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The ghost came out of the mirror during fifth-period history.
This was unfortunate for several reasons.
First, Buffy Summers was supposed to be paying attention to a lecture about the California Gold Rush, and Mr. Weller had already given her two warnings about staring out the window.
Second, Willow Rosenberg had spent most of lunch insisting that the antique mirror temporarily displayed beside the classroom door was not haunted.
Third, Xander Harris had bet Buffy five dollars that something supernatural would happen before the final bell.
Buffy saw a pale hand push through the glass.
She closed her eyes.
Maybe, she thought, if she ignored it, the universe would become embarrassed and take it back.
The hand waved.
Buffy opened one eye.
A round, translucent face had appeared in the mirror. It belonged to a boy who looked about twelve or thirteen, with wide blue eyes and an expression of escalating panic. He was pressed against the inside of the glass as if it were a window. His mouth moved soundlessly.
Buffy looked toward Willow.
Willow was taking notes.
Buffy looked toward Xander.
Xander was drawing what appeared to be Principal Snyder being eaten by a giant squirrel.
Buffy hissed, “Guys.”
Willow glanced over.
Buffy pointed subtly toward the mirror.
The ghost boy put both hands against the glass and mouthed, Help.
Willow’s pencil snapped.
Xander followed their gaze. His eyes widened.
Then he grinned and held out his hand beneath the desk.
“Five dollars.”
Buffy slapped his hand away.
At the front of the classroom, Mr. Weller turned from the blackboard.
“Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Miss Summers?”
Buffy looked at the ghost. The ghost looked at Buffy.
Behind him, something dark moved in the mirror.
It was too tall to be a person. It had shoulders like crooked roof beams and long arms ending in too many fingers. It unfolded itself from the darkness behind the boy.
The ghost spun around.
His mouth opened in a scream nobody could hear.
Buffy stood so quickly her chair fell backward.
“Bathroom emergency!”
Mr. Weller stared at her.
“Miss Summers—”
“Very urgent. Possibly historical.”
She sprinted for the mirror.
The ghost boy ducked as the creature lunged. Its hand sliced through the space where his head had been. Black cracks spread through the silver backing of the glass.
Buffy seized the mirror’s heavy wooden frame.
The surface rippled beneath her fingers.
Cold shot up her arms.
For one dizzying second she could see beyond the reflection: a gray corridor, endless doors, shadows moving where walls should have been. The ghost boy flew toward her. The creature caught his ankle.
Buffy grabbed his wrist.
Her hand passed through him up to the knuckles.
“Oh, that is deeply weird.”
The ghost stared at her.
“You can see me?”
His voice was faint and echoing, like someone speaking at the bottom of a well.
“Yeah,” Buffy grunted. “Lucky me.”
She tightened her grip, although she had no idea what she was actually holding. His arm felt like freezing fog.
The creature pulled.
Buffy planted one boot against the wall.
Desks screeched as students scattered. Mr. Weller shouted something about school property. Xander and Willow raced to Buffy’s side.
“What do we do?” Willow asked.
“Grab me!”
Xander caught Buffy around the waist. Willow grabbed Xander, because there was no convenient part of Buffy that was not currently occupied.
For a moment, the four of them formed the world’s least dignified supernatural tug-of-war.
Then the mirror exploded.
Buffy flew backward into Xander. Xander flew backward into Willow. Willow flew backward into three desks and a boy named Kevin, who had spent the entire semester claiming nothing interesting ever happened in Sunnydale.
The ghost shot out of the broken mirror like a cork from a bottle.
He sailed through Mr. Weller, the blackboard, and most of a map of California before stopping in midair.
The dark creature struck the inside of the glass.
A sound like a church bell ringing underwater rolled through the classroom.
Every unbroken light bulb burst.
Students screamed.
The remaining shards of the mirror turned black.
Then everything went still.
For approximately two seconds.
Mr. Weller pointed at Buffy with a trembling hand.
“Principal’s office.”
Buffy, still sprawled across Xander, stared at the floating ghost.
“That’s probably fair.”
---
The ghost followed them to the library.
That was not the original plan.
The original plan involved Buffy, Willow, and Xander reporting to Principal Snyder, receiving an unfair but predictable punishment, and then sneaking away to ask Giles why a dead boy had been trapped inside a school mirror.
Instead, the ghost floated through the principal’s office door while Snyder was explaining that delinquency was not a personality.
Snyder stopped talking.
The ghost hovered behind him, wringing his hands.
Buffy tried not to look.
Snyder narrowed his eyes.
“Is something amusing you, Summers?”
“No.”
The ghost waved cautiously.
Buffy looked at the ceiling.
Snyder turned around.
The ghost vanished through the wall.
Buffy bit her lip.
Snyder spun back toward her. “Detention. All three of you. Today.”
Xander raised a hand. “In fairness, I didn’t break the mirror.”
“You encouraged the breaking.”
“I encouraged teamwork.”
“You were holding Miss Summers around the waist.”
“Exactly. Teamwork.”
Snyder’s eyes narrowed until they were almost theoretical.
“Library. Immediately. You’ll assist Mr. Giles with inventory until six.”
Buffy brightened. “Oh, no. Books. My only weakness.”
Snyder mistook this for sincerity.
“That will be all.”
They escaped before he could reconsider.
The ghost was waiting in the corridor. He floated upside down near the ceiling, peering through a row of trophy cases.
When he spotted them, he turned upright and drifted closer.
“Hi,” he said.
