Three

MY GIRL

It was April eleventh.

After her workout with Rebecca, Faith spent the night at the Boston Garden, watching the Celtics thrash the Lakers. Rebecca had gotten them the same seats right above the Celtics bench as before, but at the last minute she said she wasn’t feeling well, and encouraged Faith to go on alone.

“I’ll be fine in the morning, I expect,” Rebecca had said. “I’m just...feeling rather fatigued. It’s not easy at my age, you know, keeping up with a potential Slayer all day,” she added, with a smile.

Faith knew there was something Rebecca wasn’t telling her. Rebecca was in better shape than she was, barely broke a sweat in their workouts and kicked Faith’s butt all over the mat. But Faith could tell she needed to be alone, so she went by herself to watch the Celtics kick the Lakers’ butts all over the Garden that night. The Celtics were as unstoppable as ever, and Faith had a great time watching Len Bias and Reggie Lewis and Shaquille O’Neal kick the hell out of the Lakers and the amazing new guard they had drafted out of high school the year before, while eating hot dogs and booing refs and giving Nicholson the finger on the other side of the court. She was sure he smiled back at her once.

When Faith got home Rebecca was sitting in the dining room in her bathrobe drinking scotch.

“Hey, Becca,” Faith said.

“Oh! Faith...how was your game?” Rebecca said, getting up clumsily. There was a small framed photograph on the table in front of her. It was the one Faith had seen in Rebecca’s room. A pretty little blonde girl. Faith knew who she must be. But Rebecca never talked about her, and Faith didn’t want to pry. There were plenty of things Faith didn’t like talking about either.

Rebecca picked up the photo and held it down by her side, as if to hide it. She swayed a little.

“Celts kicked butt as usual,” Faith said, watching her.

Rebecca walked toward her, and nearly fell. Faith rushed forward and grabbed her arm.

Rebecca reeked of scotch. Her eyes were puffy and red.

“Come on, Becca...how about we go sit on the couch for awhile, huh?” Faith said.

“Yes...that’s...” Rebecca said, trying to stand up straight, and dropped the photo. The glass broke.

“I...dropped it...” Rebecca said, looking down at it in shock. “It’s broken.”

Faith knelt down and picked it up. “Just the glass,” she said. “We’ll get a new frame.”

“I broke it,” Rebecca said. “I broke it.”

She dropped to her knees beside Faith on the floor, and tried to pick up the pieces. She nearly fell over. Faith steadied her.

“Hey. Becca? It’s okay,” Faith said. “I got it. We’ll buy another frame for it, okay?”

Faith put her arm around her. “Okay, Becca?” she said.

Rebecca nodded. Faith hugged her.

“Come on, Becca,” Faith said. “I’ll put on some coffee and we’ll go in the parlor, okay? Come on, here we go...”

Faith got her up, brought her into the living room, sat her on the couch, and put the coffee on.

They sat silently together the rest of the night, drinking coffee. Rebecca’s deep blue eyes were looking at something very far away.

A little before midnight Rebecca said, “My ex-husband had my daughter Gwendolyn for the weekend and a vampire killed them both at the carnival in Reading. She was six. She would have turned sixteen today.”

Faith stayed with her, and held her hand, until Rebecca fell asleep.

Faith went upstairs, put the photo back on the little antique table beside Rebecca’s bed, and came back to the living room with blankets and pillows. She made sure Rebecca was comfortable on the couch, put one of the blankets over her, and set a pillow beneath her head. Then she took the other pillow and blanket to the recliner next to the couch, and went to sleep.

Faith woke up in the recliner the next morning to the smell of bacon. Rebecca walked in and smiled at her, all showered and fresh and pretty and not a hair out of place, looking like a million bucks even when she was hung over.

“Good morning,” Rebecca said. “I made breakfast. Shall we see how badly I botched the bacon and eggs?”

The bacon and eggs weren’t that bad. Faith thought the eggs were maybe a little runny and the bacon was a little undercooked. With ketchup and orange juice it all worked out okay.

