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Where the Wild Things Are

Prologue

Buffy fights with a vampire in the cemetery. Riley is with her. After giving the vampire a thorough pummeling Buffy tosses it over to Riley so he can have a turn while she picks up and loads her crossbow. Riley grabs the vampire and holds it still while Buffy takes aim at it. Just as Buffy fires, Riley is blind sided by a horned demon, causing Buffy’s shot to miss the vampire’s heart. The demon helps the wounded vampire to its feet as Riley is recovering.

Buffy rushes in, and gives the demon and the vampire each a kick to the head. She goes to check on Riley. He’s in good shape. “Okay, you get fang, and I’ll get horny!” says Buffy. Riley gives her a look. “I mean…”

They don’t have time to discuss it further. The vampire and demon attack. Riley pulls out a stake and engages the vampire. Buffy starts to pummel and kick the demon. Buffy pulls out a knife and stabs the demon with it. Riley finishes off the vampire with a stake to its heart.

Buffy and Riley check each other out, making sure that they both okay, and brushing the dirt and leaves off of each other’s sweaters. They are both a little puzzled by what just happened. Riley has never seen vampires and demons teaming up before. Buffy tells him it doesn’t happen much. “It’s like stripes and polka dots. Major clashing. So, I guess we should tell Giles about this.” Riley wants to tell his teams too. They both agree it should be as soon as possible.

While they have been talking they have continued to run their hands over each other, way past the point of cleaning off loose leaves and things.

Riley carries Buffy into his room as she pulls off his shirt. They can tell Giles about the vampire and the demon in the morning.

Act I

Riley wakes up late that night and gets out of bed, letting Buffy continue to sleep. He quietly puts on his pants and goes out into the corridor. He hears something moving. He looks around but doesn’t see anything.

Riley follows the sound into the bathroom. It seems to be coming from the bathtub. He goes to the tub and pulls aside the curtain surrounding it. He sees the tap is dripping, and turns it off.

An icecream truck comes to a stop on a suburban street. It’s being driven by Xander. He has Anya riding along with him. Xander wants them to go to the upcoming party at Riley’s house, but Anya isn’t anxious to go. She’s still pretty nervous about being around the Initiative guys. Xander isn’t concerned. They don’t know that she’s an ex-demon, and he figures that they probably wouldn’t care anyway. They are all going to be too busy flirting with all the other girls there to notice her anyway. He moves into the back of the truck, and starts preparing to sell his wares.

“So you don’t think I’m desirable enough to be flirted with?” asks Anya. “Is that it?”

“I’m just not going to win here, am I?” asks Xander.

Anya is upset. She doesn’t think that Xander finds her attractive anymore. They didn’t even have sex last night. Xander doesn’t understand what the big deal is. They have gone other nights without sex.

“I know,” says Anya. “Twice! Can’t believe we’re breaking up!”

Xander is getting more confused. He didn’t know they were breaking up, but Anya has seen this sort of thing thousands of times over the centuries. She just never thought it would happen to her.

“Anya, there’s a lot more to you and me than the sex,” says Xander. “Well, there should be. A relationship is something that you work at—work through—together.”

Anya just doesn’t understand why Xander didn’t take advantage of her last night. If there’s nothing wrong with her, maybe there’s something wrong with him. She has seen a wrinkled man talking about erectile dysfunction on TV.

“Whoa! Hey! All systems go here. No function problem, okay? You want sex? Let’s have sex.” Xander starts to unbutton his shirt. “Right here. Hot, sweaty, big sex!” He stops and looks off to the side. A crowd of children, and some of their parents have gathered beside the icecream truck, watching and listening to him.

Buffy and Riley sit with Giles, Willow and Tara in a student lounge, and tell them about the strange teaming of the vampire and demon. Giles agrees it is rather extraordinary behaviour. Vampires and demons generally don’t associate much. Willow wonders what could have brought them together.

“Not what,” says Riley. “Who.”

“Adam,” says Giles.

“Think about it,” says Buffy. “Who better to bring together a bunch of demon types than someone who’s made out of a bunch of demon types.”

“So he’s, um, bridging the gap between the races,” says Tara.

“Huh,” says Willow, “Like Martin Luther King.” No one seems to appreciate her parallel.

Giles suggests that Buffy should pay special attention to the area where they encountered the pair over the next few nights. Let him know if she sees anything else out of the ordinary. Riley tells him that the Initiative teams will be keeping a eye on the area too. He tells Buffy that they will have a reserve unit out during the party.

