It was Willow who noticed first, because it was always Willow who noticed first.

"He drives past it," she said. They were sitting on the edge of the Summers' back porch in the August heat, the four of them, eating Popsicles that were melting faster than anybody could eat them. "Every afternoon. Around four. He drives down the street where the school used to be, really slow, and then he goes around the block and does it again."

"How do you know that?" said Buffy.

"I might have been at the copy shop across the street. For three afternoons. With a very large coffee."

"Will, that's stalking."

"It's concerned stalking."

Xander, who had a grape Popsicle and a purple mouth, pointed it at nobody in particular. "Well, what's he supposed to do all day? He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have the library. He doesn't even have the Council anymore, not that the Council was ever what I'd call a warm and fuzzy employer." He considered. "He has us. Which, you know. Mixed bag."

"He's sad," Willow said. "He tries not to be. But it's like, the library was his, you know? It was the only place in Sunnydale that was really his. And now it's a big hole with a fence around it."

Nobody said anything for a while. Oz, who had been quiet, which was not news, finished his Popsicle and looked at the stick for a long time, like it had a message on it.

"Stuff survives," he said finally.

They all looked at him.

"Fires. Explosions. Stuff survives. There's always something in the rubble." He shrugged. "We could look."

†

Which is how, at eleven o'clock on a Thursday night, the four of them came to be climbing through a hole in a chain-link fence with three shovels, one pickaxe borrowed from Xander's uncle, two flashlights, a thermos of cocoa that Joyce had made them take, and a stake, because it was Sunnydale.

The school was not a school anymore. It was hills of broken concrete and twisted metal and charred wood, black under the moon, smelling of old smoke and wet ash even after two months. The city had been saying they would clear it for weeks. The city said a lot of things.

"Okay," said Buffy, playing her flashlight over the mess. "Library. It was, what, back that way?"

"Northwest corner," said Willow instantly. "I made a map." She took out a map. It was color-coded.

"Of course you did," said Xander, with enormous affection.

They dug. It was hot and filthy and slow. Oz found half of the trophy case, which made Xander weirdly emotional for about a minute. Willow found a locker door that might have been hers, or might have been anybody's, and put it carefully to one side anyway. Buffy found a vampire.

Or, more accurately, the vampire found Buffy, rearing up out of a hollow in the rubble with a snarl, where it had apparently been living like a very ugly raccoon. It was a young one, all teeth and bad decisions.

"Seriously?" said Buffy. "You're squatting in my high school? Didn't you hear what happened to the last big bad who hung around here?"

The vampire lunged. Buffy sidestepped, and it tripped over a chunk of the old cafeteria, and she staked it on the way down, and it went to dust all over the pickaxe.

"My uncle's going to want to know why his pickaxe is dusty," said Xander.

"Tell him it's been a very busy summer."

†

It was almost three in the morning when Willow's shovel went clunk.

It wasn't a book. They had all been secretly hoping for a book, and there were no books, only drifts of wet gray ash that had been books once, which made Willow go quiet and sad. But under a slab of what had been the checkout counter, jammed in sideways and dented on one side, was a small gray metal cabinet. The kind with a lock. The lock had melted shut.

Buffy opened it anyway. Slayer strength has its uses.

Inside, sooty but whole, were three things. A brass bell, the kind you slap on a counter to get somebody's attention, which none of them had ever once seen Giles use. A rubber date stamp with a wooden handle, the rubber band still wrapped around it. And a book: fat, old, leather-bound, one corner scorched black, with a title in Latin on the spine that none of them could read.

Willow picked it up like it was a baby bird. "It's one of his," she whispered. "From the cage. It's one of his real ones."

"Is it a demon one?" said Xander nervously. "Because I've had my fill of books that bite."

Willow opened it very carefully. On the inside of the cover, in faded ink, in handwriting they all knew from a thousand notes and index cards and very long research lists, someone had written a name. Not Rupert Giles. A different Giles. A woman's name, and a date a long time ago.

"It's not a demon book," Willow said. "It's a family book."

†

They didn't call first. They just went, at six in the morning, filthy and sore and smelling like a campfire, and knocked on his door until he opened it in his bathrobe, with his glasses in his hand and his hair sticking up on one side.

"Good Lord," said Giles, looking at the four of them. "Has something happened? Is it the Hellmouth? Is anyone hurt?"

"Nobody's hurt," said Buffy. "Well. One vampire. But he had it coming."

Willow held out the book.

Giles looked at it. He put his glasses on. He looked at it some more. And then he took it from her, very slowly, with both hands, and opened the cover, and looked at the name written inside it, and for a long, long moment he didn't say anything at all.

"My grandmother's," he said at last. His voice had gone odd. "I thought it was gone. I thought all of it was gone."

"Stuff survives," said Oz.

Giles took his glasses off again. He cleaned them on the sleeve of his bathrobe for rather longer than glasses need cleaning. Then Buffy put the brass bell and the date stamp into his other hand, and he laughed, a real laugh, surprised out of him.

"I never once used this bell," he said.

"We know," said all four of them.

He turned the date stamp over in his fingers. Then, with great ceremony, he rolled the little wheels until they showed that morning's date, pressed the stamp against the inky pad he apparently still kept in his bathrobe pocket, because of course he did, took Buffy's hand, and stamped the back of it. Then Willow's. Then Xander's. Then Oz's, who held his out without being asked.

"There," said Giles, looking at the four of them standing on his doorstep in the sunrise, covered in ash and grinning like idiots. "Checked out. To me. With no due date whatsoever." He cleared his throat. "Now come inside before the neighbors see you. I'll make tea."

They went inside. He made tea. Nobody washed their hands for a week.

~ the end ~

megan's note: the stamp-pad-in-the-bathrobe-pocket thing is for my aunt, who is a librarian and does this. if you liked it, tell me! if you didn't, tell me nicely!