How can you say that my behavior's unacceptable?
So condescending, unnecessarily critical
I've got a history of getting very physical
So watch your step, cuz if I do, you'll need a miracle

"Harder to Breathe" by Maroon 5

"So, this is what he looks like when he goes feral, then?"

Spike nodded at Doyle's question, keeping a cautious eye on the cage that held a fully-transformed Robbie. Doyle hadn't realized that the basement Jordy was allowing him to sleep in was also where they housed Robbie during the full moon. The first night had been all right, due to Robbie's unique werewolf composition allowing him sentience on the first and third nights of the moon. But seeing Robbie's monstrous werewolf form tonight basically promised that Doyle would be getting no sleep until sunrise.

"This is the mongrel in all his glory," Spike remarked. He was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, giving Robbie a hard gaze as the wolf crashed against the bars of the cage and tried to go for his throat. "Feisty bugger. Almost makes me wish I was soulless enough to put him out of his misery."

"Spike!"

"What?" Turning to Doyle, he scoffed at the man's horrified outburst. "It's not like we're teammates or anything. He's hardly come around at all since he came and brought back that bloody rock, which has been doing nothing but collecting dust all this time. So, as a concerned citizen of this sleepy little town, isn't it natural for me to look at a furbag like that and want to end him before he gets the chance to end us?"

"Natural or not," came Jordy's voice from the stairs as the boy made his way down, "I wouldn't suggest taking it on as your civic duty. I doubt that even you stand much of a chance against a wolf that big, and we can't afford to lose you, O Protector of the Enigmatic Chaos Stone. And besides that, he's my friend. Whether he's fighting in your little war or not, that much hasn't changed. Kill him, and I'll do worse to you."

"You and what bloody army, toothpick boy?" Spike jeered. "Just because you loom over your older cousin, don't think that that makes you some kind of manly man. Hell, the Olsen twins loom over your cousin."

"True, I need to walk past a wall twice to cast a shadow," Jordy smirked. "But remember, I don't have as good a control over my werewolf form as Oz does." Showing off the turquoise prayer beads he had wrapped around his right hand, he added, "If I lose a study buddy, I might just be upset enough to turn. Then I'll cause some serious problems."

"Please don't," Doyle pleaded. "I'm still reeling from the revelation that I'll be sharing living space with a crazed werewolf for a while. I don't need to know that you can turn at any moment and yet are not locked in a cage." To Spike, he asked, "Why isn't he locked in a cage?"

"For that matter," Jordy brought up, "why aren't you?"

"Who?" Doyle asked. "Me?"

"Yeah," Jordy replied. "Both of you."

"What, are you daft?" Spike asked. Pointing to himself and Doyle respectively, he declared, "Vampire. Demon. We're not affected by the full moon. Only the mangy beasts known as werewolves are, remember?"

"Everyone's affected by the full moon," Jordy proclaimed. "They just don't realize it. I was reading about it in psych class today. Interesting stuff. I mean, everyone knows that women's bodies are in tune with the lunar cycle, but men? You'd be surprised."

"Yeah, yeah," Spike shrugged. "The origin of the word lunatic comes from the supposed facial tick certain people get when they're affected by the full moon. Old wives' tales, the lot of it. If that's what they're teaching you in college, then I'm happy I had none of it."

"Oh, I don't know," Doyle remarked fondly, lying back on his rollaway bed. "Co-ed dorms, wild parties, obscene amounts of alcohol. Plus the occasional stint at actually learning stuff. All in all, I'd say that college was probably the best seven years of my life."

"Seven?" Jordy asked, dumbfounded.

"Hey!" Doyle exclaimed, sitting up. "Let's not forget that I hold a Master's degree, all right? Years of hard work and hours of dissertation-writing, that took. What, do you think I just forged my name onto a diploma or something?"

"Truthfully," Spike responded, "I wouldn't be at all surprised." Cracking his knuckles, he headed for the backdoor and told them, "Keep an eye on Marmaduke over there. I'm going to patrol the cemetery, make sure none of our little ghosts get antsy in the company of someone who can't fight them off."

"A little late for that," Jordy told him. As Spike came to a stop and looked back at him, he continued, "Just got a look at the evening news. A family of five died in a fire just a couple of miles away from here. Father Callahan over at Saint Mary's said that one of the victims had called him an hour ago, saying she saw the ghost of her first husband and he told her that he had been poisoned by her current husband. Said the whole family deserved to go to hell."

"Mother of God," Doyle breathed out.

"God's having less and less to do with this as the nights wear on," Spike murmured grimly. He had no doubt that the news would be in all of the papers the next day, along with the names, ages, and pictures of each of the victims. Five people, supposedly two parents and three children. And they were still only the beginning. "If we don't get a sign from the Powers soon, the entire town's going to be filled with stories like that." Looking to Doyle, he asked, "Can't you meditate or something to be sure you can get all the visions you're supposed to be getting?"

"Don't look at me," Doyle brought up, raising his hands defensively. "I didn't know I was missing out on anything until you had that little chat with the Higher Being. I'm as ready for brain-destroying visions as I've ever been, but if something's standing in my way, I'm guessing we need to find out what's blocking the reception."

"Fine," Spike mentioned. "I'll look for ghosts, witches, and stray werewolves. Who knows? Hopefully one of them will put up a decent fight and provide us with some answers." Knowing what was on the tip of Jordy and Doyle's tongues, he snapped, "And yeah, I'll be careful. As careful as I always am, at any rate."

"Silly boy," Doyle remarked after Spike was gone. "I was almost looking forward to sweeping the streets clear of his dusty remains."

It took him nearly half an hour longer to get to the cemetery than it should have.

It seemed as though Spike needed to stop every few steps to stake another vampire or chase a demon off. They had all began congregating in Woodridge since that summer, and November had already rolled around and he was still no closer to finding out why. There was nothing notable about this little backwater town, nothing except for a psychedelic nightclub for the kiddies and an overwhelming sense of familiarity.

Spike didn't have to dwell on why he was feeling a sense of déjà v. There was a strange tingling on his skin, a certain restlessness about him. He had at first attributed it to remnants of the psychological torture that he had been put through recently after a run-in with a certain vengeance demon, but now he knew better. It was the exact same thing that had driven him to Sunnydale, other than the prospect of adding another Slayer to his list of conquests. There was a Hellmouth nearby.

It wasn't open yet, and it probably wasn't active. But it was definitely down there, churning away and waiting for the right sacrifice or incantation to burst its doors wide open. How many of these uglies that Spike was systematically taking out were probably jonesing to be the one to cast open the gates of Hell?

"You know," he told the vampire that he was currently beating up, "there was a time when I was just like you. Well, not just like you, as I would never get such a God awful haircut, but you get what I'm saying. I was just a caustic little whelp, out for blood, mayhem, anarchy... you know: fun. But there comes a point in every vampire's unlife when he just wants to stop, settle down, get himself a soul, and save the world."

Finally staking the vampire, he watched the ashes scatter in the wind as he let out a single, embittered laugh. "Who am I kidding? No vamp in his right mind wants that. Explains why I was off my tit once I got that bloody spark back. No, I'm no good with the lectures. Leave that rot for Angel."

Putting his stake away, he looked up at the night sky. Angel. He was up there, watching him. Spike would have ordinarily pegged such thoughts as nothing more but spiritual malarkey, but Cordelia had pretty much given him proof of that during his encounter with her several days before. Angel's last conversation with Spike ended with acknowledging that sometimes a new hero has to "step up to the plate." And then Cordelia proclaimed that "he" wanted her to tell Spike not to strike out.

"Lucky sod," Spike muttered, continuing on his way to the graveyard. "You get the nice cars, the nice clothes, the sweet deal in L.A., and you take the coward's way out, and what do you end up with? Box seats to watch little William doing the work that you should've done. I swear it to the heavens, I'll get even with you for this, Liam. Just watch."

Spike hadn't been wandering within the confines of the cemetery for more than five minutes before he had the sensation of being watched. Stopping in his tracks, he could hear the sound of someone skittering away, apparently realizing that he had caught on. Turning towards a row of mausoleums, he quirked an eyebrow and remarked, "Well, that's not nice. What kind of person runs off without a simple 'how do you do?'"

Using hardly any effort, Spike leapt onto the roof of the nearest mausoleum and rolled off the back end of it, effectively cutting off his stalker before he could get away. Landing deftly on his feet, he said, "Now, how about you-" Cutting himself off, he got a clear look at the demon under the full moon and groaned. "Oh for-... Clem! What the hell are you doing prowling about?"

Clem had cried out in surprise upon seeing the vampire drop down in front of him. Putting a hand to his chest, he proclaimed, "Jeez, Spike, calm down! You almost gave me a heart attack! I was just looking for a poker buddy of mine. A vamp. He never showed up to the game tonight. You need to not jump to conclusions, pal. Aren't you concerned about your blood pressure?" Seeing Spike's blank expression, Clem realized, "No, I guess you wouldn't be."