This is the first Giles has heard of any party. He doesn’t think that it’s a very good idea for them to partying at a time like this. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mine,” says Riley. The Initiative’s teams have been run pretty ragged lately, he thinks they need to let off some steam. He invites Giles to join them.

Giles declines the invitation. He already has some other plans, involving some grown-ups at the Espresso Pump. He seems reluctant to go into details.

Riley suddenly reminds Buffy of the time. Doesn’t she have a class? Buffy checks her watch. She still has twenty minutes. “Yeah, but I have that thing,” says Riley.

“Right! That thing…we could squeeze in before.” Buffy and Riley get up to go. “Bye!” she tells the others, and she and Riley rush out.

Willow smiles at their departing backs. “They’re probably going to—”

Giles stops her. “Yes, thank you, Willow. I didn’t attend university in the mesozoic era. I do remember what it’s like.”

Forrest and Graham come down from the third to the second floor of Lowell House. It’s freezing cold in there. Graham is going to call about the furnace in the morning. They pause in front of the door to Riley’s room. The sound of Buffy and Riley moaning can be heard through the door.

“Oh, you got to be kidding me!” says Forrest. “When do these two come up for air?”

Riley and Buffy are in bed, making love. Riley reaches into the drawer of his bedside table and pulls out a fresh condom.

Forrest and Graham continue downstairs to where Mason is adding wood to the fire in the fireplace, trying to warm things up. It doesn’t seem to be working. Graham tells him not to bother. They have a couple of heat generators pumping away upstairs. Mason sits down in a chair in front of the fireplace, watching the fire.

Buffy and Riley’s passion mounts.

A jet of flame erupts from the fireplace, setting Mason’s pants and sleeve on fire. Mason drops to the floor and rolls, trying to extinguish himself. Forrest grabs a banner hanging on the wall and uses it to smother the flames. He yells for Graham to get a medic.

Act II

Anya walks toward the main entrance to the Bronze by herself. A vampire jumps out of an alley in front of her, and snarls. Anya screams.

“Oh, it’s you,” says Spike, and he reverts to his human face.

“Spike! What are you doing? You made me yell really high!”

“Hey, yeah, I did. I scared you. Give me money.” Spike steps up close to Anya, trying to look threatening.

Anya pushes him away. “I’m not paying you for scaring me.”

“You’re not paying me,” says Spike, “I’m robbing you.”

Anya is not impressed. She knows Spike can’t hurt her, and she likes her money where it is. She brushes past him and heads for the Bronze. Spike growls at her, but it works even less well without his vampire face.

“Does this really work?” asks Anya. “Scaring people into giving you their money?”

Spike laughs. “Yeah, it works. Keeps me in blood and beers. Plus, you know, funny: watching the little humans quail.”

“I’m beginning to understand why you’re so friendless,” says Anya.

“Look who’s talking,” says Spike. “I don’t see droopy boy on your arm. Did he have better things to do?”

The Lowell House party is in full swing. Forrest and Graham tell Riley what happened to Mason. He wasn’t hurt. He just had his eyebrows singed off. He didn’t want the girls seeing him in that state, so he volunteered for patrol duty tonight.

Riley isn’t really paying any attention. He’s looking across the room at Buffy, where she is standing with Xander, Willow and Tara.

Xander is telling Buffy, Willow and Tara about the incident in the icecream truck. Buffy isn’t paying any attention to him. She’s looking at Riley. Xander tells them that Anya probably isn’t coming, she was pretty upset. “Which makes me wonder. Is it me? Am I the crazy one?”

“Uh-huh. Absolutely,” says Buffy. She clearly didn’t really hear what Xander said.

Willow decides that this will be a good time to confess that she borrowed Buffy’s new peasant top without asking, and spilled something purple on it. “Still love me?”

“Uh-huh,” says Buffy, but something of what Willow actually said registers. “Huh? What about my peasant top?” Willow tells her it was nothing, and Tara deflects the conversation back to Xander’s problems with Anya.

“Oh, it’s nothing much,” says Xander. “I’m just feeling pretty glad right now that a certain ex-demon doesn’t have any powers.”

Anya sits on a sofa in the Bronze with Spike. She has a beer bottle in her hand, and Spike’s holding an empty glass. She misses her powers. Back in her demon days she could have eviscerated Xander with a thought.

