TITLE: Le Bella

AUTHOR: gidgetgirl

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For anyone who has not read Only Hope, let me catch you up to speed. Angel and Cordy found Hopie, a four year old with an incredible power and destiny tied to a magic so ancient that it was governed by The Powers that Were, not The Powers that Be. Hopie, the Shanshu child, embodies the essences of Buffy, Cordy, Angel, and Conner, she has adopted Angel and Cordy as her parents, and she has a deep affection for battle. Hopie’s Champion, Faith, is now out of prison and is living in the Hyperion, along with Lindsey and the rest of the Fang Gang. Just a heads up, this story is Angel/Cordy, Buffy/Spike, Dawn/Connor, Faith/Lindsey, Wesley/Lilah, Fred/Gunn, Xander/Anya, and the whole Connor-Cordy sleeping together thing NEVER happened.

NOTES 2:Please read and review, even if you just make a smiley face! I’d like to know if you’re reading/enjoying this fic. Constructive criticism is also appreciated, and I honor most requests in the way of plot.

The girl slipped through the crowd unnoticed, even though she was remarkably pretty for a child on the edge of her teen years. She had a solemn look: brown hair, wide set blue eyes, and light skin. She walked briskly towards the Hyperion Hotel. She was a girl-woman on a mission.

Inside the hotel, a battle of epic proportions was in the midst of being waged between the forces of good and tiny. Tiny (and stubborn) was winning by far.

“Hopie,” Angel said sweetly, “honey, please come down before Momma sees you up there.” Hopie, perfectly content with her perch twelve feet off the ground, simply stared at Angel, her face free of any trace of fear.

“I like it up here,” Hopie told him seriously. “I’m taller than you are and jumping would be fun and then maybe I could just stay here and not go to school.” Angel’s non-beating heart raced nonetheless.

“Don’t jump,” he instructed firmly. Hopie shrugged.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay here.” Angel sighed. He was being outwitted by a four year old.

“You’ll like school, Hopie. You’ll learn, and there will be other children to play with, and you’ll look so pretty in the dress your momma bought you.” Angel was starting to doubt the aforementioned dress was ever going to get any use. Hopie was still wearing a white nightgown, and from the stubborn set of her jaw, she had no intentions of coming down.

“Kids to play with?” Hopie asked. “Will we play battle?” Angel smiled encouragingly at the child, not wanting to lie to her. Hopie was too sharp to fall for that. “No one will play battle with me and the teacher won’t like me and there will be boys. I don’t like boys.”

“You like me,” Angel reminded her. “And Connor.”

“My Connor is not a boy,” Hopie said, with all of the conviction of a small child. Angel tried not to smile. Hopie’s Connor would probably take offense to that statement. He couldn’t help it, he grinned at the little girl, completely using any credibility he had as the stern daddy.

“She still up there?” Gunn asked, coming into the room. “Cordy will be down any second and your name is mud if the kiddo up there isn’t all dressed and ready for kindergarten.” Hopie giggled. Angel groaned. The kid had Cordelia’s twisted sense of humor.

The young girl paused outside the door of the Hyperion, preparing herself mentally. She was in perfect control of everything. Everything would be fine. Wes would know what to do. She opened the door and took in the sight of a two-hundred and forty-seven year old vampire pleading with a four year old munchkin, who clearly had the upper hand, being firmly out of the reach of any of the adults.

The girl cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, keeping the British accent out of her voice due to force of habit. “Can any of you tell me where Wesley Wyndham-Price’s office is?” She was infinitely polite. Angel and Gunn turned around, startled that they hadn’t heard the girl enter the room.

“He doesn’t work here anymore,” Gunn replied, giving the girl a once over look. She looked about thirteen, but she could have been younger or older, with a polished innocent air about her that made Gunn want to smile.

“Oh,” she replied. “Can you direct me to his current place of residence, or possibly his current employer? It would be a great service to me, and perhaps I could do you a favor as well.” She approached Angel, keeping her eyes locked onto Hopie’s.

“You want to know a secret?” she asked the child. Hopie looked at her suspiciously.

“Not if I have to come down,” she replied firmly. “I’m staying up here forever, or at least until the next demon comes.” Angel blanched, wishing the child would remember not to talk about demons with strangers. The strange girl didn’t so much as blink.

“This is a secret about a demon,” she said. Hopie considered the girl’s words.

“Can I kill him with my crossbow?” Hopie asked, thoroughly intrigued.

“Oh no, crossbows are fair useless against Shekorith demons. There’s only one thing that can be used to kill one, but if you’re just going to sit up there, I guess you’ll never ever know what it is.” The girl, noticing Hopie’s shift in position turned to Angel and conversationally commanded, “Catch her.” Sure enough, Hopie had launched herself off her perch. She landed in Angel’s arms, giggling. He put a stern look on his face.

“Hope, that wasn’t funny,” he said seriously. Hopie frowned. He wasn’t very happy with her, and she hated having anyone mad at her almost as much as she hated the thought of going some place where she couldn’t talk to anyone about demons or vamps or anything interesting at all.

“You have to cut off its toes,” the girl whispered in Hopie’s ear. Hopie giggled. Cordelia entered the room and took in instantly that Hopie wasn’t dressed yet, Angel had his do-I-really-have-to-scold-the-baby look on, and a girl of about twelve, with impeccable fashion taste, was standing just to Angel’s left.

Cordy crossed the room and took Hopie from Angel’s arms. “Upstairs. Clothes. Now please, munchkin.” Hopie, recognizing the voice of authority, quickly scampered off. Angel sighed. Strangely, parenthood was coming naturally to Cordy, whereas the kid clearly had him wrapped around her little finger.

“Rough morning?” Cordelia asked him. He nodded. Cordy turned her attention to the girl at Angel’s side. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Bella,” the girl replied, carefully omitting her last name. “I’m looking for Wesley Wyndham-Price. Do you perhaps have his forwarding address?” Cordy’s mother instinct kicked in.

“I don’t think you should be going there,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s safe.” The girl arched one delicate brown eyebrow. The girl simply stared until someone gave in, giving her Wesley’s address. She thanked them and left quietly, realizing perfectly well that someone was tailing her, but not really caring.

Faith turned to Lindsey. “Tell me again why we’re following some teen when today is Hopie’s first day of kindergarten.” Lindsey pressed a quick kiss to Faith’s lips. He had watched the scene in the hotel from the stairs, amused when Hopie had refused to listen to Angel and fascinated by something he saw in the other young girl. Faith, consumed even by a small kiss from Lindsey, let the question hang in the air.

“Let Angel and Cordy have Hopie’s first day of kindergarten,” Lindsey said softly, drawing back from the kiss. “You can take her with you patrolling tonight.” Faith sighed, wishing for a child of her own. Lindsey, knowing what she was thinking smiled. He wouldn’t mind having a little Faith himself.

Bella knocked on the door to Wes’s apartment. A woman dressed in a business skirt suit opened the door. Her hair was still slightly mussed. Bella ignored it. “Is Wesley here?” she asked. Lilah looked speculatively at the girl.

“Wes,” she called. “You have a visitor.” She turned to Bella. “Aren’t you little and cute?” she asked. Bella stared at her, unperturbed.

“Sure,” she replied. “What, pray tell, are you?” Wes entered the room, pulling a shirt over his head.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He didn’t generally have visitors who weren’t Lilah or looking for some reluctant source of help. He stared at the girl in the entryway. She looked very familiar. He raised his eyebrow at her. “Hello,” he said in a low, mild voice that didn’t match at all with the tauter, higher-pitched voice Bella remembered.

“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me,” she said, slipping into her natural British accent at the sight of her brother. “I can’t have changed all that much.”

Wes opened his eyes wider. “Anni? My god, Anni, it is you. What in the world are you doing here? Are mother and father here? Look at how grown you are.”

“No one has called me Anni since you left,” Bella said softly. “No one but you ever did. And no, mother and father aren’t here. They don’t know that I am here, and if you plan on telling them, then I’ll walk right back out this door, and you’ll never see me again.”

“Don’t threaten me, Anni,” Wes said in a low voice. “It isn’t becoming.” His voice became lighter with the last phrase. “You took a transatlantic flight by yourself? You could have been hurt.” She ran to her brother, thinking that she really wouldn’t mind being Anni all of the time now.

“If it makes you feel better, you can yell at me,” she said, hugging him tightly. Wesley hugged her back, pushing back the feeling that he was somehow too dirty to touch her.

“I probably will,” he replied. “Later.” Lilah pursed her lips, quite sure that whoever this girl was, she was taking a part of Wes’s heart, a part of his mind, that she would never have. Lilah Morgan didn’t like to share.

“And you’ll share with the other kids, right?” Cordy asked as she tied Hopie’s long black hair into a ponytail. Hopie nodded. “And you won’t talk about…” Cordy paused for Hopie to answer.

After a petulant pause, Hopie said, “Demons or battle or Daddy being a vampire or my visions or nothin’ good.” She dug her foot into the ground to show her disapproval. “Momma,” she said finally, and Cordy’s heart warmed as it always did to hear her adopted daughter use that name. “Do you think maybe I can stay home and you can go to kindergarten?” Cordelia laughed.

“Tell you what,” she said. “If you’re really good today in school, I bet Aunt Faith will let you go out with her tonight.” Hopie smiled. Aunt Faith was one of her favorite people.

Faith and Lindsey listened carefully outside of the apartment. “I didn’t know English had a sister,” Faith said.

“I don’t think Lilah did either,” Lindsey said, “which concerns me. Wolfram and Hart knows everything. Lilah should know Wes’s second grade teacher’s name, and here this Bella, or Anni or whatever her name is has existed beneath their radar. She has a secret, that girl, and there’s no doubt she’s running.”

“Running away from someone else or to Wesley?” Faith asked. Lindsey shrugged.

“Honestly,” he replied, “I think it’s a little of both.” They both knew what it was like to run, and Faith realized that that was what Lindsey had seen in the girl, the desire to get away. She felt a sort of pull towards the child, nothing like the incredible connection she felt to Hopie as her Champion, more along the lines of feeling like a kindred spirit. It wouldn’t, Faith decided, hurt to keep her eyes out for this one as well.

“Hopie,” Cordelia said in a warning voice. “Give it to me.”

“What?” Hopie asked, batting her innocent eyes. Cordelia didn’t fall for it. She held out her hand. Hopie sighed, taking the small sword out from behind her back and placing it in her mother’s open hand. Now she was quite certain that kindergarten wouldn’t be any fun at all. What kind of fun could you have without a crossbow or a sword or any cool toys?

Anni couldn’t believe how tightly Wes was holding her. Her heart lifted at the thought that maybe he hadn’t forgotten her when he’d left her behind after all. Maybe he would understand and offer her the kind of protection she needed. Wes stepped back from embracing his sister and looked at her straight in the eye.

Anni recognized his lecture-face, despite the general changes in his expression and demeanor since she had last seen him. His voice was surprisingly calm and not at all lilting like she remembered.

“Where are mother and father?” he asked calmly.

Anni looked him straight in the eye, not willing to lie to him over facts he could easily ascertain for himself. “A conference in Lebanon. Something about the rhetorical implications of an averted apocalypse, and the economical repercussions of the demon underworld on modern European nations.” Wes nodded, interested. His parents were always going off to those conferences, having been born and raised themselves in families of Watcher lineage. Until Wesley, seventeen generations of Prices and thirty generations of Wyndhams had been members of the Watcher’s Council. As his parents always so pointedly reminded him, he was the lone failure. It was part of the reason he never went home, and looking at the girl standing in front of him, he felt the guilt of abandoning her just because he was afraid of conflict with his parents.

“And your nanny?” Wes asked, earning an annoyed look from his sister.

“I’m almost thirteen, Wesley,” she replied. Wes looked at her.

“And if I know mother and father at all, you still have a tutor who doubles as a nanny.” Anni shrugged.

“I got rid of her,” she replied. “She was happy to go once I gave her mother’s reference and a severance check. Her services were being terminated next week anyway.”

Lilah stared at the girl, fascinated. For someone so young, she seemed to have excellent manipulation skills. All the more fun manipulating her would be for Lilah. It shouldn’t take too much to send little Anni running back off to England, she thought, and if anyone could do it, she could.

“So you thought you’d just hop on an airplane, fly halfway around the world by yourself, walk through the streets of L.A. unprotected, and nothing bad would ever happen at all? That’s stupid, Anni,” Wes said sharply. “Really, truly stupid.” His voice was rising, but still hadn’t yet made it to the yelling upgrade.

Faith and Lindsey were walking back to the Hyperion, and Lindsey made no comment when Faith suggested they take the scenic route, which just happened to pass by the elementary school. They stood side by side, by the gate that separated the children’s playground from the rest of the world, not holding hands as other couples might have, because even standing a foot away from each other, the connection between them was so solid, so constant that it was palpable.

The children playing on the playground were all much bigger than Hopie, and the couple know that even though the Shanshu was small for her age, she wasn’t that small for her age, so these children were obviously much older.

Faith sighed. “I hope she’s doing okay,” she said. “I feel like I should be there, to protect her.”

Lindsey chuckled. “No big bad is going to try to abduct Hopie from kindergarten, and she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself against any minor baddies.” Faith shook her head.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said. “Demons Hopie can handle. Other children, those are the kinds of monsters she can’t fight.” After one longing look at the playground, Faith turned to walk away. Lindsey couldn’t help but see a tiny version of Faith and one of himself playing on the playground together. He felt like he had known her forever. She was his, and he knew deep down that someday his children, her children, would play on that playground.

“I hope she’s okay,” Angel worried. Cordelia laughed.

“She’ll be fine,” she said. “I just hope that she doesn’t try to slay something. What if she gets a vision? The teacher won’t believe anything she says.”

“And for that,” Angel replied. “We are grateful. Everyone will think we have the most imaginative daughter in the world. As long as they don’t know that she’s really a very straightforward child not given to whimsy, we’ll be fine.”

“Whimsy?” Cordelia asked. “What kind of vampire says whimsy?” Angel gave her a disgruntled look.

“The kind who’s trying not to think about his little girl on her first day of school, all alone.” Cordelia’s spirits were much lifted by the fact that Angel looked infinitely more pathetic than she did.

“If you’re just going to mope around all day, I’m going to do something productive.” Angel, knowing quite well what that something productive was, smiled as Connor entered the room.

“Are you up for it?” he asked.

“Always,” Connor replied, having no idea what he was getting himself into, figuring it for a demon control issue.

“Great,” Cordelia said brightly. “I’ll grab my purse. You could use some more clothes, too, and I want to get something special for Hopie for surviving her first day of school.” Connor groaned. The last thing he wanted to do was to be stuck on Cordelia shopping duty. Angel smirked at his son.

“Angel said whimsy,” Cordelia told Connor laughingly, giving the boy some blackmail material.

“Did not,” Angel muttered as Cordelia left to get her purse.

“Come children,” said the teacher, “let’s sit in the magic circle and play a game.” All of the children ran to the center of the room, and shoved their ways into spots in the circle. Hopie frowned. It didn’t look like the magic circles Lorne and Daddy and everyone made sometimes, when they had to do something magical with crystals or weird smelling powder.

“This circle isn’t very magical,” Hopie said firmly.

“Use your imagination,” the teacher suggested, smiling. Hopie imagined a huge demon attacking the classroom. She imagined herself fighting it. She smiled. “There,” the teacher said, “you see, it can be magical.”

“Whimsical,” Hopie corrected. “There’s a difference between magic and whimsy.” She was careful not to say that Daddy had told her that. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that he had said whimsy, just like she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the time that Connor had played dress up with her.

“What’s your name?” the teacher asked kindly, a little mystified by the strange, but adorable child.

“Hopie,” the little warrior replied, “Hopie Chase Angel.”

“My name’s Sam,” a little boy said, wiggling, too excited to stay still any longer. “I can sing Happy Birthday and make dinosaur sounds. Grrrr. Arrrg.” Sam demonstrated his dinosaur sounds. Hopie smiled. Silly boy, there were no such things as dinosaurs anymore.

“I can make demon sounds,” replied Hopie. “Grrr. Arrrg.” Immediately, the entire kindergarten class was making those sounds, and the teacher let out a laugh and then a sigh. It was going to be a long, long year.

“It was not stupid,” Anni replied firmly. “I had everything under control. I planned everything carefully. I’m not an idiot, you know.” She glared at Wes, and the expression on her face made him think of the way she had looked when she was little. He had left for the watcher’s academy when she was only four, but she’d often said the exact same thing to him at that young age.

Images flew through his mind of Anni and his parents. Three-year-old Anni translating a rare archaic text, with his parents either watching proudly and then giving her the cold shoulder when she stumbled over the part of the translation that had taken them years to figure out. A little older, Anni’s tutor announcing that she had finished her fourth set of Chaotismic Prophesies. Anni running with scissors because her parents really didn’t mind what she did outside of her demon-centric education. Even then, Wesley had been the one to take the scissors from the child and give her a setting down about the dangers. And then he had left, and Anni had been all alone in that big house with no one but tutors and his parents and her own uncontrolled brilliance.

Here he was again, faced with a girl he hardly knew and still scolding her about the dangers of her actions. Only now, Anni had come into her intelligence, and was a much less susceptible opponent.

“You don’t think you could have gotten hurt?” he asked her.

She looked at him evenly. “I didn’t,” she replied. “I made it here, and if I have to, I’ll make it somewhere else. I don’t want to be found, Wesley. Mother and Father wouldn’t want to find me here, and I am not going back.”

Wesley kept himself from flinching when she mentioned his parents’ inevitable horror at finding their last child in league with their black sheep son. “What are you running from?” Lilah drew out the question, letting it hang in the air.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, and I don’t believe that’s any of your business,” Anni replied politely. Wes tried to keep the laughter out of his eyes when he saw the disgruntled look on Lilah’s face.

“Lilah,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse my sister. She’s a bit overexcited after her trip. Perhaps we can talk later.” Lilah left, realizing perfectly well that she had been summarily dismissed. She headed to work, anxious to see why exactly she had never heard of Little Miss Wyndham-Price.

“That was rude,” Wes told Anni mildly.

“And you loved it,” Anni returned. Wes shrugged.

“Perhaps,” he replied, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I know that something is going on with you. Or the fact that I will have to call Mother and Father. They’ll be worried sick.”

“About their reputation,” Anni said, knowing that her parents didn’t give so much as a flip about her as a person. Wes ignored the fact that what his sister said was true.

“I have to call,” Wes insisted.

“But,” Anni started. He cut her off with a look.

“Then I’m leaving,” Anni said. “I thought you would help me, but I should have known that I was on my own. That’s just fine. I can handle myself.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Wes told his sister, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what’s going on.”

Anni glared at him. “You’ve already made up your mind about calling them,” she said. “What’s the use of telling you anything?” She jerked her arm and stalked out the door. Wesley stopped it from closing behind her.

“Annabella,” he said dangerously. Anni paused. He hadn’t ever called her that unless he was very serious and very upset. Still, the old Wesley had never sounded quite so deadly. The smile returned to his face.