"Jesus, Clem, moving about in the cemetery all quiet-like is gonna get you in one hell of a lot of trouble someday," Spike sputtered out. Reaching into his pockets, he found a pack of cigarettes and set about lighting one as he told him, "Besides, I should think you'd know better. If a vamp's playing poker against you and doesn't show up, it's likely he either got himself dusted or can't afford to pay up on last week's bets. You shouldn't go around playing with vampires, especially not the soulless variety."

Scrunching up his face at the smell of the cigarette, Clem waved the smoke away from his nose as he asked, "You are aware that we met way before this whole soul thing became an issue, right? I mean, you were the baddest vamp in all the land, and you were still a solid poker buddy."

"Wouldn't ya know," Spike murmured, taking a long drag from his cigarette, "I'm one of a kind. But these dime store vamps you associate with are little more than, well, a dime a dozen. Any distinguishing features about him? Maybe I can help you find him."

"There's not really anything special about him," Clem replied. "Brown hair, brown eyes. Average height, average weight, dresses like the average twenty-something Californian. The only thing Dave has to make him stand out is that ridiculous mullet that he refuses to update."

"Mullet?"

"Yeah."

Closing his eyes and sighing, Spike whispered, "God awful haircut."

"Oh Spike," Clem said. "Did you stake Dave?"

"Yeah, I think I might've," he replied. "Sorry about that. Only good vamp's a dead vamp or an ensouled one, after all. Hope the bugger didn't owe you a tidy sum."

"Nah," Clem remarked with a shrug. "More of the opposite, really, so you did me a favor. Thanks."

"Oh," Spike replied, surprised. "Good on me, then."

Zipping up his denim jacket at the sudden gust of a cold wind, Clem asked, "So, how'd the thing with Drusilla go? Did she and her vengeance demon boyfriend ever get around to exacting revenge, or are you still lying beneath the radar?"

"How's this for a shocker," Spike told him, "it wasn't Dru at all. Turns out, it was Harmony." Giving Clem a quick version of the situation that led to Harmony's very timely demise and his own stint in a psychological version of Hades, Spike leaned against the stone wall of the mausoleum and kept an eye on the graveyard. There were still ghosts hovering about, and it sounded like there were even some teenagers in the distance, off on a ghost hunt before getting the crap scared out of them and running off.

Spike felt that he really should have been more concerned about just how these kids were getting scared, but he found that he just couldn't muster the energy. Finishing his story, he plucked the cigarette from his mouth and looked down at it with a grimace. "Spike?" Clem asked. "You okay? You don't look so good, buddy."

"Don't know if it's the cigs or what," he replied, dropping the rest of the cigarette on the ground and stamping it out. "But for some reason, I've got this weird taste in my mouth. It's almost like...." Like blood, he suddenly realized.

For a split second, Spike was no longer Spike. He was a woman, battered and weak, the sharp taste of her own blood washing over her tongue. Above her stood her husband, the man responsible for the beating, and she was angry, so very angry, but also so tired from putting up a fight that she just wanted to lay down and rest, close her eyes and sleep.

Fearing that his horrifying visions brought on by Sadrahd the vengeance demon were returning, Spike made a startled sound and darted forward, shaking himself free of the grip he didn't know he had been in. Nearly crashing into Clem, he whirled around to see two ghostly hands protruding from the wall of the mausoleum against which he had been leaning. Upon discovering that he had escaped, the ghost of the woman that had been murdered by her husband stepped out from behind the wall, gazing at the pair oddly.

"All right," Spike declared, not liking how easily he had fallen for that. "All right, now that was completely uncalled for. You keep your hands to yourself, all right, chit? At least until I get enough drinks in me to allow me to actually enjoy that sort of thing."

"Enjoyment is temporary," the ghost told him, looking at Spike quizzically. "It is like life. Like death. Ultimately, it means nothing."

"Is this the part where I run away?" Clem asked, guardedly.

"This is the part where you shut up and let me sort through this," Spike shot back, never taking his eyes away from the ghost. Every time he had a direct encounter with one of them, he came away with a little more information. Of course, that bit of information usually led to a lot more questions, but he was used to that sort of thing by now. "I've asked this question of your brood for weeks now," he told her, "and none of them have managed to satisfy my curiosity. Now, I know the First is behind this-"

"The First?" Clem squeaked out, shocked. "Oh man, no one ever mentioned anything about the First."

"Clem, shut your gob before I do it for you, yeah?" Though Clem was probably the least likely to feel Spike's wrath, the vampire was in no mood to play around. The ghosts had a tendency of being cryptic to the point of being almost useless, and since he couldn't kill something that was already dead, he didn't like the idea of the ghosts being unhelpful nuisances. "The lady's gonna maintain her distance and answer me one simple, straightforward question. How in the bleeding hell is the First managing to wake you lot from your eternal slumber and pull you about like this?"

He doubted if any of the ghosts knew much of anything about their purpose in the grand scheme of things, but he needed to know. If there was some kind of spell that the First was conducting, if there was some kind of high priest minion or something... any information would be better than no information at all. Hell, even a riddle might prove useful, if he could get Oz and Doyle to help him work it out.

The ghost seemed confused at first, but then merely smiled. The smile turned into a grin before the grin evolved into a giggle. Soon, she was cackling wildly, setting both Spike and Clem decidedly on edge. "Eternal slumber," Clem laughed nervously. "It looks pretty good, right about now."

"Shut it, Clem," Spike retorted.

"Confused little soul," she finally said, slowly approaching Spike with an outstretched hand. He took a step back and ducked away from her reach, leaving her to stop directly in front of him, a look of pity in her eyes. "You think you know, don't you? You think you have all the answers? But you haven't yet learned. There are no answers. All that is simply is. All that will be will simply be. You should know this. It's in your nature."

"It's chaos," Spike spat out. "Yeah, I had me a lecture on that not too long ago. I know a little something about how the Random is becoming just a bit more randomized, sweetheart. Spare me the overview and get to the mechanics of the damned thing, unless you fancy sinking into oblivion for all time."

"Oblivion has no time," the ghost responded. "Time is just a measurement, and measurements are but scientific fact. Science is a wretched, useless philosophy."

"Well, it brought us motorcars and moving pictures, so I won't abandon science completely yet, if it's all the same to you." Despite the wryness of his tone, Spike was quite serious when he added, "I've got the distinct impression that you're toying with me. Aren't you, princess?"

Seeing no response from the spirit other than a narrowing of her eyes, Spike sneered and told it, "You go ahead and have your fun. In the end, that's all it is for you, yeah? Just fun. But like I told the Casper with the twisted neck a couple of months ago, I'm pulling the welcome mat out from under you right quick. So keep talking. Keep giving me what I want. Because every word out of your sorry mouth is just another stake through your heart, got that?"

Spike watched as the figure in front of him slowly began to vanish from view. Stakes through the heart shouldn't scare it off. But that wasn't what did it. No, he had noticed something about this ghost. It had been the first female one he had spoken to personally, and he supposed he just hadn't recognized it in the males. But when he had called it "princess," that changed things, didn't it? He didn't call very many people princess. That name was usually reserved for someone in particular. Someone very close to him. Someone who had been his princess. His "first."

Turning to look at Clem, Spike murmured, "Okay, so maybe I was wrong when I said Dru wasn't involved."

Oz and Doyle were less than happy about Spike's latest hypothesis.

"I am so not amused," Oz said, not for the first time. "You see this face? This is my unamused face. I don't use it very often. This expresses the depth of my unamusedness." Pacing before him, Spike shot him a curse before settling back deep into thought.

"Okay, hold on here," Doyle brought up after a deep swallow of his coffee. "I've never seen her for myself, but if this Drusilla really is involved, shouldn't we be not sitting around fretting and actually go out to look for her? She's basically a creation of Angelus, and we all know how messed in the head he was."

"You won't find her unless she wants you to find her," Spike stated slowly. "She's completely bats, but she's clever. She's... ugh!" His words faded out into an irritated groan as he punched his hand through the wall by the staircase, just a few inches away from where Jordy was sitting.

"You're severely depreciating the property value of this house," Jordy remarked.

"Jordy, you should be in bed," Oz reprimanded.

"No," Jordy replied matter-of-factly, rising to his feet to move away from the vampire who was now banging around on his side of the basement. "I should be studying about operant conditioning. Quite frankly, I find this much more entertaining and educational, especially if the world might not exist long enough for me to take my final exam."

"Not your fight," Oz said tiredly. "You're not ready. You're not strong enough. Any of this sounding familiar?"

