With a wince, Spike turned to face Jonathan, Andrew, and Anya.

“So, uh.” He sucked his teeth. “What kind of magical item did you say the slayer stole from you?”

THE PORTAL DUMPS her onto a residential street she doesn’t recognize. Small houses and more chain-link than picket fences. She assumes she must be on the edge of the Docktown district. If there is a Docktown in this Hell on Earth.

Leaves cover the ground, choking the gutters in crispy orange and brown. Jack-o’-lanterns crowd porch steps. There’s a chill in the air.

Autumn.

The Slayer had nearly forgotten seasons. Without the sun, Demondale was always a temperate midnight, rarely warmer than sixty-five degrees. The first week after she was sent there, the Slayer couldn’t sleep a wink. She had been obsessed with waiting for the sun to rise. The morning hours would tick by—six, seven, eight o’clock—and the sky wouldn’t fade. The first Demondale vamp she slayed attacked her at ten-thirty in the morning. Ten-thirty! Vampires weren’t meant to walk around during brunch hours.

Not that the Slayer had been enjoying any brunches in Demondale. She has taken to robbing vamps before dusting them, just so she can buy fast food and tickets for the one bus with a route out of town. She would never feel safe enough under the sunshade to sleep there. In the month since she fell through her first portal, she’s only slept in broad daylight, on the bus or in the stiff-backed armchairs of the Santa Barbara Public Library. She’d slink back into Demondale when it was time to hunt. For information. For vampires. For vengeance demons.

If she ever gets home, she worries that she’ll never get used to sleeping in the dark again.

Here, in this new dimension, the sun is out. It isn’t warm, but it’s bright. Looking up and seeing blue sky rather than the matte-black disk of the sunshade is a relief. Even though there must be something evil enough to lure the magical staff here, the Slayer feels herself relax. How bad could anything be in broad daylight?

Daydreaming about a cardigan left behind in her closet, she wishes she had a change of clothes. Maybe if she sneaks over to Revello Drive, there will be a closet of similar clothes and similar smells and a similar mom to tuck her hair behind her ears and tell her everything is fine. . . .

But no. The staff has a singular purpose. Inside a portal, when the gem shows her the fork in the road leading to any Hell on Earth of her choosing, the staff is pliant. But once she makes her choice and leaps into a new world, it grows heavy and sluggish in her hands if she dares turn it in any direction other than the one it wants, like a compass with an attitude problem. She can follow it, or she can leave it behind, abandoning her mission.