Spike understands, he feels much the same. “You know, you take the killing for granted, and then it’s gone, and you’re like…I wish I’d appreciated it more. Stopped and smelled the corpses, you know?”

They start talking about their love lives. It always seems to end badly. Anya has seen a thousand relationships, and they all ended with vengeance. That gives Spike an idea. She should go find Xander and eviscerate him, and he will track down Dru and stake her. They can make a project out of it.

Anya thinks about that for a bit, with a wistful smile on her face, but she doesn’t really want to eviscerate Xander. “But you can go do Dru, though.”

“Yeah, I will.” Spike sits back on the sofa. “Maybe later.”

Colm—one of Buffy’s drinking buddies from Beer Bad—is talking with a girl at the party. He tells her how sensual the French language is. “Just think about ‘car’ versus ‘voiture.’” He leans his hand against the wall. A strange feeling comes over him. “Oh, oh, wow!” He looks like he’s having an orgasm. The girl gets a little worried, and asks him if he’s okay. “I’m fine!” He is overcome by a fresh wave of pleasure.

“You really like French!” says the girl.

Xander strikes up a conversation with a pretty girl with long curly hair named Julie, who is examining the Lowell House trophy case. Somewhat to his surprise she finds him to be funny. “Funny ‘how amusing’ or funny ‘back away and avoid eye contact?’” he asks.

Julie considers that. “Mm, kind of both. Who are you here with?”

“Right now, I seem to be here with you.”

Buffy gets tired of looking at Riley from across the room. She goes over to where he’s standing with Forrest and Graham, and asks him if they can go up to his room so he can take a look an essay she’s writing for class. Riley quickly agrees, and hands his drink off to Forrest. Buffy takes his hand and drags him upstairs.

Forrest and Graham watch them go. “And I’m the one who got a ‘D’ in covert ops,” says Graham.

Colm invites his friend Evan over, and tells him to put his hand against the wall. Evan thinks it’s probably some kind of joke, but he’s willing to play along. After a couple of seconds Evan feels it too. “Whoa! What is that?” he asks as Colm and the girl watch him. “I kind of feel…” He shudders. “Oh, my god! Oh, god!”

Willow and Tara sit together on the stairs. Tara invites Willow to come horseback riding with her sometime. Willow is reluctant. She doesn’t like horses. She had a bad pony experience at her fourth birthday party, and looks on horses as being really big ponies, who are likely to bite her arm off.

Tara assures Willow that horses really don’t like arm very much. “I guarantee safety and fun.”

“Well, if you promise you’ll look after me.” Willow puts her hand on Tara’s knee.

Tara flinches away from her. “Don’t touch me! That’s disgusting!”

Willow is hurt and confused by Tara’s reaction. “Tara, what’s the matter?”

Tara doesn’t know. Now she’s bothered by her reaction rather than whatever it was that made her flinch away from Willow. Willow asks if she’s feeling okay, and Tara tells her she’s fine, but she doesn’t look it. She tells Willow that she has to go to the bathroom, and goes up the stairs.

Anya arrives at the party with Spike in tow. Spike looks around, a little surprised. He thinks he’s seen a lot of these guys before.

“Initiative soldiers,” says Anya. “They live here. The experiments happen in the lab under the house. It’s where they kept you and put in your chip. Let’s have fun!”

“What are you doing?” asks Spike. “You brought me here?”

Xander spots them. “Anya? What are you doing? You brought him here?”

“That’s what I said,” says Spike. “Only I hit the ‘here’ part.”

Xander is really not pleased to see Anya with Spike. So they had a little fight. She doesn’t need to be rebounding with the evil undead.

Spike is not impressed. “I see now what you said about him earlier,” he tells Anya. “No follow-through.”

Xander isn’t going to take that from Spike. “Hey, what a surprise!” He pats Spike on the shoulder. “Hostile 17! Can I get you a drink, Hostile 17?”

A couple of the Initiative guys are walking past them as Xander says this, and Spike prepares to bolt, but the guys just ignore them, and keep on walking. Spike looks around. No one seems to have noticed Xander’s outburst. “Well, may be some fun to be had in the lion’s den after all. You two keep scrapping. I’ll find the liquor.” He walks off into the crowd.

Xander still wants to know what Anya was doing with Spike.

“We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you mean,” says Anya. “That’s all I do now. Not have sex.”