“Well. We certainly had an eventful night, didn’t we?” Rebecca said. “Thank you, Faith, for staying with me last night. April eleventh is...a hard day for me. I had hoped it would be easier this year.”

“Becca...no one’s strong all the time, y’know?” Faith said. “We all hit snags.”

Rebecca nodded, and drank her coffee and ate a tiny bite of her toast.

“Your daughter was a beautiful girl,” Faith said.

“Thank you,” Rebecca said.

“Is she why you became a Watcher?”

“My great-grandfather was a Watcher. I knew about them, they even tried to recruit me, but I always resisted joining...until one day, when I was sixteen, I met a woman who changed my mind.” Rebecca smiled. “After awhile I started training potential Slayers.”

“Gwendolyn would be proud of you.”

“I...like to think so.”

“Any of the potentials you trained actually become Slayers?”

“No. There are about two-thousand potentials in the world at any one time. So actually becoming the Slayer is rather like winning a lottery. But someone will. And they’ll survive longer if they’re trained. Some potentials go on to become Watchers themselves.”

“Hey, you had me thinking I was all cool and stuff and now you’re telling me I’m like, one in two-thousand. So not fair,” Faith said.

“There’s magic in you, Faith,” Rebecca said. “How do you think we find potentials? And vampires seek out potentials especially. Your blood is potent to them. There are also those who have targeted potentials in attempts to destroy the Slayer bloodline. No one has come close to succeeding yet, but someone may try again someday. It’s imperative we find and protect as many potentials as we can. But even if you never become a Slayer, you’ll be important. You needed to open your eyes to the world...to the ongoing battle. You’ll be part of that battle, Slayer or not. Some people while away their lives on the couch. That isn’t for you.”

“I kinda like hanging on the couch.”

“I notice you also like fighting.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Evil touches all of our lives. It touched yours...”

Faith looked down at her eggs. She wasn’t sure how, but Rebecca knew about her mother.

“And it touched mine,” Rebecca said. “And we can’t blame ourselves.”

Rebecca took Faith’s hand. “Faith,” she said. “We can’t blame ourselves.”

Faith nodded, still looking down at her eggs.

“What matters is how you deal with it,” Rebecca said. “What you do next. Evil is like a plague. Some people become infected with it, and inflict it on others. Some weather it, but never really recover...they’re broken inside. But some people decide to rise above it, and fight. That’s what I decided to do. And it’s what you’re going to do.”

Rebecca finished eating and stood up. “But in any event, the morning is dragging on and we haven’t even had our run yet,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

“Hey, just throwing this out there?” Faith said, as she finished her eggs. “But since you’re sorta hung over and we both got like four hours of sleep I was thinking it’d be cool if we gave ourselves a day off. Y’know, we could shop, maybe get our nails done...”

Rebecca raised her eyebrow. “It’s cold out there this morning, and we’ll be doing an extra long run today to shake off the cobwebs, so wear something warm,” she said.

“Worth a shot,” Faith said with a smile.

Faith found out she was the Slayer one Tuesday night in May when she threw a guy named Brendan over the bar at The Roxy.

Rebecca had a visitor that day. His name was Trevor and he was British, and he was going to take Rebecca out dancing, “and perhaps we’ll eat at that wonderfully crude steak house on Route One.” Faith thought Trevor was a pretty good cut of meat himself...six feet tall, good build, his slacks nicely accentuating his butt and his sweater showing off his broad shoulders; he rowed in his spare time and it showed. Dark hair brushed back, a big toothy British smile and blue eyes with a playful twinkle. Way to go, Rebecca, Faith thought. Apparently he and Rebecca had been dating off and on for a year or so and he had just arrived in town as a visiting lecturer at Harvard. Trevor shook Faith’s hand and said, “So this is our Slayer in waiting. Absolutely stupendous to meet you, my dear girl.”

“Be home promptly by one a.m., and don’t test me,” Faith said, in an English accent that was a very good approximation of Rebecca’s. Trevor laughed. “Oh, I like this girl, Becky, I really do,” he said.

Rebecca smiled at Faith, and raised that eyebrow of hers. “I like impertinence, Faith,” she said. “But only up to a point.”

