The weather was clear and mild; a nice and fresh breeze was blowing above a long sandy beach, stirring up light trails of sand in the process. Faith and Tara were walking by the ocean side by side; the Slayer had even took her shoes off and pulled her trousers up to half her calves and she was walking in the water with her shoes in her hand under her friend’s dubious stare.

“How are you doing?” finally asked the blonde. “This water must be freezing cold!”

“It is,” Faith confirmed. “But that’s what’s good. You should give it a try. Well, if you weren’t the feeble type!”

“I am not the feeble type,” Tara protested.

“Walk in the water with me then,” Faith countered with a smirk.

“Oh, I know what you’re trying to do, miss Slayer!” Tara giggled while gesturing accusingly toward Faith’s nose. “And I’m not playing that game! You’re a Slayer; you may not even feel the cold!”

“It’s not what you say each time you tell me I might catch a cold!” Faith exclaimed happily while kicking gently the water surface in the style of a soccer player.

“Faith, you’re spattering me,” Tara protested.

“I hope so,” Faith teased her.

As an answer, Tara got away, leaving a meter or so between then from now on.

“You’re in a better mood than in my dream of last night,” Tara grumbled.

“Oh, you’ve dreamt about me!” Faith exclaimed cheerfully and faking surprise. “I’m sure it was a very very hot dream!” she added while getting closer to Tara who stepped aside again.

“I’m sorry to have to disappoint you again,” Tara firmly countered. “Nothing of that kind. But if I could choose, I’d rather have a hot dream.”

“Oh, it really wasn’t fun at all then,” Faith said, serious again.

“It rarely is when I dream about you,” Tara confirmed.

“I can return the compliment” Faith growled. “I hope it won’t last forever. Between the Slayer’s prophetic dreams and this, I’m not even left alone when I sleep!”

“When I went to say my goodbyes to Mrs Applefresh, she said it should become less frequent until it disappears. But she also said it was hard to tell how long it will take…”

“Great,” the Slayer grumbled. “Magic really is useless”

“You didn’t say that last night,” Tara said.

As Faith was giving her a strange look, she added quickly:

“When I threw that fireball to the vampire attacking you from behind!”

“Oh, this,” Faith commented, frowning.

She showed then one of her hair lock whose end was slightly burned:

“I remember,” she said in a mocking tone.

“The vampire moved,” Tara pleaded. “It wasn’t my fault”

“I’m not blaming you,” Faith reassured her. “It was well done in fact. With much training, you’ll end up missing my hair.”

Tara smiled back and crossed her arms over her chest while Faith came back to put her feet in the water again.

“It’s a good thing that you’re doing magic again, isn’t it?” the Slayer asked after a silence.

“I think so,” Tara approved. “I feel good anyway. I feel useful.”

“Isn’t it too much all of a sudden?” Faith questioned again thoughtfully.

As Tara did not answer immediately, the brunette clarified:

“I mean, you didn’t want to practice much before…”

“I know,” Tara admitted. “But you know, seeing those things again… Seeing my mother again… It’s just reminded me what she always told me about magic; it’s reminded me all this time I spent with her practising. It made me feel like practising again. And when… when Kira put that spell on you, I had to do something; I couldn’t leave you like that. It’s reminded me that I was a witch. And that it could be useful. Do you get it?”

Faith nodded after attentively listening to her friend’s monologue.

“It’s a good thing,” she simply commented.

They walked silently for some minutes, only passing a few other walkers, most of them looking at Faith in disbelief or amusingly. Only a single mother glared at her when her kid started to yell that he could go swimming since “the madam over there” did. The remark made the Slayer wince in disgust.

“Madam!” she exclaimed indignantly when the mother and the child were not within earshot anymore. “How old that kid thinks I am?”

Tara giggled but kept any comment she might have thought for herself.

“We should arrive in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon if we don’t leave too late,” said Faith a little later.

She glanced at Tara who was inhaling the sea air with pleasure without paying attention to her and added hesitantly:

“You know, I was thinking that if you want to, we could go to good-old Sunnydale after our stay in San Francisco. We won’t be very far…”

She turned questioningly to her friend, but the blonde’s answer, far from being awkward and hesitant as expected, was categorical:

“No,”

“Are you sure?” Faith insisted without even thinking. “You…”

“No,” Tara interrupted in the same tone.

The brunette opened her mouth to add something but then Tara turned to her, and the resolution Faith could see in her eyes kept her silent. She shrugged.

“As you want,” she said simply.

Then she suddenly changed the subject.