“I suggest you return inside and fix yourself a snack,” he said. “And then we’ll talk.” Anni stormed inside, temporarily giving up.

“Talk to yourself,” she replied. Wes ignored her tone, figuring that whatever had her in such a frenzy was somewhat of an excuse for her appalling behavior. Anni allowed the tension to flow out of her body and formulated a plan. If she had to run away from Wes in order to keep out of the hands of the Watcher’s Council, then she would do what she had to do. Annabella Wyndham-Price was not a quitter, and she was convinced that she would rather die than spend the rest of her teen years training for a destiny that may or may not prove true.

If she was called, she would slay, but she wasn’t about to let her parents sign her life over to the Council just because she had been identified as a Slayer-in-Waiting. That was the future they dreamed of for her, but they didn’t know her, and she was far past loving them. She knew she had to make her own future, no matter what it may turn out to be, and if she had to fool Wes into thinking she had acquiesced in order to escape the other life, then that was what she was going to do.

Wesley stared at his sister, convinced that she would not try to leave and face his anger. Anni had always been spirited, but never deceitful. Now he had a phone call to make and a mystery to sort out. Who was Anni running from? Surely it couldn’t be more than a teenage fit. He sighed, not believing that little Anni was almost a teen, that he had missed her growing up.

Lilah looked at the information she had on her desk regarding one Annabella Suzette Wyndham-Price. The child had had private tutors her entire life, of both the supernatural and human varieties. Her IQ tests were off the charts. Otherwise, she could find very little information. Someone was hiding the girl’s records.

Angel tried not to brood as Connor and Cordy left for the mall. At least he wasn’t going as Cordelia’s shopping buddy. “Get Hopie a sword,” Angel said, sounding pathetic even to his own ears, “or maybe a teddy bear. Something fun.” Cordelia, feeling sorry for the pathetic Daddy, leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. Connor averted his eyes.

“She’ll be fine,” he said. “Trust me, Hopie can handle anything anyone throws at her.” Connor refused to admit that his own stomach was tied in knots for the little girl.

Hopie was, in fact, doing quite well. She could read fairly well, and she and Sam were put in the same reading group. Now they were coloring.

“What’s that?” Sam asked, looking at Hopie’s picture.

“A Shekorith demon,” Hopie replied Then she remembered tha she wasn’t supposed to talk about demons. “I mean a really ugly monster. To kill it you have to cut off its toes.” Sam giggled. Secretly, he thought Hopie was very pretty, for a little girl, and she knew an awful lot about lots of cool stuff. Maybe they could play dinosaurs together sometime.

Anni composed herself. If she had to run, there was only one place she could go that her parents wouldn’t follow, one more person who could protect her from the Council. She hoped there was a midnight bus to Sunnydale, because she would have to wait until evening before Wes completely let his guard down against her leaving. Once there, she would take refuge with the Slayer, or otherwise, disappear into anonymity. She would not live her life as a puppet of the Watcher’s Council. They had stolen her childhood. The rest of her life would be no one’s but her own.

Sorry, Wes, she thought. I can’t stay; you know how that is, or at least you should, since you didn’t stay either. She refused to believe that she was still angry that he had left her. This wasn’t about anger, it was about liberation.

Anni was biding her time until she could sneak off. She ignored Wes as he picked up the phone. She had to walk a thin line, being sullen enough that he wouldn’t be suspicious that she was up to something, but sweet enough that he wouldn’t suspect her of wanting to leave as badly as she really did. More than anything, though, she wanted to want to stay, but she knew she couldn’t.

Wes hung up the phone. “What are you thinking?” he asked her. “I know that look. It’s the same look you had on your face right before you decided to put the Crenshaw’s trampoline in their swimming pool.” The Crenshaws had been their closest neighbors, but they had moved before Anni had even turned five, so she didn’t remember the incident Wes was referring to. She was more than surprised that he did.

“I don’t feel like talking about it,” she replied coldly. He narrowed his eyes, not willing to press her. If Anni at three had been formidable, Anni at almost thirteen was a force to be reckoned with.

“What do you feel like?” he asked gently, knowing that she felt betrayed.

“Like you care,” she muttered.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” he replied. Anni paused for a moment.

“Well,” she said. “Since it looks like you’ll be shipping me back off to England soon (tortured look on her part), maybe you could show me a little bit of the city. I hear you have some fabulous malls.” She smiled wickedly. Wesley had a typically male aversion to shopping.

He groaned. “All right, if that’s what you want.” Anni stood up, and he placed his hand on her shoulder, making her face him. He looked her straight in the eye. “I know you’re up to something, baby girl, and I’m warning you right now, don’t do it. You may not have noticed, but I’m not the same man I was when I left England, and you do not want to mess with me.” He had a deep suspicion that she wasn’t taking his threat seriously, but he figured he’d keep a close eye on her in the mall and cross that bridge when he came to it.

Angel, desperate for something to take his mind off of the scared look Hopie had given him that morning, turned on the television. There was nothing on except for children’s shows. He shrugged and settled into watching Sesame Street. Cordy played it all the time for Hopie, and he was becoming secretly addicted. Sure it didn’t have action or adventure, but there were bright colors and songs, and those funny happy creatures. Everyone was getting along. Nobody tried to, for instance, stake the Cookie Monster, just because he was a monster.

Angel chuckled at the counting antics of the Sesame Street children. He loved this show.

“I’m the Cookie Monster!” yelled one little girl at snacktime.

“Indoor voice,” reminded the teacher. She had only been teaching for two years, and this year’s class looked like it was stacking up to be a hand full.

“Monster?” Hopie asked, wrinkling her forehead. “You don’t look like a monster to me.”

“Don’t you ever watch Sesame Street?” the little girl asked curiously. Hopie shrugged.

“My daddy does sometimes when he thinks no one is watching, and my momma puts it on for me sometimes, but I don’t really watch it. I like Xena better.” The teacher raised her eyebrows. A four year old watching Xena? Hopie, sensing the look, turned and gave the teacher her patented adorable smile. The teacher’s heart melted. She was such a precious little girl. A bit odd, really, but precious nonetheless.

“Real monsters don’t look like that,” one little boy scoffed. “The have horns and ugly tales and spots.” Hopie rolled her eyes.

“Some monsters look just like us,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t even know they’re monsters except they feel all wrong.” Then she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to talk about that.

The teacher looked at her, and wondered what human monsters the child had seen. She sounded old, like all of a sudden a million years worth of wisdom was crammed into one four year old body. Hopie smoothed down her dress, glad that she had let Cordelia buy it for her.

Cordy was taking her mind off of her mother anxiety splendidly. Connor, on the other hand, was in the pits of misery. Cordelia piled shirts of all different colors into his reluctant arms. He eventually managed to escape to the dressing room, but Cordy was such a tenacious shopper that even that didn’t offer much in the way of sanctuary.

Anni fingered a blouse, loving the way the fabric felt in her hands. She had never actually been shopping before. She had read about malls, in the magazines her parents hadn’t known she had, but she had rarely been outside the walls of her home and the homes of her parents’ friends. She knew the world of demonology better than perhaps anyone else in the world, but the real world, the teenage world, was a complete mystery to her.

“Do you like it?” Wes questioned, realizing that perhaps his sister had had a valid reason for running away. She was looking at the mall as if it was El Dorado. He had never been so shut in. Then again, his failure had forced his parents’ hands with Anni. Because of him, she had been denied any freedom, any life outside of her duty to preserve the legacy. Wes had no doubt that his parents were planning on sending Anni to the Watcher’s Academy when she turned seventeen, but he wondered if perhaps he could talk them into allowing her to attend a normal boarding school until then.

“I love it,” Anni said, allowing the light to shine through her eyes. If she was going to trick him, she needed him to feel confident that she no longer wanted to leave. A feeling in her stomach told her to run now, even as her brain commanded her to wait until evening.

“Try it on,” he suggested. She took the shirt, and several others, into a dressing room. She recognized Cordelia Chase and surmised that the young man standing with her had to be The Destroyer, who she had read much about the past few months. At first sight, her preteen heart fluttered. He was so… dreamy wasn’t even the word. She forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand.

Connor looked at Anni uncomfortably. She was staring at him with an unequivocally adoring look, what Hopie referred to as fluffy eyes. To him, she was just a little girl, barely older than Hopie. He thought about Dawn and smiled in his mind at the memory of the girl he hadn’t seen for several months. She still called him once a week. He was planning on taking the first excuse to visit Sunnydale.

Cordelia started when she saw Wesley. “Hi,” she said shortly. Seeing Anni, he expression softened.

“Bella,” she said. “I see you found him.”

“Yes,” Anni said curtly. “I did. Thank you for your help.”

“Wait a minute,” Wesley said. “She came to the hotel, and you let her leave? For crying out loud, Cordelia, she’s only twelve years old.”

“Faith and Lindsey tailed her,” Cordy responded.

“Oh, I feel so very comforted,” Wes replied sarcastically. “My little sister was wandering the dangerous streets of LA, but I shouldn’t worry about it because the rogue slayer and demon lawyer boy were watching her back.”

“Sister?” Cordy asked, seeing the resemblance around the eyes. Anni’s were far too serious for a girl her age.

“I’m going to try these on,” Anni announced, excusing herself. Connor returned to his dressing room as well.

Once in the room, she held her breath, concentrating. Her parents, Wesley, even the Council, were fools as far as she was concerned. How could any of them believe that she had studied magical forces since practically before she was born without ever picking up any of the tricks of the trade? She may not have been a powerful Wicca, but she could manage elementary glamours just fine.

The hairs on the back of Connor’s neck stood up. “Whatever you’re doing,” he whispered over the dressing room walls, “you probably shouldn’t be doing it.” Anni was startled. She was being silent. He shouldn’t have been able to tell.

“Don’t say anything,” she begged. “Give me a few moments. It’s all I’ll need.” Connor found himself frozen in place by the tone in her voice. He tried to move to stop her from leaving, but he quite literally could not. She had somehow mojo-ed him into place.

Concentrating, Anni managed a short relocation spell. She couldn’t relocate over distances, but she could manage within a mile radius. When she reappeared outside of the mall, she looked completely different to the casual observer: older, mid twenties, blonde hair. She walked briskly towards a cab, and pulling money out of her pocket, directed him toward the bus station. Something inside of her was telling her to run, because she knew that if she stayed any longer at all, she wouldn’t want to leave Wesley, even if he was on THEIR side.

By the time she reached the bus station, she felt her spell on Connor slip. Too bad, she thought, he was awfully cute to freeze in place. If he ever saw her again, he would be angry too.

Connor ran out of the dressing room. “Your sister,” he addressed Wesley, interrupting the little fun fest he and Cordelia were having. “She’s gone.”

“Damn it,” Wesley said. “I knew she was up to something.” He was, quite simply, going to kill her when he found her. Los Angeles was no place for a child to be running around in by herself.

“Wait a second,” Cordy said. “We’re standing in the only exit out of the dressing room. How did she manage to leave?”

Connor gave her a grim look. “The same way that she made me freeze where I was standing for several minutes.”

Wesley groaned. Magic. Of course, Anni would have picked up on what she was reading. Of course she would have begun practicing, and o f course his loving parents either wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t have bothered to care. “When I find her,” he said out loud, “we’re going to have a nice long talk about magic.” Cordelia smiled, sympathizing with Wes. It wasn’t easy parenting a magical child, and she was very glad that, at that moment, her baby was four and not thirteen.

“Hope,” the teacher said, trying to get the little girl’s attention.

“Hopie,” the child corrected. “It’s only Hope when I’m in trouble.”

“It’s recess,” the teacher said, prodding the little girl towards the playground. “Don’t you want to play with everyone else?” Hopie nodded vigorously.

“But I’m not supposed to play rough with people who are weaker than me,” she said, “and I don’t know how else to play.” The teacher smiled, still bewildered. She pointed to a group of children playing hopscotch.

“Why don’t you try that?” she asked. Hopie shrugged. She walked over to the girls, but soon found herself very bored with the little jumps and skips of the game. She could jump three feet vertically into the air… what fun was hopscotch?

Hopie wandered over to the boys. “Watcha doin’?” she asked.

“Playing soldiers,” one of the boys replied.

“Grrr Arrrg,” Hopie said.

“No, stupid,” one of the boys said meanly. “That’s monsters. We’re playing real soldiers, and real soldiers can’t be girls, so you can’t play.” Hopie looked at Sam. He shrugged, promising that they could play monsters later. Hopie dug her foot into the ground, frustrated. They wanted to play soldiers? She would give them a war. The Shanshu child went to organize her forces, the other little girls. Before their plan could be enacted, recess was over. Hopie smiled. She could wait until tomorrow. Maybe she could bring her new friends some cool big kid toys to play with.

Faith and Lindsey were laughing at a private joke when they opened the door of the Hyperion to see Angel sitting in front of the television, thoroughly engrossed by a children’s television program. Neither of them had the heart to interrupt him, but Lindsey had firm plans to black mail him later.

“Faith,” Lindsey whispered, pulling her into the office area. “Do you ever think about having kids?”

“Besides Angel?” Faith joked. Lindsey smiled, but his question still stood. “Sometimes,” the slayer said finally, “and then I remember what it was like for me being a kid, and I wonder how I could ever bring someone else into this world knowing nothing but that. What kind of mother would I be?”

“You’re great with Hopie,” Lindsey reminded her, doubting his own parental aptitude at the same time.

“That’s different,” Faith said. “I’m her Champion. Being a parent is a totally different ball game.” Lindsey tickled her ribs, and she giggled softly. They fell into a sweet kiss, the kind that sent waves through both of them, straight to their souls. Together, their souls were pulling themselves out of the trenches and onto a higher plane. Old wounds were closing.

They broke apart when they heard Angel laughing in the other room. “That Oscar,” he said. “He’s so broody.” Faith and Lindsey both dissolved into fits of giggles, falling on top of each other with laughter, rolling around on the floor holding their sides until the moment that their hands intertwined.

Cordelia put her hand on Wesley’s shoulder. He may not have been the old Wes, but he was still a friend, and her mother-heart ached for the worry she saw in his eyes. “We’ll find her,” she said.

“And what,” Wesley questioned, “am I supposed to do then?”

Anni settled back into the bus seat, relatively calm considering she was headed straight for the mouth of hell.

Anni walked fearlessly toward the slayer’s house. She had known on some level that it would come to this, that she wouldn’t be able to count on Wesley when it really mattered. She knocked on the door.

A brunette who looked only a few years older than she did answered the door. “Hi,” she said. Anni waited for something else to come out of the girl’s mouth, but nothing did.

“Is Buffy here?” Anni didn’t even bother to mask her accent anymore, and the crisp British lilt had Dawn immediately suspicious, seeing as how England tended to be Watcher Central.

“Sure,” Dawn said. “Come on in.”

Buffy’s first impression of the girl was that she was trying valiantly not to be scared. Her head was held defiantly high, and she looked a little something like… Buffy couldn’t place who she looked like exactly. She tried to shake the feeling of familiarity.

Anni didn’t bother with introductions, shaking off years of good breeding and the manners she had been reared in. “I need your help. You’re the only one left, you see, who can keep the Council from me.”

“The Council?” Buffy wrinkled her forehead.

“Bunch of old guys, tweed suits. Some women who wear business suits and pull their hair back so tightly that it pulls their faces at odd places. They wear glasses and clean them a lot. Sound familiar?” Anni tried to keep the tension out of her voice.

Buffy nodded. “So,” she said slowly, “you have a problem with the Council.”

“My problem is simply that they want me,” she said, “to be a slayer-in-training. I have no intention of signing my life over to them. My brother, my parents, everyone else would just assume I give up any semblance of a normal life. They’re thrilled that I’ve been identified as your possible successor. I don’t want it, and I won’t give up my life for a destiny that may not even be mine.”

Buffy nodded thoughtfully. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Just be here,” Anni said. “If I need someone to help, if they do find me here and come for me, you can stop them. They listen to you.”

“Only because they have no choice.” Buffy wasn’t Council Fan Number One, or even number twenty-nine for that matter, and she nodded consent. Before she could say anything else, Anni was out the front door. She needed Buffy’s promise of help, but she wasn’t about to stick around, waiting for some sort of bizarre coincidence to give her away to someone in LA.

Somewhere in LA, Lilah Morgan was thinking dirty thoughts about Wesley. Of course, when it came to Wes, she rarely had thoughts of the not-dirty persuasion. She picked up the phone, hoping that somehow the little problem (as she had begun referring to Anni in her mind) had taken care of itself. Wes answered on the first ring.

“Anni?” It never even crossed his mind that his sister didn’t have his cell number to begin with.

“It’s me,” Lilah said. “I was thinking, well, I probably shouldn’t articulate that thought, but anyway…”

Wes cut her off. “Anni’s gone,” he said. Lilah felt a little disappointed: how anticlimactic. “She magicked her way out of a dressing room. I have to find her, Lilah. She’s just twelve years old.”

Magic? What kind of secret was that kid hiding? A minion, also known as a legal clerk, handed Lilah a set of papers. Her eyes opened wider. An identified slayer-in-waiting. She made the executive decision that Anni was someone she would love to get her hands on. To turn a slayer to their side before she was even called… the possibilities were endless, and if returning the girl to her brother bought her some bonus points with her lover, all the better.

She tried to think of Wes as nothing but a toy, but she couldn’t help the way her heart raced as she thought about him, or the small smile that crept onto her face, an innocent smile that clashed with every aspect of the non-person she had worked so hard to become.

“I’ll see if anyone knows anything,” Lilah replied.

“That’s decent of you.” Lilah could picture Wesley’s eyes narrowing as he spoke the words. He didn’t trust her, and perhaps he never would. Maybe she could buy his trust with his younger sister, even if she was planning on using the girl. “To get her back here safe, I’d take help from the devil himself.” Lilah hit the end button, hanging up on Wesley.

Immediately, she started giving orders. “I want to know where Annabella Wyndham-Price is, and I want to know it five minutes ago. Get the psychics on it, the empaths, anyone who can sense magic or essences.” The clerk scurried away to do her bidding. Lilah’d always known that she was born to have minions.

Lilah wasn’t the only one with minions. Hopie was quickly becoming the kindergarten queen. She fascinated the little girls, terrified the little boys, and made every use of her adorability to gain the teacher’s favor. Hopie decided that she was going to like kindergarten after all. It was just a game. There were good guys (the girls), bad guys (the boys), and lots of little ways to trick people. It was like waging a war, except with snack time and crayons and happy singing.

The little girl to Hopie’s left was the loudest singer in the room, and by far the worst. Hopie was glad that Lorne wasn’t there to hear it. The fashionably green demon would probably have been bored stiff and holding his ears. Hopie decided she would sing the song for him when she got home.

Two little boys started fighting. Hopie rolled her eyes. They didn’t even kick right. The teacher pulled them apart.

“What do the rules say about fighting?” the teacher asked them, hauling them apart.

“Not to do it,” one of the little boys suggested.

“Use our words,” the other one mumbled.