Buffy glanced around. The hallway was crowded with students changing classes, but no one else appeared to notice him.
“Hi,” Willow whispered.
Xander walked directly through a freshman to keep pace with the ghost. “So, I’m trying to decide between ‘friendly neighborhood spirit’ and ‘vengeful dead child waiting until we trust him.’ Any preference?”
The ghost’s face fell.
Xander winced.
“Okay. That came out more suspicious than welcoming.”
“He’s like that,” Willow assured the ghost. “The talking happens before the thinking.”
“I’m Xander.” Xander pointed to himself. “This is Willow. The blonde with the look that says she’s measuring you for a coffin is Buffy.”
“I am not measuring him for a coffin.”
“You have the coffin look.”
“I have a cautious look.”
“You have several cautious looks. This is specifically the coffin one.”
The ghost raised his hand.
“My name’s Casper.”
Willow smiled.
“Casper?”
He nodded hopefully.
“As in…” Xander began.
Buffy elbowed him.
“What?”
“No.”
“I was only going to ask—”
“No.”
Casper’s shoulders slumped. “People usually ask.”
Xander considered him. “Is it annoying?”
“A little.”
“Then I will bravely resist.”
They reached the library doors. Buffy pushed one open.
Giles stood behind the circulation desk with a ledger in his hands. He glanced up.
“Ah. I was informed that you three had been assigned to help me organize the storage room.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Buffy said.
“I assumed as much.”
“The mirror attacked first.”
Giles lowered the ledger.
“The mirror?”
Casper floated through the closed half of the double doors.
Giles took off his glasses.
Casper smiled weakly. “Hello.”
Giles put his glasses back on.
Xander pointed at him. “See? That’s a normal reaction. Calm. British. No screaming.”
Giles walked backward into the card catalog.
Casper’s smile disappeared.
“Sorry.”
“No, no.” Giles cleared his throat and straightened his jacket. “You needn’t apologize. I simply wasn’t expecting a spectral adolescent.”
“I’m not sure how old I am now,” Casper admitted. “I was twelve when I died.”
The joke drained out of the room.
Willow looked down.
Buffy’s expression softened.
Xander shoved his hands into his pockets.
Giles recovered first. “And how long ago was that?”
Casper hesitated. “A long time.”
“Do you know the year?”
“Not exactly.”
“Where do you usually reside?”
“In Maine. Whipstaff Manor.”
Giles went very still.
Buffy recognized that look. It was the same look he got when a dusty book confirmed that the monster currently trying to kill them was significantly worse than the monster he had originally thought was trying to kill them.
“You know it?” she asked.
“I’ve heard of it.” Giles hurried toward the locked book cage. “Whipstaff is mentioned in several records of concentrated spiritual activity. Supposedly, it sits on an unusually stable crossing between the material and spectral planes.”
Xander leaned toward Willow. “Is that like a Hellmouth for ghosts?”
Willow frowned. “Maybe more like a ghost airport.”
“A ghost airport sitting on a ghost volcano.”
“I don’t think he said volcano.”
“He was thinking it.”
Giles returned with an enormous book.
“I was not.”
Buffy looked at Casper. “How did you get from Maine to a history classroom in California?”
Casper floated lower until his feet nearly touched the floor.
“I don’t know.”
Buffy waited.
Casper glanced toward the library windows, where afternoon sunlight had begun to take on an orange tint.
“The mirror belonged to my father,” he said. “It was in our house before I…before. I found it in one of the old rooms a few weeks ago. My uncles said it was junk, but I remembered it.”
“Your uncles are ghosts too?” Willow asked.
Casper nodded. “Stretch, Stinkie, and Fatso. They aren’t really my uncles. They just call themselves that. They’ve been at Whipstaff longer than I can remember.”
Xander blinked. “You live in a haunted house with three ghosts named Stretch, Stinkie, and Fatso?”
“They named themselves.”
“They sound subtle.”
“They aren’t.”
Despite himself, Casper smiled.
Then his gaze moved to the library doors.
The smile vanished.
“Something was inside the mirror,” he whispered.
Buffy sat on the edge of the table.
“The tall shadow thing?”
Casper nodded.
“I didn’t see it at first. I thought the mirror was showing me places. Rooms I’d never been in. People I didn’t know. Sometimes I saw this school.”
“Sunnydale High?” Willow asked.
“Your library. The halls. The courtyard. I thought maybe…” He looked embarrassed. “I thought maybe I could come here.”
“Why?” Buffy asked.
Casper’s translucent fingers twisted together.
“There were kids my age.”
Nobody spoke.
Casper rushed on as if silence were worse than pity.
“I know I’m not really their age anymore. And they probably wouldn’t see me. But I thought maybe the mirror was like a window. Then this morning it pulled me inside. The shadow chased me through all these rooms, and I couldn’t get back home. Then I saw you.”
He looked at Buffy.
“You pulled me out.”
“Yeah. About that thing chasing you.” Buffy hopped off the table. “Did it have a name?”
Casper shook his head.
“Did it say anything?”
“No.”
“Did it try to eat you?”
“It kept whispering.”
“What?”
Casper’s outline flickered.
“That nobody wanted me.”
The library lights dimmed.
Willow drew in a sharp breath.
For a moment, a dark stain appeared on the wall behind Casper. It stretched upward, impossibly long.
Buffy moved between Casper and the wall.
The stain vanished.
Giles began turning pages more quickly.
“Giles?”
“I believe I may know what we’re dealing with.”