Xander really thinks that Anya is overreacting. They had a fight, it’s normal. Anya agrees that fights are a normal part of a relationship. They come right before the vengeance starts.

Xander remembers Anya’s former vocation as a Vengeance Demon, and starts to get a little worried.

“Relax,” says Anya. “I’m not going to do it. I’m just trying to tell you that we have nothing in common besides both of us liking your penis, and now I don’t even have that! So I get to say when it’s done. And it’s done!”

Xander really doesn’t think that she deserves to be the one to walk away. He has put up with an awful lot from her through the course of their relationship. He thinks that he should be the one who gets to walk away. He turns and starts to go.

“Where are you going?” she asks him.

“To enjoy the party!”

“Well, then I’m staying too! To show you how much I’m not bothered by you having fun! Because I’ll be having more fun!” Anya walks away in the opposite direction.

“I’m having fun already!” Xander shouts at her across the room.

“Me, too!” shouts Anya back at him. “Whoo hoo!”

Xander walks into another room where a bunch of people are sitting on the floor playing Spin the Bottle. “Sometimes I just don’t get the sophisticated college lifestyle,” he tells himself. He notices that one of the players is Julie. She invites him to join them.

Spike has found himself a seat beside a keg of beer. Across the keg from him sits one of the Initiative guys. He looks at Spike curiously. “Hey, buddy. You look familiar.”

“Yeah,” says Spike. “I get that a lot.”

Xander gives the bottle a spin, and it stops, pointing at Julie. She invites him to give her a kiss. Xander leans across and gives her a peck on the cheek. That isn’t the sort of kiss Julie had in mind. After Xander sits back down, she pounces on him, and gives him a long deep kiss.

Julie suddenly pulls away. “I’m sorry! I didn’t— I’m sorry!” Julie gets off Xander, and runs from the room.

Xander gets up to follow Julie. While he looks for her he notices the group of people gathered around the spot on the wall, having orgasms as they feel it. He can’t really investigate that too closely because he hears the sound of Julie crying coming from inside a closet. He tries the door, but it’s locked from the inside.

Julie is crying inside the closet. “I’m bad. I’m bad,” she says over and over as she hacks at her hair with a knife.

Willow knocks on the bathroom door, looking for Tara. She doesn’t get an answer so she opens the door and looks inside. There is no one there. She pauses at the sink for a drink of water, and hears the sound of splashing coming from the bathtub behind her.

Willow goes to the bathtub and pulls aside the curtain. The tub is full of water, and there’s a boy in it who is being held under by some unseen force, drowning him. Willow reaches into the water to pull him out, but he vanishes. Willow stands up, and looks around. The boy is standing behind her. His skin has a blueish tinge to it. He looks very dead. Willow screams.

Buffy and Riley break off kissing. “Was that Willow?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” says Buffy. “Doesn’t matter.” She kisses him again.

Xander returns to the game of Spin the Bottle to see if anyone there knows Julie. They all just ignore him, and keep playing their game.

Willow comes running down the stairs, looking for Xander or Tara, or someone. She finds Xander and tells him about the ghost in the bathtub.

“A ghost?” asks Xander. “What’s the deal? Is every Frat on this campus haunted? And if so, why do people keep coming to these parties? ’Cause it’s not the snacks.”

Tara finds Willow and Xander. Willow asks her how she is. Tara’s okay, but she’s getting a very bad feeling about this house. She thinks they should go. Xander and Willow are inclined to agree, but before they go anywhere the bottle in the Spin the Bottle game starts to spin wildly, picking up speed until it shatters, showering the players with shards of broken glass.

“We need Buffy,” says Willow. The three of them run upstairs and start to pound on Riley’s door, calling out for her.

Vines start to grow out of the doorframe, covering the door. Xander continues to pound on it, calling out for Buffy.

Buffy and Riley continue to make love, oblivious to the sound of the pounding on the door, and Xander calling out Buffy’s name. The sound is very distant and muffled.

Act III

“Do you want to go back?” Riley asks Buffy.

“Never.” Buffy continues to kiss him.

Xander and Willow keep calling for Buffy, and pounding on Riley’s door as it’s overgrown by vines. Tara senses something else is about to happen and looks down from the balcony at the party still going on below. There is a rumbling sound, and the house begins to shake. People start to run for the exits, and Tara backs away from the edge of the balcony. A stronger shock knocks Tara, Willow and Xander off their feet.

