too hard for too long. The dreams, the dreams, they wouldn’t let her rest while she slept and they kept her uncentered when she was awake. She was jittery and out of focus at a time when control was more important than ever. If she didn’t pull herself together quick, she’d totally drop the ball, and the ball was the world and the world was a big damn egg with a cement floor waiting underneath.

Yeah. That was exactly the kind of cheery thought she needed to keep her going.

She reached the apartment complex where Giles lived; parked, went to his door, and entered without knocking. “I hear you all have some questions for me,” she announced to the assembled group. “Here I am. Quest away.”

Willow, Giles, Xander, Oz. Marcie somewhere in the background, no doubt. (Or maybe not, it was easy to forget her or to not notice her even if you remembered, and how exactly could you know if she wasn’t there?) They regarded her with familiar expressions: Oz imperturbable, Willow slightly nervous — she did fine in a physical battle, but the prospect of personal conflict always unnerved her — Xander with the tamped-down rage that might erupt at any moment or just simmer indefinitely, and Giles with rigorous self-possession. He was the one who spoke. “We have studied the spell printouts you left with me,” he said. “The diskette you say they came on: do you have it with you?”

Cordelia frowned. What did the diskette have to do with anything? “It’s in my car, I think,” she said. “Yes, that’s right, I got it back from Jonathan once he broke the password, and after we had the printout to look over, the diskette itself didn’t seem that important. Why?”

“I’d like Willow to inspect it,” Giles said. “She knows Jenny’s formatting and coding style better than anyone else, so she can best judge if it’s genuine or some kind of —”

“Trick?” Cordelia interrupted grimly. “Something I faked up to manipulate people, since that’s all I ever do?”

Xander gave her a thin smile. “If the Prada knockoff fits …”

“Trap, I was going to say,” Giles continued evenly. “Planted, perhaps, to precipitate action that could be used against us. How certain are you, for instance, that the diskette is genuine?”

Cordelia reined in her emotions. This wasn’t the time to be touchy. “As sure as you can be with a Slayer dream,” she said. “She was there, Giles. Jenny was in the dream. She was talking directly to me: showing me how she found the spell, showing me where to look to retrieve it.”

He nodded, showing no flicker of reaction at the mention of his dead love’s name. “It could still be a ruse — there are various means by which one may send dreams to a receptive mind — so we shall have to investigate the possibility, but at present we should proceed on the assumption that it may be legitimate. What else did it tell you?”

They were watching Cordelia — by turns — expectantly, warily, and doubtfully, and it took her no more than an instant to decide that Giles did not need a play-by-play of Jenny’s death. “Well, different stuff,” she said. “I picked out the part that mattered most and zeroed on that, but you know how it is with Prophetic Dreams For Slayers: lots of weirdness, very stream-of-consciousness, full of metaphors and symbolism and things that don’t make any sense. Besides …” She hesitated, went on. “It wasn’t the only one. There have been others. Quite a few others.”

“Yeah?” Marcie’s voice, so she was indeed in attendance. “How many, and what kind?”

“It’s been going on for nearly two weeks,” Cordelia said. “At the start, it was the same three dreams, taking turns a night at a time. In the first, I had this enormous fishing rig, like they use to catch marlin, and I kept casting the line up into the sky, trying to hook a star. Every now and then the hook would catch, and I’d start reeling in the line, and the star I’d snagged would get bigger and glow brighter as I pulled it close, but it would always slip the hook before I finished. And the whole time, Giles and Willow would be standing beside me saying, This isn’t your job. You shouldn’t be doing this.

“The second was shorter but, I don’t know, scarier somehow. There was a whirlwind, and vampires were just turning to dust — they were chained to something, I think — and streaks of lightning slamming out everywhere, with this huge deep horrible grinding in the background, like there was an earthquake about to split the planet in half.

“The last one …” She shook her head. “Usually, if somebody speaks to me in one of these dreams, it’s a person I know. Not always talking as themselves, or acting like themselves, but you get the idea. In the last dream, though, I’m trying to find my way through this big old dark house, and the rooms keep changing and I can’t get my bearings, and then I’m standing in front of these two doors, and there’s a guy I’ve never seen before. Thin, pale, bad clothes, but he’s got these really really blue eyes, and he says to me: Normally, now, it’d be th’ lady or th’ tiger … but seein’ as you’re a lady already, you got t’choose between a tiger an’ a lion. You just hafta decide which has th’ worse teeth —”

“A moment,” Giles said. “Were you attempting to reproduce an Irish accent?”