“I’m sensing the part where you say it’s bad.”
“It is not ideal.”
“British for very bad,” Xander told Casper.
Giles stopped on a page covered in woodcut illustrations.
The creature in the picture looked like a tall man draped in funeral cloth. It had no face, only a hollow opening filled with tiny white teeth.
Casper recoiled.
“That’s it.”
Giles read aloud. “‘The Desolate One. The Hollow Guest. The Eater at the Threshold.’”
“Those are all deeply unfriendly names,” Xander said.
“It is a predatory entity that inhabits reflective surfaces, doorways, and other liminal spaces. It feeds upon spirits who remain emotionally connected to the mortal world.”
Buffy folded her arms. “It eats ghosts.”
“Not precisely. It consumes the memories and emotional ties that allow a spirit to maintain its individual identity.”
Willow went pale. “It doesn’t eat ghosts. It makes them forget who they are.”
Casper stared at the book.
Giles closed it slightly, shielding the illustration from view.
“Once deprived of identity, the spirit becomes part of the creature. An extension of its hunger.”
Buffy thought of the shapes she had seen moving behind the shadow in the mirror.
“How many ghosts can it take?”
“There are accounts of entire graveyards being emptied.”
Xander was quiet now.
“What happens when it gets enough?”
Giles looked toward the shattered remains of the mirror, which Buffy had carried to the library in a cardboard evidence box.
“It crosses over.”
A crack snapped through one of the blackened shards.
All four humans looked at it.
Casper floated away from the table.
Giles continued, “It cannot ordinarily enter the physical world. It requires an anchor—a spirit strong enough to hold a doorway open.”
Everyone looked at Casper.
He shrank into himself.
Buffy’s voice hardened. “It’s using him.”
“I believe so.”
“To get through the mirror?”
“Not merely the mirror. Sunnydale itself is saturated with supernatural energy. If the creature reaches the Hellmouth—”
“It gets an all-access pass,” Xander finished.
Giles nodded.
The final bell rang.
Throughout the school, hundreds of students poured into the corridors.
The sound washed through the library like distant thunder.
Casper’s head jerked up.
From somewhere inside the walls came a whisper.
Alone.
Casper spun around.
The whisper became a chorus.
Unwanted.
The library windows darkened.
Forgotten.
Casper clapped his hands over his ears.
“Stop.”
Buffy grabbed the nearest shard of mirror and flung it to the floor.
It shattered.
The whispering ceased.
Casper hovered motionless.
“Casper?” Willow asked.
“I’m okay.”
His voice said otherwise.
Buffy reached toward him, then stopped. She remembered the awful cold of his wrist and let her hand fall.
“Not to disagree with the dead guy about his own emotional state, but you don’t look okay.”
Casper tried to smile.
His face blurred around the edges.
“I’m used to it.”
Something in Buffy’s chest tightened.
She knew those words. Not those exact words, maybe, but the shape of them. The way they could be used to build a wall around pain and then pretend the wall was a home.
“No,” she said.
Casper looked at her.
“You’re not allowed to be used to it. We’re fixing this.”
Giles removed his glasses. “Buffy, destroying an entity of this nature may be exceedingly difficult.”
“Then we’ll be exceedingly difficult back.”
“That is not a plan.”
“It’s the beginning of a plan.”
Xander nodded. “Most plans begin as threats.”
Willow moved closer to the table.
“The mirror brought Casper here because the creature needed him as an anchor. But it chose Sunnydale because of the Hellmouth.”
“Correct,” Giles said.
“What if the Hellmouth isn’t the only thing it can use?”
Giles looked alarmed. “What are you suggesting?”
“The school is full of people Casper’s age. People with memories and emotions and—and loneliness.”
Outside, a locker slammed.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The sounds moved down the hall toward the library.
Casper whispered, “It knows they’re here.”
The library doors burst open.
No one stood on the other side.
The corridor beyond was empty.
Every locker door hung open.
Darkness pooled inside them.
Then the students began to scream.
---
The first ghost appeared in the girls’ bathroom.
She wore a dress from the 1950s and stood beside the sinks, weeping silently while two sophomore girls tried to claw through a locked stall door.
The second rose through the cafeteria floor.
He was an old man in a railway uniform, carrying a lantern that gave off no light.
The third was only a pair of hands pushing out from a trophy case.
By five minutes after the final bell, Sunnydale High was haunted.
Buffy kicked open the door to the girls’ bathroom.
“Everybody out!”
The two sophomores did not argue. They scrambled past her.
The weeping ghost raised her head.
Black veins spread beneath her translucent skin.
Her mouth opened.
The scream that emerged shattered every mirror above the sinks.
Buffy ducked as glass sprayed across the room.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re skipping introductions.”
The ghost flew at her.
Buffy sidestepped. The spirit passed through a stall door, leaving frost across the metal.
Casper floated through the wall behind it.
“Wait!”
The ghost turned.
Casper held up his hands.
“We’re not going to hurt you.”
The woman’s face twisted. The black veins crawled into her eyes.
“She can’t hear you,” Buffy said.
“Yes, she can.”
Casper drifted closer.
The ghost lunged.
Casper did not move.
She slammed into him, and their bodies became a whirl of pale light.
Buffy’s first instinct was to hit something. Unfortunately, there was nothing solid to hit. She grabbed a toilet-tank lid anyway, because improvised weapons were emotionally reassuring.
“Casper!”
The light separated.
Casper reeled backward.