“Know your enemy and your own limitations,” Hopie sang in a cheerful, sing-songy voice. “And never let yourself get backed into a corner.” The teacher stared at her. Hopie shrugged and smiled.

Cordelia, Wesley and Connor in tow, came in the front door of the Hyperion like a whirlwind. Angel quickly switched off the television, trying to look natural and inconspicuous. His eyes narrowed when he saw Wesley, but he decided to be fair and give him a chance to explain the situation. Talking out problems was the way that Ernie and Bert had sorted out their problems. Angel was willing to give it a try.

“What’s going on?” he asked. Cordelia looked at him strangely. He was being reasonable. He wasn’t reasonable where Wesley was concerned. She tried not to laugh. He’d obviously been watching Sesame Street again, and he was too smug to believe that she knew about his growing obsession with children’s television. She put the thought to the back of her mind. Now was not the time to be making fun of Angel, no matter how tempting the circumstances.

“My sister is missing,” Wesley said. “She ran away, first from England and then from me. She has some knowledge of magic, but she’s still just a little girl.” He was talking in the same voice that Angel used when he was in Worried Papa mode.

“Bella,” Cordelia put in. Angel remembered the girl from that morning. She had been really good with Hopie. He smiled at the memory.

“Oh no,” he said suddenly. Everyone looked at him. “Hopie,” he reminded Cordelia. “School ended five minutes ago.” Cordelia gasped. What kind of mother was she anyway? She’d forgotten all about Hopie. She made a beeline for the door.

“Sorry, Wes,” she said. “I gotta go pick up the kiddo.” They heard the engine rev as the seer sped off. Wesley shot a confused look at Angel.

“Hopie?” he asked, momentarily distracted.

“Our daughter,” Angel explained. His voice stiffened, “You could ask Lilah about her.”

When the phone rang, Connor ran to answer it. Dawn was out of school for the day, and he was expecting her call.

“Sunnydale?” Lilah asked. “Great. Just great.” She stuffed the papers in her brief case, and left the office. She was not in a good mood. Sunnydale, California was not a favorite place of Wolfram & Hart. She stalked towards her car, a woman on a mission.

An hour later, Cordelia had returned to the hotel with a very hyper Hopie. The child was quite literally bouncing off the walls. “Uh, Hopie sweetie, if you’re going to put your feet on the walls, take off your shoes.”

Lilah had made her way to Sunnydale, and was finding her way to the exact location where Anni had last been sensed. Connor was still speaking about absolutely nothing on the phone with Dawn.

“Yeah,” he said dreamily, while Lorne was reading Wesley. “Colored straws are great.” To Connor, anything Dawn thought was great was just peachy with him.

“Well, Wes-Wes,” Lorne started, “your little sister has so-ome issues there, buddy, and I think we both know you do too.”

“Get to the point, Lorne,” Wes growled, “and don’t call me Wes-Wes.”

Lorne bristled. “You want the cliffs notes? How’s this: Sunnydale.”

“Sunnydale?” everyone in the room asked. Connor’s ears perked up at the mention. Lorne nodded.

“Hey Dawn,” Connor said, trying to sound not too excited in that I’m-cool kind of way. “Guess what? I’m on my way to Sunnydale. Now. See you.” He lowered his voice. “Iluvyoutoo,” he mumbled, hanging up the phone.

“Buffy?” Hopie asked excitedly. “Mr. Spike?” Cordelia nodded. “Will Mr. Giles wear tweed?”

“Yes,” everyone in the room responded at once.

“You’re all coming?” Wes asked, surprised. Cordy nodded.

“You’ve got yourself a preteen time bomb, Wes, and whether or not it’s magical, you’re going to need some back up.” Cordelia patted his shoulder.

“Back up, back up,” Hopie sang, jumping excitedly from foot to foot. “Can I bring my crossbow? I gotta show Mr. Spike how I can fire it with my eyes closed.”

“You’ve been playing with weapons with your eyes closed?” Angel asked, raising his eyebrow. Hopie shrugged.

“Only when the bad guys are real wimps,” Hopie replied. Everyone groaned.

“Eyes closed in battle?” Cordelia asked. “Don’t scare Momma like that, Hopie.” Hopie just grinned and continued her rendition of “back up, back up” until a thought occurred to her.

“Aunt Faith!” she bellowed. “Uncle Lindsey!” Lindsey and Faith stuck their heads into the entryway. Hopie was used to their fluffy eyes by now.

“Did I interrupt special grown up time again?” she asked. Faith groaned. She and Lindsey weren’t having the same kind of “special time” as the other couples in the hotel. What they had was beyond that, beyond physical. Faith wasn’t ready for that yet, not when she was just getting used to being a new person, having personal connections to other people. Hopie couldn’t tell the difference between special time and special time yet.

“Sunnydale,” Angel said. Faith shrugged. Lindsey smiled.

“Anni?” he asked. Everyone nodded. The entire entourage left for Sunnydale.

“Well, hello there, Anni,” Lilah said, approaching the girl from behind. “Imagine seeing you here.”

Anni looked behind the woman, expecting to see an irate Wesley. To her surprise, Lilah was alone. Anni caught sight of a W&H logo on a piece of paper sticking out of the briefcase.

“You’re coming back with me,” Lilah commanded.

“So you can give me to your lover-boy or so you can give me to your boss?” Anni asked, letting Lilah know that she knew the score.

Lilah decided it was time to quit playing with kid gloves. “You know who I work for, so you should know that I can make you come with me, that nowhere on this earth is out of my reach. You really should give in and just come home. What? Are you afraid big brother is going to be angry with you? You’re right. He’s furious.”

Anni stood up to face the older woman. “I’m not going anywhere, and you know as well as I do that Wolfram and Hart has an agreement with the Watcher’s Council to stay out of Sunnydale. The rest of the world is up for grabs, but here in Sunnydale, you’re powerless. Why do you think I chose to come here in the first place? Here the slayer rules, and the slayer alone, and last time I checked, you weren’t the slayer.”

Lilah narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you play games with me, little girl,” she said dangerously.

Anni smiled at her. “I’m not playing with you Lilah. In fact, you quite simply don’t have a hand, so don’t expect me to deal you in.”

“I’ll call your brother,” Lilah threatened, feeling lame.

“Okay,” Anni said, “so you do have part of a hand, but considering what it amounts to is the two of clubs, you still can’t play at the high stakes table. I’m sorry.” Anni forced her mind to go through the relocation spell. When she landed in the street a mile away, her body was shaking. Magic took so much out of her.

Lilah picked up the phone and dialed Wesley. “Anni’s in Sunny…” Lilah trailed off when she realized that Wesley was well aware of the fact. She heard voices in the background. One in particular stood out to her.

“Do you want to see my crossbow?” Wesley smiled at the child in the seat next to him, a little mystified. He nodded, thoroughly charmed by the small warrior. Lilah dropped the phone. If the Shanshu child was with Wesley, that meant that Angel and his entourage were as well. She wondered how the vampire was surviving the sunlight.

Angel was currently hiding under a blanket. Unfortunately, the full moon was still two days away, so his sunlight “allergy” still held. The others heard his muffled voice underneath the blanket as he talked to himself quietly.

“Rubber Ducky, you’re the one…” The car erupted into laughter, and Angel quickly shut his mouth.

Hopie ran her little fingers lovingly across the crossbow. It wasn’t loaded, because Momma and Daddy tended to get very cross when she played with loaded weapons inside moving vehicles. She thought about kindergarten.

“Grrrr. Arrrrg,” she said out loud, giggling. “Today we made sounds like dinosaurs, only nobody but me knew that they were really demon sounds, and hopscotch is dumb, but boys are dumber, and my teacher likes my pretty dress. Grr. Arrrg.” Like most small children, Hopie was a master of the run on sentence.

Lindsey smiled at her, agreeing silently that boys that age were dumb. Apparently, Angel and Connor agreed.

“Boys are dumb,” Angel said, from underneath his blanket. “You should stay away from them. Forever, or at least until you’re thirty.” Connor nodded enthusiastically.

“I’m not dumb, right Hopie?” he asked playfully. She paused for a long moment.

“Well…” the child said thoughtfully. “You’re not AS dumb as most of the little boys, but you get all goofy around Dawnie, and then you look like a ‘luv sick little nipper.’” Everyone recognized the quote from Lorne. Connor seethed quietly, and Angel laughed from underneath the blanket.

“I wouldn’t be laughing at me if I were you,” Connor retorted. “I don’t think it’s the kind of behavior rubber ducky would approve of.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Angel replied in a serious, macho tone.

Lindsey tickled Hopie, knowing that the long car ride would tax the child’s attention span past its limits if he didn’t intervene. “Grrr. Arrrg.” Hopie clapped joyfully.

“Uncle Lindsey made monster sounds! You better slay him, Aunt Faith!” she cried out in a loud voice. Cordelia, Angel, and Connor choked on their laughter.

“Oh yes, Aunt Faith,” Wesley said in a wry voice, trying to take his mind off of Anni’s situation, “Please slay him.”

Hopie poked Wesley in the ribs. “Are you making fun of me?” she asked. He shook his head. Hopie looked at him strangely for a moment. “Why do you feel sad?” she asked him. “Are you worried that none of the other kids will play with you in Sunnydale?” The thought hadn’t even occurred to Wes. “Because I can tell you a secret to get them to play with you.”

Wesley smiled down at the little sweetheart. “No, Hopie, I’m not worried that the other kids won’t play with me. I’m worried about Anni, my little sister.”

“You have a sister?” the child asked, delighted. “Is she my age?”

“No, she’s several years older, though you wouldn’t know it based on her actions.” Hopie recognized the very adult somebody-is-going-to-be-in-big-trouble voice. She hoped that Wesley’s little sister was good at making innocent eyes.

“Are you mad at her?” the child asked, wide eyed. Wesley nodded.

“Hopie, I don’t think Wes wants to talk about this anymore,” Cordelia put in from the front seat.

“What are you going to do?” Hopie asked. “Are you going to yell at her?”

“Hopie,” Angel warned from underneath his blanket. Hopie shrugged, letting the topic slide.

“So, Wes,” Cordelia said. “What are you going to do when you find her?” Wesley sighed.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “She was only Hopie’s age when I left home. I should hardly know her, but I look at her, and I can still see the four year old little girl with bright eyes getting into everything she knew she wasn’t supposed to.”

“She was a handful?” Faith asked, liking the girl already.

Wes nodded. “Every time I came back from school, she would have outwitted the latest nanny. My parents seldom noticed, so long as she finished her translations and her tutor reported steady progress.”

“Translations? At four?” Lindsey asked, remembering that Wes came from old Watcher stock. He nodded.

“She was, is I imagine, quite brilliant.” A little light finally went off in Hopie’s head.

“Bella!” she said. “Bella is your sister.” No one knew how the child had made the connection.

“You feel sad like she does when you think about her,” Hopie replied seriously to the unspoken question. “Don’t be mad at her, Wes, or I’ll be mad at you! She’s good, just sad.” Wes grinned at the child, still planning on letting Anni have it when they found her. Hopie stuck out her bottom lip and gave Wes a disgruntled look.

“Cordelia, your child is glaring at me,” Wesley said.

“Hopie, stop glaring at Wesley.”

“Tattletale,” they heard from underneath the blanket.

“Angel!” Cordelia said, laughing.

“Oh, go talk to a muppet,” Wes responded.

Anni collapsed by the side of the road. She’d never done two relocating spells in one day before, and making the glamour last for several hours had been exhausting. As she sat down, her hands started shaking. She wondered if she should return to the slayer’s house. Surely Buffy wouldn’t begrudge her some food. She looked up and saw a red-haired woman walking toward her.

The girl sat down beside her. “You shouldn’t go into a spell like that on a whim,” Willow told the strange girl. “Magic feeds off of your essence, and without proper preparation, it can drain your life force.”

Anni stared at the stranger, trying to remember all she knew about those forces who resided in Sunnydale. “Willow?” she asked, recalling all she had heard in the past year about the Wicca who had almost destroyed the world. The girl nodded.

Willow took her hand, and allowed some energy to flow from her body into the girl’s. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Anni,” the girl replied. “Bella. Either/or.” Willow nodded.

“You’re the girl, the one who came to see Buffy earlier?” Anni nodded. “Don’t you just hate those Council guys?” Willow asked. “Cause I do, except for Giles.”

“They’re not all so bad,” Anni replied, thinking of all of the people who she had grown up around. “But most of them are.”

When Cordelia saw Willow talking to Anni on the side of the road, she just couldn’t believe their luck. Wes was out of the car before it had even stopped. Anni saw him and took a deep breath, more than willing to relocate again.

“Stop,” Willow said, grabbing the girl’s hand while she cancelled the spell. “You’re not ready to do that spell again yet.” Recognizing the man, she opened her eyes widely. “Wesley?” she asked. It sort of looked like Wes, in a broad-shouldered, not-wearing-tweed-or-funny-glasses kind of way.

“Willow,” Wesley said, barely nodding at her before he crushed Anni against him in a tight embrace. Anni, for a moment forgetting why she had run, enjoyed the hug, feeling safe, if only for an instant.

“Are you all right?” he asked her seriously. She nodded, attempting to back away from the anger she saw in his face. He held tightly onto her arm, giving it a good shake.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Wesley exploded. Hopie frowned vigorously at him from inside the car, trying to get the door opened so she could go save her new friend. “Like it or not, you’re twelve, Anni, twelve! Running around isn’t safe for young girls, not in LA and not here.”

“Let go of me,” Anni cried. Wes brought his face close to hers.

“Let go of you? I think not.” His voice was so dangerously low that Willow shivered, feeling like she shouldn’t be listening to this conversation. At the same time, she was afraid to leave for fear that Anni would try to relocate again. Sure enough, the child was focusing her concentration on the spell. With a wave of her hand, Willow cancelled it.

“You could have been killed, Anni. Killed! I ought to kill you myself.” Anni tried desperately to relocate. Willow cancelled the spell again. “What is going on with you?” he asked his sister. “I want to know, and I want to know now, and if you have any sense at all, you won’t give me a reason to make this a day you will remember for a very, very long time.”

Anni jerked out of his grasp. “Leave me alone!” she yelled. She turned her glare at Willow. “Both of you just leave me alone.” She tried to run away, still attempting the relocating spell. Instantly, Wes’s hand was on her shoulder.

“Anni luv,” he said in a very serious tone, “if you don’t stop trying to cast whatever spell it is that Willow keeps canceling or if you so much as take one more step or do ANYTHING that’s not telling me what the hell is going on, so I help me, I’ll take you over my knee here and now, and you’ll rue the day you were born.”

“You wouldn’t,” Anni replied, frozen in place at Wes’s threat.

“Try me.” His voice was low and true, and she took him very, very seriously. Willow looked around, trying to find anything to look at that wasn’t the drama playing before her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Wes asked, more gently, his voice still firm enough that she knew that the threat stood.

“Like you even care. Like you’ve ever cared. You left me there. You knew what it was like, and you just left me there. You never came back, not once!” The girl’s anger took him by surprise.

“Anni,” he said softly. She didn’t stop screaming.

“You know them, Wes. You know what it was like, never getting to be a kid, never having friends, but you came scurrying off to America like a good little Watcher-boy, leaving me all alone. And then you failed, and that made it fifty times worse, and now I will NOT do what they want me to do. I won’t! I don’t care what you do to me, I won’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Wes asked her, truly mystified. She wouldn’t be old enough for the Watcher’s Academy for four more years, even as advanced as she was. What were his parents trying to make her do?

“What the HELL do you think I’m talking about? One guess as to what they want me to be. You were the watcher. And then the Council comes to them, making all nicelike for the first time in YEARS, and they were so damn happy!” Her brother was still shooting her a clueless look. “You do the math, Wes. Take a wild guess here.”

“The Slayer,” he said, seeing the truth in her eyes, finally. “You’ve been identified as a Slayer-in-Waiting, and mother and father signed your life over to the Council.” Anni nodded, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Anni, sweetie, why didn’t you tell me?” Wes pulled his sister close, still angry at her actions, but his heart absolutely aching for her pain, her loneliness.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Anni scoffed. “You’d already made up your mind. I had to leave. I have to leave.” Wes shook his head.

“The promise still stands, Anni,” he said, clearly referring to his earlier threat. “You can’t keep running from this. I’ll help you, but you’ve got to let me.”

“I’ll help too,” Willow offered awkwardly. “We all will. Buffy already said she’d help, and if you haven’t noticed, we’re not too much with the Watcher-loving here, no offense, Wes.”

“None taken,” Wesley said, and Willow thought again how much he’d changed in such a short period of time. He looked… rougher somehow, stronger, and not at all like the pompous Watcher who had left Sunnydale four years earlier.

The rest of the crew, sensing the worst of the familial argument was over, exited the car, Hopie running straight up to Wes and kicking him hard in the leg. Wes doubled over in pain.

“Hope Chase Angel!” Cordelia and Faith said simultaneously. From underneath his blanket, Angel could be heard echoing the same sentiment. Faith, despite her words, was struggling not to laugh because, try as she might, she still invariably pictured Wes as the stuffy Watcher the Council had stuck her with. Wes rubbed his shin. The child had a powerful kick for someone so small.

“I didn’t kick him hard,” Hopie explained, “and he made Bella cry!” Anni self-consciously wiped the tears from her face, smiling at the little girl.

“Are you all right Wes?” Cordelia asked.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, refusing to believe that his leg was throbbing as the result of the pint sized terror in front of him.

“You’re lucky she didn’t break anything,” Lindsey said, having seen the Shanshu child in battle before. “That kick wasn’t even at quarter force.”

Willow watched all of this, amused by the little girl they had all grown to love during their last stay at the Hyperion. She sent a tentative smile towards Faith and Lindsey, well recognizing the continuing fluffy eyed phenomena between the two of them.

“Hopie,” Anni said softly, feeling a little guilty that she was secretly relishing the child’s actions, “I’m okay. Thank you.” Hopie responded by lifting her arms up to the girl, and Anni picked her up.

All of them stared at the two girls, one clearly a child, the other on the edge of growing up, both with destinies and responsibilities too heavy for their small shoulders. Hopie’s black hair and Anni’s brown hair lifted as a breeze started through, and the children clung to each other as if they were holding on for dear life.

Hopie put her hands on Anni’s face, gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you,” she promised. “Never, ever again.” Anni smiled at the child, feeling, more than ever, caught in the middle of something she shouldn’t understand.

“Do you guys maybe want to continue this at Buffy’s house? I know Dawn will want to see Connor, and this whole standing-in-the-middle-of-the-road thing can only work for so long before some car comes and makes big with the smushing and the crashing and the honking.” Willow let go of her magical hold on Anni, keeping her senses sharp, but knowing innately that the older girl would do nothing while she was holding Hopie.

“Besides,” Faith said, cracking a smile, “I think Angel’s getting a little bored underneath that blanket, and I for one don’t want to be here to hear Rubber Ducky Reprise.” Even Hopie giggled, but Anni and Willow were completely mystified. Wes, overcome with the desire to pick his sister up and hold her as she was currently holding Hopie, resigned himself to standing as close to her as was humanly possible, promising himself that he would die before he let anyone or anything hurt her again. Even if it meant standing up to the Watcher’s Council, Anni would have the life she deserved.

