Giles looked over at me, and must have sensed that it was serious. "Of course, Xander," he said, and gestured to a table. I sat, and he joined me. Suddenly, I wasn't sure how to explain any of this. It seemed so unbelievable, even though I knew it was true. How would Giles be able to accept it? Then I remembered who he was, and where we were, and knew it wouldn't be any less believable than anything else that happened daily.

"Xander, what is it?" Giles asked, removing his glasses, and cleaning them with a handkerchief.

"What's that?" I asked, having just registered that there was a brick sitting on a nearby table.

"It's a brick," Giles said with a shrug.

"Um, yes, it is. I guess the question I'm going for is why is there a brick randomly sitting on your table?"

"Oh, well, it was thrown through that window over there just a few minutes ago," Giles indicated a broken-out window, "along with a rather nasty note stating that Sunnydale didn't need another magic shop."

I was surprised at Giles' unconcerned mood. "And that doesn't worry you?" I asked.

"No, not in the least," Giles replied. "I'm sure it's nothing serious. People who don't understand the usefulness of magic have always responded in fear. They'll get bored and move on eventually."

"Okay, well, I did have something to tell you. Something weird happened this morning," I started.

Giles nodded, "Weird how?" he asked.

"Weird, as in, strange, unusual, and bizarre," I replied.

Giles raised an eyebrow, "Thank you Xander, for that. I wasn't asking for a listing of synonyms though. What I meant was, tell me what, exactly, happened this morning. But you knew that, didn't you."

"Yeah, just being ...me," I shrugged. Even my joking ability was off, apparently. "When I woke up this morning, there was a cat in my room. But that's not the weird part. Well, a cat showing up in my room _is_ weird. But not the real, real weirdness." I looked up at Giles to see if he was following me, and saw that while slightly bewildered by the Xander-babble, he appeared to be keeping up.

"Cat," he nodded intelligently.

I smiled. "Good, you're familiar with them." Before he could protest my 'inappropriate light-heartedness' as he sometimes called it, I went on. "So, I got up, to shoo the cat out, and then I saw it had brought in the morning paper." I held up the paper in my hand.

Giles nodded again. "That is ...interesting," he said. "A cat trained to bring in the paper. But I don't see what--"

"It's tomorrow's paper," I added.

That got his attention. "I beg your pardon?" he replied. "What?" he added, as if the first question didn't cover the question well enough.

"It's tomorrow's paper," I repeated, and handed it to him.

He looked at it suspiciously, as if it would turn into a demon and attack him. *Now that's an interesting possibility,* I mused. *But not too likely, since the cat didn't appear to be evil. And how would I know that, just from a few minutes with the cat?* I questioned myself. *Off-topic,* I responded to myself. *Current topic is that Giles needs to know about the massacre tonight.*

"It doesn't bite," I said with a sigh. "Take it," I said, shoving it in front of him.

He hesitantly took the paper, and examined it carefully. "October twenty-ninth," he said. "How do you know it's not just a typeset error?" he added. "Maybe the newspaper office just made a mistake."

"Read the front page article about the Halloween Fest," I said patiently. "According to the article, it was last-night, but it's not. It's tonight."

"But..." Giles obviously didn't have a follow-up to go with the 'but.' He frowned at the paper. He put his glasses on, and read it. I waited for him to get to the end. "Oh dear," he said. Then he took his glasses off, polished them again, put them back on, and I figured he was reading the article a second time. "Oh my," he said this time.

He sighed, and put the paper down. "How do you know it's not a prank? A practical joke?" he offered.

"Pretty sick practical joke, don't you think?" I returned skeptically. "Besides, it's a pretty expensive practical joke, too. There's more in the paper than just that article, Giles. It's very thorough, the way a newspaper typically is. I know that the Mayor's not going to give a speech like he planned at the City Council meeting tonight, because he'll get food poisoning at lunch today. I know that some city big-shot's going to announce a gift of a hundred thousand dollars to the Sunnydale Hospital for the starting of a new cancer research wing. If I cared, I even know what the stock market's going to do by the end of the day. Oh." That was interesting, I realized. But secondary to the point at the moment.

"Okay," Giles sighed. "Let's just assume for the moment that the article is true. Then we should attempt to stop the attacks. Before we go any further, though, we should get everyone together.

"First day of school," I reminded him.

"They can come by either between or after classes. I'll call Buffy, and Willow. Could you go outside to the payphone and try to contact Riley, Spike, and--"

"SPIKE???" I yelled. "You've gotta be kidding me, Giles."

"I'm not," he replied. "Spike could be helpful--"

"Okay, I know you did not use the words 'Spike' and 'helpful' in the same sentence. Because that's even weirder than my early paper," I protested. In fact it hurt my brain to think about Spike being helpful.

"Spike has no source of amusement other than killing demons," Giles said.

"Um, okay. But I'm _still_ not convinced it's a good idea to ask Spike to help us." I replied. "We're talking about SPIKE, here Giles. You do remember Spike, don't you? Skinny, blond, likes to betray us at every turn?" I couldn't believe Giles was even contemplating giving the peroxide blond the ability to screw everything up. Which he would. He was Spike, he un-lived to torment us, in every annoying way possible.

"I share your concerns, Xander," Giles said. "But I know that we can convince Spike to help us."

"Oh yeah?" I replied. Yep, that's me, known for my eloquence.

"Spike, in shunning our help lately, is probably having more and more trouble getting blood. We can fix that. I'll provide him money, so he can buy blood. He can't turn that kind of assistance down. His survival depends on it."

"So you're going to bribe him?" I guessed. "I guess it might work, but still--"

"Xander, saving lives, that's our main interest at the moment," Giles reminded me. And I had no witty response to that. *Man, I hate when he gets all logical on me.*

"Fine," I muttered. "I'll get hold of Riley and Anya. You call Willow and Buffy." At Giles' disapproving look, I added, "Yes, I'll go by the crypt and get the bleached one." I stood, and snatched the newspaper off the table. "But I'll hold on to this. The cat brought it to me, so it's going to stay with me."

At Giles' doubtful look, I added, "And don't give me that 'He's going to lose it and spoil everything' look. I'm not a complete screw-up, contrary to popular belief."

"I didn't say that, I wasn't even remotely thinking it," Giles protested.

"Uh-huh, of course not." I nodded. "That's fine, I'll just have to prove it to all of you."

With that, I rolled the paper, stuck it in my back pocket, and left.