❝ 'Cause baby now we got bad blood.❞
Nikki was left to pick up the pieces when Buffy left her behind, broken. Her friends had established themselves as a Scooby Gang as she became more reckless and careless, she was a Slayer without a cause. What h...
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I woke up slowly, the kind of heavy, reluctant awakening that comes after another night of too much patrolling and not enough sleep. My room was still dim, the curtains doing their best to hold back the California morning light.
For a second, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the familiar low buzz of telekinesis humming under my skin, like a second heartbeat I could never quite turn off.
It had been better lately, more controlled, but it still flared when my emotions got loud.
And lately, everything felt loud.
My eyes drifted to the framed photo on my nightstand; it's of Buffy and me, when we were maybe six years old, grinning with matching pigtails and scraped knees.
Before the divorce, before Sunnydale swallowed her and left me with Dad in a different state.
Before the Slayer thing made everything ten times more complicated.
I sigh, push the covers back, and pad downstairs. The smell of coffee and toast greeted me before I even reached the kitchen. My mom was already up, moving around with that worried energy she got whenever she thought one of us was hiding something important.
"Morning," I mumbled, grabbing a mug even though she hates us drinking coffee.
Mom turned, offering a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Morning, honey. You girls get in late again?"
"Same old, same old." I poured the coffee. "Buffy must have patrolled with Angel because she wasn't with me," I told her, hoping she'd leave it there.
She didn't.
"I've been thinking about Buffy's college plans," she said carefully, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "She still hasn't given me a straight answer about leaving Sunnydale. And I can't help but wonder if... Angel is part of the reason."
My stomach twisted, wondering where she's going with this.
"Nikki..." Mom pressed gently. "Do you know where he's living these days?"
"Why do you want to know that?" I ask with a small frown as I take a sip from the mug. "It's not like you can talk to him-" She just looks at me, and I realize, "You're going to go behind her back and talk to Angel?"
She tries to express her point, but by now I wasn't listening. "So I get into trouble for trying to cancel UCSD, but it's okay for you to go talk to Angel and practically do the same thing? How is that fair?"