Spike looks around from his chair, watching the panicked people running past him. “Well, this party’s starting to liven up after all!” His pleasure is short lived. Leather straps wrap themselves around his wrists, chest and mouth, trapping him in the chair.

Forrest finds Graham standing transfixed in the hallway, not moving. He tells Graham to stop standing around and to help get the people to safety.

Graham doesn’t move. “Touch not the impure thing, or ye shall perish. Find salvation in the cross of our Lord and Savior.”

Forrest is confused by Graham’s behaviour, but he doesn’t have time for this now. He turns Graham to face the wall mirror and hits the control for the elevator. The green light of the retinal scan plays across their faces, and the mirror slides aside. Forrest pulls Graham into the elevator with him.

People continue running from the house, passing by Anya, who’s standing still, trying to keep her balance. Apparently no one has told the former demon that it is a good idea to get outside during an earthquake. She is soon alone in that part of the house. The tremors subside.

Anya looks down the hallway and sees another girl running toward her, screaming. The girl doesn’t see Anya, and keeps running right at her. She doesn’t stop. She runs right through Anya, and vanishes. Anya looks around, and the earthquake begins again.

Willow, Xander and Tara make their way down from upstairs. Xander grabs Anya, and the four of them start for the door. Spike breaks free of the leather straps holding him in the chair and follows them.

Xander pauses at the doorway and looks back. He sees Julie, with most of her hair gone. She just has a few tufts sticking out from her bare skull. “Please god, help me!” she cries. Xander runs back in, grabs her, and pulls her toward the door.

Forrest and Graham enter the Initiative’s control room to report in. Graham seems to have recovered from whatever took control of him upstairs. The people downstairs are aware of the situation, and have been trying to page people to come in, but their frequencies are all jammed by whatever is going on up there. The man in charge sends Forrest and Graham off to guard Section Two. “If the cell door locking mechanisms malfunction, you know what to do.”

Xander and Julie come out of the house, and find the others waiting for them. Julie has a quick look around at them, and then runs off. Willow thinks they have to go back in.

“Why?” asks Anya.

“Because Buffy and Riley are trapped,” says Xander. Anya isn’t worried about them. She figures the Slayer and the soldier boy can take care of themselves. “Anya, look around. There’s ghosts and shaking and people are going all Felicity with their hair. We’re fresh out of super-people, and somebody’s got to go back in there.” Xander looks around at the others. “Now, who’s with me?”

“I am.” Everyone is surprised that it was Spike who said that. “I know I’m not the first choice for heroics, and Buffy’s tried to kill me more than once. And I don’t fancy a single one of you at all. But…” Spike stops and considers everything he just said. “Actually, all that sounds pretty convincing.” He walks off, to look for another party.

Anya wants to follow Spike, but Xander isn’t going anywhere. “I’m going back in there, and I’m not coming out till I bring my friend with me.” He turns and walks back in the door.

Something unseen grabs Xander and throws him out of the house. He rolls to a stop on the sidewalk, lying on his back. “Or, it could be Watcher time.”

Xander and the girls arrive at the Espresso Pump and find Giles. He’s sitting on a stool, playing a guitar, and singing. The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes. They are stunned.

“Could we go back to the haunted house?” asks Xander. “Because this is creeping me out.”

“Does he do this a lot?” asks Tara.

“Sure,” says Xander. “Every day the Earth rotates backward and the skies turn orange.”

Giles notices the four of them watching him, and falters a bit in his song, but he recovers quickly and continues.

The girls are impressed by just how good Giles is. Willow remembers why she had such a crush on him back in high school. Xander just finds the whole thing very disturbing.

The vines completely cover the door to Riley’s room. Buffy and Riley pull apart for a bit of a breather. It doesn’t last long.

“You’re, you’re too far away from me,” says Buffy.

“I’m right here,” says Riley.

“You have to keep touching me.” Buffy rolls back onto him.

Giles and the others go to the university library to research the history of Lowell House and to see if they can figure out what’s causing the haunting. Giles is puzzled by the lack of response from Buffy and Riley. Anya figures it means they were dead.

“Unless they’re too busy doing it to answer,” says Xander.

“Doing what?” asks Giles.

“You know, for a god of acoustic rock, you’re kind of naive,” says Xander.

