Feeling Jo's eyes on her back as she reached for the doorknob, Blair took a deep breath and steeled herself. She could handle this. She was Blair Warner. The job was already hers.

She just had to convince Alix, no, Joyce Summers, she'd been quite clear of that.

Stepping inside, she glanced around at the warmly-lit space. She'd been in more galleries than she could remember. Spent more money on art than all of her friends combined. This was the first gallery that felt welcoming. A place to visit just because. Her mother wouldn't be caught dead in it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by someone clearing their throat. Looking around she spotted a young girl leaning against a couch in a small alcove to her right, watching her intently.

"I'm here to see Ms. Summers," she told her.

"Mom! Someone wants to talk with you!" the girl shouted.

"Miss Warner," Joyce began, after showing her into her office.

"Blair," she corrected with a slight smile.

"Why are you here?" Joyce asked. Blair's file had been very slim compared to the other Watcher candidates. Although that had made her stand out, what had really caught Joyce's attention had been her previous job. But she wasn't going to trust her around Dawn without a better feeling about her.

"I need a job?" Blair said.

"We both know that isn't true," Joyce said. "Even if you weren't independently wealthy, you had a job, at a private school, that you couldn't be fired from."

"I needed a change," Blair said.

"Enough to come all the way to Seacover?" Joyce asked.

"Yes."

Joyce leaned back in her chair, and waited for a longer answer.

Blair took a deep breath. And then another before speaking. "I needed to get Joey away from her job for a while," she said quietly.

"Joey?"

"She's my best friend," Blair said, blushing faintly. "A police detective in New York. She had a close call a few months ago. She was in the hospital for two months. She almost died."

"Does she know why you're here?" Joyce asked.

"I told her I needed a break from directly running the school," she said. "I convinced her to take some of her vacation time and come with me for a little while. She doesn't know anything about the Society."

"If she's going to stay in Seacover, I expect you to tell her," Joyce told her.

"That's against the rules," Blair said. "I'd get in trouble."

"We're already breaking rules," Joyce said. "I don't want anyone in close contact with my daughter whom I can't trust to keep a secret. It's too dangerous for all of us for your friend to find out on her own. Especially here."

Jo leaned against her bike, staring sightlessly at the door of the gallery across the street She still couldn't quite believe she'd agreed to this. But the look on Blair's face at the hospital still haunted her. It'd been a close call, too close for her old friend. In the five years she'd been a detective, she'd certainly been shot before. It was inevitable. But she'd never come so close to dying before.

Strictly speaking, she hadn't quit. Yet. Between ten years worth of unused leave time and a sabbatical the Captain insisted she take, Jo had a year to decide if she wanted to go back. She wasn't sure what she would spend the time doing, but she'd agreed to keep Blair company on her trip to Seacover.

Blair didn't need to work so Jo was a little suspicious that she had an ulterior motive for leaving her position as Headmistress at Eastland and traveling to the other side of the continent for a possible job as an assistant at a new art gallery, no matter how highly recommended the owner was by Blair's favorite antique dealer.

"Detective? What brings you to Seacover?" a vaguely familiar voice asked.

Jumping in surprise, Jo dragged her attention away from the gallery. Turning her head, she found herself looking up at Amanda Deveroux, a suspect in a string of unsolved jewelry heists the year before. There'd been other suspects who'd seemed more likely candidates but the striking Ms. Deveroux was unforgettable.

"Ms. Deveroux, I could ask you the same thing," Jo said.

Amanda wasn't sure which was more surprising, an NYPD detective in Seacover outside this particular gallery or the very faint quickening, more of an echo than the real thing, coming from her. It'd been unnoticeable until she'd been only a couple feet away.

"I have friends here," Amanda said. The detective just nodded and went back to staring pensively at the gallery. Amanda pouted. She wasn't used to being ignored. "Are you going to be in town long?" she asked.

The detective looked back at her. "Planning any robberies I should know about?"

"I'm innocent," Amanda protested. It was one of the few times she could honestly say that. Her encounter with the detective the previous year had been while helping Mac. The jewelry robberies had been staged by an old foe of his, trying to use her as bait.

The detective gave her a skeptical look, raising a single eyebrow at her. "If you say so," she said.

"Joey? You know her?" a feminine voice asked from the gallery door.

Amanda turned and found herself looking at a younger version of someone she'd never expected to run into again, someone she'd robbed years ago.

"I want it back!" she growled, stomping across the street up to Amanda.

"Blair!" The detective said.

"Just a minute, Jo," she said, holding up her hand. "We have some unfinished business," she said.

"I don't have it, whatever it is," Amanda said, slowly stepping back.

"It was my mother's birth day present," Blair said. "And it never showed up at any of the fences that would take it, so you must have kept it."

"And you checked every fence in the world?" Amanda asked, shaking her head.

"Daddy did," the blonde said with utmost conviction.

"And you believed 'Daddy' ?" Amanda asked, curious.

"Of course," Blair said. "Why would he lie to me?"

"I bet she took it," a young voice piped up.

Groaning, Amanda turned to her teenage nemesis, who'd joined them while she wasn't looking.

"Don't you have a science project or something to do, elsewhere?" Amanda asked. She wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve this but Dawn Summers had decided it was her duty to keep an eye on Amanda whenever she was in the neighborhood. And she wasn't remotely subtle about it, unlike Amanda's watcher, who was down the street pretending to window-shop.

"Back inside, young lady," a firm voice said from a distance. Looking across the street, Amanda wasn't sure if she should be relieved that Joyce was about to join them or concerned.

"But, mom!" Dawn loudly protested.

"Have you finished that essay?" she asked, stepping between them.

"No," Dawn said glumly, looking down at her feet. "Right, I'm going," she said, in response to some gesture from Joyce that Amanda missed.