“We’re not done talking about this,” he told her gently. “The stunt you pulled, what’s going on at home, any of it.” Anni groaned. Wes had always been a long winded lecturer, and she desperately hoped that he didn’t have anything else in store for her.

“Would you like to see my crossbow?” Hopie asked Wesley for the second time that day.

“I’ve already seen it,” Wes told the child distractedly.

“I know,” Hopie replied seriously. “Would you like to see it up close?” The threat in the tiny child’s voice was unmistakably. “Because that could be arranged.” She sounded so much like Angel when he was making a threat, that everyone had to cough to prevent themselves from dissolving into laughter. Anni hugged the child a little closer, somehow feeling as if she, too, had a Champion.

Buffy was as surprised as she would have been if Giles had referred to pop-tarts as “brain food,” when Willow arrived at the house with three fourths of the Fang Gang in tow. She recognized Bella as well as the impishly pouting child the girl was holding.

“Hopie!” Buffy said happily, having fallen half in love with the little girl the last time they had met. Like Angel, Connor and Cordelia, Buffy was a part of Hopie, their essences melded together in the young child by the ancient Shanshu magic that made her a Galactic Copy Machine in a four year old body.

Hopie didn’t say anything, still pouting over the scolding she had been given for kicking Wes. Her foot was itching to kick him again.

Anni wasn’t pouting, because it wasn’t at all the thing for almost-teenagers to do, but she was pretty darn close. She kept shooting Wesley disgruntled looks, reminding him that there was a reason that most people happened across mid-life crisis while raising teenagers.

Connor and Dawn were greeting each other a little too enthusiastically for Spike’s tastes. “Oh, bloody ew,” he said, earning an elbow in the ribs from the blonde slayer. “Come on,” he said, “somebody back me up here.” Connor pulled away from Dawn reluctantly, and the two of them made with the diffusing to another room in the house,

Angel made his way inside to a safely dark part of the room and shed his blanket. “Hopie, aren’t you going to say hi to Buffy?” he asked. Hopie thought about it a moment.

“Hi Buffy. Hi Mr. Spike.” The child smiled at them and then shot a glaring look at Wesley. Wes, well aware of the contrast, rolled his eyes. It seemed somehow fitting that Cordelia and Angel’s child would have taken such a dislike to him, but the fact that she was mad at him for scolding Anni when she had richly deserved it didn’t sit well with him at all. The fact that he wasn’t completely sure that Anni trusted him enough to stay put sat with him worse.

“Hi Dawn!” Hopie bellowed, knowing that Connor and Dawn were in another room. They heard a pause and then Dawn yelled back a greeting. Hopie sighed a very adult sigh. “Everyone but me gets special grown up time,” she said sadly. “Momma and Daddy get a lot of it, and Mr. Spike told me last time that he and Buffy do too.” Everyone glared at Spike.

“Well, she asked,” he justified himself. “And we do.” Buffy elbowed him in the ribs again, half mortified, half playful.

Faith shot Lindsay a knowing look, relishing in the excitement of their relationship. No one else knew that they weren’t together that way, and the secrets and unique passion they shared made the connection taste that much sweeter to Faith. Lindsay smiled down at her, feeling a tug of possessiveness as he looked at her dark tresses and the impish smile on her face.

“Don’t worry, Hopie” Anni comforted the child softly. “I don’t have special grown up time either.” She shot Wes a pointed look. “Yet.” He tried to calm himself, knowing that she was striking back at him because of her anger at his having abandoned her years before. If he wasn’t off his mark, he guessed that she was also still nervous about the situation with his parents and the Council. Worse by far, she wasn’t sure that she trusted him yet, as a brother, a friend, or a guardian.

Anni, well aware of the limits to which she was pushing her brother, laid off a bit. She was, after all, a very intelligent girl.

“Maybe we can find people to have special grown up time with,” Hopie suggested. “Then we can scream without someone telling us to use our inside voices.” Angel actually blushed at that comment, and Cordelia quickly took Hopie from Anni, hushing the child, her own embarrassment clear.

“How about you stay my little girl for a while longer?” Angel asked. Hopie shrugged.

“When do we get to play on the Heckmouth?” she asked.

“Heckmouth?” Spike said, raising an eyebrow,

“She’s four,” Cordelia explained. “It seemed a little more appropriate.” She directed her next comment toward Buffy. “Do you have someplace Hopie can sleep? She’s had a long day, and I think it’s just about time for an N-A-P.” Hopie looked at Cordelia suspiciously.

“You just wait until I learn how to spell, Momma,” she said seriously. Buffy took Cordelia to her bedroom and they got Hopie fixed up in the bed. The tiny warrior was asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. Buffy and Cordelia both looked at her. Buffy smiled as Hopie wriggled and mumbled in her sleep.

“Grrr. Arrrg,” the sleeping child muttered. Buffy simply laughed silently. Cordelia felt the desire to stay and watch the sleeping child a little longer, but the sound of raised voices from downstairs had her deciding that she was needed elsewhere.

By the time Cordelia had reached the room, Wesley had calmed himself. He knew exactly what Anni was trying to do, and he wasn’t about to fall for it. She was trying to aggravate him enough so that he would be willing to let her leave. She was trying desperately to find support for her secret belief that he didn’t care about her. He wasn’t going to give it to her. She was with him and she was safe, he could deal with the rest of it as it came. It kept on coming.

“Your slut is in town,” Anni said casually, waiting for Wesley to tire of her. She knew he would. Everybody did. She simply wasn’t worth the trouble. All she was good for was translating ancient texts, and there didn’t seem to be anything worth translating. All he needed was a good push, and then he would realize that she wasn’t worth it, that she wasn’t worth anything at all.

Wesley mentally counted to ten. “It won’t work,” he said. He stared at her evenly. “No matter what you say, I’m not letting you leave here. We’re going to sort this out, and we’re going to do it together.”

“Lilah’s in town?” Angel asked curiously. Wes glared at him.

“I don’t know whether she was looking for a future slayer or a way to ensure her next lay, but…” Anni started.

“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” Wes interjected conversationally.

Anni shut her mouth, figuring that the damage would have to be done bit by bit. She had come to accept the fact that she couldn’t run away again. Something in the pit of her stomach told her that Wes would find her, and she wasn’t ready to face him on his terms again. If things were going to come to that, she would be the instigator, not him. Buffy and Spike watched the play by play, equally entertained by the girl’s show of bravado and Wesley’s new persona. He stood more confidently, looked more rugged, and had an air of rough appeal that had been absent in the former Watcher they had known.

“So,” Buffy said, “the Council wants your sister.”

Wes nodded. “That seems to be the gist of it. Needless to say, they’re not getting her. Perhaps you can be of service in that department, Buffy?” Buffy nodded.

“How about you and me mosey on over to the phone and make a little collect call?” she asked.

Everyone stared at her. “Mosey?” Angel asked incredulously.

“Whimsy,” Cordelia reminded him underneath her breath. Faith hummed the Rubber Ducky song.

“I retract my incredulous mosey,” he said quickly.

Wes took Anni’s chin gently in his hands, making sure that her eyes met his. “We’re in agreement that you won’t try to leave here,” he commanded softly. She shrugged. Wesley and Buffy left the room to make the phone call, but Wes returned moments later with a stack of paper and a hand full of pens and pencils. Everyone looked at him puzzled.

He handed the pens, paper, and a Post-It note to Anni. She read the note: I will not recklessly endanger myself. Beneath it was written the number 1000. Still confused, she looked back at Wes.

“I told you we weren’t finished with all of this,” he said. “I need you to trust me that I will figure this out, that I will protect you, but more than that, I need you to realize that regardless of what happens, you cannot and will not do anything so stupid as what you did this afternoon. You throw all the nasty comments at me that you want to, but if it kills us both, you’ll learn something today about taking care of yourself. I want to see that sentence one thousand times before you even think of doing anything else.” His voice left no room for argument.

“That would take hours,” Anni said, trying to make him see reason. He lowered his head next to hers and whispered something into her ear. After shooting him a death glare, she picked up the pen and started writing.

He kissed the top of her head, and the display of affection struck her as odd. No one had ever done that before. “Later,” he said, “after I’ve sorted this out, we’ll talk. I love you, Anni-girl.” She didn’t respond. He sighed and left the room.

“Well,” Spike said, “somewhere in this house, the Bit and the Boy are making out, and I for one feel that it must be stopped.” He took off, whistling, knowing how much he’d actually enjoy breaking up the love fest. He half hoped that Connor would put up a fight when he pulled him up for air.

Willow sat down next to Anni, feeling a strange kinship with the girl. She recognized loneliness and despair, the kind that forced a person to unreasonable limits. She could feel the hurt radiating from the little body. This wasn’t something she could heal with magic, this was a weariness of the soul. She loved Wesley for trying to heal it with love and knew that she would help him any way she could.

Lindsey and Faith were both humming now, very softly. It was a simple hymn, one of the first songs she had been able to play. He grabbed her hand.

“They’re so small for slayer hands,” he commented for maybe the thousandth time.

“Not too small to hit all the chords,” she replied softly. Angel looked at them curiously.

“Two words,” Lindsey said calmly. “Rubber Ducky.” Wisely, Angel said absolutely nothing.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, Wes and Buffy were ending their negotiations with the Council, Anni’s hand was rebelling with throbbing pulses, and Hopie was just waking up from her nap.

She bounded into the living room. “Guess what, guess what guess what,” she said happily.

“What?” everyone in the room replied at once.

“There’s a monster outside my window,” Hopie tugged on Angel’s sleeve. “Where’s my crossbow, Daddy? I want to play eyesies closies with the monster.” Angel struggled not to groan.

“Is it a real monster?” he asked her seriously.

She shrugged as if the answer was unimportant. “Crossbow,” she reminded him sweetly.

“You know what you might like, sweet,” Spike said, feeling the compulsion to irritate Angel now that he had successfully separated Connor and Dawn, “a flame thrower. I think we have one around here somewhere.”

Hopie’s eyes danced. “Ooooh,” she said excitedly. “Fire.” She thought about it for a moment. “I have two hands” she said finally. “One hand for Crossbow and one hand for a flame thingy.”

“You say crossbow like it’s a name,” Dawn commented. Hopie rolled her eyes.

“It is,” she said very nicely. She still felt like being really nice to Dawn, since she had been kidnapped the last time they had seen each other.

“What are you going to call the flame thrower?” Spike asked, earning another death look from Angel at the mention of a flame thrower.

Hopie thought about it for a moment. “Bob,” she said finally. “I’m going to call the flame thrower Bob.” She bounded over to Anni, who was still sitting on the floor writing, barely halfway done.

“Watcha doin?” she asked the older girl. Anni rubbed the palm of her right hand with her left.

“Writing,” she replied. Hopie looked at the paper thoughtfully, and then put one hand on Willow and one hand on Anni. Then she smiled very widely. Anni looked down and found the rest of the sentences completed. How had Hopie managed that? Willow looked suspiciously at both girls.

“Done,” Anni said.

“Good,” Hopie said, pulling the older girl by the hand. “Now you can come play with me and Crossbow and Bob.” Hopie went to tug on the bottom of Spike’s shirt.

“Mr. Spike, where’s Bob?’

“The flame thrower?” he asked, wishing he had never put the idea in the child’s head. She nodded. He sighed and led the girls to Buffy’s weapons chest.

“What just happened here?” Angel asked Willow.

“The part where Spike has the foresight of a toothbrush or the part where Hopie managed to borrow my magic to help Anni?” Willow asked.

“The second one,” Angel replied.

“It looks like Hopie can activate her copy mechanism on a small scale at will,” the Wicca replied. “Nothing major, just enough to duplicate my powers for a few seconds.”

Angel groaned. “Kindergarten was tough enough when she just had super strength and occasional visions. What if she borrows some really crazy power?”

At the moment Angel said vision, Cordelia ducked her head, receiving the image of eight vampires converging on a group of young males.

“Oh boy!” came a shout from the other room. “Now we get to go play on the Heckmouth. Bob and Bella can come too!” The rest of the group heard the child turn on the flame thrower.

“Are you trying to singe my bloody eye brows off?” Spike yelped. Hopie giggled.

“You’re silly, Mr. Spike,” she said. Anni giggled as well. Wesley heard her as he hung up the phone and thought that it was a sound he would like to hear more often. With the way the situation had been resolved, he wondered if he was going to get his wish.

“Time to go fight fight fight a battle battle battle on the Heckmouth!” Hopie sang happily to herself, oblivious to the glare Spike was sending her. The blonde vampire carefully massaged his forehead, which though not seriously burned, was turning a very undignified shade of pink.

“No running with the flamethrower,” he said firmly in Hopie’s direction, but the child was too hyper at the thought of a good slay to mind him.

“Come on, Anni,” Hopie said. “You come too. We can play together with the vampires. Grrrr. Arrrrg. Slay slay slay slay with Crossbow and Boooooooooob!” The child giggled.

“Indoor voice, Hopie,” Cordelia yelled from the other room. Hopie quieted a bit.

“How come you never shriek with joy when you go slaying?” Lindsey asked Faith with a mocking smile.

“Oh goody,” Faith said mockingly, “I will enjoy this slaying ever so much.” Lindsey nuzzled her neck, and she shrieked with laughter.

“Indoor voice, Aunt Faith,” Hopie yelled from the other room. “Or else Momma will get mad.” Cordelia laughed, her eyes shining with adoration for the little girl.

Hopie, still running with the flame thrower, ran directly into Wes. Both of them fell over. “Sorry,” Hopie said, not exactly sure if she was. “Anni and I are gonna go slay some vamps. Wanna come?” Hopie stared at him, playing with the trigger of the flame thrower. Wes got the distinct impression that the child was daring him to tell her that Anni couldn’t go. Anni looked at him, her ice composure perfectly in place.

“You’re going to need a weapon,” he said. “So am I.” Anni smiled. She wasn’t ready to be the slayer, but hanging out with the Shanshu child was the most fun she could ever remember having.

Buffy led them both to a weapon chest. Anni looked carefully at each of them, her expression unwavering. Buffy didn’t understand the girl, who seemed so very different than she had at that age. “Have you ever slayed a vamp before?” she asked Anni.

Anni shook her head, biting her bottom lip slightly as she picked up several stakes, fitting them carefully into her sleeve. “I’ve read about them, but I’ve never actually seen one before, with of course the obvious exceptions of Spike and Angel.” The girl’s British accent became more pronounced, the only clue that she was feeling anything at all. To Buffy, her face was a complete blank.

Wes knew better. Anni was walking the line between excited and nervous, and she clearly adored Hopie. He helped himself to a glaive and several stakes. Buffy lifted her eyebrows at him. A slayer in training was one thing, a former wimp-Watcher was completely another. He returned her stare, and Buffy shrugged.

“Did you have a vision, Hopie?” Buffy asked. Hopie nodded, skipping from one foot to another excitedly.

“Yup yup,” she replied.

“How many were there?” Buffy asked. Hopie shrugged.

“More than four,” she said. “I forget.”

“Eight,” Cordelia answered. “Think you and Faith can handle eight vamps and the girls? I’m not feeling up to it, and someone has to watch out for Connor and Dawnie, because something tells me that they aren’t coming up for air any time soon.”

“They’ll be mad we didn’t tell them,” Buffy said. Cordelia shrugged.

“You make out like luvsick teenagers, you miss out on the slay action,” she said. “Maybe it will teach them a thing or two about this whole I-haven’t-seen-you-in-so-long-well-would-you-look-at-that-our-lips-are-touching-I’ll-be-darned thing.” Anni tried to control her facial expressions, but the idea of touching her lips to Connor’s sent little shivers down her back. She wished that he was coming.

“My Connor’s no fun when Dawnie’s here,” Hopie commented, noticing the odd expression on Anni’s face. Anni mentally seconded that motion. “You can play with me instead.” Anni nodded.

“Go for the heart, don’t get backed into a corner, and call for help if you need it,” Buffy said, giving Anni the Slayer’s Cliffs Notes to Slaying Vampires. Anni nodded.

“Don’t do anything untoward,” Wes instructed. Everyone stared at him and he shrugged.

“Who wants to come play with us?” Hopie asked. “Besides Aunt Faith, ‘cause I know she’s coming.” Hopie knew that Aunt Faith would never let her go into battle without tagging along. Faith took her Champion duties very seriously.

“I feel so loved,” Faith said. Hopie ran up to her, trying to give her a hug, but finding it difficult with a crossbow in one hand and a flame thrower in the other. Faith snuggled the little girl for a moment, feeling the protective tug she always felt when they were about to go into battle. Hopie may have been Cordelia’s daughter, but she was Faith’s charge, and her darling at that.

“I’m in,” Spike said, “providing the half-bit there keeps her flame thrower bloody well to herself.” Angel snorted with laughter and then tried to hide it behind a straight face.

“I’ll stay here,” he said, thinking that either he could have some special adult time with Cordelia or catch an encore presentation of Sesame Street. Either way, he’d be a happy vampire.

“I’ll go,” Willow said, surprising everyone and earning a soft smile from Wesley. Anni looked at the Wicca and then at her brother, trying to let go of her anger at them both. She hardly knew Willow, but a Wyndham-Price did not take terribly kindly to having her spell cancelled repeatedly. Willow returned Wes’s smile and then turned the grin toward Anni. Anni returned Willow’s stare, allowing her face to soften a little.

“Two slayers, One vampire, one witch, one slayer-in-training, the Shanshu child, and…”

“A partridge in a pear tree?” Wesley suggested wryly.

“A former Watcher,” Willow said helpfully.

“I think we can handle a measley eight vamps,” Faith said. “Lindsey, are you coming for the show?”

“Actually,” he said. “I have another hunt in mind.” Looking each other in the eyes, a silent message passed from Lindsey to Faith, and she knew that he was going to make sure that Lilah had left Sunnydale.

Hopie ran to the door, weapons in tow.

“Don’t run with the flame thrower,” Angel and Cordelia said simultaneously. Hopie slowed slightly. Everyone followed the eager child, who was acting like they were going to the circus.

Spike carefully kept Buffy in between himself and the flame thrower.

When the vamps came into sight, Buffy whispered instruction to Anni, “The element of surprise can always work in your favor.” Hopie let out a high pitched little kid version of a blood curdling war cry.

“Or,” Faith said dryly. “There’s that.” All of them threw themselves into the middle of the vampire circle. Immediately, Faith took out one with a quick stake to the heart, and Buffy’s first victim fell soon after. Hopie picked the shortest one, and, biting her bottom lip in concentration, jumped up and thrust. She burst into giggles when the vamp exploded into dust.

“Bye Bye!” she called joyfully.

Anni narrowed her eyes at the vampire approaching her, a male who looked about twenty. He was easily twice her size, but it was her mind, not her heart that was racing. Years of vampire anatomy lessons had her sharp mind analyzing that margin of error she would be allowed in order to hit her target. Her eyes widened a bit when she noticed the ring he wore on his left index finger. Was that what she thought it was?