Cordelia shrugged. “Beats me. I just tried to repeat it the way it sounded. Anyway, I ask him, Who are you?, and he says, Road not taken. Or, maybe, th’ road you woulda taken if another road hadn’t opened out first. And I say, So what do I do now?, and he says, You choose, ’cause nobody else will choose for ya. Then he looks at me real close, and he says, You can throw a knife, or stab with an arrow. It’s th’ use matters, not th’ weapon.”

There was a reflective silence after she finished, then Oz broke it. “When you said lots of weirdness … yeah.”

“Very much so,” Giles agreed. “And elusive in meaning, as such things tend to be.” To Cordelia he said, “Are you certain they were in fact prophetic, and not simply ordinary dreams with no deeper import?”

“Pretty sure,” Cordelia said. “There’s a particular feel to a Slayer dream, I can’t explain it but it’s there. Besides, like I said, they kept repeating. Dream One the first night, Dream Two the next, Dream Three the night after, and then the cycle would start over. Definitely not how my nights normally go.”

“You said it was the same three dreams ‘at first’,” Willow prompted. “Does that mean different ones after that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cordelia confirmed. “The one with Jenny showing me where to look for the spell disk. Then one where Vampire Sheila had a nice long chat with me at the Mall. One with Drusilla throwing a Mad Tea Party for her dolls; Amy was there, too, making no more sense than everybody’s favorite dead nutjob. And, oh yeah, a couple that had Buffy playing with a snow-globe and saying she’s lost.”

“Lost,” Xander repeated flatly, his expression strained and harsh. “Gee. Wonder how that ever could’ve happened.”

“That is a distraction from the main point,” Giles said, intervening firmly. “Presuming the disk proves to be genuine, presuming the spell proves to be efficacious, presuming that we establish to our satisfaction that the approach you suggested — bringing in Amy and, er, Jonathan, to work with us in doing the casting — is one that appears practicable, that still leaves us with the central question. To wit, do we attempt the re-ensoulment ritual on Angelus?”

“Bet we know which way Queen C’s vote will go,” Xander scoffed.

“Damn skippy you do,” Cordelia said, disregarding everyone else to speak directly to Xander. “Buffy’s where she is right now because Angel felt like playing one of his games. You blame me for that, and I won’t waste time arguing … but what if we’d bitch-slapped him with a soul the day before he got bored and decided to screw with us some more? What if he gets the idea next week to hijack a cruise missile and steer it into the middle of the school quad?” She turned to survey the others. “I know none of you ever really liked Angel that much even when he had a soul, but at least back then he wasn’t trying to kill us all … us and the people who go to school with us. If there’s a way to stop him, I’m all for it.”

“Which only just happens to give you your sweetie back,” Xander sneered. “I’m not buying. He deserves to die.”

“He deserves to fry in hell for several consecutive eternities,” Cordelia shot back. “But re-souling him? that’s something we can DO.”

“She’s got a point,” Oz observed. “We’ve lost, what, six people just from Sunnydale High since Angelus came out to play? Even if he didn’t get ’em all, taking him off the roster means he turns into a non-threat.”

“My question didn’t pertain to the strategic value of performing the re-ensoulment,” Giles said. “I was thinking more of the attendant risks.” He gestured toward a stack of papers on the table next to his chair, doubtless the spell printout. “These are extremely potent magics: volatile, unstable. Even if we can make the spell work, there’s no guarantee we can fully control it.” His gaze rested on Cordelia. “There will be some danger for those doing the casting. Perhaps serious danger.”

“You’ll have to talk that over with Jonathan and Amy,” Cordelia said. “They understand that part of it better than I do. Maybe better than you, but I’m thinking you and them together should have all the bases covered.”

“Right.” Xander’s voice and face were still hostile. “Because you say so.”

