Jonathan took a deep breath and peered around the headboard. “We wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t very important!” he stressed.

“And I’m not mortal,” Anya said. She tossed her hair so that the ends whipped across Andrew’s face. “I’m a demon too. Just not the punching, kicking kind.”

Willow glowered as though she wanted to keep arguing with them but had suddenly remembered that doing so was beneath her.

A streak of black leather cut through the remaining newborn vamps. Willow cast aside those that didn’t automatically move out of her way. The high heel of one of her boots kicked a stake out of the slayer’s right hand. The slayer reached out to stab with her left, but Willow grabbed her by the backpack straps and threw her down—a move Jonathan was all too familiar with. As someone who had been a full foot shorter than his bullies for most of his life, he’d been flipped over by the backpack, the legs, and the elastic of his underwear more times than he could count.

The slayer landed flat on her back, the air escaping her lungs in a pained “Oof!” The Gandalf staff rolled just out of her reach. She didn’t seem to notice. She was staring up at the red-haired vampire who had attacked her.

“Will?” she asked, breathless.

Sensing an opening, a fledgling in a Hawaiian-print shirt and cargo shorts flung himself at the slayer. Willow tossed him into the nearest candelabra, not bothering to look even as he burst into flames and ran screaming out of the room. Spike and Angelus moved out of the way to let him burn in the antechamber.

Backpack now in hand, Willow loomed over the slayer and cocked her head. “You know me?”

“Of course I do! You’re my best friend,” the slayer said. Crunching her legs into her abdomen, she did a kip-up and brushed off her pants. “Your favorite food is gingerbread cookies, but you hate when they’re shaped like people because then you feel bad for eating them. You’re scared of horses. You love math and computers! You’ve had a crush on Xander Harris since kindergarten!”

Willow’s face contorted in disgust. “You do not know me.”

Willow threw the backpack. It sailed through the air, punching the painted Darla in the face before falling to the ground beside the stone coffin. When Willow bent down to snatch the Gandalf staff from the floor, the slayer grabbed her by the shoulders and cracked her knee into the vampire’s nose. As Willow reeled, the slayer recovered the staff and one of her stakes from the ground.