His hand reached immediately for her throat, and in the moment she was distracted, he closed his hand and she couldn’t breathe. She soon fell limp in his arms. He brought his mouth down to her neck.

“Accio!” yelled Wesley.

“Muerte!” Willow screamed at the same time.

Anni turned and gave them a disgruntled look as she neatly thrust the stake into the vamp’s heart. Microseconds later, the spells hit the vamp, and he screamed in horror before he burst into dust.

“Haven’t you ever heard of playing dead?” Anni asked. Wes shuttered at hearing her say the word dead. She needed to start training, and soon. He had every intention of keeping her alive for an extended period of time. Besides, if he didn’t he had the distinct impression that Hopie wouldn’t let him live very long either.

Two vamps jumped Willow, and Wesley turned his attentions to the red head. Hopie was arguing with Buffy and Faith over who got to slay the seventh vamp, and didn’t notice that unusually small predator at her back. Anni acted like lightning, her heart pounding.

She dove, tackling the girl to the ground and covering her small body with her own. Buffy and Faith quickly took out the larger vampire as Wesley watched Willow handle the vampire rushing her like a pro. A whisper from the Wicca’s red mouth was all it took for them to burst into flame. Seeing the flames from underneath Anni, Hopie remembered her flame thrower. She shoved the older girl gently aside and aimed the flame thrower carefully at the smallest vampire, who was only a little taller than Anni.

The flame caught hold, and Anni threw a stake at the vamp’s heart to be on the safe side. All of the warriors stood, frozen in spot, as the flame burned a deep midnight blue, and then, with a sunburst of amethyst light, the vampire exploded into dust. The dust, refusing to settle, formed a snake like projection in the air. Even as the dust finally began to fall, the eerie color seemed drawn toward Anni like a magnet.

No one could move. Hopie thought really hard about making that blue light go away, but the best she could do was slow it down. Willow reached out to the Shanshu child with her mind, and she mentally urged Wesley to do the same. Hopie, given the last burst of magical enthalpy she needed, wished really hard that the blue light would stay away from Anni. A rose colored force field appeared around Anni, simultaneously blocking the onset and freeing her to move.

Anni concentrated, imagining the entire group back at the Summers’ house. Moments later they were there. Anni collapsed, completely drained by the magical feat. Willow rushed to her side.

She grabbed Anni’s hand, allowing energy to flow from her body into the twelve year old’s limp body. Anni’s eyes remained closed. Finally, they fluttered, and everyone in the room let out a breath.

“You can’t do that!” Willow scolded, surprising everyone with the hardness of her tone. “You could kill yourself like that.” Anni absorbed the Wicca’s anger and nodded her acquiescence. Willow silently accepted Anni’s admission of guilt, and crushed the girl against her in a fierce hug. Moments later, Wesley had enveloped both girls in a hug.

They heard laughter from another room, a very familiar kind of laughter.

“Ooooh,” Hopie said. “Someone’s very happy.” Everyone ignored the child.

“Please let that be Cordelia,” Spike said, “because if it’s Dawn, I don’t think I could take it.”

They followed the noise. Angel and Cordelia were sitting in the living room, inches away from the front of the television. “Three, three red go carts,” the Count said on the television.

Angel gave Cordelia a disillusioned look. “I can’t believe that’s what they think vampires look like,” he said, crushed. Cordelia kissed his lips hard, and then started laughing again. Poor Angel hadn’t ever seen that particular Sesame Street character before and was properly insulted.

Seeing they had an audience, the two turned, and Hopie bounded down to join her parents. “We killed all the vamps real good, Momma, but then one turned into blue and glowy light and tried to get at Anni, and I made it stop and Anni brought us back here and I kept my eyes open this time and Willow’s making fluffy eyes at Wesley!”

Wesley cleared his throat. Angel smirked at him, subtly turning off the television. “Fluffy eyes?” he asked skeptically. Willow glared at the child. Wesley smiled at Willow. Buffy’s jaw dropped open.

“Oh,” Hopie said as an afterthought, “and you need to talk to Aunt Faith and Buffy about sharing, ‘cause they wanted that one vamp all to themselves and wouldn’t share none of him with me!” With that, Hopie curled up in between her parents and fell promptly into the deep peaceful sleep of the very young.

“Blue light?” Angel asked.

“Research,” Buffy responded. “We need research. Go ahead, someone make with the books, because I think we’ve got a problem.” Angel picked the sleeping Hopie up.

“We have to get back,” he said. “Kindergarten tomorrow morning.” Cordelia nodded.

“Come back this weekend?” Wesley asked, letting everyone know that he and Anni planned on staying. He frowned, thinking that Anni still looked very pale. The others nodded.

“Connor,” Angel bellowed, knowing that Hopie could sleep through seventy-two trombones playing with tambourine accompaniment. Connor came into the room.

“Can Dawn come?” he asked.

“Please,” Dawn added, expertly making it a five syllable word.

“School tomorrow,” Buffy reminded her sister. Dawn gave her begging eyes. “This weekend,” she promised. “As soon as school is out on Friday, you can go to LA.”

“Like Hell,” Spike said.

“Heck,” Hopie corrected groggily.

“Bloody Heck,” Spike responded.

Anni, much like the younger child, fell asleep between the hold of a man and a woman. She thought groggily that she liked the feeling. The blue light would haunt all of their dreams that night, until Anni woke up in a strange bed, screaming.

“THE RING!”

Dawn didn’t like Anni for the obvious reasons. (1) She was a slayer-in-training, meaning that she shared something with Dawn’s sister that Dawn never would. (2) She looked at Connor like he was a piece of prime rib. (3) Anni’s brother was so obviously into Willow, and wasn’t Willow supposed to be gay and mourning Tara?

Buffy noticed her sister’s dark mood, but figured it had a little something to do with the fact that Connor was in L.A. and not attached to her at the lips any more, so she said nothing to Dawn and instead picked up the phone to call Giles. She figured that it was just about time to clue him in on the whole Anni situation.

Anni herself was being clued into the situation at that very moment by her brother. The night before, everyone had just gone to sleep, and Anni had been more than happy to settle for sleeping on the couch as long as it meant she didn’t have to talk to Wes right away. She had a sinking suspicion that he was still angry with her, and the last thing she wanted to do was get into another screaming match with her older brother. She didn’t want to trust him, not when she knew that he would let her down again, and more than that, she didn’t want to need him. On some level, she knew she did.

“Anni,” Wes said softly, trying to regain her attention. As clever as she was with hiding her emotions, Wes was beginning to be able to read his sister like an open book, and the distrust that flew across her face, and the pain, made him take in a quick breath.

Anni met his eyes, banishing the hurt as far out of hers as she could. “I assume you’ve taken care of the situation? I’ll be allowed out of the Council’s training program?”

Wes nodded. “To some extent.”

Immediately, Anni was on her feet. Only the look in her brother’s eyes kept her from bolting toward the door. “To an extent? I won’t do that again. I won’t go back there. You can’t make me.”

“Easy,” Wes said softly, carefully maneuvering his sister back into a sitting position. “You aren’t going anywhere. Any training you do, you’ll do here. Buffy has agreed to take you on as a student.” Anni let the information sink in. She didn’t want to be a slayer, but then again, no one particularly ever did. If training with the older blonde was the only condition of her stay in Sunnydale, then she would do it.

Wes was hardly finished. “You’ll also be training with Willow in Magic and Magical Ethics. This is my condition, not the Council’s. You’re obviously magically gifted, and the last thing we need is for you to kill yourself because you haven’t learned your own limits.” Anni rolled her eyes a bit. “You do have limits, Anni-girl. You’ve almost killed yourself twice in the past twenty-four hours because you’ve taken more energy out of your body than you can safely give. Magical ethics, is, of course, another story. It is a story that has a little something to do with not abusing magic in order to run away from an older brother who cares about you into a world where you could be hurt. Magical or not, slayer or not, you’re still a little girl, Anni, and you have to be careful. It’s not safe.”

“It’s never been safe,” Anni replied softly, “and I stopped being a little girl a long time ago. I left because I had to, Wes. I couldn’t risk your calling Mother and Father, and having them drag me back to England. You can understand that, can’t you? I wasn’t about to let the Council get their hands on me again.” Anni realized what she had just let slip, and she hoped her brother wouldn’t catch her mistake.

Faith grimaced at the sound the guitar made when she hit the wrong chord. Lindsey echoed her grimace and laughed.

“Now do you see why I don’t want anyone to know about the guitar lessons?” she asked. “They’d get enough of a kick out of me trying to learn in the first place. Just imagine it: the rogue slayer gets in touch with her artistic side.”

“You’re not a rogue any more,” Lindsey reminded her. “You’re a champion now.” And a woman, he reminded himself. An amazing woman.

“I’ll always be a rogue,” Faith admitted.

“My rogue,” Lindsey said. Faith tried the chord again, but even the pleasant sound it made and the way Lindsey looked at her didn’t dismiss the tiny microvoices in her heart that always let her know that she wasn’t good enough to deserve any of it. She started playing the song, stumbling but managing.

“Did you find Lilah?” she asked over the music, looking carefully at her hands.

“Yes,” he said, “and no. I found her, but I couldn’t get any information out of her, and she seemed different somehow. Not any more human or humane, but more vulnerable. It’s a wonder she came to Sunnydale in the first place. Wolfram and Hart avoids the Hellmouth like the plague.”

“Don’t you mean Heckmouth?” Faith asked, jokingly. More and more, the Shanshu child was lightening her heart. For some reason, Faith had been given the task of guarding the innocence and power and laughter that was Hopie. That task alone made her feel as if she might someday be worthy of having children of her own.

“I guess I better start practicing with the whole proper language thing,” Lindsey said gruffly. “Who knows? Someday, maybe we’ll have a little slayer of our own.”

“The Slayer,” Hopie explained to the group of girls that surrounded her on the playground. “Is very, very important. She’s really strong and wears pretty clothes and makes all the vampires go poof. Except for Daddy and Mr. Spike, ‘cause they have souls.”

“I wanna be the Slayer!” One of the other little girls shrieked.

Hopie nodded benevolently. “You can be the slayer this time, Lizzy,” she said. “Now, who wants to be the really powerful Witch?”

The boys on the other end of the playground were beginning to get a little suspicious. None of the girls had talked to them all day. They were definitely planning something.

The teacher looked at the children and laughed. Every year, the girls and boys split off like this, and every year, one of the girls took exception to it. Obviously this year, the girl was the adorable little Chase Angel girl, who the teacher was already counting among her favorites. Sure, she was a little bit high strung, but what harm could possibly come of that?

Hopie organized her troops.

Not too far away, another battle was being waged. Their leader glanced down at the data in his hand. There were only a few options left, and of the slayers-in-waiting, only one had the magical capacity to hold the precious gift they would bestow upon her. There hadn’t been an archslayer in millennia, not since before written records. Annabella Wyndham-Price was the perfect candidate. Their trip to Sunnydale had not been for naught.

“Get me the next vessel,” he said calmly. Another young vampire, not more than thirteen at the time she had been sired entered the room. It was a shame, as he had no taste for young blood, but only a girl under eighteen could hold the essence. He took off his ring and dipped it carefully in holy water, making sure to avoid splashing himself. He pressed the ring into her bared shoulder. The child vampire cried out, but silenced herself at her leader’s look.

This was what she had been sired for. She had lived for years waiting until it was her turn to house the essence. The branding was a small price to pay. The amethyst light seized the girl, and her eyes glowed a fierce blue.

“Excuse me,” Wesley said, completely dismissing the innocent look in his sister’s blue eyes. “Did you say again? The Council had you before? I thought you left before Mother and Father could send you to training?”

“I wasn’t trained,” she explained. “I was tested.” No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get more information out of her than that. He decided to save his battles for those issues he considered most important. “Anni, I’ll have your word that you won’t leave again, no matter the circumstances. Something’s after you now. We both saw it.”

“It was probably just attracted to me because I was closest,” Anni said, hoping it was true.

“I want your word, Annabella.” Anni took honor very seriously, and she didn’t know if she could give her word on that. She didn’t know if she could stay, not forever.

Willow knocked on the door. Seeing the identical expressions of stubborn seriousness on the two siblings’ faces, she guessed that it was very fortunate for Anni that she had knocked when she did. The girl was dead set on getting into with Wes, and Willow had no doubt that Wesley would win. She only hoped that Anni wasn’t shattered in the conflict. She felt protective of the girl, as if she was meant to help her, teach her, the way that no one had ever done for her.

“Giles is downstairs,” Willow said. “I think he’s wanting to make with the research, but he wants to meet Anni first.”

“And no doubt put me to work on the research as well,” Wesley sighed. “We’ll be down in a moment. We have something to settle first.”

“Okay, ominous sounding enough, Wes?” Willow asked, managing to draw some of the tension out of his face. She hated to leave the room. This was a new Wesley, not the man who had left Sunnydale. Why was she feeling this way? She wasn’t supposed to be feeling this way.

“I’m not leaving until Anni says it’s okay,” Willow said, surprising herself. What was she doing in the middle of a brother-sister argument.

“It’s all right,” Anni said softly. “We’ll be down in a moment.” Willow left the room. Anni cursed herself and the way she had been brought up. Family matters stayed inside the family. She had flouted the mantra many times over the past few days, but when she really wanted to tell Willow to stay, other words came out of her mouth.

“Anni,” Wes said. “Do I need to tell you how worried I was? How many awful things could happen to you out there alone?”

“No,” Anni said, “I’m aware of the possibilities.”

Wesley sighed. “You don’t trust me,” he said. Anni opened her mouth to argue, but Wes waved away the argument. “I don’t blame you for that,” he continued. “You have no reason to trust me. Just know that I will always have your best interest in mind, and if you feel like I don’t, there are so many other people here you can go to: Buffy, Willow, Angel, although I hate to say it, even Spike would help you. You have options Anni, even if you won’t trust me. The only option you don’t have is leaving.”

His words hung in the air.

“Anni-Anni, tell me that I don’t need to thrash you soundly this time in order for you to take me at my word here. Don’t put yourself in jeopardy. Do you understand how serious I am about this?”

“I understand, but I wish you’d stop it with the thrashing talk. It’s most unbecoming of you.” Anni stared at him, trying to get her point across.

“Don’t do it again, and I won’t have to unbecome, now will I?” he asked. Breaking the solemness in the room, he reached across and tweaked her hair. She hugged him, the stone over her heart cracking enough for a little trust and love to leak out.

“Faith,” Lindsey said, pleased with her performance on the guitar and with her as a person in general. “I have something to ask you.”

Faith’s hands paused over the strings.

“Okay,” Hopie said. “Let’s go get those boys, I mean vampires.” She let out a healthy war cry, and the kindergarten teacher gasped as the girls launched their offensive on the boys.

Giles looked very much so to Anni as a Watcher should look, except there was an easiness in his gait and a look of pride and emotion in the expression he shot his slayer that made Anni curb her desire to spit on him because of his association with the Council. Of course, the gentle hand that Wesley had laid on her shoulder might have had a bit to do with that as well.

Faith stared at Lindsey as he carefully stood up from his place beside her and knelt down on one knee.

The little girls were merciless. The boys were shrieking with indignant laughter. The tickle war campaign was starting to succeed, until the first boy threw a punch. Hopie couldn’t allow that to continue.

The little boy in question was easily twice the size of the tiny girl he had punched. If there was one thing Hopie despised, it was someone who would willingly hurt someone weaker than themselves. It wasn’t to be abided. While the war was waged around her, she walked slowly to the little boy, staring directly at him. He was the same one who had refused to let her play the day before.

Effortlessly, she picked him up off the ground, holding onto his shirt and raising him high above her head. “It’s not nice to hit people,” Hopie clarified, giving him a good shake. The boy tried to kick her, but Hopie was much too swift to fall for it. He was on the ground before he knew it.

The boy struggled manfully not to cry. What was with this girl? She was strong. Little girls weren’t supposed to be strong, his daddy said so. Hopie looked at him and offered him a hand. He didn’t take it. Instead he stared at her. She was awful pretty.

The teacher, as soon as she came to her senses, blew her whistle, and the children guiltily let go of each other.

“What’s going on?” she asked them.

“Tickle war,” replied one of the little girl, “and the vampires are losing.”

“Vampires?” the teacher questioned, completely mystified.

All of the little girls nodded and gestured to the boys.

“If the boys are vampires, who are you?” the teacher asked, stunned at the creativity.

“I’m the slayer,” Lizzy said proudly.

“I’m a Witch,” several other little girls replied.

“I’m a thousand year old vengeance demon.”

“I’m a seer.”

The teacher looked at Hopie, who was looking as innocent as could possibly be. “And who are you?” she asked wryly.

“Oh,” Hopie said seriously. “I’m just me.” The teacher sighed. It was going to be a very long year.

“No more wars,” she said, shooting looks at each of the children. They all mumbled their agreements.

“You all know this is pretend, right?” the teacher clarified.

“Of course,” Hopie said. The teacher let out a sigh of relief. Hopie was obviously just a very imaginative child. “You can’t really slay a vampire with tickling, unless you tickle with a wooden stake.” All the other children nodded, taking Hopie’s words as truth.

The teacher thought that perhaps she’d have a talk with Hopie’s mother when she came to pick the daughter up at school. The child was extraordinary, but so peculiar.

“Hello, Mr. Giles,” Anni said, and Giles smiled at her pleasant British accent.

“Hello, Anni,” Giles replied, staring speculatively at Wesley. He noticed the change that Buffy had spoken of. Wes was a new man.

“Down to business?” Wes asked. Giles nodded.

“What can you tell me about this light Willow spoke of? Or these vampires?” Giles had obviously put on his scholarly hat.

“One of the vampires was remarkably small, almost child like,” Wes recalled, “and the…”

Anni cut him off, cursing herself for not remembering sooner. “The ring,” she gasped. Everyone looked at her. “One of the other vampires was wearing a ring. I recognized it, at least it looked familiar.”

“What did it look like?” Giles asked.

Anni looked directly at him. “It looked like the seal of Anari. Inverted.” Both Giles and Wesley stared at each other.

“The seal of whatsit?” Buffy asked.

“Anari,” Giles replied, stunned. “The founder of the Watcher’s Council. It’s the official insignia.”

“But if the symbol was inverted,” Wes said…

“We’re in a world of trouble,” Anni finished.

“The Dark Council,” Giles said. “I thought it was a myth.”

Everyone stared, dumbfounded at the three Brits. They might as well have been speaking in a different language.

“This Dark Council, bad huh?” Dawn asked, always ready to put her two cents in. The answer, already apparent hung blithely in the air.

“Very bad.”

He made his plans carefully, more than pleased at the anger he had felt from the girl. There was hurt, too, and that was important, but the anger pleased him the most. In a short time, she would be ready. She would be his slayer. A dark slayer. The Archslayer.

Wes put his arm around Anni protectively. “And what,” he questioned angrily, “Does the Dark Council want with my younger sister?” No one had an answer for him, Anni least of all. She knew she was in the midst of friends, but she couldn’t help the shiver that ran slowly up her spine.