The woman hovered near the ceiling, blinking.
The black veins had receded from her face.
“You have to go,” Casper told her. “It’s calling you. Don’t listen.”
The woman looked around the bathroom as though waking from a nightmare.
Then she faded.
Casper sagged.
Buffy dropped the toilet-tank lid and caught him by instinct. Her hands passed through his shoulders, but his body slowed as if she had supported him.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
“You said that before.”
“This time I’m medium okay.”
“Better.”
She looked toward the broken mirrors. Darkness moved inside every shard.
“Can you do that for all of them?”
Casper stared at the glass.
“I don’t know how many there are.”
A crash came from the corridor.
Buffy stepped in front of him.
“We’ll take them one at a time.”
---
Willow and Xander barricaded the library doors with a table.
It would not stop a ghost.
It would, however, stop Principal Snyder, who had returned after hearing reports of vandalism and mass hysteria.
“Open this door!” Snyder shouted from the hallway.
Xander shoved a chair beneath the handle.
“Library’s closed for haunting!”
“Mr. Harris!”
“Inventory!”
Willow sat cross-legged on the floor amid six open books.
Giles had drawn a circle around the box of mirror shards using salt, chalk, powdered iron, and something from a jar labeled in Latin.
“Are we sure that’ll hold it?” Xander asked.
“No.”
“Comforting.”
“I have explained before that certainty is rarely possible in occult matters.”
“Right. But this would be a great time to break tradition.”
The mirror shards trembled.
From the largest piece, a black finger pressed against the glass.
The salt circle hissed.
Willow read faster.
“Reflective entities, mirror demons, hungry ghosts…”
Xander crouched beside her. “Anything useful?”
“They hate sunlight.”
“Great. It’s almost dark.”
“They can be trapped by turning a mirror toward itself.”
“Our mirror is in a box.”
“And broken.”
“Could we get another mirror?”
“It would need to be connected to the original.”
“Duct tape?”
“Magically connected.”
“Magic duct tape?”
Willow gave him a look.
Xander raised both hands.
“Just exploring options.”
The library doors shook as Snyder pounded on them.
“You have ten seconds!”
Xander glanced toward the book cage.
“Could we put him in the magic circle?”
“No.”
“Morally or practically?”
“Both.”
“Shame.”
The mirror shards began rattling.
One piece lifted into the air.
Then another.
Giles threw a handful of powder over the circle. The shards fell.
“The barrier is weakening,” he said.
“Because it’s getting stronger?” Willow asked.
“Because it is feeding.”
Xander looked toward the doors.
“On what?”
A girl screamed somewhere on the second floor.
Giles’s expression became grim.
“Fear. Loneliness. Grief. The school provides an unfortunately abundant supply.”
Xander sat back on his heels.
“Teenagers.”
“Precisely.”
“So we’re basically an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
The doors shuddered again.
Snyder had stopped shouting.
A shadow appeared beneath the gap.
It stretched across the floor toward the circle.
Willow scrambled backward.
“Giles!”
The shadow wrapped around the table leg.
Wood blackened and split.
Xander snatched a candle from the desk and held it over the darkness.
The flame turned blue.
The shadow recoiled.
Xander blinked.
“It hates fire?”
“Light,” Willow said. “It hates light.”
Giles seized a flashlight from a drawer and shone it at the floor.
The shadow vanished.
The doors stopped moving.
For a moment, everything was silent.
Then Principal Snyder spoke from the hallway.
His voice was wrong.
“You are not wanted here.”
Willow froze.
The voice continued.
“None of you are.”
Xander grabbed Willow’s hand before she could answer.
“Don’t listen.”
The shadow pressed against the frosted glass panels in the doors. It took the shape of a towering man.
“You are tolerated,” it whispered. “Not loved.”
Willow’s eyes filled with tears.
The lights flickered.
Giles thrust the flashlight toward the doors.
“Get back!”
The shadow laughed.
The flashlight went out.
Every candle in the library extinguished at once.
Darkness crashed over them.
---
Buffy found three more ghosts on the second floor.
A boy wearing a military uniform marched through the science lab, knocking equipment from the tables without touching it. A woman with half her face burned away stood at the drinking fountain, whispering names. A little girl crawled along the ceiling.
Casper helped all of them.
Each time, he spoke softly.
Each time, he told them they were remembered.
Each time, the darkness inside them loosened its grip.
And each time, Casper grew fainter.
By the time they reached the stairwell, Buffy could see the wall through him.
“You need to stop.”
“I can still help.”
“You’re disappearing.”
“I’m a ghost. I always look like this.”
“More disappearing than usual.”
Casper tried to float past her.
Buffy blocked him.
He moved left.
She moved left.
He moved right.
She moved right.
“You know I can go through you,” he said.
“You know I’ll follow you.”
For a second, he looked irritated.
Buffy considered that progress. Irritation was healthier than fading into nothing.
“They’re scared,” Casper said.
“So are you.”
“They don’t know what’s happening.”
“Neither do you.”
“I can help them.”
“And who helps you?”
Casper stopped.
Buffy immediately wished she had found a gentler way to ask.
The stairwell lights buzzed overhead.
Casper looked down through the steps.
“My uncles sometimes do,” he said. “In their way.”
“In their way meaning?”
“They make jokes. Break things. Scare people.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“They don’t mean to be mean all the time.”
Buffy leaned against the railing.
“What about people who aren’t ghosts?”
Casper did not answer.
“Friends?” Buffy asked.