Seeing that Jordy was about to retaliate, Doyle stood up and came between the two of them. "Whoa, whoa, okay, let's not turn this into a family feud. Regardless of where Jordy's strengths lie, we need him right now. As it is, it's just the group of us. And Mr. Snarly McSnarlingPants over there." The last was said with a gesture to the still-feral Robbie, locked away in his cage and starting to growl at the sight of Spike's flared temperament. "Just about every blood-curdling story I've ever heard about Angelus or William the Bloody includes some mention of Drusilla, so we're dealing with someone old, evil, and completely loose upstairs. Spike knows her the best, so I'd like to hear why he thinks that it'd be completely useless to at least try to find her and give her a taste of mean, hard wood." When the other men in the room all turned to give him an odd look, Doyle realized what he said and quickly closed his eyes, as though to avert the unwanted imagery. "I meant a stake!"

Choosing to ignore the unintentional innuendo, Spike responded, "This is a game. For her. Dru might've assisted in a near-apocalypse or two in her time, but it was never for the sake of wanting to watch the world burn. She was just in it for the excitement. Hell, to be blunt, it got her off. The bloodlust was always stronger within her than in any other vampire I've ever known, so if there was a chance that people'd be getting their throats cut, she was all over it.

"Not only that," he continued a bit more grimly, "but now she knows that I know. Or she suspects that I suspect. She knows me well enough to know that she won't need a plan to get to me. She knows how to cut me in ways you wouldn't believe. Attacking her blindly now will force her to work on instinct, which can be brutal. Giving her time to attempt to work out a plan-"

"Could be fatal," Oz mentioned. "Especially if she's working with the First."

"Dru doesn't work with anyone," Spike told him. "She plays nice, yeah, for a while. But there's always something she wants. And when she gets it, she'll drop the dead weight like a cross and go about her business."

"So what does she want now?" Jordy asked.

"Me," Spike answered.

"Not that he's cocky," Doyle remarked.

"I'm the one that got away," Spike explained. "She found me, stalked me, turned me. I'm her pet project. If she could take away my soul and turn me into a demon once, you can be damned sure that she'll try and do it again."

"Is that possible?" Oz asked. "Can you re-vamp a vamp?"

"Well," Spike brought up, "I once tried to torture the ever-loving soul out of Angel. Even if it can't be done, I'm sure it'll get her rocks off."

"So, wait, she's got a connection of some kind to the ghosts and... what?" Doyle queried. "She's using them to drive the world crazy one by one?"

"Agent of chaos," Spike whispered. "More and more of them keep cropping up. She's like my foil. My dark side. Me as I should have been."

"You're being just a little self-centered here, aren't you?" Jordy remarked. "Yeah, she might be your sire, but maybe this has nothing to do with you. Maybe you just happened to show up in a town that was chosen to be the next location of a Hellmouth at the same time that she started playing the zombie master."

"And this same town just happened to house a few refugees from Sunnydale," Spike brought up skeptically, "and be not too far away from a primordial artifact called the Chaos Stone that can destroy all of creation as we know it?"

After a moment of silence, Jordy said, "I've heard of stranger coincidences. Still, it doesn't mean it's about you. Maybe she got interested in the First after hearing what it did to Sunnydale. Maybe she practically has some kind of hero worship for it."

"Or the female version of a boner," Doyle mentioned.

Putting his head in his hands, Spike sighed, "I don't know what disturbs me more; the idea of my sire getting it on with the First Evil, or your horrifying lack of knowledge of female anatomy."

"Look, the point is," Jordy continued, "for some reason, she teamed up with the First. If she didn't learn how to make the ghosts rise, then that means there's someone else involved who's pulling Pinocchio's strings while she talks through their mouths. She's out there having fun and getting her Morticia on without you, so there's no solid reason to believe that her involvement has anything directly to do with you. And on top of that, there's still no solid reason to believe that she is involved at all. Unless I missed the beginning of this conversation, this is all just conjecture, right?"

"Just conjecture," Spike affirmed. "Except that I know in my gut that it's right. The way the ghost talked... the way all the ghosts talk. If she's not personally reciting their lines, there's definitely some kind of shared consciousness going on there. Major mojo, as someone would have said. Add that to the fact that she's something of a psychic...." Looking to Doyle, he asked, "Are we getting the big picture?"

"My visions," Doyle realized numbly. "If she gets premonitions, then that means she can potentially tap into the Powers That Be. My death severed my connection with the Powers, and maybe when it was brought back, she could have tuned into that and...." Gaping at Spike, he murmured, "That's why I've only been getting the visions Cordelia's sent me. She and I have a connection. A special bond."

"Before you go all Chuck Woolery on me," Spike remarked, "there's work that needs to be done. It's coming to a head, boys, and it'd be wise for us to stay away from Dru until we know what the hell she's been doing with herself all these years. Oz, I want you working with Robbie all day tomorrow. We need as many werewolves in tip-top shape as we can get. Doyle, go to the public library and bring back any and every text you can find on demons, magic, and anything slightly non-human."

Seeing the two men nod, Jordy sarcastically asked, "What should I do? Lend Doyle my library card?"

"No," Spike told him. "You're going to the University library. I doubt that your librarian will be another Rupert Giles, but I'm guessing that there are different materials available to students than there are the normal civilians. Claim it's for a research project or some such thing."

"This is sounding very much like a plan," Oz remarked. "What will you be doing?"

"I met up with an old friend of mine," Spike replied. "A demon by the name of Clem. I figure I'll play a few hands of poker with him and see what sorts of idle rumors he's picked up. Then, providing no one gets themselves eviscerated, I assume we'll all reconvene at an ungodly hour and start pouring over some horribly dull books and make absolutely no headway before something terrible happens that will blow the whole thing wide open."

"Oh," Oz commented. "So it's basically high school all over again."

Doyle couldn't remember the last time he had set foot in a library.

Scratch that, he could remember, but he chose not to. It had been the library at the elementary school where he taught, filled with lots of stories about the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine and Amelia Bedelia. He had sometimes read to the children and encouraged them to write their own stories, never knowing that he would be the subject of more weird and fantastic tales than even their imaginations would ever fathom.

He tried not to utter a low whistle upon entering the Woodridge Public Library. It was two stories tall and lined with more books than he could recall seeing in one place, but then, books hadn't been a really big part of his life lately. He should make it a point to try and change that.

Seeing the front desk empty, Doyle looked towards the reference section and saw a middle-aged woman seated at the desk, engrossed by her computer. Approaching her, he saw her hastily try to hide her game of solitaire behind a professional-looking spreadsheet document when she saw him coming. "Hello," she greeted. "Can I help you?"

"Sure hoping you can," he replied. "I'm, uh, writing this book, you see. A horror novel. And I'd like to base it on as much fact as possible, so I was wondering what you might have here in the way of, I don't know... demonology, magic, apocalyptic prophecies, and the like?"

He was mildly surprised when she turned to her computer and started typing in the keywords. Either Woodridge was seeing a lot more demonic activity than he had realized, or the Stephen Kings of the world all started out in this little town. "Can you be more specific, sir?"

He was about to ask if they catalogued their books based on the type of demon, but he didn't want to appear too knowledgeable about the subject. There might be only so much weirdness she could take, after all. "No, I can't, actually," he responded. "I'm looking for anything pertaining to the supernatural. Maybe I can fish out actual plot ideas from some of the silliness in these texts, huh?"

Judging by the look she gave him, he had overdone it. "Sir," she said steadily, turning to face him coolly. "You're clearly not a local. You're not another one of those people from the Sun or Enquirer here to dig into our alleged ghost infestation, are you?"

"Oh, me? No!" Doyle tried to grin charismatically, but that was hard to do considering that he was sorely wishing that he had gone with the research paper angle that Spike had suggested. "No, I don't even read those things. Not unless I'm in the dentist's office. Which is rarely ever. All right, that was too much information, I suppose." Dropping the act, he decided to see if honesty ever really was the best policy. "Look, I'm new in town, and I've seen things that are scaring the hair right off my head. If these things really do exist, then I'd just like an idea of what I'm dealing with here, you understand?"

Her expression softened slightly at his somewhat more truthful approach. "I understand very well." Turning back to her computer, she continued to type as she told him, "We've got a lot of hits under those subjects, so unless you're carrying a hundred dollars in change for the copy machine, you'd probably be better off taking the books home with you. Have you gotten a library card yet?"

"Uh, no...." He was beginning to think he really should have taken Jordy's card, as he surely didn't have any kind of proof of address on him, making this a wasted trip.

"Go to the front desk and talk to the circulation assistant," the librarian told him as her printer began to start up. "If you have an ID or something with your address on it, she can add you into our system within a few minutes."

"Right," Doyle remarked, accepting the printed list of books from the librarian. "That'd be... swell. Thanks." Glancing down at the multi-page list, he wondered how many of these books he could scrape the security bar off of and hide under his jacket.

Stopping at the still-empty circulation desk, Doyle grabbed a highlighter from a tin cup and began marking down the titles that seemed the most relevant. If nothing else, he could smuggle these out today and come back for the rest of them later, either with Jordy's card or "after hours" with Spike.