“I didn’t think you meant— In the midst of all that, do you really think they were keeping it up?” Everyone looks at Giles. “Oh, for a different phrasing.”

Willow tells him that there was a lot of weird sexual behaviour going on at the party. Giles starts to consider the possibilities. It could be the work of a succubus, or a satyr’s prank. It might also be something leaking out of the Initiative’s labs beneath the house.

Willow finds an old newspaper account about Lowell House. Prior to 1960 it hadn’t been a fraternity residence. It had been the Lowell Home for Children housing up to 40 adolescents: runaways, juvenile delinquents, and emotionally disturbed teenagers from the Sunnydale area. Tara asks if any of the children died there, but the account Willow has found doesn’t say anything about that. It is mostly about Genevieve Holt, the woman who ran the home.

“When did she die?” asks Giles.

“She didn’t,” says Willow.

Mrs. Holt lets Giles, Anya and Xander into her apartment. She’s a little old lady, with short white hair. She’s wearing glasses, and has a deep blue robe on over her pyjamas. The apartment is small and neat, crowded with knickknacks, and there are several crosses and crucifixes on the walls amid the pictures. She doesn’t mind them calling this early. She was already up for her morning prayers anyway, and she likes to talk about her children. She leads them into her living room.

Giles tells Mrs Holt that he realizes that his questions may sound strange, but did she notice any odd occurrences in the house? Furniture moving, or objects or people appearing and disappearing, things like that. Mrs. Holt thinks that all sounds like crazy talk.

Giles switches subjects. He asks if any of the children in her care were ill, or if anything happened to any of them. Mrs. Holt tells him that of course the children had the flu and other normal childhood illnesses, but none of them ever died or anything like that. “I treated them as I would my own flesh and blood. Gave them hugs and praise when they were good and punished them when they were dirty.”

Giles starts to tell her that of course children do like to play in the muck, but Anya realizes that Mrs. Holt meant an entirely different sort of dirty. Giles catches on quickly too.

“Without me,” says Mrs. Holt. “They would have been shut out of the Kingdom. Lost to lust.”

“But you…helped them,” says Giles.

“The girls fell to vanity more than the boys,” says Mrs. Holt. “I’d see them preening like Jezebel, doting over their pretty hair.”

“So you’d hack it off,” says Xander.

Mrs. Holt looks crossly at him. “I’d remove the temptation to admire themselves. They were better for it.”

Anya asks if anything happened in the bathtub, and Mrs. Holt tells how she would baptise the worst of the children there.

“You held them under,” accuses Giles.

“They needed to be reborn!” Mrs. Holt doesn’t like the way Giles seems to be judging her.

Giles has had quite enough of this woman too. He thinks that she seriously needs judgement. She has abused and traumatised uncounted children and now her actions have manifested as a malevolent force which threatens still more lives. Mrs. Holt doesn’t want to listen to this anymore, when she can smell the sin on each and every one of them.

“Yeah? You smell sin?” asks Xander. “Let me tell you something, lady. She who smelt it dealt it!” Giles gives him a questioning look. “It’s like what you said, but faster.”

Xander, Anya and Giles leave Mrs. Holt’s apartment. Xander is now more convinced than ever that all old people are crazy. Anya doesn’t understand what Mrs. Holt has to do with what’s happening now though. She may have tortured those children, but she didn’t kill any of them to make ghosts. Giles doesn’t think they are dealing with ghosts.

“One ran right through me,” says Anya.

“Not a ghost,” says Giles. “An apparition. I believe we’re dealing with a kind of poltergeist, a whole cluster of them in fact. Born out of intense adolescent emotion and sexual energy.”

“Both of which were totally pent-up during Mrs. Holt’s reign of repression,” says Anya.

“So, with Buffy and Riley having, you know, acts of nakedness around the clock lately,” says Xander. “Maybe they set something free. Like a big, bursting poltergasm.”

Giles agrees, and the poltergeists are drawing their energy from Buffy and Riley.

“Okay. They’re the battery in the boo factory,” says Xander. “So what happens when the battery’s drained?”

“They die,” says Giles.

Act IV

Riley rolls off Buffy.

“Don’t stop,” says Buffy. “Never stop touching me.” She pulls him back toward her.

Willow and Tara set up a table with candles in Buffy and Willow’s room. Giles is going through Willow’s trunk of magic supplies. Xander is looking through Buffy’s weapons trunk, something that Anya thinks is kind of pointless. Weapons are pretty useless against what they are dealing with.