“What’s impertinence?” Faith said.

“Being inappropriately presumptuous,” Rebecca said. “Now run along and have a nice night with Evan.”

“Got a joke for you,” Evan said, with that sly wolf’s smile he had, as he and Faith sat on wobbly stools at the bar in The Roxy after his first set, Evan drinking his usual margarita, Faith drinking her usual Coke. Faith could’ve found ways to sneak a drink here and there, but Rebecca didn’t want her drinking until she was eighteen...and Faith didn’t miss booze anyway. Memories came with it.

“Oh, no,” Faith said, and smiled. She couldn’t help smiling around him. Evan was a big goof. A big, gorgeous goof.

“Okay, so these three like, English explorer guys are exploring this deserted island, right? And they get captured by this evil pygmy cannibal tribe.”

“Why are they English?”

“Fine. They’re not English. What do you want them to be?”

“I don’t know. Swedish?”

“Why Swedish?”

“Why English?” Faith said, and they both started giggling. Faith liked trying to screw up Evan’s jokes.

“Fine,” Evan said. “Three Swedish explorer guys get like, captured by this evil cannibal tribe. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So they’re captured, and tied up. And the leader of the evil cannibal tribe says, ‘You have two choices, white man. Death, or ki-ki.’”

“Death, or ki-ki?” Faith said.

“Death, or ki-ki,” Evan said. He finished his margarita. “Dan, need another round over here, bro!”

“How bombed are you on a scale of one to ten?” Faith said.

“Four,” Evan said. “I’m in the giggly phase but I haven’t started slurring words yet. So the first explorer guy says, okay, I’ll take ki-ki. And then...”

Dan brought them another round.

“That was fast,” Faith said.

“Had it ready to go,” Dan said. “When Ev gets in margarita mode you just keep ’em coming. But this is it for now, dude, you have another set later.”

Faith reached for her purse, but Dan waved her off. “Your money’s no good here, Faith,” he said. “Ki-ki joke?”

“Yeah. Should I be worried?” Faith said.

“You be quiet,” Evan said, waving his finger at Faith’s face, and missing.

“You sure he’s gonna be okay to DJ?” Faith said.

“I have a routine with him,” Dan said. “His second set’s in an hour, after this I’ll get him onto ginger ale. He’ll be fine. He likes being a little tipsy for his second set anyway. ’Course, he did play ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ that time...”

“It’s a good song!” Evan protested.

“It’s not a good song, and you sang along with it,” Dan said. “And yeah, the cowboy hat? ’Nuff said.”

“That was just that one time,” Evan grumbled, apparently talking to his margarita now.

“Okay, well, as long as you’re taking good care of my man,” Faith said.

“Don’t worry, hon, I got it covered,” Dan said, and walked away.

“Okay, so back to the joke. The first explorer says, ‘I’ll take ki-ki’, and then all of a sudden like thirty of the cannibals tear his clothes off, and start fucking him in the ass...” Evan said, and gulped down half of his margarita.

“Oh, my God,” Faith said, closing her eyes and giggling.

“And fucking him in the mouth and doing all these horrible things to him,” Evan continued, undeterred. “So the second explorer guy sees this, and he figures being fucked by pygmy cannibals is better than being killed. So when the tribe leader says ‘You have two choices, white man. Death, or ki-ki’...” Evan was doing a very bad impression of a pygmy cannibal that sounded like he was trying to imitate Mr. T after breathing helium. It made Faith burst out laughing. Evan rubbed her shoulder until she stopped. “So the second explorer’s like, fine, whatever, I guess being fucked by thirty pygmies is better than being killed, and he says ‘I’ll take ki-ki,’ and braces himself, and the pygmy guys grab him, tear his clothes off, and fuck him in the ass and the mouth. So anyway...”

Dan passed by on his way to the other end of the bar. “You’re in the home stretch,” he said.

“So anyway,” Evan said, grabbing Faith’s hand to make sure she was still listening. “The tribe leader says to the third explorer guy, ‘You have two choices, white man...’”