"Oh, sorry! I'll be right with you!"

Realizing that the circulation assistant was coming back and thought that he had been waiting for her, Doyle looked up and responded, "No, actually, I'm just-" He stopped when he saw the girl that had just moved to sit behind the desk. When she saw his face, her brown eyes widened in surprise, and he could almost see a blush rise to her cheeks, leaving him to wonder over her reaction.

"Doyle?" Marissa Harris asked.

"Marissa," Doyle remarked, looking her over. "Hi."

"Hi," she replied uncertainly, giving him a similar assessment. "Sorry, I... just didn't think I'd see you here. You don't exactly strike me as a... a library patron or anything."

"Well, I've got some surprises left in me," he answered, putting the highlighter back and giving her a small smile. "Same can be said for you, apparently. You don't exactly strike me as a librarian."

"Circulation assistant," she corrected. "You need a degree in library science to be a librarian. I'm just the girl who checks things in and out."

"I'm sure the guys that come up to your line have more to check out than just books," he complimented. "Speaking of, I heard you checked out of town. I'm guessing you just couldn't bear being away from me, but I'll understand if you choose a different explanation."

She uttered a small laugh, though he noticed she was still uneasy. He knew that her return to Woodridge wasn't voluntary even before she stated, "My aunt kicked me out." He was about to offer her words of sympathy, but she quickly shrugged it off. "Hey, I get it. She's got a baby on the way and can't afford to take in her unemployed niece. And it's just that much harder to get a job in an unfamiliar place, you know? Figured I'd come back home, work full-time here at my old summer job, and if the world doesn't end, maybe I'll earn enough money to get my own place. Far away from here. Far, far away. How is Ireland at this time of year, anyway?"

Chuckling at her words, he replied, "I wouldn't know. It's been years since I've set foot anywhere on the continent. Got myself pretty firmly settled here, for better or worse."

"You don't keep in touch with family?"

Doyle pursed his lips and tried to figure out the best way to answer that question. "On my mum's side, sure. We drop a line with one another every so often. Well, less now that they think I'm dead." Seeing her startled glance, he explained, "It was just easier to let them think I went out like a hero. Heroes don't come back for a life of mediocrity, am I right?"

"If you ask me," Marissa replied somewhat bitterly, "heroes shouldn't come back at all. No one should." Sighing, she remarked, "Sorry. That came out wrong." Before he could say anything, she looked at the sheet of paper Doyle had been highlighting and asked, "What are you looking for?"

"Oh," Doyle answered, almost robotically, "writing a book and want to make it realistic-"

"The ghosts are still causing problems, huh?" For a moment, Doyle had forgotten that just because Marissa didn't know about his own demon lineage, it didn't mean that she was ignorant to everything that had been going on in Woodridge. Heck, that was the reason she left Woodridge.

Her eyes scanning the titles that Doyle had managed to highlight, she breathed, "The Origin of Satan. The True History of Demons. The Beginning of Time: A Summary. Well, judging by what you're planning on researching, I'm guessing you made some kind of headway as to what's causing this. Can I take a stab at this and say it has something to do with the First Evil?"

"By all means, take several stabs," Doyle responded. "Anything to make that mother bleed and slow it down."

Flipping through the pages of the list, Marissa remarked, "Are you going to look into the OriginisChronicles?" When Doyle asked her what that was, she looked up at him. "Basically a summary on how the world was created and why. Supposedly written by some prophet or something sometime in the B.C. era and passed down orally until a monk wrote it down sometime in the seventeenth century, I think. There are only a few dozen extant copies throughout the world, two of them in California. There are questions concerning its authenticity, but I would've thought it'd be the main book on your list."

"Never heard of it," he told her. "But mark it down and point me in its direction. And while you're at it, see if you can pull a few strings and dump my name into your system so I won't have to hide it under my shirt on my way out. I want abs of steel, not abs of moldy old books."

"I can set you up with a library card," Marissa said, turning to the computer at her right, "but that won't enable you to take the Chronicles home. Books that old are kept under lock and key downstairs in the archives section. If I'm not mistaken, that one's probably in a display case or something."

As she reached into a drawer and removed a blank library card, Doyle asked, "What've I got to do to be able to get my hands on it, then?"

With a snicker, she replied, "Sneak into the library after we close and smash your hand through the glass." Realizing who she was talking to, her face went serious as she turned to gawk at Doyle. "You wouldn't actually do a thing like that, would you?"

"I've served enough jail time in my life," he answered with a smirk. "Though if you want to keep your job, you'd better hope that I don't decide to tell Spike about your proposed tactic." Seeing her downcast eyes, Doyle realized that he had just entered into what was probably an uneasy topic. "Oh! Hey, sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine," Marissa told him as she continued programming the library card's barcode into the computer. "It's... not fine, no. Not really. But he... Spike... told me that running away from my problems isn't going to solve anything. Won't change the past, won't have a great impact on the future. All I can do is take the stuff that happened to me and accept that it happened... and that I won't let it happen again."

Doyle observed her as she carried on with her typing in silence. Her jaw was clenched and her throat looked as though she had just swallowed back a sob. He couldn't be sure of such things, of course, but he knew one thing for certain: being back in this town would slowly drive her mad if she didn't have someone there to make things easier. "Damn right you won't let it happen again," he told her firmly. "And neither will I."

His encouraging words did little to make her feel better. Biting her lip as though wondering if she should say anything at all, she turned to him and said, "Doyle, you did all you could. You faced off against Angelus and came away with nothing but some bruised ribs and a broken hand. Not a lot of men can say that."

"Right," Doyle agreed. "And not a lot of women can say that they've done more than face off with Angelus and yet are sitting in a library, living, breathing, and being a productive member of society. Better than what me and the rest of Monsters Anonymous can say, being chronic unemployables and all."

"Monsters Anonymous," she scoffed. Doyle was relieved that she didn't pick up on the fact that he included himself with the monsters. "Sounds like Violet came up with that name." Almost reluctantly, she asked, "How is she? And... and Robbie?"

"Not too good, to be brutally honest." Marissa hardly moved as Doyle told her about Violet tiredly bowing out from their adventures after retrieving the Chaos Stone, and how Robbie had done the same in order to keep an eye on Violet. "Something happened between them in that cave," Doyle proclaimed. "I don't know what, as they're both mum about it, but whatever it is scared them away from little old us, possibly for good."

"Robbie too?" Marissa asked. "What's he been doing during the... you know. The full moon?"

"He comes back around for that," Doyle affirmed. "But if not for the fact that he's buddy-buddy with Jordy, we wouldn't have seen him at all since then. His feral half can give Freddy Krueger nightmares, but underneath that, he's the same kid."

Marissa said nothing for a long time. Finally, she mentioned, "That's good." Handing Doyle the newly-activated card, she told him, "You're ready to go. I put my home address down as yours, and I'll see if I can extend your due dates. And, um... if you promise not to tell the others that I work here, I'll see if I can cancel any overdue fees you might incur." Seeing him look up at her, she shrugged and explained, "I don't mind them knowing I'm back, if they just happen to see me around. But I don't know if I'm ready to do the whole socializing thing, especially not here at work."

"You've got to do it sometime."

"I know," she replied quickly. "Just... not here. And not... yet. I mean, you, you're different, you know? You're... human. And I don't want to harbor these prejudices against them forever, but... it's just easier with you. I think if it had been Oz or Robbie to just waltz in here, I probably would have.... I don't know what."

Doyle was no master of human emotions or at reading people. And yet, it almost seemed as though he could sense how irritated she was. Not at him or at her former friends, but at herself. She really didn't want to dislike them anymore just because they weren't human. She really was trying. Maybe there was hope for her yet.

Not knowing how to say all that without making it sound like he was judging her or being overly analytical, he simply accepted the card and told her, "Thanks." She gave him a small smile as he took up his lists, but said nothing as he turned away.

Instead of going out in search of the books, Doyle had a silent debate with himself. It really wasn't smart for a half-demon to try and be friendly with a girl who hates demons and who doesn't know about his demon half. If she found out by accident, she'd lose the last bit of trust she had in anyone in this town, and then what would that do to her? Still, he had been hesitant about telling Cordelia, and that had turned into a whole mess, since he had died just a little while after she learned the truth. Better Marissa hear it from his mouth rather than someone else's, right?

Turning back to her, Doyle quickly asked, "Do you want to get off?" Seeing her widened eyes, he groaned. "Crap, I have to stop saying things like that! What I meant was, do you want to do something... when you get off... of work?"

She was quiet for a long time before hesitantly asking, "Doyle... you're not asking me out, are you?"

"No," he responded, truthfully enough. Realizing something, he took on a slightly offensive tone when he asked, "Hey, and what would be wrong with me asking you out?"

"It's just... with a guy like you...."

"Guy like me?" Doyle was now confused. Did she know? Had she somehow learned that he was part-demon? Then why wasn't she avoiding him? Was she really seeing past the demon bit and-

"You know," she replied uncomfortably. "I've never dated older guys."