Somewhere, someone was thinking of her.

Cordelia was talking, exasperated to her daughter. “Hopie, we don’t talk about Momma and Daddy’s work, remember?”

“Yeah huh, I remember. Hey Momma. Show and Tell next week. Can I bring Bella?” Hopie batted her eyelashes at her mother.

Cordelia sighed. “Why would you want to bring Anni?” she asked, thinking that there were worse things Hopie could ask to bring. From her conversation with the teacher, Cordy had inferred that Bob the flamethrower and Crossbow would not be welcome additions to the classroom.

“Because,” Hopie replied decisively “Bella’s special.”

Faith’s mouth dropped open as Lindsey said the words.

“Hey Momma,” Hopie said after a moment, “how about we don’t tell Daddy or Connor or Aunt Faith about the tickle war?” Cordelia let out an exasperated sigh and then held back a giggle. She loved this little girl so much.

Connor had joined Angel next to the television, and both were firmly engrossed in the antics of Big Bird, completely unaware that the world around them was coming to a stop as they knew it.

The attack was quick and brutal, and Anni had to throw all of her body weight into blocking the kick. She moved quickly, agilely, blocking punches. She looked the enemy straight in the eye, trying to guess her next move. It came in the form of a left hook, and Anni dodged it just in time. The movement left her off balance, leaning slightly leftward. Her opponent seized the opportunity and sent her flying with a round house kick. She landed none too softly on her butt, halfway across the room.

“Sorry,” Buffy said. Anni didn’t think she looked very sorry at all. Only a few scant minutes into their first training session, and Buffy was already pushing the girl to new limits. Anni was a refreshing sparring partner: graceful, agile, and smart on the defense. She tended to shy away from offensive movements, and Buffy was trying hard to break her of the habit.

“You have to be aggressive, Anni,” she said. “The vamp isn’t just going to stake himself. You may be able to keep yourself safe with defensive maneuvers, but try protecting someone else while simply dodging blows without dishing out any of your own. Not so much so with the easy.”

Anni shot Buffy a dirty look, but broke into a smile after a few seconds. Training with Buffy was different than what she had expected. The Council’s tests had been regimented, strict, and of the unsmiley persuasion. Training with Buffy was almost like… like fun.

Dawn stood in the doorway of the training room and tried hard not to glare at Anni. It had taken her years to talk Buffy into training with her, and here Anni was, only twelve, and Buffy was sparring at almost three-quarter force. Dawn recalled the image of Anni flying across the floor, looking for all the world like a disgruntled flying squirrel with long brownish hair. She couldn’t help but smile.

Buffy noticed Dawn standing in the doorway. “Hey babe,” she said. “What’s up?”

Dawn couldn’t think of any quippy reply, so she just shrugged and said, “Giles and Wesley wanted me to tell you that you and Anni have been in here over an hour, and that you’re making, and I quote ‘a terrible racket.’ What kind of expression is that? That’s like saying ‘horrid din” or, I don’t know ‘searing appetite’ or…”

“Searing appetite?” Buffy said skeptically. Dawn shrugged.

“Must be a British thing,” she replied.

“Not a British thing,” Anni corrected, “a Watcher thing.” Anni gave Dawn a firm look, and Dawn felt distinctly younger than the much smaller girl.

“Well, Anni, looks like we’re done for now on the orders of the Brit Brigade out there, but next time, I want to see some more aggression, and try not to favor your right side quite so much,” Buffy felt all official like. It felt good to pass on the slayer knowledge, but her heart went out to the girl. It was a hard life, the old adage of a blessing and a curse definitely applied.

“You favor your right side too,” Anni replied. She gave Buffy a quick impish grin and bounded out of the room, for once looking like a twelve year old.

“You up for it?” Buffy asked Dawn, noticing her sister’s scowl. Dawn smiled.

“Sure,” she replied. Dawn got herself psyched up to spar, and Buffy reminded herself that she would have to take it a lot easier on her little sister than on Anni.

Hopie was excited. It was Friday, and that meant that when school was out, she and Momma and Daddy and Connor and everybody would be going down to Sunnydale, and she would get to see Bella and maybe play with some fun magic stuff.

“Okay, boys and girls. Come sit on the magic circle. It’s story time!” The teacher was pleased that the school day was almost over, and there had been no tickle wars, no incidences of monster related mischief.

“What story?” asked Sam, always the little boy enable to keep the words behind his mouth.

“If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” the teacher replied. Originally, she had planned on reading Where the Wild Things Are, but given the kids’ penchant for being little ankle biting demon mongers, she figured that the other book was probably a better idea.

Hopie sat quietly and listened to the story. She had an idea.

Lindsey and Faith were lying on the floor of the hotel, snuggling innocently. Lindsey had his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and the two of them were staring off into space. Faith looked at the ring on her finger. It wasn’t a typical engagement ring.

“Would you like something else?” Lindsey asked. “It’s fourth century Kayan. I know it’s not gold and diamonds, but I thought…”

Faith socked him in the stomach with her right hand, never taking her eyes off of the ring on her left hand. “It’s perfect,” she said, “and I won’t here you defaming my baby.”

“It’s your baby already?” Lindsey asked. “I was hoping that your baby, my baby would be a bit more human and a little less circular.”

Faith grinned at him, completely unable to keep the grin from spreading over her face even as her stomach clutched at the mention of the children she would never be worthy of having. Pushing the thought out of her mind, she looked at the ring again. The band was silver, the kind of silver that was obviously very old but in very good condition. In the center was a single pentagonal shaped diamond, surrounded by five stones of different colors: ruby, sapphire, amethyst, emerald, and a deep black stone Faith didn’t recognize.

“They say,” Lindsey whisper, kissing her knuckles softly, “that the stone in the middle represents two people united in true love. The others embody the love of those closest to them.” The two of them stared at the stones, smiling in a soft goofy way.

Giles looked up as Anni entered the room, and he couldn’t help but smile at the very much so kidlike grin on her face. “So Buffy finally decided to let you take a break?” he asked her.

Anni looked at Giles, still unsure of how she felt about the man. His voice was pleasant enough, but the accent felt familiar, and she was more than ready to throw familiarity out the window. No good had ever come from a British adult wearing tweed, at least not in Anni’s world.

“How is the research going?” she questioned, impeccably polite. Wesley tried not to raise his eyebrows. Anni seemed to put on her polite face whenever she talked to Giles. It couldn’t have been just the accent, because he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the polite face aimed at his person. Sure, he’d seen ticked off face and her sassy don’t-mess-with-me face, polite-face was strictly a Giles thing.

Giles rubbed his brow. “Decently enough, I suppose,” he replied, “considering that the Dark Council is supposed to be no more than a myth. The only reference I’ve been able to find is in a Dankyan scroll from around four thousand years ago. It talks about the Dark Ones who guard the kcyna, but I can’t seem to translate the meaning of the word, let alone pronounce it.”

“Ka-si-nah,” Wesley and Anni said simultaneously. Giles looked at Anni, surprised.

“You’re familiar with the Dankyan language?” Giles questioned. Anni rolled her eyes, safely out of polite mode and into teenagers-aren’t-stupid-you-know mode.

“Yes,” she said primly. She glanced over his shoulder. “The kcyna literally means ‘of the side of not,’ but since it comes in the second movement of the sentence, I believe that the translation is closer to ‘the other one,’ where the other has an overtone of ‘not’ or darkness.” Now it was Wesley’s turn to stare at her, impressed. She was far more capable than he had been at that age, and for that matter, quicker than he was now.

“See,” Anni said, sticking her tongue out at Wes, “told you I’m not stupid.” She flounced off to the counter. Wes didn’t know whether to be happy that Anni was feeling comfortable enough that she could be obnoxious or to be annoyed that she had been obnoxious. Pride in his sister won out.

Anni carefully watched until the moment Wes was knee deep in his own translation. She knew if she caught him at just the right moment, he would agree, unknowingly to anything. “Hey Wes,” she said.

“Yes?” Wesley said, not really paying attention.

“I’m going to head back to the house. I’d like a shower.” She made her voice as innocent as she could without dripping sugar.

“All right,” Wesley said, turning the ancient page very carefully.

Anni headed out the door, planning on doing some exploration on the way home. She hadn’t lied. She’d just take the scenic route, maybe go by the cemetery, checking for crypts, or better yet, she’d go to a bookstore. A real book store, with books about romance where the main characters had names like Raoul and Cynthia and demons weren’t mentioned even once. She smiled at the thought.

As she opened the door, Wes came to his senses, “Anni, luv,” he said. “Stop. Turn.” Anni turned and gave him an innocent smile. “Not alone,” he said. “And I’d greatly appreciate it if you didn’t try to catch me off guard while I’m translating.”

“What?” Anni asked petulantly. “Haven’t you ever heard of multitasking?” Wes broke into a grin despite himself. Anni had fire. She had survived his parents’ house with her personality in tact. That, in itself, was a miracle.

Dawn and Buffy came out of the training room. “Can either of you walk home with Anni?” Giles asked. Anni shot him a grateful smile.

“Actually, I’m going to make a little more with the training, but Dawnie will do it,” Buffy replied. Dawn sighed. Anni took mental notes. Dawn played the petulant teen to perfection.

“So,” Anni said as they walked out of the Magic Box,” any chance I can talk you into hitting the bookstore on the way home?” Dawn reluctantly agreed, figuring Anni probably wanted to get some I’m-special-and-smart-and-slayery book.

“Does that really happen if you give a mouse a cookie?” Hopie asked seriously.

“Well, I don’t know,” the teacher replied with a grin. “I’ve never tried. Hopie thought about it for a moment. She needed to find out.

When her momma came and picked her up from school, Hopie beamed at her.

Cordelia let out a sigh of relief when the teacher gave her a happy wave. Hopie had obviously not been the little slayer/seer/Shanshu she truly was. “How was school?” Cordy asked her, trying not to feel guilty about making the little girl pretend to be someone she wasn’t.

Hopie looked at her seriously. “Can I have a mouse?” she asked. Cordelia blanched at the question. Usually when Hopie started a sentence with the words “can I have” the sentence ended with a specific weapon, as in “can I have that battle axe?”

“We’ll think about it,” Cordelia said. When they got home, Connor and Angel were engaged in a heated debate.

“I can’t believe you!” Connor said angrily.

“Well, that goes double for me, little man,” Angel said, deliberately enticing his son’s temper.

“Ernie is weak,” Connor said, shooting his father a dirty look.

Angel gasped in outrage. “How can you say that? Like Grover is strong,” he said, bashing Connor’s favorite character.

“Hey, he may be wiry…”

“Scrawny,” Angel corrected.

“He may be wiry,” Connor corrected in a low, angry voice, “but there’s steel in there somewhere, I tell you.”

The two of them glared at each other, and it looked as if they were going to come to blows. Cordy cleared her throat. “Boys,” she said, trying not to lose it in laughter. “I’m sure Grover and Ernie are both equally manly. Can’t you just agree that all of the Sesame Street characters have the same potential for battle and let it go?”

“Okay,” both of them muttered, realizing that they were fighting about their favorite Sesame Street characters in front of witnesses.

“Grover doesn’t have a rubber ducky,” Angel whispered.

“Thank God,” Connor whispered back.

Hopie wandered over to the kitchen counter and climbed up on it so that she could reach the cabinet. She frowned when she saw that there weren’t any cookies inside. Instead, she picked up a box of saltine. She wondered… what happened when you gave a vampire a cracker?

“Daddy,” she said in a very sweet voice, running toward him. It was time to put the theory to test.

Upstairs, Faith and Lindsey were still lying close to each other. “Who do you think they are?” Faith asked finally. Lindsey looked at her, confused. “The other stones. Who do you think they are?”

Lindsey looked at them carefully. “The sapphire,” he said, looking at the joyful blue stone, “is definitely Hopie. Young, well defined, and original.”

“The black has got to be Angel,” Faith decided. “Broody but somehow shiny and well intentioned.” Lindsey gently kissed her hand. “The ruby is probably Cordelia,” Faith said, wondering how in the world she had come to think of Cordelia of all people as family.

“The emerald, and please don’t hit me, baby,” Lindsey said, “is Buffy.”

“B?” Faith questioned.

Lindsey nodded. “The two of you are connected in a way that neither of you could ever change.”

They both stared at the last stone, neither of them knowing the owner. The amethyst stared back at them.

Dawn’s mouth dropped open when she saw the books Anni was holding. “The Heiress Bride?” she questioned the girl. “Only Pleasure? Once and Always?” Anni grinned, turning a little red.

“They aren’t smutty,” she assured the older girl. “They’re just fun, and romantic.” The girl sighed, and Dawn couldn’t help but soften to her.

Dawn picked up a book of her own, a man with his shirt off on the cover. “I bet this one is smutty,” she said. Anni’s blush deepened as she thought unwillingly of Connor.

The girls sat down and read random sentences out of the book. It was indecent, and very, very funny.

“We probably shouldn’t be doing this,” Anni said.

“Definitely not,” Dawn replied, “but I want to know what happens when Arianna finds out Carlos was cheating on her.”

Their leader sat, quietly, his frown deepening as he felt the girl’s laughter. The darkness was leaving her heart. No matter. It would be more difficult, but they could still take the girl, make the transfer, and once her blood had been drained by the anointed one carrying the essence, the rest was of little matter. They would force the blood down her throat if they needed to, and then the essence would give her the powers of a slayer, multiplied by her vampire strength. Add in the power that had been accumulating in the essence for ages, and he would be more than a match for a normal slayer. The archslayer would rise, and The Dark Council would reap the benefits.

Willow stood in the doorway, looking at Wesley. Why do I feel this way? She wondered. Her stomach made little fluttering feelings and her heart beat a little faster. I’m not supposed to feel like this about him, she told herself, for a gallon of reasons, not the least of which being that he’s Wesley and I’m gay.

“Don’t put limits on who you love,” she heard a familiar voice whisper. Perhaps it was all in her imagination, or perhaps she had just been given the blessing she needed.

“Thank you,” she whispered softly, hoping that somehow Tara would hear her. She crossed over to Wesley.

“Oh dear,” he said.

“What oh dear?” she questioned him.

“Did Anni and Dawn make it home safely?” he asked her.

Willow stared at him. “I was just there, and they weren’t home yet,” she replied.

“They left three hours ago,” Wes replied worried. Willow touched her hand gently to his shoulder. They were both surprised at the connection that literally sparked between them, lighting the area around he hand slightly. Then the touch settled into a warm, comfortable, almost easy touch, and Wes tried to tell himself Anni would be alright. Then he remembered. An idea, perhaps the obvious idea, had just occurred to him.

“The Dark Council, they know that Anni is a slayer-in-waiting.” Giles shook his head.

“Impossible,” he said. “Those records are sealed so tightly that I couldn’t even get ahold of them.”

“They know,” Wes replied, sure of himself. “And they want her.”

“What for?” Giles asked.

Kcyna, Wes thought. Of course. Wes stared at Giles, mentally willing the other man to remember everything he had ever heard about the spoken Myth of Turot.

Giles’s eyes flew open, just as the Fang Gang walked into the door.

“Turot,” he muttered, “but that’s just a myth.”

“Guess what?” Hopie shouted, unable to keep the secret to herself.

“What?” Willow asked, her hand still on Wesley’s shoulder.

“We’re engaged!” Hopie cried, running to Faith and Lindsey’s side.

Everyone squealed their excitement, including Spike who had appeared as the sun set. Angel, wary of rubber ducky comments, didn’t comment on Spike’s girly squeal.

“Congratulations,” Giles told Lindsey. “Now tell me everything you know about Turot.”

Hopie offered Angel another cracker, hoping that this time he’d take it. Angel declined the offer, and Hopie’s heart sank.

“Hey Mr. Spike,” she said batting her eyelashes at the peroxide tinted vampire. Spike returned the look, trying to avoid falling under her powers of cuteness. “Want a cracker?” She looked so hopeful that Spike took it and ate it quickly.

“Anya keep any blood around here?” Spike questioned. Giles pointed toward the storage room.

Hmmm, Hopie thought… If you give a vampire a cracker, he’s going to want some blood.

Anni and Dawn were both giggling uncontrollably, trying desperately to keep quiet about it so as not to draw the attention of the teenage boys looking across the aisle at the Sci-Fi novels.

Dawn’s face was bright red with laughter. A tear slipped out of Anni’s eye.

“Reginald…” Anni started to say, but lost it.

“And… the…way…he,” Dawn couldn’t finish the sentence and dissolved into laughter. Trashy romance novels were such fun. It occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t be reading parts out loud with a twelve year old, but they weren’t really reading the explicit parts, just the cheesy ones.

Neither of them realized that they had been hanging out in the bookstore for the better part of three hours. Somehow, with the likes of Reginald, Duke of Hawthorne and his cheesy peers in the other books they had looked at, the time seemed to just fly by.

Wesley was very aware of the fact that his sister and Dawn had been missing for quite some time, and he was worried. With the Dark Council out there, Anni shouldn’t be out after dark, he thought. The worst part was that she knew that, understood, at least on some level, the danger.

He hoped she was all right. He was, quite simply, going to kill her himself.

“You have on grrr face,” Hopie informed Wes seriously. “I don’t like it when you get all grrr on people, especially Bella. She’s special and good.” Hopie gave Wes a very pointed look that let him know that she was reserving the right to form the opposite opinion of him.

Spike gulped down the glass of blood, and parts of it smeared on the corner of his mouth.

“Mr. Spike has a blood mustache!” Hopie cried joyfully. Wesley couldn’t help but notice the fact that Hopie seemed to like Spike much more than she liked him, and somehow that just seemed wrong.

“Could I get a napkin?” Spike asked no one in particular.

Hopie made a note. If you give a vamp a cracker, he’s going to ask for some blood. If you give him so blood, he’s going to need a napkin.

Connor’s smiled at Buffy when she walked into the room. “Where’s Dawn?” he asked.

“Back at the house,” Buffy replied.

Willow made an awkward throat clearing sound. “Um, Buff… I was just at the house and Dawnie and Anni weren’t there.” Buffy screwed her forehead up in concern. Where could the two girls possibly have been?

Lindsey’s expression went from joyful at Hopie’s announcement of his engagement to Faith to a pensive expression that creased his brow when he heard Giles’s question. The Myth of Turot had of course been of long interest to Wolfram & Hart. That kind of power…

“The myth is, as far as I know, nothing more than a myth. No one, not even our best power senses, were ever able to sense the location of the Turot’s kasya. If her power was true, the power died with her.” Lindsey knew even as he spoke the word that something wasn’t right.

Giles finally caught Wesley’s drift. “Kasya. Kcyna. You think they’re the same thing?”

“Sure,” Buffy said sarcastically. “Sounds like it to me. How bout you brainy types make with the information giving about this Turot.”

Giles cleared his throat. “Turot was, according the oral history of a tribe in, well nevermind where… Turot was a young girl of the elite cast. She was younger than Dawn according to the myth.”

