The second volume of “Buffy Season Eight” was really fun to read, thanks to its lightweight story arc, which directs the spotlight on Faith – our misunderstood, and for a while now, reformed slayer.
Late one night, Faith gets a phone call from ex-lover Robin Wood, and it’s not a booty call as she first suspects. Wood asks her to slay-to-rest a bunch of child-vampires. Sure, they’re as murderous a demon as any other, but not just any slayer could take on such a task. As bitterly noted by Faith, she’s the one that people turn to in order to get dirty jobs done, dirt cheap.
Faith gets home from her PG mission to find Giles waiting for her. He too has a dirty-slayage job, one he cannot assign to his radiant blond girl, Buffy. Should Faith carry out this special task, she will be granted a new identity and an early retirement plan. But is bailing out from this second-rate hellmouth in Cleveland really what she wants?
The dirty-job, if you'd wonder, is to take down a gone-wrong-turned-evil slayer. This bad slayer, Miss Genevieve - or Gigi to her scarce friends - is a rich British heiress. Her only confidant is an evil warlock, who’s carrying around a spell book marked with the mysterious twilight sign. Since Gigi is protected by both magic and wealth, Faith has to let Giles transform her into a high society undercover girl, just in time for Gigi’s fancy-dress party.
Now, we all know that Faith has her own demons to fight, metaphorical and not. Her past still haunts her, especially the one where she’s Mayor Wilkins’ girl. A slayer falling for an older, evil, fatherly type? Completely diggable. Faith wants to help Gigi rather than kill her.
At the end of this arc we also get a glimpse of the mysterious Twilight guy. He is depicted – spoiler alert – as a masked super-villain with no distinct facial features ('cause of the mask). It seems that Twilight has slayers, warlocks, and the government working for him. Things look dire for our girl Buffy.
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