The Slayer spits a hunk of her own hair out of her mouth. “What do you mean?”

“To open the portal,” Anya asks. How can she sound bored while they’re spinning between realities? “You must have thought something at the gem to make it go.”

The Slayer struggles to think back. She recalls the anxiety of being in the middle of an endless horde of demons, one hand fused to the freeze ray. The anxiety turning to horror when the gem popped off the top of the guiding staff. The dread when she saw the ax-wielding girl diving for her. The shock and pain of being grappled to the floor.

“I just thought get me out of here,” she admits, chagrined. “The wizard-staff thingy was doing all the navigation before. I guess I panicked. Stupid, I know.”

She can imagine the epic scolding she’d get from her Watcher if she told him she panicked during a fight. Giles would say something like, A Chosen One choosing fear has chosen death. But Anya doesn’t seem to be as judgy as Giles.

“An entire club was trying to kill you. Seems like a good time to panic,” Anya says. She ducks her face into her shoulder and scratches her nose against the sleeve of her T-shirt. “Would you mind if we stopped plummeting through nothingness now? I really need to sneeze, but I don’t want to end up flying off into some loser dimension. I refuse to live in a world without shrimp.”

“I’d love to stop falling,” the Slayer says. “But I’m not controlling—”

Her stomach bungees into her esophagus as the world skids to a stop. Her feet land in grass. She staggers to stand still, woozier than the rainy day at Disneyland when she rode the teacups three times in a row. Only when she reaches out to steady herself against the rough bark of a palm tree does she realize where they’ve landed.

Arched open hallways. White stone steps leading to a second story under a red tile roof. The burble of a fountain, flouting the Southern California water-conservation drought rules. Overhead, cotton clouds stretch across the brilliant cornflower-blue sky. The Sunnydale High quad is empty. Peaceful. Tranquil.

“This is my school,” she says, staring around. “I used to eat lunch right there.”

She starts to gesture to her favorite bench but stops when she realizes that would mean releasing the green stone. Both she and Anya have their hands on it. Letting go of it now feels like a mistake.

“Is this. . .” The Slayer gulps. “Is this my Sunnydale?”

“How should I know?” Anya asks, tucking her chin back. “I picked a dimension at random. I don’t know your exact coordinates of origin. I just thought you’d like somewhere sunny.” She pauses to waggle her eyebrows. “Get it? Sunny? Sunnydale?”