“Death, or ki-ki!” Faith said, and did her own impression of a pygmy cannibal that sounded like Darth Vader would sound if he was high. They both started giggling again.

“And so the third explorer guy says, ‘Screw you! I’m not doing this ki-ki stuff. No way any man’s fucking me in the ass!’”

Evan said that last part a little too loud, and with a raised fist for emphasis. People at the bar started staring, and Faith put her hand over Evan’s mouth, laughing so hard her cheeks were hurting.

“Ev...? Honey, baby, darling?” Faith said. “I think you’re up to maybe a six now.”

“Five,” Evan said, his voice muffled beneath Faith’s hand. Faith took her hand away, and Evan said, “I’m only at five because I’m still not slurring my words.” He took another big gulp of his margarita. “So like, the third guy says, ‘I choose death, you bastards!’ And the tribal leader looks at him, and then he says, ‘You are very brave, white man...’” Again Evan did his Mister T impression, and again Faith burst out laughing. “And then the tribal leader says to the third guy...”

Evan was grinning at Faith, or at least in her general direction, his eyes apparently focused on a point just above her left shoulder.

“And then the tribal leader says to the third explorer guy, ‘Very well! Death...by ki-ki!” Evan shouted, and banged his fist on the bar, and spilled what was left of his margarita, and laughed like it was the funniest joke in the history of the universe. Faith laughed too, and grabbed some napkins and cleaned up the mess Evan had made.

“Whoa,” Evan said. “Think I jush shit six.”

“Ginger ale time,” Faith said.

“Ginger ale time,” Evan said, his eyes wandering to Faith’s legs. She was wearing a short skirt and knee-high boots. Faith didn’t usually wear skirts; she wanted to see if Evan would notice her legs. “Jesus Christ, you’re beautiful,” he said. He put his arm around Faith and leaned his head on her shoulder. “Tired all of a sudden. Just...wanna snuggle up with my girl.”

“Okay, Ev,” Faith said. “Time to sober up. You just let me and Dan take care of you, okay?”

“My girl,” Evan said softly, and dozed off with his arm around her.

He was drunk. Faith knew he didn’t really mean it.

“Yeah. That’s me,” Faith said.

Faith got hit on most nights at The Roxy, usually when she was at the bar, getting her wind back after a long stretch of dancing. Guys (and a few girls) would try to buy her drinks, and she’d drink the non-alcoholic ones and smile politely, and not give her phone number out because it was Rebecca’s number. But she had a large and growing collection of phone numbers from guys that she hadn’t called back. Faith didn’t trust guys. One after another, they had treated her like she could be bought. Like something to be used and discarded.

She had been ignoring guys that night, hanging with Evan and getting him ready for his second set, and then getting back onto the dance floor once he got back in his booth. She didn’t know how he did it but you wouldn’t have been able to tell he had been half drunk an hour before. As Faith danced, a hot blonde guy sitting at a table in the corner caught her eye. He was watching her too, his eyes all over her while she did her thing, dancing to her favorite tunes, the fast ones that really got her engine running. He smiled at her, ignoring the three giggling preppy girls who kept making excuses to walk by his table.

He finished his drink and came over to Faith, with his nice body and his little diamond earring and his killer smile, and got up in her space and danced back at her. He knew how to move, and Faith liked the way he did it in those pants. This one might just be a little too hot to pass up, she decided, so she let him into her space and danced around him, tailoring her moves to his, and they stepped around each other like they’d practiced it all their lives, and then they were right up close and it was a slow song, and his arms were around her.

He whispered something in her ear, but the room was too noisy.

“What?” Faith said.

The whisper again, though he wasn’t whispering, he was actually talking pretty loud, to no avail. “I’m...” he said, and Faith missed the rest.

“What?” she said again, giggling.

“I’m Brendan!” he shouted, just as the music suddenly cut out, and his voice carried across the room like the announcer at a wrestling match. Everyone in the club laughed. “Let’s hear it for Brendan, folks,” Evan said into his microphone, and everyone applauded. Faith looked up at Evan in his booth and giggled. He smiled back at her. He didn’t look jealous. Damn, Faith thought.