“Okay, young girl, check,” Cordelia said, wondering where this story was headed.

Giles continued the story. “Turot’s people were said to have made a marriage contract for her, but on the day of the wedding, the groom was dead. Within hours, the entire town was dead.”

“Unknown cause?” Willow guessed.

Spike shook his head. “Vamp marks on their necks,” he said. Giles looked at him, and Spike shrugged. “I’ve heard that much of the story before. Kind of liked it myself.” Hopie giggled. Mr. Spike was so silly.

“So, girl turns vamp and kills the villiage?” Buffy asked.

Wesley picked up the story. “Not exactly,” he said. “Turot was, for centuries according to legend, unstoppable. Many river peoples began worshipping her, sacrificing a child to her each year in exchange for her giving their villiages a wide breadth. The area was no stranger to vampires, but Turot was different. Greater strength, greater speed. She was little more than a child herself, but stronger than any other being on earth.”

“This is getting freaky,” Willow commented. “I’m guessing it’s about time to hear about the big brooding evil inside of her?”

Wes looked down, not wanting to voice the rest of the story. He continued anyway.

“It was said Turot could do magic, sense other vampires, have prophetic dreams. She was, in many senses their queen and in many other senses their servant. She wore an amethyst around her neck, her kasya, that was said to contain her magic, her dark essence, her power, but she didn’t rely on the gem as vengeance demons do. Turot was her own source of power.”

“Kcyna,” Giles said. “Of nothing, black… the dark force. The Dark Council had to have been formed years after Turot’s time. The Watcher’s Council wasn’t even around in the mythic time of Turot.”

“So,” Spike said. “Anybody else see something a bit odd about this whole Dark Council thing?”

No one said anything. Hopie waved her hand wildly around in the air.

“Yes, Hopie?” Angel said, still finding it amusing that Hopie had started often raising her hand to speak just like the children did in class.

“They knew she was special!” Hopie said, wriggling with excitement.

“Who knew who was special?” Cordy asked, humoring the child, but not really paying much attention.

“The Dark guys knew that the purple lady was special. I think they stole her.” Everyone stared at the child.

“Hopie, baby,” Cordy said, “did you see something that Momma didn’t see?” Usually Hopie only got Cordy’s visions. Hopie shook her head.

“I didn’t see anything that way. They feel dark and we saw the purple lady last night. She’s bad, but she used to be special.” Hopie gave Wes a pointed look.

“Special?” he asked. “Special like Anni?” The child had insisted for days that “Bella was special.” Could she see something that the others couldn’t? Part of Hopie’s magic involved her connectedness with the world around her, her ability to sense a person’s essence, their intentions. Wes wondered why no one had taken her special claim any more serious than they had.

“Hopie, what does Anni feel like?” Wes asked her seriously.

Hopie thought for a moment. “Like Aunt Faith only more purple,” she replied finally. “And sometimes she feels like you.” Then Hopie, for good measure, stuck her tongue out at Wes and went back to watching Spike with great interest. Spike looked around for a trashcan.

If you give him a napkin, he’s going to need a trashcan…

“So this Turot, anything else we should know about her?” Buffy questioned.

“Her marriage was never supposed to be arranged,” Giles replied. “She wasn’t supposed to be married, ever. It is reported that she was one of her people’s chosen, one child in every generation among the ancient world.”

“One girl child?” Angel asked.

Wesley, Giles, and Lindsey all nodded.

“A slayer,” Buffy said.

“But I thought you said she was a vamp,” Cordy said, picking up Hopie who had wandered over to her, looking a little drowsy.

“She was a vampire. She was never called as a slayer,” Wes replied.

“Well if she wasn’t called…” Angel started to say.

“I didn’t say she wasn’t called. I said she wasn’t called as a slayer.” The words hung in the air. Turot had been called by something else.

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” Connor said, blushing when everyone looked at him. “Fred’s been talking physics a lot lately,” Connor explained.

“Connor’s right. Whatever it is that calls you as a slayer cannot exist without its opposite also existing,” Lindsey said, pulling Faith closer to him.

“And this purple smoke is the essence of this, this calling?” Buffy asked.

Giles and Wes had no reply for her question. Wes, in fact, knew only three things for sure. One: he had to get to Anni before the Dark Council did. Two: when he found her, he was going to throttle her for being a bloody idiot. And three: the next time Hopie spoke, he was going to listen.

“First thing’s first, we need to find Anni and Dawn,” Buffy said. Wes nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said. They all headed for the door, but Cordelia, sensing that Buffy might want to have some parent time with Dawn, decided to give Connor an excuse to not go. She handed him the sleeping Hopie.

“Take her back to Buffy’s house,” she instructed. Hopie clung to Connor, and Connor realized how much he had missed the little girl in the days that she had been in kindergarten. Without realizing it, he clung to her too, even as he gave Cordelia an exasperated look for excluding him from the action. The rest of the group split up to form search parties.

Dawn and Anni had just about had enough of the romance section. The two, on much better terms now, got up to leave the store, not realizing that they were both being watched very carefully.

The vessel was heavily guarded this time. They could not risk the essence escaping should this vessel be slayed. They would capture the girl, and she would become the next archslayer, the next Turot.

As the Scooby and Fang Gangs scoured Sunnydale looking for the two girls, Connor sat down on a rocking chair in the Summers’ house with Hopie on his lap. She felt safe and secure and real, the first real and pure thing in his life. He couldn’t help himself and sang to her in a sweet voice, a lilting Irish song that he almost remembered Angel singing to him as a baby.

Hopie opened her eyes a little. “My Connor,” she said contently, taking her thumb out of her mouth and touching a soggy hand to his cheek. Then it occurred to her that everyone else was gone. “Where’s everyone?” she asked sleepily.

“They went out to look for Anni and Dawn. There are some big baddies in town,” Connor said, trying to rock the little girl back to sleep.

“They went without me?!” Hopie exclaimed. “But Crossbow and I could help!” Connor sat, not really sure what to do as Hopie teetered on the edge of a full blown Shanshu tantrum.

There were few things in life scarier than a hellgod with highlighted hair. One of those things was the world’s oldest and most powerful magic thrown into a full blown temper tantrum. Connor was at a loss for actions.

“Hopie,” he said reasonably. “Sweetie, you were sleeping and Momma and Daddy had to go help Wes and Buff look for Anni and Dawn.

“They. Should. Have. Woken. Me. Up.” Hopie’s voice got increasingly louder as she started stamping her feet. “I wanna help fight! I wanna see Bella and Dawn. Now, Connor, Now!” Hopie’s eyes darkened, and Connor hoped with all of his Miracle Child being that he could get her calmed down before the force of her will managed to teleport them into the middle of some dangerous fight. It wouldn’t have been the first time Hopie had managed to defy all logic and reason with the force of her will. The essence of her ancient magic relied upon her ability as a person to accept or reject a person’s essence when that person crossed dimensions. The force of her will had given Angel a soul without a happiness clause… he could only imagine what it could do when she was cranky.

“They’ll be fine,” Connor said. “Go back to sleep, Hopie-girl.” He had picked up Wesley’s habit of adding girl to the end of his sister’s name when he was losing patience with her. Hopie didn’t notice.

“NOW, CONNOR, NOW!” she screamed, throwing herself on the floor. He was mystified at her very un-Hopie like actions. Hopie generally fought with weapons, not tantrums. This was very odd.

Dawn and Anni giggled as they exited the bookstore, falling into one of those hysterical fits for which no one has an explanation other than another burst of giggles. They noticed at the exact same time that it was dark outside, but, in the manner of teenagers, they didn’t think anything of it, because they were, after all, invincible.

The hair on the back of Anni’s neck stood up as she felt someone, something watching her. She felt a pull in her stomach towards a power, an ancient power. Her power. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind from the hypnotic mind music of the kcyna.

Dawn saw Anni twitching. “Got an itch?” she asked.

Anni shook her head. “No,” she replied slowly. “I think someone might be following us.”

“Probably,” Dawn said in a surprisingly chipper voice. “Someone or other is always trying to kidnap me or kill me or whatnot, but Buffy usually shows up just in time.”

Dawn’s words proved to be less than prophetic when they were surrounded, seconds later, by vampires wearing dark purple robes. Anni could smell the essence on them, and she knew by looking at them that she and Dawn didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m going to kill her,” Buffy said simply, no malice in her tone. “How many times does she have to get kidnapped before she figures out that Sunnydale after dark is not the bloody Cosmopolitan?”

“Bloody?” Cordelia asked, raising her eyebrows slightly. Buffy blushed.

“I’ve been around Spike too much,” she said as a way of explanation.

“That’s right, pet,” Spike said, practically purring in response. Then he straightened up a bit at her look. “I’ll have a talk with the Bit,” he promised.

Buffy rolled her eyes. Dawn had Spike completely wrapped around his little finger. At the first sign of big round sad Orphan Annie eyes, he was history. Angel would have made some sort of broodily scathing comment about the way the Summers women had him acting, but remembering his last encounter with Hopie’s stubborn nature and the Sesame Street incident, he decided it probably wasn’t the safest course of action in terms of embarrassment. Besides, he was moving slowly out of brood mode.

“I’m going to kill her,” Wes commented to Willow ceremoniously. “How many times do I have to say ‘don’t run off’ to get it through her bloody head?”

“Bloody?” Willow asked.

“I am British, you know,” Wes replied, as if all British people said the word bloody as often as they said the word and.

“Maybe she’s just feeling kind of lost,” Willow said. “She’s been through a lot. You have to make allowances for that. Besides, she’s with Dawnie, and two teenagers can never be expected to have as much sense together as they do apart.”

Wes sighed and looked straight into Willow’s eyes. “What would you do if she almost killed herself with that bloody transporter spell again?”

“I’d kill her,” Willow replied jovially, hoping that Anni wouldn’t do something so stupid again. The last time it had nearly drained her life force. Who knew what it could do if the girl tried it again?

Faith looked at Wesley and Willow, sharing a look with Lindsey. Not too long ago, she had felt like she would never deserve the love of another person again. Lindsey had felt the same way. Now Wes and Willow, the two fallen angels of the group, were sharing the same kind of silent communication that had marked their relationship throughout.

Faith looked down at her ring, carefully admiring her baby even as she expertly scanned the streets for any sign of the girls.

The sapphire was glowing a bright, angry blue. Faith tilted her head to the side. Hopie, she mused silently, was obviously not in the best of tempers. Her Champion sense told her that the small Shanshu child wasn’t in any danger. Still, the actual connection of the child to the stone in her ring reminded Faith how much she had grown to love and depend on those around her.

She looked down at the amethyst and noticed it glowing a desperate and urgent purple.

“CONNOR!” Hopie yelled, slamming her small body into the ground. “I wanna go play battle. They need me. They NEED me. THEY NEED…”

Connor slapped his hand gently over Hopie’s mouth. “Shhhh,” he commanded softly.

Hopie bit him.

“OW!” He gave her a very cross look. “Hope Chase Angel!” he said, knowing that it was just the thing to say when Hopie crossed the line, at least that was what Cordy always said, and Cordy had surprised everyone by taking naturally to motherhood.

Hopie looked at him with innocent little girl eyes that still gleamed a little petulantly. “Wanna go play battle and save Bella,” Hopie whimpered.

Connor tried to give her a stern look even though he desperately wanted to kiss her precious little toes. “No,” he said firmly. “Anni doesn’t need your help, and you, little missy, are in time out.”

Where, Anni thought, was help when you needed it? She did her best to shove Dawn behind her, even as the older girl tried to fight her way in front of Anni.

“Don’t fight me on this,” Anni said lowly. “I’m stronger than you are. They’ll have to get through me first.”

“But what if they want you?” Dawn said, trying to keep herself from whining to a twelve year old. The idea had just occurred to her. Giles had been doing research about something that was after Anni. What if, for once, she wasn’t the center of the evil-kidnap-plotting universe? The thought befuddled Dawn’s mind.

Anni gauged her energy level and figured that she could transport herself or Dawn away, but not both. She made her decision instantly, and Dawn found herself in her room at home. She ran downstairs, looking for help, finding Connor staring stoically away from a pouting Hopie.

“Anni,” Faith murmured. Lindsey looked at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Didn’t Wes say that Turot wore an amethyst? That it contained her power? And Hopie said Anni looked like me, only more purple. Even you said that Buffy and I were connected because we were both slayers. Anni’s a slayer-in-training, and she’s the heir apparent of Turot’s power. Don’t you see? Anni’s the amethyst.” Faith held up her ring, the purple light of the amethyst glowing brightly.

Willow looked at it, sensing the young girl’s connection to Faith through the ring. She felt the same connection between Wes and Anni, only this was a connection born of love, not destiny and magic. Willow felt Anni’s call for help. She tried desperately to think of something she could do to help the girl.

“Let her be all right,” Wes said out loud. “Please let her be all right so I can kill her.” He didn’t see any inconsistencies in that logic.

Lindsey grabbed Faith’s left hand in his right hand, and his love connected the two of them together, making the diamond in the center of the ring glow more brightly.

“I can feel her,” they both said at once, the sensitivity powers of the ring enhanced by the love that they shared.

“Where?” Willow asked desperately. She could transport herself there, and Anni away, if she was lucky.

“By the bookstore,” Faith and Lindsey replied in unison.

“Connor,” Dawn gasped. “Anni’s in trouble. She needs help. Now. Where’s Buffy and your dad?”

“See?” Hopie said triumphantly, jumping out of her timeout chair. “I told you Bella needed help!”

“You still shouldn’t have bitten me,” Connor mumbled, grabbing weapons. Hopie grabbed her crossbow and poked it pointedly in Connor’s side.

“I know,” she said impishly, “but I didn’t have Crossbow.”

Then a serious expression came over Hopie’s face. “Bella needs me now,” she said, and Connor and Dawn gasped as Hopie disappeared.

Willow and Hopie appeared at Anni’s sides at the exact same instances. Anni looked down at them both. Hopie made quick work of three vamps with her crossbow, all of them too stunned to see a four year old warrior with a heart shaped face and the cutest little dimples firing arrows at them to fight them off.

When the vampires kept coming, in numbers too large to count, Hopie grabbed Willow’s hand and then Anni’s.

Light shot out from all of the stones in Faith’s ring, white from the center, and red, blue, purple, green, and black from the stones around the edges.

All of the vampires fell, one by one. Angel, Buffy, Connor, Cordelia, Faith, and Lindsey also fell to the ground, weakened by the power Hopie had taken from each of them.

A lone vampire, no older than Anni appeared by her side, and Hopie, recognizing the purple lady, let go of her Bella’s hand, knowing that this was one decision that Anni would have to make on her own.

Wes ran toward the fight, crossing blocks in what seemed an incredibly fast time. Like the others, the scene he saw froze him to the ground, as Anni moved, trancelike, toward the child vamp who bore the brand of the Dark Council, which Hopie had just ceremoniously wiped out.

“Come child,” an older voice whispered through the vampires mouth. “You know me. You’ve always known me, known that it would come to this moment, to this choice.” The vampire ran her hands down Anni’s neck softly.

“Turot,” Wesley whispered. The vampire bearing the essence of the Archslayer ignored him.

Turot’s voice turned childlike. “I was special,” she said, sounding very much like Hopie, “but I never asked to be, and when the high priestess told them that I would never be worthy of my gift, they bartered me away like an animal to the highest bidder. She was among the first to die, the priestess. The night before my wedding, I was given a strange kiss, and I felt a power like no other run through my body. My amethyst, part of the bride price my future husband had paid my father, glowed with the power. I felt it elsewhere in the world, knew that the white power, not the dark, was what I had been raised for, my only purpose in life. I didn’t want it. I never wanted it, but it was all anyone ever wanted for me. All I ever was to anyone. So when this gift, so different, came, it felt as if it could really be mine. I made the choice. The choice you long to make. I’ve felt your sorrow across centuries, the power it could bring you. You are a chosen one, but now it is your time to choose.”

Anni looked at Turot, mesmerized by her words.

“You never wanted it, and they, none of them, ever wanted you, Anni.” The monster knew her name, knew her innermost thoughts and fears. Wes tried to cry out to her but could not. “Be what you long to be, Anni. Make your choice.”

The world froze in that moment.

Faith and Lindsey, their arms wrapped around each other, were lying on the ground, weakened by the incredible power the ring had harnessed.

Cordelia, Angel, and Buffy had made it to their feet, but the slayer was leaning on Spike for strength. Cordelia prayed that her baby was all right.

Connor and Dawn were, of course, frozen in a kiss, innocent and passionate at the same time, Connor still holding a sword in his hand.

Willow was gripping Hopie’s hand, and their solemn expressions were almost identical.

Wes stood by helplessly, watching his sister walk the line, the fine and final line between good and evil, and he knew that, no matter who or what she became, he could never kill her, never allow any harm to come to her.

When we get out of this mess, he thought, I am quite simply going to kill her. Even in the frozen moment in time, his logic was that of a protective, scared older brother.

Anni looked carefully at the child vampire, her exact height, and she felt the call, stronger than ever, to accept the destiny that called to her in Turot’s voice from within the vessel.

Anni took a step closer to Turot, called by the mesmerizing pull of the amethyst power. The world around her was frozen, the others watching in helpless dismay.

“They didn’t want you,” Turot reminded her. Anni stared, not blinking. She’s right. They never, not one of them, wanted me. Mother and Father could not possibly care less. All I ever was to them was an asset. To be traded, bartered for prestige, just like Turot. Wes left me, and there was no one to help me. Just like Turot.

“You know this is what you were born for, the power you long for.” The voice crept up Willow’s spine as she wanted to shout out to the girl that that kind of power had consequences. Her mouth was frozen shut by the power that was literally electrifying the air. Anni felt the power flow gently through her body. Wes called me stupid, but I’m not stupid. I could be powerful, so powerful that no one could hurt me, force me to do something unspeakable again. The Watcher’s Council would never touch me. I could kill them all if they tried. Anni shook her head. That wasn’t her mind voice talking, was it?

“Make your choice,” Turot said, for the second time. Anni looked at her, and in that instant, she made her decision. I am Turot, she realized. Just like Turot. She took the final step toward the child vampire and moved her hair away from her neck, knowing instinctively what needed to be done for the transfer of power.

My baby sister, Wes thought, is about to turn into the most dangerous creature possible, and it’s all my fault.

Not your fault, Willow told him silently, and he looked at her across the space, surprised that he was able to hear her thoughts.

“I’ve made my choice,” Anni said. The child’s face vamped, and she moved towards Anni’s open and inviting neck.

Microseconds after the fangs touched her neck, just as the purple light was leaving the vampires mouth, the vamp exploded into dust. Anni pulled the stake back victoriously, rubbing her neck, thankful that it hadn’t been pierced but disgusted at the tiny bit of vamp saliva on her neck.

“I’ve made my choice,” Anni repeated, looking Wes straight in the eye, and giving him the most precious gift he could imagine: her trust.

Willow grabbed hold of Hopie’s hand, figuring the transfer of power should work both ways if the child was willing.