He blinked. Older. She had qualms with him being older than her. "Well, thanks for making me feel like a senior citizen. You know, Buffy had no problem dating guys 250 years older than her, and you're getting antsy because I'm... how old are you again?"

"Nineteen."

Pausing for a moment, he finished, "... over fifteen years older than you. God, really?"

"What?" Marissa asked, surprised. "You can't be in your late thirties."

"That depends. Do you count the years where I was dead?"

Covering her face in her hand, Marissa remarked, "Leave it to me to meet a guy where that would actually be a legitimate question."

"Either way, it's not a date," Doyle told her. "It's just... catching up time. There's stuff going on in town-stuff going on with certain people in this town-that you should know about. And I think you should hear it from a friend. And call me crazy, but I like to think of myself as a friend."

Putting her hands down, she gazed at him in silence. Doyle folded the papers in his hand in half, waiting for her response. She needed to know. If she was going to spend any amount of time in this town and if things were going to get as dangerous as involving Drusilla and the First, then it was likely that he'd be forced to use his demonic abilities sooner or later. He couldn't tell her now, and he didn't want to tell her in front of her mother, and so he was relieved when she finally answered, "Meet you at Neon at about seven?"

Grinning, Doyle replied, "I'll be there."

Robbie was just getting ready to go home when Doyle walked through Jordy's front door.

"A little help here," the half-demon called. Robbie got up from the sofa and went to his side, catching about half a dozen books before they fell to the floor. Oz got up as well and went to pick up two books that had lost their battle with gravity.

"Wow," he remarked, "what did you do, clean out the entire library?"

"Damn near to it," Doyle responded, dumping the armful of books onto the nearby easy chair. "Maybe after what happened in good old Sunnydale, Woodridge decided to gear up so the same thing won't happen to them. Of course, when you're preparing for a war, the best place to start is with your library."

"Well, if you don't know what you're fighting against," Robbie remarked, placing the books he was carrying on the coffee table, "then you're not really going to have much luck fighting it. Explains why we've been getting our asses kicked by these ghosts."

"You've been getting your asses kicked," Doyle corrected. "I've been holed up in the corner, searching every new demonology website that's cropped up since I've passed on. Looks like the books might just fare us better, though. Speaking of, I got a tip about something known as the Originis Chronicles. It's locked down in the archives section and the lady wouldn't even let me into the room where they keep the case it's kept in, but should anyone on our team develop a case of sticky fingers, that'd be a prime place to start."

"Originis Chronicles?" Oz asked. "I think I've heard of it. I thought it related mostly to werewolves, though. There are legends that it contains the secret origins of lycanthropy, though some scholars think it's all an elaborate hoax."

"Yeah, well, people thought that my visions were a way to turn a quick buck," Doyle proclaimed. "Which, at one point, sure, I suppose they were. Point is, assuming that oral tradition didn't lose something in translation, maybe this book's got something about the Chaos Stone. You can grab the book, translate it, and find the 'on' switch for our little rock and save the world. Have fun with that busy day, chums; I'm off to get me a shower. I'm dusty and sore, and I've got somewhere to be tonight."

"Where's that?" Oz inquired.

Brushing off his jacket, Doyle hesitated for a moment before replying, "Somewhere that doesn't involve evil things potentially coming to kill me when I least expect it." Seeing both of the werewolves look at him oddly, Doyle returned their gaze with a quizzical one of his own as he turned away. "What? A man's allowed one night to himself, yeah?"

"Doyle," Robbie called. Doyle stopped and turned to look at him, not liking that pensive look on Robbie's face. "Were you... did you eat something or stop off somewhere else while you were out?"

Confused by the question, Doyle replied, "No. Just went to the library and back."

"That's strange," Robbie replied quietly. "I smell apples."

"Well, I didn't pass a place called Eden and I didn't meet a woman named Eve, so-"

"Did you meet a woman named Marissa?" Robbie asked, already knowing the answer. "She wears an apple-scented body spray." Seeing Doyle's surprised expression, Robbie remarked, "She was my girlfriend, Doyle. We dated long enough for me to have her scent printed on my memory. Why didn't you mention you ran into her?"

Girlfriend? Doyle had known that the two of them had once been close friends, but he hadn't known that Marissa was Robbie's ex. Sincerely hoping that Robbie wasn't the jealous type, he shrugged his shoulders and remarked, "Didn't think she'd want me to. To be honest, she didn't look a hundred percent happy to see me, so I figured it'd be best to leave that alone for a bit."

"How long is a bit?" Robbie inquired, crossing his arms over his shoulders. "Long enough for us to do all the book work while you're off on a date with her?"

"Robbie," Oz warned.

"It's not a date!" Doyle blurted out. "That's the trouble with contemporary American society. You think that just because one man and one woman decide to go out and talk over a few drinks, they're automatically going to wind up in bed."

"Please don't put that imagery in my mind," Robbie nearly growled.

"We're not!" Doyle asserted loudly. "I'm going to tell her, all right? Tell her about me. Once she finds out my dad's a demon, it's not likely she'll want to do anything else than throw her drink in my face and head screaming for the hills. But she's going to find out sooner or later, so if she's planning on sticking around, I think it's best that she finds out from me."

"Don't get mad at the bloke, Hercules," said Spike's voice as he emerged from the basement. "From the looks of it, he's got the stones to tell her the truth about himself rather than risk her getting hurt by his demon half. More than I can say for you, if I recall. Besides, you and Violet make quite a pair of quitters, so it was clearly meant to be."

"Shut up," Robbie angrily remarked, flushed. Spinning around to grab his jacket from the coat rack, he proclaimed, "This whole 'us' against 'you' bull that you've been pulling on me and Violet since that night is part of what's keeping us away, you know. You might end up needing us, and all you can do is crack jokes."

As Robbie headed for the door, Spike quickly brought up, "And all you can do is keeping running away." Seeing Robbie falter a little in his indignation, Spike couldn't keep back an amused laugh. "That's what you're all doing, isn't it? You, Tinkerbell, the pup? But the pup came back, muscle man. And more likely than not, she didn't come back to run into your strong arms or trade quips with my quick wit or even to laugh at Irish's asinine pick-up lines. She's got her reasons for coming back, just like you've got your reasons for darkening that doorstep so often."

"Jordy's my friend," Robbie attested.

"Oh, bollocks," Spike scoffed. "I've got friends in Hell, but you don't see me popping down to visit them this often, do you? No, you just keep coming back to us and get all tangled in your knickers just before running away again. Difference between you and the pup is, she knew what she was running from, so now maybe she can square with it. You? You're ignorant and hopeless. Woodridge's answer to Riley Finn."

"To who?" Robbie asked.

"I liked Riley," Oz declared.

"No one ever claimed you were a man of taste," Spike told him disdainfully. Looking to Robbie once again, he continued, "Get going, then. Run off to the faerie or to wherever it is you spend your days now. You'll have to come back by nightfall, and then we can play this game when you leave tomorrow morning." Seeing Robbie merely glance at him, Spike waved his hand impatiently. "Go on. Don't let the door hit you on the ass, and all of that."

Glaring at the vampire, Robbie sullenly reached out for the doorknob. He purposely jerked the door wide open, letting in a rectangle of sunlight and causing Spike to have to back away with a groan. Slightly cheered up by that sight, Robbie turned to Oz and said, "Tell Jordy I'll be back at around six-thirty. I've got some studying to get done tonight."

Oz nodded and bade Robbie farewell, moving to close the door behind him. After a moment in which the three men merely stood in silence, he turned around and looked at Spike. "No, really, I liked Riley. He was like a Slayer, but with guns. We should invest in more guns."

Ignoring Oz's comment, Spike looked at the pile of books that Doyle had brought back from the library. Most of them seemed like the sort of things one could find at the occult section of any Borders, but there were a few leather-bound, musty books with crumbling pages. There might just be something useful in them yet. Looking up at Doyle, he asked, "How's the pup doing?"

"Good," he replied. "Real good. She looks great."

"Too bad," Spike remarked, turning back towards the basement. "I was sort of hoping she had a nasty fall somewhere down the line and lost most of her teeth."

"Hey!" Doyle exclaimed heatedly.

"Don't act so surprised," Spike told him coldly, sparing him a glance as he got to the basement door. "If not for this niggling little soul lurking beneath my skin, I'd be wearing her scalp as a hat after what she put me through. I tried to make nice, she wouldn't have it. So if she's decided she's going to come back to this demon-infested town and still have it in for us monsters, she'd better hope that our paths don't cross. I will take her out, and not in the way you're planning on, Casanova."

After watching Spike disappear down the steps, Doyle turned to Oz and asked, "So what part of, 'It's not a date,' do people seem to be having a problem with?"

For reasons not wholly known to him, Spike found himself at Neon that night.