Then Faith looked back at Brendan, and she couldn’t resist: “Hey, no reason to shout, Brendan,” she said, and burst out laughing.

He kissed her. Faith thought it was a little too soon, but he had worked for it. It was a pretty good kiss, too.

When the music came up again, Faith felt strange. At first it felt like a wave of nausea. But then it passed...and she suddenly felt better than she had ever felt before. She was full of energy. She needed to dance. Evan was playing a good, fast song, and Faith started moving. Brendan matched her move for move, and kissed her again, with some tongue this time. Faith smiled, and pushed him away. “Hey, cowboy, let’s take it easy, okay?” she said in his ear.

“What?” he said, grinning, and kissed her again, forcing his tongue into her mouth. She pulled away.

“Seriously, dude, come on. Let’s just dance, okay?”

He smiled and nodded apologetically. They danced. But now his hands were getting a little too friendly, groping her butt. Faith moved them back to neutral territory. “Brendan, come on. Please?” she said.

“Can’t hear you,” he said, and moved his hands back down onto her butt. Faith yanked them back off.

“Dude. Stop it, okay?” Faith said. “I’m not like that.”

“C’mon, don’t be a tease,” he said.

He yanked her toward him, and shoved his tongue in her mouth again.

“I said stop!” she shouted, and pushed him away. “What the hell? I thought we were having fun here! What the hell are you doing?”

“What’s your problem?” he said.

“My problem? My problem is you’re treating me like crap. What the hell do you think I am?”

“Whatever,” he said, and threw up his hands. “I thought you were fun.”

“You mean you thought I was a slut,” Faith said.

“Get over yourself. I can have any girl here anyway. You’re not all that.”

“Know what? I thought you were a cool guy. Turns out you were just another dick,” Faith said, and walked off the dance floor. But she still felt like she had energy to burn.

Brendan pulled her back toward him. “Know what I thought you were?” he said. “My fucking cum dumpster.” And he laughed at her, and walked away.

Faith stood there, speechless, and almost started to cry...

Then she grabbed his arm and threw him twenty feet across the room.

People scattered away as he crashed into the bar, smashing bottles and sending drinks flying everywhere...

Faith wasn’t sure what had just happened. She looked around the room. Everyone was staring at her.

“Faith!” Evan shouted, and jumped over the booth and ran to her, and threw his arms around her. “Are you okay? Are you okay, baby?”

“Ev?” Faith said. “I don’t...” She saw herself in the mirror behind the bar.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

It wasn’t her. It looked like her, but, somehow...it wasn’t her...

And then she knew what had happened.

“Ev, I’ll...call you tomorrow, okay? I just...I don’t feel...I gotta...I gotta go...” Faith stammered.

And she tore herself away from Evan, and ran...

She ran straight back to Rebecca’s house at a full sprint. She never felt tired, never had to take even one deep breath. It would have been a ten-minute walk; she made the run in less than sixty seconds.

She noticed the full moon looking down at her as she ran, a perfect circle of pure white.

She charged into the house and bounded up the stairs three at a time and ran into Rebecca’s bedroom on the third floor. It was past midnight. Rebecca was sleeping. Faith switched on the little antique lamp on the bureau.

“Becca!” she shouted. “Becca!”

Rebecca leaped out of bed. “Faith! What’s wrong?” she said.

“I’m the Slayer,” Faith said.

They were in the gym. Rebecca stood by the weight bench in a blue terrycloth bathrobe, piling a hell of a lot of weight on the barbell. Faith thought she looked beautiful, as always. Twelve-thirty at night, just rolled out of bed, and not one blonde hair out of place. That’s how she looked every morning too, even before she put her makeup on. Faith always wondered how she did that.

“Bench press this,” Rebecca said.

“Bench press that?” Faith said. Then she remembered running back to the house...how she never felt out of breath. She remembered the energy she felt...

“Bench press it,” Rebecca said, in that tone she had, the one Faith knew meant now.

The energy was still there. It pulsed through Faith like a sugar rush...but it was constant. It would always be there. She would always feel like this...

Faith giggled, said “sure,” and got on the bench.

