The career fair at school has Buffy down, for as the Slayer what kind of future can she have? Meanwhile, Spike, wrestling with a difficult translation of the book he stole from Giles, is planning to make that point moot for Buffy by killing her.
On patrol, Buffy comes across a pair of vampires stealing something from a mausoleum. She kills one, but the other gets away, thus further dampening her spirits. She takes it out on Angel, who suggests an ice-skating date to cheer her up. The next day, Giles is more than a little disturbed by Buffy's report of the kleptomaniacal vampires, and Spike decides to "bring in the big guns" to get rid of the Slayer: demonic bounty hunters known as the Order of Taraka.
A follow-up trip to the mausoleum confirms Giles' fears — the vampires robbed the tomb of Josephus du Lac, a theologian and mathematician who wrote the stolen book, a book of evil spells. Sunnydale has some new arrivals: a brutish man who gets off the bus from L.A., a mousy salesman who offers a woman free beauty care samples but whose entrance into her home is followed by a scream, and an exotic beauty who knocks an airport worker unconscious before emerging from a plane's cargo hold. Buffy's ice-skating is interrupted by the brutish man, who tries to kill her but is stopped by Angel. Together, Angel and Buffy dispatch the assassin, then share a romantic moment, unknowingly watched by the exotic beauty.
Giles explains to Buffy that the Order of Taraka is unstoppable, and that she should probably find somewhere to hide. Rattled, Buffy disappears. She doesn't go home (which, unbeknownst to her, is being staked out by the mousy salesman, who sits next to the maggot-covered corpse of the woman who let him in while his arm forms out of maggots). She instead goes to Angel's place, but he isn't there. He's at a bar, trying to find out from the vampire-friendly bartender who sent the Order after Buffy. Before he gets any useful information, though, he is attacked by the exotic beauty.
The beauty overpowers Angel and locks him in a steel cage that in six hours will be exposed to direct sunlight, then goes off to find Buffy. Giles has figured out that the book the vampires stole contains a spell to restore an ailing vampire to health — a vampire like Drusilla. Xander and Cordelia go to Buffy's house, trying to find her. They don't, but the maggoty salesman shows up and, enticed by his offer of free cosmetics, Cordelia lets him in. Buffy is awakened when the exotic beauty attacks her with a hatchet. They fight each other to a stalemate, and Buffy asks the girl who she is. "I am Kendra," the newcomer announces, "the Vampire Slayer." To be continued...