“Splashing about in the water makes me feel like eating a good ice-cream with loads of whipped cream!” she exclaimed happily.

Tara rolled her eyes.

“A good hot waffle sounds more accurate!” she commented.

“A waffle is good too!” Faith replied.

She stepped out of the water and dashed resolutely towards the stalls along the beach and caught Tara’s wrist as she did.

“C’mon, it’s time for a waffle!”

“I thought we shouldn’t waste our money in that kind of things Faith!” Tara protested.

“We earned a little money last week with your lousy magic potions,” Faith explained, and calling her magic potions ‘lousy’ made Tara growl unhappily. “We can afford a waffle or two!”

Tara rolled her eyes again but shrugged and gave in, following the Slayer close as the brunette had released her and strode ahead.

“Don’t just take the whipped cream extra!” Faith shouted over her shoulder as she quickened her pace, her hair dancing in the light wind, still holding her shoes in her hand.



Shoes on her feet again, Faith needed both her hands to control her chocolate waffle topped by an indecent amount of whipped cream. Beside her, Tara looked almost pitiful with her tiny pancake with sugar.

“I really don’t know how you do to swallow all this,” Tara commented between two bites.

“Very simple,” Faith answered. “Like this,” she concluded while swallowing half the whipped cream at once under Tara’s horrified stare.

The blonde grimaced, which obviously made Faith very delighted and she repeated her action with a big smirk and a very rude swallowing noise.

“Faith!” Tara snapped.

The Slayer giggled and gave another bite at her waffle as an answer. Both girls went on walking along the houses lining the long beach, Faith busy with what could be considered her second breakfast of the day, and Tara watching wavelets crashing on the shore. Focused as she was on the ocean’s ebb and flow, the blonde did not notice when her friend suddenly stopped and she nearly had a heart attack when the Slayer’s iron grip briskly grabbed her wrist to stop her. Tara could not help a small cry and jumped slightly before turning to Faith with questioning eyes.

“You gave me such a start!”

But Faith did not look at her but instead stared at something in front of them. Seeing her so focused, Tara turned to what Faith was looking at and jumped slightly again. Not far away from them, only a few meters from the entrance of a house, a human shape was lying still. Faith released Tara and came closer slowly. She bent over the figure and noticed it was the body of a young blonde woman, wrapped in what looked like a tarpaulin. Tara came closer in her turn carefully while Faith watched the body with attention.

“Is she…?” Tara asked.

“Dead, yes,“ Faith confirmed.

“Vampires ?“ Tara questioned again upon seeing Faith frowning.

“No,“ the brunette answered immediately. “No bite on her neck,” she added, gesturing to said-neck.

She was about to pull the tarpaulin to free the body but Tara held her arm.

“Don’t touch anything,” the witch advised her.

Faith looked upset but she complied.

“We should call the police,” Tara said wisely.

Faith shrugged and grumbled her disagreement.

“You want me to call the police? I’ve been convicted of murder and I’m a fugitive.” She spat.

“You think it’s a better idea if it’s me whereas I’m not even supposed to be alive?” replied the blonde.

They stared at each other in silence, both wavering about what to do. Before either of them had time to submit another idea, they turned their head toward the house nearest to the victim upon hearing the noise of a door being unlocked. Faith stood up instantly, caught Tara’s wrist again and dragged her behind her in a small street between two houses. They both flattened themselves against the wall and Faith lightly bent forward to be able to see the body they had just left.

“Do you think he’s seen us?” Tara sighed.

Faith did not answer as she watched a man still in his bathrobe exiting his house with a trash bag in his hand. He crossed the distance between the house’s door and the gate leading to the beach, and his still sleeping expression made clear he had no idea what he was about to find. He threw the thrash bag in the trash can casually and only when he closed back the can, he caught sight of the tarpaulin on the other side of the gate. The lid noisily fell back on the can and he quickly went out of his backyard after giving a little cry of surprise. He bent over the body, wanted to touch the neck but did not dare, looked right, then left as if what to do could suddenly appear in front of him, then he admitted he was powerless and came back hastily in his house, calling his wife.

“Mary, Mary! Give me the phone!”

When he had disappeared from sight and the door had slammed behind him, Faith turned to Tara and both friends exchanged a relieved glance.

“He hasn’t seen we were there,” Tara commented.

“It’s better this way,” Faith confirmed.

“What do we do?” the blonde asked. “Do you think a demon did this?”

Faith shrugged.