She looked up at the barbell. It looked heavy.

She lifted the barbell off the rack, lowered it to her chest, lifted it straight back up again with hardly an effort, and set it back on the rack. It amazed her, how easy it was. She could have sworn she was lifting, at most, thirty pounds.

Rebecca put two more big plates on the barbell. “Again,” she said.

Faith lifted it again. It was still easy; she still barely felt the weight.

Faith set the barbell back on the rack. Rebecca went around the room picking up plates, and loading the barbell up with as many as could fit.

“Now,” Rebecca said. “Again.”

Faith felt it a little bit, this time; she could tell she was lifting something heavy. But it was still easy, and she got the weight up without any real effort. She kept benching it, two reps, three, four, her arms still not tired...how much could she lift now? Just how strong was she?

“That’s enough,” Rebecca said. “You can stop now.” Faith set the barbell back on the rack and sat up.

“How much was I just benching?” Faith said. They had done their chest and triceps routine the day before. Faith could just barely eke out three sets of bench presses at one-hundred pounds, with a lot of help from Rebecca on the last set; she could get one-hundred and thirty up once, with Rebecca spotting her. “Eight-hundred and forty pounds,” Rebecca said.

She was benching eight-hundred and forty freaking pounds.

She was the Slayer! The Slayer!

Faith looked up at Rebecca, expecting her to be happy, expecting her to be proud...

Rebecca forced a small smile. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s...”

She turned away from Faith, as if she didn’t want her to see her face.

“Let’s celebrate,” Rebecca said.

Faith sat in the big first floor dining room, at the long table with candles on it under the fancy chandelier. The room was dark, but the street lamp outside bathed her in a little pool of light as she looked out the window at Commonwealth Avenue. It had started to rain, and the colors from the street lamps and the traffic lights mixed and melted together on the slick wet street, red and green and yellow on black, making everything seem a little unreal, like a dream. Rebecca had set a bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil champagne in a bucket of ice on the table between them, and lit the candles, and they had talked for awhile. It was always easy for Faith, talking to Rebecca. Sometimes, they didn’t even talk about anything in particular. But Faith always felt perfectly at ease. Rebecca always made her smile.

They talked about nothing in particular, as they sat together in the dining room that night. Faith smiled.

“Have you ever had champagne, Faith?” Rebecca eventually asked, after the champagne had chilled for awhile, and she had come back from the cupboard with two big, fluted glasses.

“Nope,” Faith said.

“I think you’ll like it.”

Their shadows flickered on the walls. Faith felt like she was in church.

Rebecca poured two glasses, and raised her glass to her.

“To the new Slayer. To Faith Lehane. To my girl,” Rebecca said, and smiled. They touched glasses, and drank.

Faith knew Rebecca; she knew something was wrong. She’d figure it out eventually.

Faith liked the champagne. “Why do I get the feeling this stuff is really expensive?” she said.

“Because you’re a smart girl with a discerning palate,” Rebecca said.

“What’s a discerning palate?”

“A keen sense of taste.”

They finished their champagne, and Rebecca poured two more glasses.

“And now...one more toast,” Rebecca said, and raised her glass again.

“To Buffy, and Kendra,” Rebecca said.

It hit Faith all at once. If she was the Slayer now...

Someone else was dead.

“Buffy, and Kendra,” Faith said, and understood, for the first time, what exactly being a Slayer meant. She hadn’t felt the weight before, in the gym. Now she did. She felt the weight on her shoulders, now...the weight she would carry the rest of her life.

They touched glasses, and drank.

Rebecca had decided to get good and scuppered. She wasn’t quite there yet, but she was feeling quite relaxed. Good show, Mr. Krug, she thought. You make a capital champagne. She stood in the doorway of Faith’s bedroom on the second floor, the champagne bottle and her glass in her hand, watching Faith sleep. Faith was seventeen. Still a girl.

On the wall above the stereo system and the stack of hip-hop CD’s that Faith had insisted she needed there hung the painting that Rebecca had bought for her in one of the galleries on Newbury Street. Faith had chosen it. It was an abstract, all swirling curves of deep, dark blue. “That one,” Faith had said, pointing right at it.