“I had one.”
“What happened?”
“She grew up.”
Buffy waited.
Casper’s voice became quieter.
“They all do.”
The stairwell seemed suddenly too large.
“That’s why you were watching the school through the mirror,” Buffy said.
Casper nodded.
“I didn’t want to scare anybody. I just wanted to see what it was like.”
“What what was like?”
“To have classes. Complain about homework. Sit with someone at lunch.” He gave a small shrug. “Normal things.”
Buffy looked at the floor.
Normal things.
She had moved to Sunnydale hoping for them. She had packed away her stakes and holy water and promised herself she would become a different girl. A girl who worried about tests and dances. A girl who did not know the sound a vampire made when it turned to dust.
She had lasted less than a week.
“Normal is mostly a trick,” she said.
Casper looked up.
“People act like it’s this place you can get to if you make all the right choices. But nobody actually lives there. Willow thinks normal means being less shy. Xander thinks it means having parents who notice when he gets home. I thought it meant not being the Slayer.”
“What’s a Slayer?”
“Long story. Terrible job benefits.”
“Is that why you’re so strong?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you exercised.”
“I exercise too.”
“Oh.”
“The point is, none of us are normal. And we still sit together at lunch.”
Casper’s outline steadied.
Buffy offered him a hand.
He stared at it.
“You know I can’t really hold it.”
“You did before.”
“That was the mirror.”
“Then pretend.”
Casper slowly placed his hand over hers.
Cold prickled across Buffy’s palm. Not painful this time. Just strange.
They walked down the stairs together.
Casper’s hand floated inside Buffy’s, but neither of them mentioned it.
---
The darkness in the library whispered in Willow’s voice.
It knew exactly which words to use.
They only keep you around because you’re useful.
She could hear herself saying them.
That was the worst part.
A monster’s voice would have been easier to ignore. A growl, a hiss, something with obvious evil built into it. But this sounded like the voice in her head during lunch, when Buffy laughed at something Cordelia said and Willow wondered whether she was boring.
It sounded like the voice she heard when Xander looked at any girl except her.
They will leave.
The darkness pressed against her face.
Willow could no longer see Giles or Xander. She could hear Giles knocking objects from the desk. She could hear Xander calling her name.
They sounded far away.
You already know this.
Willow shut her eyes.
It did not help.
The darkness was inside now.
She saw an empty library. Empty corridors. An empty lunch table. Her parents’ house with all the lights off because they were attending a conference in another state and had forgotten which weekend they had promised to be home.
No one chooses you.
“Willow!”
Something crashed into her.
She hit the floor.
A blue flame flared above her face.
Xander held the candle in one hand and a can of hair spray in the other.
“Get away from her!”
He pressed the nozzle.
A cone of fire roared across the darkness.
The shadow shrieked.
Willow stared up at him.
“Where did you get hair spray?”
“Buffy’s emergency gym bag.”
“Why are you setting it on fire?”
“Because the regular flashlight was insufficiently dramatic.”
The shadow surged again.
Xander sprayed another burst of flame. The can sputtered.
“Also, almost empty!”
Giles struck a match.
The tiny flame illuminated his face.
“Willow, the emergency lantern!”
She crawled toward the circulation desk.
The darkness hooked around her ankle.
Cold slammed through her body.
Willow screamed.
Xander dropped the hair spray and grabbed both her arms.
“Let go of her!”
The darkness pulled.
Xander’s shoes slid across the floor.
Willow clawed at the carpet.
The shadow whispered into her mind.
He will let go.
Xander gritted his teeth.
“Not happening.”
The shadow pulled harder.
Xander hit the floor but kept hold of her.
“Seriously,” he gasped, “we’ve known each other since we were five. You think I’m losing an argument with a rug stain?”
Despite the terror choking her, Willow laughed.
The darkness recoiled.
Only slightly.
But enough.
Willow kicked free.
She and Xander scrambled behind the desk. Giles lit the emergency lantern, and white light flooded the library.
The shadows ripped upward.
For a moment, the creature appeared above the salt circle.
It was taller than the ceiling.
Its body bent around the room, wrapped in folds of darkness. Inside its faceless hood, dozens of mouths opened and closed.
The stolen voices of ghosts poured out.
Alone.
Forgotten.
Unloved.
The lantern glass cracked.
Giles shouted, “It’s nearly through!”
The creature drove both arms into the circle.
Salt scattered.
Every mirror shard rose into the air.
They spun around the library, forming a ring of black glass.
In each shard, Willow saw a different reflection.
Herself alone at graduation.
Xander sitting at an empty lunch table.
Giles standing over Buffy’s grave.
The creature reached through.
Its fingers became solid.
Long black claws scraped across the library floor.
Then Buffy kicked open the doors.
The table barricade launched across the room.
Principal Snyder, who had apparently been lying unconscious in the hallway, rolled several feet and came to rest beside a drinking fountain.
Buffy took in the creature, the floating mirror pieces, and Xander holding an empty can of hair spray.
“I leave for fifteen minutes.”
“We improvised,” Xander said.
Casper flew into the library behind her.
The creature turned toward him.
Every mouth inside its hood smiled.
Home, it whispered.
Casper stopped moving.
The mirror shards rotated.
His reflection appeared in all of them.
But not as he was.
In the glass, Casper was alive.
He had pale skin instead of a pale glow. He had legs touching the floor. Brown hair fell across his forehead. A red sweater covered his shoulders.
He looked older than twelve.
