"Yes."

"Doesn't anyone besides Slayers ever address these things? Is this strong evidence against the going-to-prom-with-the-ghost-or-whatever-would-help hypothesis since a non-Slayer could've theoretically done that anytime in the last six or seven or howevermany decades?"

"Not strong evidence," he says. "You're forgtting the longstanding traditions of denial."

"I was thinking, a target," she says. "Somebody in the middle of being strangled, uses their last breath productively. Maybe I'm overestimating the average high school student."

"For all we know," he says, "the ghost approaches its victims by asking them out, and this is what happens when they turn him or her down."

"And it's not impressed if they try to change their minds."

"Apparently not."

"Did it only kill actually single people? Did it ever miss and get someone whose date wasn't acting datelike or was off in the bathroom or something?"

"There was one case where a couple had a very public argument, the fellow stormed off to the toilet, and he drowned in the sink like everyone else."

"That explains the warning about not breaking up in the middle of the dance," Bella nods.

"Yes. There were a few more like it, but I mention this one because the surviving half of the couple still identified herself as his girlfriend afterward."

"I wish I knew what to make of that."

Giles shrugs.

"Hello, love," he says. "Did you finish that argument with your father about crashing at my place?"

"I told him I promised not to do anything needlessly reckless, to be more careful about keeping my phone charged, and to call if I'm not going to be home before eleven p.m. or 'borrow your phone' to do it if mine dies," she says. "And I think it would probably be a good idea if I refrained from not-being-home-before-eleven for at least a couple of weeks, especially so I haven't burned out his tolerance by the time prom rolls around."

"A reasonable compromise. If you fall asleep again, I will wake you up."

"Thanks. Sweet though it was, it will apparently not be practical to repeat with any regularity while I have a Charlie to placate."

He laughs and kisses her cheek.

"I do hope to go on having a Charlie, but perhaps my eighteenth birthday is magical in some way and I will no longer find placating him necessary after that time."

"Well, if nothing else, when I'm eighteen I can threaten to move out. Technically all I could do right now would be go back to Renée, and you got less portable recently."

"I did, at that."

"I wanna go to L.A. or a suburb again this weekend, en masque, and spread around a little more pacifying terror. Are we out of known targets at this point?"

"We are not!"