Faith’s leather coat was on the floor again; she always threw it on the floor no matter how many times Rebecca told her to hang it up. Rebecca picked it up--quietly, careful not to disturb Faith’s sleep--and hung it in the closet.

Faith slept, curled up on her side by the open window. Faith always slept with the window open. A cool breeze was coming in.

Rebecca draped the blanket over Faith, and kissed her cheek.

She shut the door and walked up the stairs to her own room on the third floor--she was a bit wobbly, but not nearly enough, she would definitely need more champagne shortly--and sat down on the frilly four-poster bed, looking in the antique mirror with its gilt baroque frame. On the little table next to the bed, Gwendolyn looked up at her, frozen in that one smiling moment, forever. Rebecca and Faith had bought a new frame for the photo the day after Rebecca dropped it.

Rebecca stood up, and walked to the big mahogany bureau. Standing up suddenly like that told her she was closer to scuppered than she thought. Perhaps just one more glass, Mr. Krug, then we’ll call it a night. She leaned on the bureau, looking in the mirror. She would be forty-two in August, though most people thought she looked ten years younger. But there were crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes now, and laugh lines by her lips too, that most people didn’t notice. Her hands rested on a silver tray on the bureau, which held brushes and combs and makeup and perfume. There was an antique porcelain vase next to it, which Faith had bought her the day before from an antique shop on Charles Street, because she knew Rebecca loved flowers. Faith had put tulips in the vase today.

Faith could have used the allowance Rebecca gave her to buy it. But Rebecca had found out from Evan that Faith had worked shifts at The Roxy--sweeping floors, helping behind the bar, checking ID’s at the door, whatever needed to be done--to save up for it herself. Faith gave it to her on Mother’s Day.

“Damn it Damn it DAMN IT!” Rebecca screamed, and smashed her fists down on the silver tray, and started to cry.

She wasn’t sure how long she cried, leaning on the bureau with her eyes squeezed shut, the bottle of expensive perfume Trevor had bought her broken on the floor, spilling out at her feet. When she looked up at the mirror again, she saw Faith there, standing in the doorway behind her, in her nightgown.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Faith said. She came into the room, and took Rebecca’s hand.

“Do you know...do you know how long a Slayer lives?” Rebecca said. “Nineteen. Nineteen is the average life-expectancy of a Slayer.”

When Rebecca looked at Faith, Faith saw something she had never seen before in those eyes, in that ocean of peaceful, calm blue that had been her constant source of strength, that Faith had taken for granted would always be there. She saw something desperate.

“This isn’t what I wanted for you, Faith,” Rebecca whispered.

Faith hugged her, and now she was crying too...

“I wanted you to live,” Rebecca said. “I wanted you to be strong and happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you. Not...not this. Not this...”

Faith felt the weight on her shoulders. The weight that would always be there...

They stood like that, crying, a little longer.

Then Rebecca straightened up, and wiped her tears away. And she wiped Faith’s tears away too.

Faith looked up at Rebecca, and she saw that the desperation was gone, the ocean in Rebecca’s blue eyes placid and strong again.

“So I guess you and I are just going to have to beat the odds,” Rebecca said, in that tone she sometimes used, the one that Faith knew meant now. And she smiled. And Faith smiled too.

“Well, we’re a frightful mess, aren’t we?” Rebecca said, as they looked in the mirror together, and laughed. “Run along and get some sleep, Faith. Tomorrow your training begins.”

“Begins?” Faith said. “Then what have we been up to for the past like, six months?”

“The past six months were a nice vacation on a tropical island somewhere, sipping Mai Tais,” Rebecca said. “The past six months were training wheels. We’re going to beat the goddamned odds. And to do that, we’re going to have to do the work. I’m going to work you, Faith. Harder than you’ve ever worked before. Your combat training? Double it. Then double that.”

Rebecca looked at Faith, just the way she did that night in November under the full moon.

“You’re going to live to a ripe old age, Faith,” Rebecca said. “Because I’m going to make you the greatest Slayer that’s ever been.”