Book excerpt: Cora comes clean after a night spent together with Thess; her past is tied to the enemy in ways filled with the demonic and arcane, and it’s too much for Thess to bear. Thess’s destructive power is dangerously out of control, with not much left of the boardwalk as Soren’s gang approaches... And with Thess keeping the mantle of the Slayer, what steps will Buffy take to heal her trauma and start a new chapter?