Not much older. Maybe fifteen.
The age his body might have reached.
Casper stared.
The living boy in the mirror smiled.
Come home.
Casper drifted toward the circle.
Buffy caught him around the waist.
Her arms passed partly through him, but again he slowed.
“Casper.”
He did not look at her.
“It can make me alive.”
Giles’s voice was sharp. “No, it cannot.”
The creature’s mouths opened.
Alive.
Casper pulled against Buffy.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Giles said. “It can only show you what you desire. It cannot restore life.”
The reflection stepped closer to the inside of the glass.
It raised one warm, solid hand.
Casper reached toward it.
Buffy tightened her grip.
“Casper, look at me.”
He struggled.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
“I could be normal!”
The words struck harder than any blow.
Buffy remembered standing in her first Watcher’s office. Remembered shouting that she did not want to die. Remembered every part of herself that still wanted someone to promise she could stop being chosen.
The creature leaned closer.
The reflected Casper’s hand pushed through the mirror.
It was warm.
Buffy could feel the heat from where she stood.
Casper trembled.
“It feels real.”
Buffy swallowed.
“Yeah. The best lies usually do.”
Casper looked at her then.
His eyes were full of an impossible hope.
Buffy almost let him go.
Almost.
Then the creature’s claws scraped forward.
Behind the image of the living boy, Buffy saw pale faces pressed together inside the darkness. Ghosts with empty eyes. Mouths moving without names.
“Look behind him,” she said.
Casper turned.
The living reflection smiled wider.
Too wide.
Its face split down the middle.
The creature’s mouths screamed.
Casper jerked backward.
The warm hand caught his wrist.
Black veins spread up his arm.
Casper cried out.
Buffy grabbed the creature’s solid wrist with both hands.
This time she had something to hit.
She twisted.
Bone cracked.
The creature shrieked through a hundred stolen voices.
Xander seized a wooden chair and slammed it against the arm. The chair shattered.
“Get your own friendly ghost!”
The claw loosened.
Willow grabbed Casper and pulled. Her hands went through him, but Buffy’s grip gave Casper enough resistance to break free.
He tumbled across the library.
The black veins continued climbing toward his shoulder.
“Casper!” Willow crawled to him. “Can you hear me?”
He stared at the ceiling.
His face flickered.
“I can’t remember.”
“Remember what?”
“My house.”
Willow’s voice broke. “No.”
“My father’s name. I can’t…”
The creature dragged itself farther through the circle.
A second arm became solid.
Its shoulders followed.
The building shook.
Somewhere below them, deep beneath the school, the Hellmouth answered.
The floor split between the tables.
A line of red light glowed beneath the carpet.
Giles’s face went white.
“It has connected to the Hellmouth.”
Buffy released the broken arm and reached for a stake.
“Tell me where to stab.”
“It has no heart.”
“Everything has a weak spot.”
“Buffy, it isn’t fully corporeal!”
“Then we make it corporeal.”
“How?”
Buffy glanced at the mirror shards.
At Casper.
At the reflected image the creature had created.
“Willow said you can trap a mirror thing by making it face itself.”
Willow looked up. “Yes, but the original mirror is broken.”
“Can we fix it?”
“Not physically.”
“What about magically?”
Giles looked at the spinning shards.
“They remain parts of a single object. If arranged correctly, they may still function as a connected reflective surface.”
Xander followed his gaze.
“There are about fifty pieces flying around the room.”
“I counted forty-three,” Willow said automatically.
“Of course you did.”
The creature pulled one leg through.
The floor cracked beneath its weight.
“Could Casper move them?” Buffy asked.
Everyone looked at the ghost.
Casper lay on the floor, fading.
The darkness had reached his chest.
Willow shook her head.
“He can barely move.”
“Then we help him remember.”
“How?”
Buffy knelt beside him.
“Casper.”
He blinked slowly.
“You came from Whipstaff Manor.”
No response.
“You live with three horrible uncles.”
The corner of Casper’s mouth twitched.
“Stretch,” Xander said. “Stinkie. Fatso. The world’s least reassuring law firm.”
Casper’s outline brightened faintly.
Willow leaned closer.
“You found your father’s mirror in an old room.”
Casper looked toward her.
“You watched our school through it,” she continued. “You wanted to know what classes were like.”
“You helped those ghosts,” Buffy said. “The woman in the bathroom. The soldier. The little girl on the ceiling, which, for the record, was extremely creepy.”
Casper’s eyes became clearer.
The creature’s third limb crossed the threshold.
It was not an arm or a leg. It was a cluster of pale hands fused together at the wrist.
Giles threw powdered iron at it.
The hands smoked but kept moving.
“Hurry!”
Xander crouched beside Casper.
“You met us.”
Casper looked at him.
“Today,” Xander said. “History class. Buffy broke a mirror, which was objectively awesome. Willow immediately started researching because she is the smartest person in any room, including rooms she’s not currently in. I made several insensitive jokes and then improved very slightly as a person.”
Casper almost smiled.
“And you,” Xander continued, “are Casper. You’re a friendly ghost.”
Casper’s face crumpled.
Xander understood too late.
“No, not like the— I wasn’t doing the annoying thing.”
“It’s okay,” Casper whispered.
The black veins stopped moving.
“You are friendly,” Xander said. “Not because that’s all you can be. Not because you owe it to anybody. You’re friendly because you choose to be, even when people are awful to you.”
Casper’s outline brightened.
“You’re brave,” Willow said.