“It’s hard to tell, I haven’t seen much.” She laconically answered. “She had strange marks on her face and her neck that were not vampires’ bites. But it could be anything.”

They turned together toward the body they could only make out from where they were, then looked at each other again.

“Let’s clear off before the police arrive.” Faith concluded, dragging Tara along. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Tara nodded and the girls went away, taking care to remain unnoticed.



Tara was energetically rubbing her hair with a small white towel and looked at the ocean out of the window of the motel, while Faith was going through jobs advertisements in a local newspaper. The Slayer was lying on the bed in her birthday’s suit. On the floor by the bed lay a pile of soaked clothes while others were drying, hanging at the bathroom door or on the backs of the two chairs of the room. The TV was playing in background but none of the girls was paying attention to it.

“Shower was good?” Faith asked kindly.

“A blessing,” Tara replied without turning to her. “That rain storm has soaked me to the bones”

Outside, rain was still pouring down and the sky had turned a pale grey. Faith put the newspaper aside and dashed toward the bathroom.

“My turn then,” she concluded as she closed the door behind her.

Once the Slayer under the shower, Tara gave up her contemplation of the ocean under the rain, stopped to dry her hair and came by the bed where she flopped down at the place Faith had just freed. As the Slayer was doing before her, the blonde took the newspaper and browsed quickly the jobs ads page.

“Have you found something interesting?” She shouted for her friend to hear her despite the noise of the running water.

“Uh?” she got as an answer.

“Forget it,” replied Tara, and Faith did not insist.

Tara settled herself comfortably on the bed with the wall in her back and resumed her skimming through the jobs ads while glancing at the TV from time to time, though the noise of the shower almost drowned out the sound of the television. Faith soon was done and switched off the water taps before appearing at the bathroom door, wrapped in a large towel.

“Have you said something?” she asked.

“I just asked if you had found something interesting in this,” Tara repeated, waving about the newspaper.

“I’ve seen a few th…” Faith started, moving forward in the room.

But Tara interrupted her sharply.

“Oh, watch this!” she exclaimed, showing the TV and not paying any attention to the Slayer’s answer.

Faith frowned with annoyance to the change of subject but she nevertheless turned to the TV as Tara asked. On the screen, she recognized the house in front of which they had found a corpse in the morning. The brunette flopped down on the bed, and just as her friend, gave her undivided attention to the reporter who had just appeared on screen with a grave suitable expression on his face.

“…there is every reason to believe…” he was saying in his mike. “… that this young woman is a new victim of the killer of the ‘holding the night’ as the residents call him now.”

“What’s the ‘holding the night’?” Faith grumbled.

The answer to this question was given the second after when the storefront of a bar with a neon sign reading ‘Holding the night’ appeared on screen.

“The owner has still not commented on this new murder committed not far from his bar but has already confirmed the victim’s presence at the ‘holding’ yesterday evening to the police.”

The scene shifted from the bar to three pictures of young women around the same age. The pictures were aligned on screen, each of them topped with a date.

“This new victim is the third one of the killer of the ‘holding the night’. The police are very reluctant to give any detail about the murders but it seems this murderer is not an ordinary one and the police have a lot of trouble to determine his profile…”

The news went on, from the reporter to the testify of the man who had discovered the body, then to a police officer saying nothing could be revealed, but Faith was not listening anymore.

“A murderer not ordinary?” she said, turning to Tara who was trying to listen to the end of the TV report. “Might be our business.”

Tara shrugged to show her ignorance.

“Maybe,” she said, obviously not convinced. “We don’t have anything to decide either way”

“Well, we’ll try to find out then,” Faith concluded. “Tonight, we’re going to the ‘holding the night’”

“And what are you gonna do?” Tara asked in a dubious tone. “Ask the clients if they have seen a demon walking around?”

“Hey!” Faith protested in an offended tone. “First, I’ll rely on my Slayer’s senses to see if I can find a demon around. If I do and if it’s our killer, I’ll slay it. If not, I’ll ask him kindly if it knows anything about our killer and then I’ll slay it. You could also do your magic trick to see if you can find the murderer. And…well, that’s a good start”

“And what if the murderer is not a demon but just a murderer?” Tara asked.

“In that case, we’ll just spend an evening at the bar,” Faith replied. “Which can only do us good anyway.”

She stood and went back toward the bathroom after rummaging her travel bag.

“And get all dressed up Tar,” she said above her shoulder. “We’ll try to find you someone!”

She closed the door behind her; just in time to avoid a shoe Tara had just nimbly thrown in her direction.

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