He hadn't been to the neighborhood club in weeks, especially since the scum that usually frequented the place were now bold enough to make their moves right on the street. He didn't know if Doyle was planning on meeting Marissa here, though he sort of wished that the two of them planned to do something at her house instead. Not only was it safer, but Doyle could stand to get laid.

Coming back from the bar with a glass of whiskey, Spike felt someone crash against him, almost causing him to drop his drink. Looking up, he caught sight of what looked like a young, apologetic woman with dyed red hair and hazel eyes. He knew better. Vampire. "Sorry," she proclaimed, noticing that he was glaring at her. "Didn't mean to scare you, Spike."

Blinking, he replied, "Neat trick. How'd you work that one out?"

"Well, you're kind of famous," she remarked coyly. "The renowned vampire with a soul, killing off the vampires without souls. Though I've got to say, Angel was cuter." Hearing the growl rumbling in his throat, she laughed and added, "Calm down, tiger. You wouldn't turn a girl to dust in the middle of a crowded bar, now would you?"

Much as he hated to admit it, it was still too early in the game to go around staking vamps amidst civilians. Widespread panic would probably just help the First in its plans, hence why the ghosts were being brought out to play to begin with. With a small smile, he asked, "Don't suppose I can convince you to take a walk with me out around back, can I?"

She chuckled before turning away from him. "I already had my workout for the night. But if you're really that anxious to jump me, you can just keep an eye on me. It might just reintroduce you to the joy of the hunt."

"Not likely, Jezebel," he called out after her. He saw her slink into a corner table with a short, unassuming man that he had never seen before. From the looks of it, she was cruising for a meal. Fantastic. He really would have to keep an eye on her. "Damn it," he muttered, seating himself at a table from where he could keep the girl in view.

As the female vampire sat down across from him, Roderick looked up and saw Spike staring after her. Folding his hands in front of him and breathing hard from his recent sprint, he narrowed his gray eyes at the girl and asked, "Did he seem to notice anything?"

Shaking her head, she smiled as she replied, "Are you kidding? You're such a shrimp that he didn't even notice you once he saw vamp written all over my face. He's probably watching me close now, so I should probably split."

"No need," he told her. "I already slipped the drug in his drink while he was distracted with you. You've got your pay and I've got my delivery; now, if you want to sit here and have a few drinks with me while we watch the show-"

"In your dreams," she remarked. "I was just in it for the pay and for the shot at getting back at the bastard that staked my boyfriend. If my job's done-" Seeing Roderick gaze past her and widen his eyes, she asked, "What? What is it?"

"Crap," he hissed, skulking closer into the shadows and covering half his face in his hand. "Why is she here?" Looking back, the vampire saw a young girl just enter the bar, her surprised eyes on Spike. She was definitely human and didn't look like much of a threat, leaving the vampire to wonder why Roderick suddenly seemed so distressed.

Noticing his quarry's gaze, Spike narrowed his eyes and turned around. "Oh, bloody hell," he sighed, seeing who was approaching him. He wasn't sure whether to be gladdened or offended by how uncomfortable Marissa looked as she got closer, but the fact that she even tried advancing towards him surely meant something. He didn't know what (or if he should take his glass and smash it across her face before she opened her mouth) but he managed to bite his tongue until she came to a stop about a table away from him. "And look at what the cat dragged in. Remind me to shoot that bloody cat."

There was a long moment of silence before she asked, "What are you doing here?"

Giving her a perplexed glance, he gestured to his glass and remarked, "What, did someone forget that she lives in a free country? If there's booze to be had and no demons that want slaying, I think I'm allowed to have fun. Speaking of fun, I don't think I've seen your new boyfriend come in yet, so you'll have to wait. Preferably on the other side of the bar."

"I thought this was a free country?"

"If I'm not free to kill anything that annoys me, then I'm thinking there are certain limitations in even the most democratic of nations."

She said nothing right away, leaving Spike to stare sullenly at her. She wasn't leaving, nor was she attempting to join him. Just as he decided that she still couldn't figure out what she wanted and raised the glass to his lips, she spoke. "Doyle isn't my boyfriend."

It was his laughter that made him lower the glass. Shaking his head, he looked up at her and wondered if Buffy or Dawn had ever been quite this stubborn during their teen years. "It doesn't much matter what he is to you, Marissa. I've got more important things to work out than plotting out this week's episode of Gilmore Girls, or whatever sort of nonsense drama the whole you/Doyle/Robbie/Violet thing will turn out to be."

"What?"

"You haven't heard?" Spike asked as he turned to face her head-on, almost hoping to see her hurt. "Yeah, turns out your ex is harboring some sympathies for the pixie. I thought he was in love with you, but apparently, I was wrong. Very wrong. He won't own up to it, but he doesn't have to. Real convenient, them being neighbors and all. No one can complain about the noise they're making."

"Okay, stop," Marissa declared, looking down. Spike smirked at the disgusted expression on her face, trying not to wince at the pangs of shame he felt for lying to her. In truth, he didn't know if anything was going on between Robbie and Violet at all, though he certainly suspected that there was something they were hiding from the others. Still, as Marissa herself had proved, what's a little psychological torture amongst friends, right?

"What happened to pet?" Hearing no response from Spike, Marissa looked up to see him looking at her perplexedly. "You never call me Marissa. It was always 'pet' or 'love' or... what was the other one? Pup? Am I worth the three syllables now, or am I not worth the nicknames?"

"You vain bitch," Spike proclaimed. "I teach you a little self-defense, stop Robbie from tearing into your liver the first time he changed into a feral mongrel, and I rescued you from my soulless sire. You would be dead countless times over if not for me, and the only thanks I got for that was being blamed for every bad thing that ever happened to you and being made to feel every bad thing that ever happened to everyone, and now you're wondering why I don't want to be chummy?!"

"I was being manipulated," Marissa told him through gritted teeth. "That vengeance demon was twisting the truth, and I had just been tortured and raped by a vampire that was connected to you. Excuse me if I wasn't thinking clearly."

"Excuse you?" Spike sputtered. "You excused yourself. You said you needed to go off, and that was all well and good. You should have stayed gone, if you expected us to be best mates after, what, less than a month?"

"You were the one that said that what you went through comes with the territory of being a champion," Marissa shot back, her hands balled into fists at her sides. "What's wrong, you're not a brave, self-sacrificing hero for the great Powers That Be anymore?"

"Matter of fact," Spike replied, a little quieter. "Turns out I got the signals crossed. Far as I'm concerned, the Powers have no champion." Seeing Marissa's wary glance, Spike sighed, "Oh for God's sake! That doesn't mean I'm evil now! Still got a soul, remember?"

"Soul," Marissa scoffed. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Oh, you're just a laugh riot, aren't you?" Spike jeered. "My soul means that I can choose between good and evil. And I choose to do what's necessary for the world to continue cranking out good food and decent primetime television. If you want to label that as evil, then that's your own dilemma."

Marissa simply stood there, watching as he stared into his glass. Was he waiting for her to apologize? Waiting for her to shoot another insult his way? Waiting for... something? Crossing her arms over her chest and sincerely hoping that he would be the last unexpected familiar face she'd see that night, she murmured, "If you're going to try to save the world, it'd probably be a good idea to stay sober."

Gazing back up at her, he let out a smirk. She had conceded that he was attempting to do the right thing, so he supposed that was as good as he could expect right now. Still, he was always one to attempt to push the envelope. Picking up his glass, he remarked, "Vampire constitution. It'd take a lot more than a glass of jack to get me sloppy. Speaking of, a drink would probably help loosen you up." Holding the glass out towards her, he added, "You know. For your not-boyfriend."

She stared at the glass before giving him a mirthless smirk of her own. "I don't drink. You know that."

"I've forgotten," he stated, putting the glass down. "Bloody teetotaler."

"I'm not against it," she remarked. "I used to drink in high school. Until I got smart and realized that it was disgusting and would end up making me no better than my mother. Who, by the way, told me that two pale men with funny accents have been coming around every so often to see if I was back. Doyle, I could understand. I didn't think you'd care."

"I don't," Spike replied. "I've only been once. I don't know what Irish's intentions were, but I just wanted to make sure that I didn't have any reason to start worrying that you'd wish me into a hell dimension. Especially one that was reminiscent of High School Musical."

Just as Marissa was about to ask after the seemingly random reference, a scream was heard from the entranceway, causing Spike to jump to his feet just as a blonde girl came racing in. She held her left arm against her chest. It was bleeding. "Help," she called out, "somebody call the cops! There's a giant dog loose in the streets!"

As the people in the club all scattered for their cell phones as the same time, Marissa looked up at Spike. "It's the last night of the full moon," she realized. "Werewolf?"

"Possibly," Spike replied.

"Robbie?"

"Less likely," Spike answered, though he couldn't know for sure until he went out there. Turning to Marissa, he handed her his drink and absently told her, "Drink it or guard it. Just stay here and wait for Doyle."