Giles agrees with Anya. Xander and Anya should just wait outside until they have bound the spirits. Willow doesn’t really know how much time they will have once they’ve done that though. Xander still wants weapons. He selects a machete for himself and hands Anya an axe.

Xander waits outside the doors to Lowell House, with his machete leaning on his shoulder. Anya leans against the door with her hands against the glass.

“What do you feel?” asks Xander.

“Upset,” says Anya. “Afraid of being without you. And a little hungry.”

“I meant about the house.”

“Oh. Still haunted.”

Giles, Willow and Tara link hands around the table on which the candles are burning. “Children of the past,” says Tara. “Spirits of Lowell, be guided by our light. Come forth and be known to us.”

“How will we know when it works?” asks Giles.

“We’ll know,” says Tara. Several children have appeared standing around them. They all look dead.

The front door to Lowell House opens. Xander cautiously looks around inside, but he doesn’t see anything. He enters the house with Anya following him. Xander heads for the stairs, which are totally enveloped in vines. Xander starts to hack at them with his machete.

“We implore you.” Tara tells the children gathered around them. “Be still.”

“Find it in your hearts to leave our friends passage,” says Giles.

“Transform your pain. Release your past, and, uh…” Willow is a loss for what else to say. “…get over it.”

Giles frowns at Willow, and she shrugs.

Xander and Anya make their way up the stairs to the door to Riley’s room. Xander reaches out and grabs the knob. A wind starts to blow through Lowell House.

A wind blows through Buffy and Willow’s room. “Find here the serenity you seek!” Tara shouts above the wind. “The peace you—” She stops when the table is tossed across the room. The children vanish.

“What happened?” asks Giles.

“We lost them,” says Tara.

A force grabs Xander and pulls him away from Riley’s door. It drags him across the floor and into the bathroom. The door slams shut. Anya chases after him and tries to open the door. Something grabs her and pulls her away from the door. It tosses her through the balcony railing and down onto the floor below.

Xander is dragged into the bathtub, and held under the water. He struggles against whatever is holding him down, but he can’t break free. He looks up through the water over his face and sees the children.

Anya picks herself up off the floor and staggers back toward the stairs. She can hear the sound of the children’s cries all around her.

“Shut up repressed crybabies!” Anya shouts at voices. She starts up the stairs. A shoot of the vine impales her hand. Anya screams, but she pulls her hand loose and keeps going.

Xander struggles under the water. The children vanish, and are replaced by Anya as she reaches into the tub and drags him clear of the water.

Anya helps Xander to his feet, and together they go out into the vine choked hallway. They start to make their way back toward Riley’s door. A vine whips at Xander. It hits him in the face, and knocks him down. Anya helps him back to his feet, and they keep going down the hall as more vines whip at them. Another vine wraps itself around Anya’s neck. Xander pulls it free, and they keep going. They reach Riley’s door. They push at it, both of them hitting it with their shoulders. It opens.

Buffy and Riley look toward the door. They are somewhat surprised by the interruption.

“Xander!” Buffy pulls the sheet up to cover herself. “Don’t you knock?”

Xander and Anya look at each other without saying a word, and turn and walk away through the vine free hallway.

Epilogue

Buffy and Riley have breakfast in the cafeteria with Willow, Xander and Anya. They can’t believe what happened. “I just had no idea,” says Buffy. “It’s so creepy. He was really singing?”

“I’d say it was more like crooning,” says Xander. He turns to Anya and pats her on the knee. “If we grow old together, remind me to skip the mid-life crisis.”

Willow still thinks that Giles’ singing was kind of sexy, something Xander really doesn’t want to hear.

“We’re just lucky no one got injured,” says Riley. “No thanks to us.”

Willow thinks that Riley is being too hard on himself, but Buffy agrees with Riley. If they hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in each other none of this would have happened.

“True,” says Anya. “Feel shame.”

“My girlfriend,” Xander gives her another pat. “Mistress of the learning plateau.”

Willow still doesn’t think it was their fault. They were under the influence of powerful magic.

“We were like zombies,” says Buffy. “I had no control over myself at all.”

“It must have been horrible,” says Willow.

Buffy looks aside at Riley and gives him a bit of a smile. “Yeah. Horrible.”

Riley looks uncomfortable, and quickly agrees. “Mm-hm. It was bad.”

Death Toll