“You’re one of us,” Buffy said.
The darkness cracked across Casper’s chest.
Light poured through.
With a sharp gasp, Casper sat up.
The black veins shattered into smoke.
The creature roared.
Casper rose into the air.
His glow filled the library.
The spinning mirror shards reflected him one by one.
“You need them in the shape they were before,” Willow said. “The frame was six feet tall, oval at the top, wider near the base.”
Casper lifted both hands.
The shards stopped.
For one impossible second, forty-three pieces of glass hung motionless in the air.
Then they flew together.
Not touching.
Not repaired.
But arranged in the exact shape of the old mirror, with narrow black gaps between each piece.
The creature saw itself.
Every stolen mouth screamed.
Its reflection showed not a towering shadow, but a small, shriveled thing curled inside a web of hungry ghosts.
The creature recoiled.
Casper pushed the mirror forward.
The reflected creature reached out and seized the real one.
Claws locked around claws.
The Desolate One thrashed.
The library shelves collapsed.
Books filled the air.
“Now what?” Buffy shouted.
“We force it back through!” Giles said.
“With what?”
Giles grabbed a fallen book and began reading Latin.
Willow joined him.
Buffy understood approximately none of it.
The creature understood enough to panic.
It turned toward Casper.
You will be alone forever.
Casper faltered.
The mirror shards shook.
The creature dragged one arm free.
Buffy leaped onto its back.
It felt like climbing a frozen chimney wrapped in wet cloth.
She drove her stake into the folds where its neck should have been.
The creature bucked.
Buffy held on.
“Bad news,” she said through gritted teeth. “You picked the wrong lonely kids.”
Xander grabbed the fallen emergency lantern.
Its cracked glass flickered.
He ran toward the creature.
“Xander!” Willow shouted.
“I have a thought!”
“That’s not reassuring!”
Xander hurled the lantern through the mirror.
It passed between two shards.
For half a second, the light existed on both sides.
The creature’s reflection caught fire.
White flames spread across its body.
The stolen ghosts tore free.
They burst from the creature in a storm of faces and hands and light.
The library filled with voices.
Names.
Hundreds of names.
The creature collapsed inward.
Buffy jumped clear.
Casper thrust both hands forward.
The mirror slammed into the Desolate One.
The shadow folded like paper.
Its arms, claws, and screaming mouths flattened against the shards and vanished into the reflected space.
The glass turned black.
Then Casper clapped his hands together.
All forty-three pieces collided.
The mirror shattered for the second time that day.
A wave of cold wind tore through the library.
The lights went out.
The red crack in the floor closed.
Silence descended.
Tiny fragments of glass rained onto the carpet.
Buffy lifted her head.
“Everybody alive?”
“Yes,” Giles said weakly.
“Technically,” Casper added.
“Emotionally uncertain,” Xander groaned from beneath an overturned table.
Willow crawled over to him.
“That was your thought?”
“It worked.”
“You threw our only light source into another dimension!”
“It was a high-risk thought.”
Buffy stood.
A pale shape moved near the ceiling.
Casper floated down.
He was still translucent. Still a ghost.
But he was no longer fading.
Buffy smiled.
Casper smiled back.
Then the library doors opened.
Principal Snyder stood in the entrance.
Dust covered his suit. One side of his mustache had frozen solid. Behind him, the corridor was littered with broken lockers, scattered papers, and several unconscious students who were beginning to stir.
Snyder looked around the destroyed library.
His gaze moved from Giles’s torn jacket to Willow’s chalk-covered hands, Xander’s singed eyebrows, Buffy’s stake, and Casper floating two feet above the ground.
Snyder blinked.
Casper waved.
“Hello.”
Snyder pointed at him.
“What is that?”
Xander sat up.
“New exchange student.”
Snyder fainted.
---
By seven o’clock, the official story was a gas leak.
Sunnydale had many official gas leaks.
They caused hallucinations, property damage, temporary frost, unexplained animal attacks, spontaneous neck injuries, and on one memorable occasion, an entire graduating class to forget the school mascot’s name.
No one found this suspicious.
The students were sent home. Mr. Weller insisted he had never seen a ghost and had merely become disoriented when the mirror fell. Principal Snyder woke up, denied fainting, and assigned Buffy two additional detentions for contradicting him.
Giles locked the remaining mirror fragments in a steel box.
“Can that thing get out?” Buffy asked.
“Not without an anchor. The creature’s connection to Casper has been severed.”
“So it’s trapped.”
“For the moment.”
Buffy sighed. “You know, sometimes I miss answers that end before the word ‘moment.’”
Willow closed the final research book.
“What happens to the other ghosts?”
“Most should return to the places to which they were originally bound,” Giles said. “Those who recovered enough of themselves may be able to move on.”
Casper floated near the windows.
Outside, the last trace of sunlight disappeared behind the school buildings.
His reflection did not appear in the glass.
Xander joined him.
“So.”
“So,” Casper echoed.
“Can you get home?”
Casper looked toward the steel box.
“I think so.”
Buffy approached. “Through the mirror?”
“Not that one.” Casper pointed toward a small decorative mirror hanging behind the circulation desk. “The doorway is still open. Just a little.”
Willow stood.
“Will the creature follow?”
“No. It’s trapped between the broken reflections.”
Giles frowned. “Crossing such a distance without the original mirror may be dangerous.”
Casper shrugged.
“I’ve been dead before.”
They all stared at him.
Casper frowned. “That sounded funnier in my head.”