"Spike!" Marissa called, seeing Spike race for the exit. When the door burst out inwards and a large, fur-covered being crashed against Spike, Neon's patrons erupted into screams. With a gasp, Marissa jerked backwards, bumping into another table and spilling some of the drink onto her white sweatshirt.

She moved to put the glass down on the table before turning to the fight between the werewolf and vampire. Thinking of something, she peered back at the drink. "Liquid courage," her mother used to call it, right? Knowing she'd need all the courage she can get and deciding that Spike's drink of choice couldn't be much worse than the cheap liquor she used to steal from her mother's stash when she was younger, Marissa grabbed the glass and quickly downed the contents.

Slamming the glass down, Marissa coughed for a moment before wiping her mouth and turning back to the fight. "Oh man," she groaned lowly. "That was rank." Reaching into her purse, she took a step towards Spike and the werewolf that she desperately hoped wasn't Robbie, meaning to get out a silver pen or something to aid Spike.

Even as the irony of her wanting to assist Spike crept into her mind, Marissa found that she couldn't move. Or rather, she did move. Instead of stopping at the floor, her foot seemed to go through miles of earth and she felt herself falling to the floor as a deep coldness washed over her. Her cheek hit the ground hard, and it occurred to her that she should have felt some kind of pain, but her body was in too much shock over whatever it was that was happening to her.

On the floor, Spike made a face as the werewolf's hot, foul breath fell upon him. "Why don't you buggers ever pop a Mentos before the moon rises?" With the rhetorical question out of the way, he grabbed for a bit of a broken chair and rammed it through the beast's shoulder, wincing at both the sound it made and the thought of the wounds it'd wake up with in the morning. "Sorry mate," he murmured, pushing the creature off of him. "But if it had been me, a wooden stick would have done far more damage."

Seeing the wolf wrench the wood from its shoulder, Spike realized that it probably knew that as it struck out at him with it. He managed to dive towards an overturned table, watching as the wolf dropped the potential stake and raced out the door. Could it hear me? Spike wondered, rising to his feet and staring after it. Why would a drooling mutt like that use a weapon on me rather than tear right in with teeth and claws?

Deciding that there was only one way to find out, Spike gave chase, never giving Marissa a second thought.

"Just how many dates do you think a resurrected man gets to go on in this day and age?"

Jordy glanced up at Doyle, an amused look in his blue eyes as a response to the man's irritated question after noting that they were running late. "I haven't taken a census on it or anything," he replied. "Besides, didn't you just get through telling Oz and Robbie that this wasn't a date?"

"Well, it's not!" Doyle protested, parking his car outside of Neon. "It's a not-a-date. I'm just... abbreviating it, you know."

"Uh-huh," Jordy remarked dubiously as they got out of the car. "And is it customary, during most not-a-dates, for one to ask for an impartial third party to join him for the beginning portion, to 'lighten the mood?'"

"I told you," Doyle said, leading the way towards the club. "I don't think she knows you're a werewolf. If she doesn't then maybe the two of you could strike up a conversation before revealing what you are. And based on her reaction-"

"You can decide whether or not to chicken out before revealing your big secret?"

"I won't chicken out," he shot back, knowing full well that he probably would. Heck, that was the main reason Jordy was really there, right? To make sure he'd be held accountable for doing what needed to get done. "I just... girls get skittish, you know? No law that says a man can't test the waters."

"Whatever, man," Jordy told him. "All I know is that you owe me a burger and onion rings for dragging me out here, on one of the wolf nights, too. I just... whoa." He stopped then, sniffing the air before moving to get a better look at the front of the club. "Huh. Looks like Neon's decided to redecorate."

"Oh yeah? New chairs, windows, what?"

"Try a lack of a door," Jordy remarked, approaching Neon a bit more carefully. "Along with a distinctive ambience shift. They went from 80's music video to the aftermath of a 70's kung-fu flick." As Doyle stepped in besides him to get the same vantage point, Jordy shook his head. "I don't like this. I smell werewolf all over this mess."

Looking at the remnants of the glass door and the splinters of wood from several pieces of broken furniture littering the floor, Doyle asked, "How can you tell?"

"Because. I smell werewolf all over."

"Oh, right," Doyle realized.

Glass crunched beneath his shoe as he carefully entered. Though there were less people around the entrance than normal, it looked like whatever had happened had happened long enough ago that the patrons were able to move on. It seemed that Neon's proprietors didn't want to lose business on a Friday night, so they simply cranked up the music and probably handed out free rounds.

A couple was on their way out, and Doyle gingerly touched the man's shoulder and asked, "Hey, mind telling me what went on here?"

The man was obviously drunk and saw that as some sort of threat, but his girlfriend put a hand on his chest as she laughingly chided him. Looking at Doyle and Jordy, she explained, "Some wild dog just crashed in here about fifteen minutes ago. Landed right on this British guy. It looked like he knew what he was doing, though, since he ran out after the thing. Probably an off-duty animal control guy. Steve from security is moving around the block to make sure the dog doesn't come back, then he's going to come in and clean up this mess. They really oughta hire more people in this dive."

"Uh-huh," Doyle replied, pretending to quickly lose interest. When the couple left, he and Jordy exchanged glances. "A British guy who knew what he was doing. Wanna place a bet and say that Spike's dog-walking right about now?"

"I hope it's Spike," Jordy admitted, having to speak uncomfortably loud over the music. "While he's not exactly a cuddly Sesame Street character, at least his soul's good enough that he won't hurt the wolf anymore than he has to."

"God, you just brought to mind horrifying images of Angel and Spike as Bert and Ernie," Doyle muttered, heading for the bar. "Place is a bit understaffed," he noticed, seeing the lone bartender fulfilling scores of orders. "Maybe I could do with a bit of honest work for once."

"Honest work? You?" Jordy nearly laughed as he sat himself down on the one free stool at the bar. "And Spike's next in line to be Pope."

"I think he's Church of England," Doyle mused. "They're not Pope-friendly, if I recall." When the bartender finally noticed them, he ordered Jordy's food, along with a beer and a Sprite. Leaning back against the counter, he looked around the dancing throngs of young adults. "I hope Marissa doesn't flip out when she sees the door. Worse yet, hope she wasn't here when the whole thing happened. She probably bailed on me."

"Yeah right," Jordy replied. "If Spike was here, she probably jetted way before she even saw the werewolf."

"That Spike, man," Doyle commented. "What a buzz kill." Standing straight, he looked towards the center of the group of dancers. He thought he saw someone familiar. "Huh... well, looks like Marissa made our date after all."

"Date?" Jordy asked with a smirk as Doyle began heading in that direction.

"Abbreviating," he repeated, walking backwards as he talked to Jordy. "Guard the drinks with your life, sir. I've got a girl to drag over here before laying some big stuff on her." That said, he turned and disappeared amidst the dancing crowd.

Turning back to the bar and thinking about it, Jordy murmured, "Oh man, I hope that wasn't a double entendre."

Awkwardly elbowing his way through the dancers and smiling at the occasional single-looking girl, Doyle eventually made it to Marissa. He stopped, uncomfortable, upon seeing that she was exuberantly dancing with two guys, both of them looking like they just stepped out of a Calvin Klein advertisement. Telling himself that he sure was happy that this wasn't a date, he shoved his hands in his pockets and coughed loudly, trying to get her attention.

Even as he realized that the music was far too loud for him to be heard, Marissa looked up and met his eyes. "Doyle!" He was relieved by her bright smile as she moved towards him, quickly forgetting about the two men that were left looking after her. Doyle could see that she was breathing hard and had a slight sheen of sweat on her face. Judging by that and her mussed-up hair, she had been dancing for a while. "Nice of you to show up."

"Yeah, sorry," he remarked. "Got a little tied up with... you know... the dogs."

"Robbie and Oz," Marissa realized quickly, grinning at their names. "Yeah, we had a run-in with one of their distant cousins not too long ago. Ugly thing, too. I'll take Robbie over that son of a bitch any night of the week."

Doyle was mildly surprised by her choice of words, but tried to pay no mind to it. "Uh, right. Well, Robbie's certainly a nice-looking young man. He's got that whole clean-cut, apple pie thing going for him, and he's got those silly growths on his arms. What are they called again? Oh, right. Muscles."

"Do I need to leave you alone with your thoughts?" Marissa asked coyly. Stepping closer to him, she lowly remarked, "Besides, muscles aren't everything, you know. There's also personality. But personality's for wimps. There's eyes, nice blue eyes that keep on staring at you when they think you're not looking. There's hair, the kind that you can really run your fingers through. There's lips-"

When Marissa had actually run her fingers through Doyle's hair and reached up as though to kiss him, he grabbed her hand and took a step back, surprised. "Okay," he remarked, finally piecing it together. "Judging by your newfound talkative nature and the smell of my dear buddy Jack coming off you, I'm going to guess that you're drunk."

