The call ends.

"Thanks, Jarvis," says Bella. She peers down at herself. "Mmm, possible I should stop at home for a change of clothes. Bloodstain's not obvious on black, but it's not totally invisible, either... I should take my shirt off first in the future," she concludes.

"An excellent plan."

She kisses him. "I think six-thirty has the sun up already so you can't walk me home, doesn't it. I'll see you tonight."

"It does indeed. See you tonight, then."

"Unfortunately, no," he says. "Or rather, I've had a few leads, and none of them have amounted to anything so far."

"Do tell?"

He shakes his head. "Articles about suspicious prom deaths that didn't mention a pattern, but turned out to have come after one that did."

"Geez, how far back does this thing go? How old is the school?"

"The school is not much younger than the town," he says. "The articles I'm looking at now are from the 1950s."

"That's a serious body count," says Bella, shaking her head.

"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.