03E01 - Anne

While Cordelia flies off to Las Palmas for the summer, Xander, Willow and Oz learn to control the vampire population (to some degree of success) without the Slayer. Meanwhile, Giles follows false trails and searches for Buffy all over the United States, but as the new school year starts without the expelled Buffy, the Scooby Gang wonder where she is. Living under an assumed name, her middle name Anne, she becomes a waitress in big city, still dreaming of eternal love with Angel but tortured by the thoughts of what she had to do to him. She is soon recognized by another former Sunnydale resident, whose present alias is Lily, and Buffy/Anne helps Lily search for her sweetheart, Rickie, whose life-drained body Buffy find. Only later, after Lily goes with Ken, a man who seems to be some sort of pastor to the lost and homeless, do they realize that Ken is really the culprit in Rickie's death. When Ken pushes Lily and Buffy through a portal to a hell of hard labor they have to find out - can a Slayer handle the taskmaster demons? Will Buffy make it home to Sunnydale?