“Fun fun!” Hopie said, sensing what Willow wanted to do. Willow muttered the words in Latin, and the purple light began showing signs of fading in strength. Hopie grinned at the light and broke her grip with Willow, causing the older girl to lose control of the spell.

The light changed colors, until it was a beautiful and pure yellow starburst.

“Anyone else a little with the confused?” Cordy asked. Hopie just giggled and clapped her hands in response.

The light surged so bright and pure that it hurt their eyes before plunging into Anni, lifting the girl off of the ground. Her body glowed brilliantly as she floated, suspended in the air, her face tilted toward the sky, her brown hair thrown back. Slowly, she descended until she was standing again on the ground.

Anni blinked a couple of times. Everyone was silent. “Bloody hell,” she said finally. “That was so cool.”

Wes looked at his sister, who looked as fresh, young, innocent, and happy as he had ever seen her. He raised his eyebrows, gesturing toward Hopie, trying to keep the smile off of his face.

“Bloody heck,” Anni corrected herself. “That was so, so cool.”

Hopie looked at them suspiciously but gave up in favor of a more important pursuit. “I wanna try!” she said.

“No,” Everyone replied at once.

“What just happened?” Buffy asked. She looked at Anni. “Was the yellow light a good thing?”

“Well, my best guess…” Wesley started to say when he was cut off by his sister.

“I was Turot,” she said softly. The others stared at her. “I had her memories, felt her pain, my pain, all of it. I felt the power, the night she was turned, and I saw all of the slayers, called from the same power as the archslayer, only from the other side. I was Turot, but I was me too, and I changed her destiny, my destiny. I chose this.” She paused, looking around and seeing herself surrounded with people, with family, with friends. “I chose you,” she said softly.

“No more purple lady,” Hopie clarified. “Bella is a yellow lady now!”

Faith looked down at her ring, feeling the warmth radiating from it. The amethyst was gone, replaced with a piece of amber the color of sunshine. She looked at Anni, feeling her connection to the girl.

“You’re a slayer,” she said.

Anni shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “I hope not ever.”

“You’re something,” Buffy commented, “because the Powers that Be don’t really condone the fireworks-for-nothing thing.”

Buffy aimed a flying kick, full speed toward Anni’s head. Wes and Willow both gasped. Buffy ended up on the ground. Anni’s eyes widened.

“I guess I am something,” she said, half marveling, half sad.

“You always were something,” Wes replied walking toward her slowly. She met his eyes and smiled half of a smile.

“What am I?” she asked.

“Well, you can’t be a slayer, because last time I checked Buffy and Faith were still alive and kicking,” Lindsey replied. “So my best guess is that you’re a non-slayer.”

“You’re my sister,” Wes replied, answering her question with the words Anni most wanted to hear.

“A what?” Cordelia questioned. “Aren’t most of us here not slayers?”

“Not being a slayer doesn’t make you a non-slayer,” Lindsey explained. “A non-slayer, to the best of my knowledge, is a person who has slayer powers through an alternative power. In Anni’s case, I’d guess her choice turned the power that called the Archslayer to the other side and then it flowed into her body, combining with her essence. She wasn’t called, not traditionally at least, but she has the power. She’s a non-slayer.”

“Wow,” Willow said. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”

“There’s not,” Faith said, smacking Lindsey slightly. “I think he just made it up.” Lindsey grinned, and the two of them kissed, Faith’s ring glimmering in the light from the street lamps.

“I like it,” Anni said, smiling shyly at Faith and Lindsey. “Being a non-slayer means I don’t have to deal with the Council.”

“You have to deal with the non-Council,” Spike told her seriously.

She wrinkled her forehead. “Who?”

The peroxide vamp gestured around. “All of us. We’re about as far from the Council as you can get. If there can be a Dark Council, there sure as he-, uh, heck can be a non-Council for all of us non-councily types.”

Anni embraced Wes, and he finally knew the meaning of the old adage: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, hug you or bend you over my knee. He tried to get used to the feeling. He had someone to take care of now.

Hopie burst into the middle of the two of them, impatiently holding her arms up to Anni. Anni picked up the little girl. Hopie played with her hair.

“That was fun!” Hopie said. “Especially when all of the vamps went poof. I’ll have to try that for our next playground war.”

Everyone stared at the child. Cordy took her from Anni. “No way, little Shanshu. I don’t think so.” Angel peered at Hopie specutively.

“Why do you smell like blood?” he asked, detecting the very slightest trace.

Hopie gave him an adorable smile. “I bit Connor,” she explained.

“Hope!” Cordy explained.

“Who’s Daddy’s little vamp?” Angel asked fondly, earning himself a proper glare from Cordelia.

“Angel!” she scolded. Angel shrugged, still grinning an absurdly proud grin at Hopie. Spike smiled at Angel’s look.

“I’m not a vamp,” Hopie said seriously. “I’m a Hopie.” Everyone laughed at that statement. It was true. Hopie had the best of all worlds, was the best of all worlds.

“Where’s Dawn?” Buffy asked suddenly.

“I, uh, sent her home,” Anni replied shooting a glance at Willow.

“Translocation spell? Again?” Willow asked. Anni nodded sheepishly, feeling suddenly weak from the combined efforts of the spell, the fight, and her transformation. Willow groaned. I’m gonna kill her, she thought.

Wesley sent her a smile. Not if I kill her first, he replied. Willow, startled that the connection went both ways, smiled back at him, and they both turned to glare at Anni. Wes lifted her unceremoniously off the ground. Anni was weak enough that she just enjoyed being held tightly by her brother.

“Wait,” Spike said. “Connor’s at the house. Connor and Dawn are at the house. Alone. Together. Bloody hell.”

“Bloody hell!” Hopie echoed gleefully in a perfect British accent. Cordy sent dagger eyes at Spike for corrupting her little girl.

Together, they all headed home.

Spike burst through the door, thinking to catch the two teenage horrors making out, because in times of emergency, making out like it was the apocalypse was a very Dawnesque thing to do. He was surprised to see them snuggled up on the couch, watching a video tape of the movie “Big Bird’s Big Adventure.”

Angel immediately sat inches from the screen, thoroughly engrossed.

Spike went in search of some more blood. For some reason he was incredibly thirst. Hopie watched him with interest.

“If you keep drinking all that blood,” Buffy warned. “You’ll never get to sleep tonight.”

Hmmmm, Hopie thought. After he throws the napkin away, he’s gonna want some more blood. If you give him more blood, he won’t be able to fall asleep. She was very interested.

“Buffy,” Wes said, still holding Anni, who was near to unconscious with weariness, “can I use one of your bedrooms?”

“You can use mine,” Willow offered, sending Anni glare eyes. “And you’re mine next, missy. How many times can I say no more transportation spells?”

Dawn raised her hand. “I like the transportation spell,” she said. Everyone ignored her, and she returned to watching Big Bird search for his family.

Wes quite nearly threw Anni down onto the bed. She looked up at him with big eyes, fully awake now. “Annabella,” he said and she gulped. That was never a good sign. “What were you doing out at night alone?” Anni didn’t mention that she was with Dawn. Somehow, she didn’t think that would help her case at all.

“We were at the bookstore,” she replied. “We just lost track of time.” That took the wind out of his sails a little bit. She hadn’t been running off or looking for trouble. She had been careless and stupid. In other words, she had been a teenager.

“Do you have any idea how careless, how stupid that was given the circumstances?” He braced himself for her argument.

“You’re right,” she said. “It was stupid of me, and careless, and I’m sorry.” Wes didn’t have it in him to kill her, even though he felt like maybe he should. She had been so brave, come through so much, and he was too much of a softee. Then again, rules were needed…

“I want to know where you are and when you’re there,” he growled, “and when you start school, you’re to come straight home afterward.” Those sounded like good ideas.

“School?” Anni’s eyes lit up. She had never been to school. She smiled. There would be boys at school, like the ones at the bookstore. Like Connor.

Wesley frowned. There would be boys at school, and that was completely unacceptable.

Downstairs, Faith was humming softly a hymn that Lindsey had taught her to play on the guitar. Lindsey joined in. Soon, the melodic sound of their humming duet filled the room.

“So,” Dawn said, breaking the silence. “When’s the wedding?”

“What’s your dress going to look like?” Buffy asked Faith.

“I’ll help you shop for it,” Cordy offered.

“Can Crossbow and Bob come?” Hopie asked.

“Bob as in the flamethrower?” Spike clarified.

Hopie nodded seriously.

Faith shrugged. “Why not? The more the merrier.”

When Willow heard Wes calming down a bit, she walked into the room, giving him a subtle hug, feeling little butterflies in her stomach as she did. What am I doing? She thought.

The same thing I am, he replied mentally, also thinking that this whole psychic connection thing was utterly fascinating.

Willow put on her stern face and looked at Anni. “You just see how much magical homework you get tomorrow,” Willow said. Anni smiled at her, completely oblivious to the looks her brother was sharing with the red headed Wicca.

Anni smiled. “I’ll have real homework soon,” she said.

Willow looked offended. “My homework’s real,” she said sullenly. After a moment of silence, they all broke into laughter.

Hopie looked closely at Faith’s pretty ring as Faith explained what a flower girl was. The pretty white stone in the middle felt happy and sad and wonderful all at once, like Momma and Daddy or Aunt Faith and Uncle Lindsey. The red stone felt like Momma, like laughter and love and Momma-ness all at once. The black felt like Daddy. What was the word Momma used? Broody. The green felt like Buffy, hyper and smart and sometimes lonely. The blue felt like what Hopie felt like all the time, so she guessed that the blue was supposed to be her.

The yellow felt happy, like a new happiness, and Hopie recognized it, recognized Bella as if she had known her for a very, very long time. Hopie looked at Aunt Faith, who was finished talking.

“I throw flowers?” Hopie asked, wrinkling her nose a little. Faith nodded.

“You get to wear a pretty dress,” Cordy said, knowing the child’s weakness for pretty clothing.

“Okaaaaay,” Hopie said slowly, “but you know those shiny little sharp weapon thingies that Daddy plays with sometimes?”

“Chinese stars?” Cordelia asked, picturing the tiny metal razors in her mind.

Hopie nodded vigorously. “Can I throw those instead?”

The kindergarten classroom was very busy. All the little boys and girls were illustrating the special stories they had written for family night. Assistant teachers had helped them all to write down their stories. There were some very…interesting ones. Some of the children were so creative.

The teacher walked over to Hopie’s desk, smiling at the way the little girl bit her bottom in concentration as she colored. She peered at the drawing and saw a stick figure with yellow hair.

“Is that your Daddy?” she asked Hopie.

Hopie shook her head. “That’s Mr. Spike,” she said. The teacher raised her eyebrows. Mr. Spike?

Hopie got a worried expression on her face.

‘What’s wrong, Hopie?” the teacher asked her. “Are you nervous about the play tonight? You have a very big part.” The teacher was rather proud of her casting. Hopie looked so adorable in her costume.

“I’m not nervous,” Hopie said, looking at her like she was crazy. Hopie had slayed vamps, and the teacher thought she was nervous about a silly little play?

“Then what?” the teacher asked.

“Is there room for my entire family to come tonight?” Hopie asked. “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by leaving them out.”

“Of course there is,” the teacher said, figuring that Hopie couldn’t have more than one sibling. Her mother looked so young that the teacher doubted that Hopie could have a very big family yet. Hopie smiled a big smile and went back to illustrating the book.

Later that night, the kindergarten teacher’s mouth dropped open as Hopie Chase Angel came in with an entourage of people, very few of whom looked older than 25. Dawn and Connor were grinning at each other like they were getting ready to go back to the cubby room and make out. Spike was glaring at them, and Buffy was poking him in the ribs. Faith and Lindsey were smiling at the way that Wes and Willow were holding hands, and Anni was holding Hopie’s hands as the little girl jumped up and down, excitedly.

The teacher recognized Hopie’s mother and guessed that the man next to him was Hopie’s father, but she did not recognize the other people standing with her. Even Fred, Gunn, Anya, Xander, Giles, and Lorne had come. The teacher wondered why that one gentleman was wearing an overcoat, a hat, and a scarf that covered most of his face. Lorne winked at Hopie from underneath his disguise. She giggled.

“Hopie,” the teacher said, “who are all of these people?”

“My family,” Hopie replied. She introduced everyone. The teacher heard a lot of “Aunts” and “Uncles” and a few “Mr.’s,” but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why Hopie’s family all looked like they shouldn’t even be out of college yet.

“Come on,” Hopie said, pulling on Anni’s hand. She motioned for Momma and Daddy to follow her. “Come see my desk!” There were so many of them that they had to move the other desk in order to see Hopie’s.

She proudly showed them her work: her spelling and math, her shapes. They all oooo-ed and ahhhh-ed appropriately.

“What’s this?” Anni asked curiously, picking up Hopie’s story.

“That’s my book,” Hopie replied importantly. “I wrote it.”

“If you give a Vamp a Cracker,” Connor read the title and then grinned.

“Hey,” Fred said, “you know that stick figure on the cover sort of looks like…”

“Spike,” everyone said.

“Doesn’t either,” Spike said until he caught Hopie’s frown. “Maybe a little bit,” he conceded, trying to bring the smile back to the girl’s face.

“You wrote this?” Xander asked, shooting a cocky look at Spike. Hopie nodded, a huge grin on her face.

“You read it,” Hopie instructed, thrusting it at Giles. She liked his reading voice. It sounded nice and British.

“Very well,” Giles said, adjusting his glasses. “If you Give a Vamp a Cracker, by Hopie Chase Angel.” Hopie wriggled in anticipation. Giles opened the book to reveal the first page, with a drawing of a certain peroxide tinted vampire and a cracker with golden lines extending around it.

“That’s because it tastes good,” Hopie whispered to Anni.

“If you give a Vamp a cracker,” Giles read, “he’s going to want some blood.” Giles turned the page. “If you give him some blood, he’s going to need a napkin.” Everyone laughed at the image of Spike with a blood mustache that Hopie had roughly drawn.

“Is that why you kept shoving those bloody crackers at me?” Spike asked, half amused, half outraged. Hopie nodded.

“Keep goin, Mr. Giles!” she squealed. Angel smirked at Spike, remembering that he had turned down the cracker.

“If you give him a napkin, he’s going to need a trashcan,” Giles read.

“Makes sense,” Anya said. She peered at the picture. “That looks like the Magic Box,” she said. “Were you drinking the blood from the fridge?” she accused Spike.

“If it’s not there for me, I don’t know why you have it,” Spike retorted.

Anya shrugged. “You never know when you’ll have to entertain a vampire.” Xander shuddered at an unwanted memory when Anya said the word entertain. The reference floated over Anni’s and Hopie’s heads, but Dawn giggled.

Hopie poked Giles and he kept reading.

“If he throws away the napkin, he’s ready to go fight.” Fred thought that the logic there wasn’t exactly sound and in the keeping with the words of the original book, but she didn’t say anything because Hopie was, after all, just four years old.

“If he goes on patrol, he’s going to be hungry. If he gets hungry, he’s going to want a cracker. If you give a vamp a cracker, he’s going to want some blood.”

“That was a wonderful story,” Willow told Hopie.

Hopie shook her head. “It’s not over yet!” she cried. “The best part is the next part.

Giles turned the page. “If he drinks some more blood, he won’t be able to get to sleep.”

“Ain’ t that the truth?” Spike muttered, thinking of the sleepless nights during Hopie’s little cracker experiment. Then he smiled. Those sleepless nights with Buffy had actually been very… interesting. He grinned shamelessly at Buffy until he saw the impish grin on Hopie’s face. She wouldn’t have, he thought in horror. She couldn’t have… she was just four years old.

“If he can’t sleep, he will get bored.” Picture of bored Spike. “If he gets bored, his slayer will come play with him.” Everyone laughed at Hopie’s picture of blonde Buffy and Spike smiling at each other.

Giles turned to the last page of the book. His face turned a little red, but he read the sentence out loud anyway. “If the slayer comes to play with him, they will have special grown up time. A lot. THE END.”

Cordy looked at her little girl horrified, but she couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing at the embarrassed look on Buffy’s face. Soon everyone was laughing so hard that tears fell down their cheeks.

The teacher wondered what was so very funny and decided that it was no wonder that Hopie, though adorable, was just a bit odd.

“Okay boys and girls, time to get in your costumes for our play!” The teacher ushered the parents and random teenagers and twenty-somethings into the auditorium.

Soon the lights went out, and a little blonde girl walked onto stage.

“The Fairy Tale Tea,” she said, announcing the name of their play. “Look,” the little girl gestured widely, “it’s Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

“Over-actor,” Anya commented loudly. Everyone else in the group shushed her.

“She’s, like, five, An,” Xander whispered back.

“Five year olds can have talent,” Anya commented again. Several of the other parents turned around to glare at her.

The children playing goldilocks and the three bears stumbled through their lines. Next up was Cinderella, then Snow White, and then finally, Hopie walked out onstage for the big finale. She was wearing a red cloak and carrying a large hand basket. Cordelia didn’t know why, but she got a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach.

“Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house I go,” Hopie sang. Lorne’s eyes opened widely, and he tried desperately to get Angel or Cordy’s attention. They shushed him, beaming at their baby on stage.

Spike smacked Connor upside the head when he leaned in to kiss Dawn.

The kid playing the wolf came onto stage and talked to Hopie, and then with a quick change of scenery, Hopie was talking to the wolf dressed as her grandmother. The wolf’s ears looked more a bunny’s, but no one thought anything of it since the costumes were home made. Anya covered her eyes with her hands. Evil wolf-bunny hybrid, she thought.

“What big eyes you have, Grandmother!” Hopie said.

“The kid’s a natural,” Angel commented proudly.

“The better to see you with my dear,” the boy playing the wolf growled back, his ears flopping around. Anya shrieked in horror, and Xander shushed her. Lorne tried again to get Angel’s attention, and again he failed. Giving up, he just sat back to enjoy the show.

“What big ears you have, Grandmother!” Hopie said. The audience was enthralled. Most parents admitted to themselves that they had never seen a cuter child than the little black haired sprite up on stage.

“The better to hear you with, my dear,” the little boy replied.

“What big teeth you have, Grandmother,” Hopie said, inching her basket open a bit. In that instant, Cordelia gasped, knowing exactly what was going to happen. She started gesturing wildly to Hopie not to do it.

“So talented,” Angel muttered, completely out of it, like the proud papa he was. “And so darn cute.”

“The better to eat you with, my dear,” the little boy said, moving towards Hopie like he was getting ready to pounce.

Before the woodcutter could come in to save her, Hopie pulled out her crossbow and aimed it firmly at the boy’s chest.

“I don’t think so,” she replied. The little boy stood, frozen to his spot, and all heck broke loose in the auditorium.

“Take that, evil bunny-wolf!” Anya screamed.

Cordy and Angel both rushed toward the stage.

“Do you think our kids will be like that?” Faith asked Lindsey curiously.

“I hope so,” Lindsey replied, grinning up at the stage.

“I hope so too,” Faith replied. Hopie saw her Momma and Daddy coming, and she figured that it was a good thing she had left Bob at home.