Xander looked across the street at the old school in amazement. Looking down at the scrap of paper in his hand he checked the address again. He'd thought Dawn was kidding when she said her new school looked like something out of a movie. Looking down at himself, he shuddered.

If he stood there too long he would be lucky if some suspicious teacher didn't call the cops on him. He was going to have to find a place to stay, get himself cleaned up, find a job to cover his expenses before it was time to move on and then let her know he was in town. She didn't know he was coming so he could surprise her later in the week.

He'd been lucky to find a room. The hotel had looked like the one in the Blues Brothers' movie that Carrie Fisher had blown up with a rocket but at least it was cheap and clean. He'd had enough to pay for a month. He wasn't sure what he'd do in Seacover for a month but maybe it was time to take a break from the road. He'd spent the summer hitchhiking to Boston, bitten by the urge to see where Faith had grown up. From there, he'd wandered randomly as he headed back west, never spending more than a week in any place.

His only communication with friends were the postcards he dropped in the mail once a week and the long rambling letters he wrote to Anya, who'd been unexpectedly sympathetic with his need to get away from Sunnydale for a while. Willow hadn't. She'd been scathing in her remarks, accusing him of running away.

The bar was two blocks from the hotel. He'd discovered it the night before while taking a stroll in his new neighborhood, checking for any signs of vampires or other demons. When he'd first left Sunnydale he'd actively searched for them in some kind of suicidal impulse, as he'd realized later. All of the major cities he'd traveled through had some kind of bar that catered to the supernatural but most of the non-humans he'd run into would have rated a 'mostly harmless' in his hometown. A few major cities, like LA and Boston, had larger populations of demons.

He'd gotten used to the idea during his wanderings that vampires weren't as common as he'd expected. He'd seen maybe a dozen in the last six months. There had been subtle signs of more but not the mobs of them he'd expected. Sunnydale had been an exception fueled by the Hellmouth. And the whole 'Chosen One' label had actually begun to make sense. If there were so few of the creatures running around, one super powered person might have a hope of keeping them under control.

• Enter Xander.