“A common problem,” Xander said.
Casper floated toward the small mirror.
The glass rippled.
Beyond it, a huge dark house appeared beneath a stormy sky. Lightning flashed behind crooked towers.
Buffy peered over Casper’s shoulder.
“That’s your house?”
“Whipstaff.”
“It looks…”
“Haunted?” Casper suggested.
“I was going to say structurally ambitious.”
A distant crash sounded through the mirror.
Someone shouted, “HEY! WHO TOOK THE KID?”
Another voice yelled, “Maybe he ran away!”
A third said, “Nobody runs away from us! They run away because of us!”
Casper’s whole face lit up.
“My uncles.”
Three faces slammed against the other side of the glass.
The first was long and thin, with an enormous nose.
The second had a round head and a grin full of uneven teeth.
The third was broad, bald, and smoking a cigar.
All three screamed.
The Scoobies screamed back.
The ghost trio stopped.
The thin one peered through the mirror.
“Casper?”
“Hi, Stretch.”
“Where have you been?”
The round ghost shoved beside him. “We looked everywhere!”
The broad one squeezed in from the other side. “We even looked in the basement!”
“You live in the basement,” Stinkie said.
“Exactly! Thorough!”
Stretch noticed Buffy.
His eyes bulged.
“Well, hello.”
Buffy produced a stake.
Stretch vanished from the mirror.
Stinkie laughed.
“She’s scary. I like her.”
Fatso squinted at Giles. “Who’s the librarian?”
“I am not merely—”
“Don’t engage,” Buffy advised.
Casper turned to his new friends.
“I should go.”
Willow’s smile wobbled.
“Right.”
Xander stared at the floor.
Buffy folded her arms, then unfolded them.
None of them seemed to know what to do.
Casper looked from one face to another.
“Thank you.”
Buffy shook her head.
“You saved the school.”
“You pulled me out first.”
“We’re big on reciprocal saving.”
Willow stepped closer.
“Can you come back?”
Casper glanced at the mirror.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“But maybe.”
Willow brightened slightly.
“Mirrors are connected,” Casper said. “Not all the time. But sometimes. Especially old ones.”
Xander pointed toward the library mirror.
“So you could pop in occasionally?”
“Maybe.”
“Cool. But, as a boundary-setting thing, not in the bathroom.”
“Xander,” Willow said.
“It’s an important ghost rule.”
Casper laughed.
The sound was softer than a living boy’s laugh, but it filled the library all the same.
Buffy extended her hand.
Casper placed his palm over hers.
This time, for one second, she felt him.
Not cold fog.
A real hand.
Small. Solid. Warm.
Casper’s eyes widened.
Then the moment passed.
His fingers became translucent again.
Buffy swallowed.
“See you around, Casper.”
“See you around, Buffy.”
He shook Willow’s hand next, though they could not quite touch.
“Bye, Willow.”
“Bye.”
Xander looked at Casper’s offered hand.
Then he ignored it and stepped forward.
He tried to hug him.
Xander passed through Casper and stumbled into the circulation desk.
“Ow.”
Casper stared.
“I meant to do that,” Xander said into the desk.
Casper floated behind him and wrapped both arms around Xander’s shoulders.
Xander shivered violently.
“That is extremely cold.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Xander turned.
For a moment, his usual grin disappeared.
“Come back sometime.”
“I will.”
Casper drifted toward the mirror.
Stretch reappeared on the other side, tapping an invisible watch.
“Move it, bulb-head. Fatso ate the welcome-back cake.”
“It didn’t have his name on it!” Fatso protested.
“It said ‘Welcome Back, Casper!’”
“My middle name is Casper.”
“No, it isn’t!”
Casper looked over his shoulder at Buffy, Willow, and Xander.
Then he flew through the glass.
The mirror flashed white.
The image of Whipstaff vanished.
For a few seconds, the library mirror reflected only the battered room and the four people standing in it.
Giles cleared his throat.
“Well. That was…”
“Exceedingly difficult?” Buffy suggested.
“Yes.”
Xander rubbed his arms.
“Ghost hugs should come with sweaters.”
Willow touched the mirror.
“Do you think he’ll really come back?”
The glass fogged beneath her fingertips.
Words appeared in the mist.
SOON.
All three teenagers smiled.
Then a second message appeared beneath the first.
DUCK.
Buffy grabbed Willow and pulled her down.
Xander dove behind the desk.
Three enormous ghostly heads burst from the mirror.
“BOO!”
Giles screamed and threw the steel box into the air.
The Ghostly Trio howled with laughter.
Casper’s voice shouted from somewhere behind them.
“Guys!”
The three ghosts vanished.
The steel box crashed to the floor.
Everyone stared at the mirror.
A final line appeared in the fog.
SORRY.
Xander slowly stood.
“I have changed my mind.”
“About what?” Willow asked.
“Ghosts.”
Buffy brushed dust from her jacket.
“You don’t like them?”
“Oh, no. Ghosts are excellent.” Xander grinned at the mirror. “I’m thinking spring break in Maine.”
Giles groaned.
Outside, night settled over Sunnydale.
Beneath the school, the Hellmouth murmured in its sleep. Vampires climbed from fresh graves. Ancient things shifted in forgotten tunnels. The darkness waited, hungry and patient, as it always did.
But inside the library, three teenagers laughed.
And far away, in a crooked house overlooking the sea, a lonely ghost laughed with them.
For one night, at least, none of them were alone.
End