“Xander.” Giles raised a hand to punctuate the interruption. “She won’t be making the decision … nor will you, nor ultimately the group itself. I’ve included you all because it concerns us all, but she’s correct: in the end, the choice will be made by the four who will have the responsibility of carrying it out.” He looked to Cordelia. “We will confer with Amy and Jonathan tomorrow. Binding Angelus again with a soul would, indeed, be a good tactical move, so long as the ritual can be carried out with reasonable safety for the participants.” He paused, then concluded, “On reflection, I would say you did well to bring this matter to our attention.”

“Good. Thanks.” Cordelia turned to leave, then looked back. “I know you want to be careful, but … we may not have a whole lot of time here, so don’t dawdle if you can help it.”

“Hunch?” Marcie’s voice again. “Or do you have info you haven’t given us?”

Cordelia glanced toward the space that seemed to hold the invisible girl. “In one of the dreams, Buffy said something about bringing down the curtain. In another one, Sheila said the river was rising fast. And, that one with the whirlwind and the lightning definitely had that end-of-the-world flavor to it.”

“Huh,” Oz said. “An apocalypse? We usually get those in December and May.”

“Just a feeling?” Giles asked. “Nothing more definite than that?”

“More than a feeling,” Cordelia said. “But definite, no. All the same, I think we’d better not waste any time.”

“That might be inadvisable in any case,” Giles noted. Cordelia wasn’t the only one surprised at that, and he elaborated, “I received word this afternoon that representatives from the Council of Watchers will be arriving within the next several days, responding to the report I sent them following the … events, at the library and factory. They will be here to assess our situation with their own eyes, to determine whether it will be desirable or even possible for me to continue in my current role, given my condition.” His eyes met Cordelia’s. “They may decide to make recommendations in regard to you, as well. However I might feel about the matter at another time, this seems the wrong moment to attempt … I believe the American expression is, ‘switching horses in mid-stream’.”

Great. Another deadline. At least, this one was a few days in the future; something told Cordelia that the crisis now looming might not wait for the arrival of the Snobby Brigade. She nodded to Giles, and left.

She was halfway down the sidewalk to the parking lot (the sun was nearly down, time to start planning her patrol) when a voice halted her: “Hey.” She stopped, turned, it was Oz, approaching her without hurry. He halted outside the normal ‘personal space’ boundary, and regarded her with that habitual even gaze. “The disk, they remembered it just as you were out the door.”

“Oh,” Cordelia said. “Right. Sure. Come on out to my car, I’ll give it to you.”

She started off again, but his voice halted her. “You doing okay?”

Small shock, and she couldn’t keep the surprise from showing. “What? Do I look like I’m having a major problem?”

“Yeah,” he said, still without changing expression. While she was trying to recover, he went on steadily. “I hit you with some pretty heavy stuff the other day. Meant it, but still. And there’s enough on you right now that what I’m seeing might be strain.”

Cordelia shook her head. “Fluff up a girl’s ego, why don’t you? Angel and Spike and world’s-end prophecies aren’t enough, now I have to deal with the prospect of worry lines.” Oz didn’t respond, except for what might have been a microscopic lift of one eyebrow, and she sighed. “Probably it’s just lack of sleep.”

A nod. “I hear the cure for that is … you know … sleep.”

“I am sleeping,” she protested. “It just isn’t doing me any good. Every day I feel like I’m being dragged down a little more. My body rests, but …” She made a little helpless gesture.

“Huh.” An actual frown, for those trained to recognize it. “You said the dreams had been coming for, what, two weeks? Is that right?”

“Big time,” Cordelia said. “And now they’re popping in during the day, too.”

That was rewarded by a full quarter-inch tilt of the head. “Really? ’Cause I hear you don’t get all the benefits of sleep without a full REM cycle. And REM is when people do their dreaming.” Cordelia gave him a blank look, and he went on, “If Slayer dreams are on, like, a different frequency, then having them non-stop could maybe jam up your rhythm. You sleep, yeah, but it’s like more flavor, less filling.”

Oz had always played straight with her, so Cordelia didn’t give him her usual impermeable social mask. “Really?” she said. “That could explain why I feel so frayed lately.” She shook her head. “But what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Don’t know,” he replied. “Could be serious, though. Sleep deprivation …” He shrugged. “That’s big.”

“Right,” Cordelia said. “Of course, it’s only a problem if the world doesn’t end first.”

“There’s always that,” Oz agreed. Together they started toward the parking lot where Cordelia’s convertible waited. Neither spoke again. There was nothing to say.
 

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