The ride to the house was silent, seeing as how Cordelia was so intent on making up for lost time with her insults toward Buffy, and none of them wanted to deal with that right now. So Cordelia sped into the driveway, let Buffy and Giles out, and then sped off again without a word.

For a moment Buffy looked at her house, feeling a sense of dread usually only reserved for times she faced death. And actually, it wasn't dread she was feeling as much as anger. The dread was that she was afraid if Joyce tried to talk to her, she would say something they would both regret.

"You will have to go in there sooner or later," Giles told her as he started off to the death trap he called a car.

"Yeah." But still, she wondered if she should go in through her bedroom window. You know, for old time's sake.

"You did nothing wrong. None of this is your doing. She can not blame you-"

"That's not what I'm worried about," Buffy told him, shaking her head. "I'm just really not in the mood to see my mom and have her explain."

He nodded. "I can understand that."

"I'll be fine. Go home, put some ice on that bump, and I'll bother you tomorrow. Are you going to be okay to drive-" She cut herself off as a thought popped into her mind. "No, you can't go fast enough in that thing to really hurt yourself."

"Thank you for the concern."

Buffy checked for that clucking sound- thanks to Willow she always listened for it now- and when she didn't hear it, she decided to proceed. "Hey, I told you to put ice on that," she smiled. "Bye, Giles."

Another nod. She knew he'd say something about it tomorrow, but for now it would be let go. "Good night."

Giles got into his car and started off, but Buffy couldn't help but call to him as he drove off. "If you think I'm slaying anything tonight, you're insane," she said. He was down the street before she finished the sentence, though, so he couldn't have even heard her.

Buffy looked back to the house, finally deciding to just bite the bullet and go inside. What was the worst that could happen? She'd get into another fight with Joyce. Not like that was an uncommon occurrence.

The door was open, which was good since her keys had been left in the house when she and Giles were knocked unconscious and then dragged out of there. Upon entering, she looked, but didn't see her mother in the immediate area. She took advantage of that and started up the stairs, but she hadn't made it up halfway when she heard, "Buffy?"

Stopping dead in her tracks, she turned around to see Joyce at the bottom of the stairs, with that 'let's talk' look. "Honey, look, I think we need to talk about what happened tonight. I know that a lot of-"

"Not right now," Buffy said, and turned to go back up to her room.

She made sure to lock the door before plopping onto her bed. Ugh! There were just some days that you knew you never wanted to relive or even think about again. Although Buffy had definitely had her share, this was one of those toward the top of the list. It wasn't every day your mother tried to burn you at the stake. God, she was never going to get this smoke smell out of her clothes! And that was the least of her problems.

One thing had bothered her all night, since they had taken the books from the library. And then she had seen that those were the same books used to light the fire that was supposed to kill her, Willow and Amy. And all these what ifs kept playing out in Buffy's mind. It was like she told Joyce. What if they needed to kill a demon or something and they couldn't? Not just because that little troll Snyder had taken them but now because they were just ashes on the floor of the town hall. There was so much at stake every single day, and now they stood less of a chance of actually being able to pull things off as they had been because the information was gone.

This was just so insane. How could something like this happen? And she did feel an indignation at the fact that she would have been punished for something she couldn't even control. Not that Amy and Willow deserved this ghastly treatment, but... And she wasn't even going to think about the fact that Joyce had been oh-so-willing to see her daughter die. Yeah, she was like possessed or whatever, but how was Buffy supposed to get that thought out of her mind?

After about two hours, Buffy had not heard anything from Joyce, and she was ready to climb out the window and go slaying, despite her words to Giles. She could at least get her frustrations out by beating on a few vamps. Maybe Faith wanted to help. It could be nice to vent to someone who was out of the loop on this one. Just as she had gotten up from the spot she had held for two hours, the phone rang. She picked it up on the first ring. "Hello?"

"We found Amy," Willow said. "She made it all the way to the gym."

"Is she human again yet?" Buffy wondered.

"I know I have the spell in one of my books. I don't think my mom found it, but I'm going to look for it tonight. So right now Amy's in this old hamster cage Xander had lying around."

"How are you doing?"

This time the pause was from Willow's end. "I don't know yet," she said finally. "Haven't had much time to think."

Buffy heard voices in the background and frowned. "Where are you?"

"Xander's. I was supposed to get dropped off first, but Xander refused to leave me alone, but he doesn't want to make it seem like he's trying to one-up Oz, so it turned into this whole big thing and now basically I'm trapped here."

"You could walk," she reminded her.

"Tried it. They don't want me walking alone."

She smiled. "They're so protective. How sweet."

"They don't want me to go home. I think I'm agreeing with them," Willow said with a sigh.

"You could always have Oz drive you here. This way you don't have to be all helpless and unprotected or whatever and we can wallow in psychological hell together." And actually, Buffy wouldn't mind it. She just didn't want to actually deal with her mom right now, but she knew she had to deal with the situation, if nothing else.

"I thought about it. But I have to go back there. If worse comes to worse I can go off on my mom, tell her I worship Satan and that I'm dating a musician. Oh, wait, I already did that." Willow paused. "How was Cordelia?"

Buffy shook her head as if Willow could see her from the other line. "No big. We didn't talk. Giles went home and I'm thinking about going on a slaying rampage."

"Or that works." There was a mumbling on the line, Willow talking to a muffled guy's voice, but Buffy couldn't discern if it was Oz or Xander. "Buffy, Oz is getting his keys," Willow said. "I'm finally being allowed to go home."

"Gonna talk to your mom?"

"I think I'm going to try to ignore her tonight. You?"

"I'm already ignoring her. I'll talk to her tomorrow," Buffy said.

"Okay," Willow said. "Um, I'm bringing Amy home with me. Should I call you in the morning if I find the spell? You can help me."

"You do that. So I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Bye."

"Bye."

They both hung up, and Buffy sat on her bed again. Insane. It was the only word she could think of to describe this. She looked at her alarm and decided she could do without the endorphin rush tonight. She'd had enough already. It was time to get a good night's sleep, and start off tomorrow with a nice long and incredibly frustrating and emotionally taxing conversation with her mother.

Maybe on her way to Willow's she'd stop to buy Amy some cheese.