"Why?" Marissa asked. "Because I'm telling the truth? Because I've realized that humans are pretty much nothing but the form of flesh over muscle over bone? Come on, that's what we are, right? That's what your buddies at Monsters Anonymous would like me to believe, right? That humans and werewolves and all of us are just bundles of neural impulses and animalistic urges. We all eat, we all sleep, we all, you know, do other stuff."

"Marissa," Doyle stated steadily. "You. Are. Drunk."

"As a goddamned skunk," she proclaimed loudly.

Though Doyle didn't want to encourage her, he couldn't help but laugh at her response. "Come on," he told her, taking her hand and gently leading her out of the throng. "Jordy's by the bar with the drinks. You'll steal a couple of his onion rings and drink something nice and caffeinated, and you'll be right as rain in a few."

He stopped when she pulled away from him. "No," she told him. "I'd rather dance. Besides, you don't go stealing a guy's food. They get testy, and then they get vicious. And while Jordy's not exactly my mortal enemy or anything, I don't wanna be the one to plug him if he decides he's going after finger food. I like my fingers."

"What, are you saying you're scared of Jordy?"

"Would that surprise you?" Marissa queried, raising an eyebrow. "Or, what, you think that just because I don't talk about Jordy being a werewolf that I don't know about it?" Seeing Doyle's disappointed expression, she scoffed, "Oh man, you think that I'm Captain Oblivious, don't you? Oz looks after werewolves, and he also looks after his cousin. I put two and two together back in kindergarten, D. You can't tell how I feel about Jordy? Fine. I'll show you."

Widening his eyes, Doyle stepped in front of Marissa, meaning to block her way as she moved forward. "Whoa, hey, wait a minute-" He was cut off when she violently shoved him away, causing him to crash into a group of dancers.

"Hey Jordy." Jordy jerked back when he felt a pair of hands on his shoulders and heard a voice surprisingly close to his ear. Turning around, he didn't know if he should've been relaxed or even more worried when he saw Marissa standing behind him, a playful smile on her face.

"Hey," he replied, keeping his tone light enough. "Came by with Doyle, thought we'd have a chat. Where is he?"

"Is that a question, or the beginning of an interrogation?"

"You tell me."

Marissa grinned at him then, letting out a small laugh. "You're cute," she told him. "Real cute. Hey, let's forget that question. Here's a new one." Shocking him by putting her arms around him and sitting on his lap, she quietly asked, "How do you feel about motels?"

"Marissa!" Doyle called, just managing to get to the pair. The cry sounded like it was trying to be a warning, but he was too perplexed to give it the proper weight. Whatever he had expected her to do to Jordy, it certainly wasn't this.

Jordy held one of his hands up to Doyle to stop him, doing his best to ignore the instinct that told him to hold on to her so she wouldn't fall. Never taking his eyes off of Marissa, he remarked, "Personally, I think they're dirty and unsanitary. If I want that, I can just sleep in my basement. Can I ask what this is about?"

"Do you have a problem knowing when you're being hit on?" Marissa asked.

"Not at all," Jordy responded. "I'd just rather it not be you." Seeing Marissa's widened eyes and realizing that he hurt her feelings, Jordy looked around, trying to find some way to change the subject. "Got a little sloppy there with the drinks," he noticed, seeing the stain on her sweatshirt. "Friends don't let friends drink and dance. Not only does it get messy, but the aftermath shows up on You Tube."

Smirking, she answered, "This? It was Spike's drink, so it's not like it cost me any money on booze. Besides, I thought guys liked it when girls were a little bit dirty." Moving one hand to slowly pull down the zipper of her shirt, she asked, "Or did you just want to watch me peel it off?"

Noting the discomfort on the boy's face, Doyle walked up to them and sternly told Marissa, "All right, that's enough." Grabbing her arm, he pulled her off of Jordy, this time prepared for any surprise shoves. "What's gotten into you?" Doyle asked, his question more literal than it would ordinarily be. "This isn't you."

"I told you," she retorted, yanking herself out of his grasp. "I'm drunk."

"That's not like you," he repeated, grabbing hold of her shoulders. "You don't drink. You told me that yourself. I even ordered you a Sprite because that's what you said you preferred."

"Aw, how sweet," she remarked sarcastically.

"Marissa," he firmly said, giving her an involuntary shake, "this isn't like you. Spike spilling his drink on you isn't enough to make you go on a binge, so why don't you let us help you? Was it the werewolf? Did it scare you? Did Spike say something?"

"Oh, just bug off, will you?" Marissa groaned, disengaging herself from Doyle. "Do you think you know me? That you understand how I work? You saw me after the whole Angelus thing and saw a messed up little girl, and yeah, she needed help. But now, just because I don't choose to run to a knight in shining armor and instead decide to loosen up, that's when you try to go all therapist on me? I'm having fun. I'm being someone who isn't creeped out by the fact that Jordy might just turn on me. Way to have a double standard, D."

Not liking the attention they were getting by some of the others at the bar, Doyle closed in on her and fiercely whispered, "This isn't about double standards, all right? You're acting strange, and I...." Looking down at the spot on her shirt, Doyle trailed off before asking, "Did you say that was Spike's drink that got spilt on you?"

As though confused and somewhat frustrated that Doyle's antagonism just faded away, Marissa answered, "Yeah. Half of it. Decided to down the rest, and then Spike ran off and I figured it was safe to let go. Be me. Be me for real, I mean."

Doyle quickly met her eyes, sensing another meaning in her words. She reached a hand towards his face, as though she meant to caress him, but he simply grabbed her hand and looked at her with a great deal of concern. "Marissa, that drink... I think it might've done something to you. You need to come with us-"

"Threesome action?"

Closing his eyes and trying his best not to be unnerved by the crude question, Doyle continued, "I think something might have happened to you. Please, you have to come back to the house with Jordy and me. We'll fix this."

She looked at him for a long time before glancing at Jordy. Though he didn't know what was going on, he seemed to believe that Doyle did, and so his worry was sincere. Returning her gaze to Doyle, she smirked and replied, "Nothing broken, sweetheart. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a night to enjoy."

As though anticipating some kind of resistance from Doyle, she pushed him in the midsection with both hands, effectively getting him out of her way and knocking the wind out of him. Jordy stumbled to his feet to catch Doyle before he lost his balance, and by the time they righted themselves, she was gone. "Okay," Jordy remarked, his hand going into his jacket pocket for his prayer beads. "Overdoing the alcohol, much?"

"I wish it were that easy," Doyle murmured, his eyes scanning the club for Marissa. "A bit of hooch won't stick around for longer than a few hours and leave you with nothing but a massive hangover the next morning."

Also looking for and finding no trace of Marissa, Jordy thumbed the prayer beads in his right hand and tried to keep himself calm. Being out on one of the nights of the full moon and then getting an unexpectedly close encounter with his friend's AWOL ex wasn't exactly helping him. "Okay," he said, "so what is it, then?"

Praying that he was wrong, Doyle replied, "I think it's some kind of demonic possession."

With his hands in his pockets, Spike looked up at the darkened building of the Woodridge Public Library.

He had walked around the entire block, scoping for weaknesses in their alarm system. There didn't appear to be anything other than a standard control box that could easily be cracked even without over one hundred years of experience in sneaking into places he shouldn't. Still, he was after the Originis Chronicles. The staff wouldn't even let Doyle near it in broad daylight; if they had any brains, they surely would make certain that it'd be only more difficult to get to it come nightfall.

Of course, Spike knew, that would imply that anyone in this dinghy little down had any brains at all. Unless someone was working some kind of magic to keep them rooted in place or blinding them to the involvement of the cemetery's ghosts to the recent murders, there was no reason for them to simply carry on like it was another perfect day in Suburbia. As far as he had been able to tell, even the basic crime rate hadn't gone up.

Then again, that's about to change, Spike thought to himself as he easily scaled the wrought iron gates surrounding the building. Landing silently on the other side, he strolled around the side of the building, finding a set of stairs that presumably led to a basement storeroom or some such thing.

His eyes scanned the dim doorway for wires or other signs of an alarm system, but he stopped when he saw that the door was ajar. Tilting his head and deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth, he nudged the door open and crept inside. He couldn't hear the sounds of any overworked librarians doing whatever it is an overworked librarian would do, and so he began walking down the dark corridor.

Seems a bit easy, Spike thought, suddenly wary. Doyle happens to hear tell of a book that might just help us with the Chaos Stone, and when I pop up at the library unexpectedly, the door's just wide open. No one even knew I was coming, since I was off with that werewolf-

It was the thought of the werewolf that stopped Spike in his tracks. Oz had mentioned something about the Originis Chronicles being rumored to hold the origin story of the werewolves. And the beastie that Spike had chased out of Neon hardly put up much of a fight, choosing instead to turn and run off at a speed that had nearly surprised Spike speechless. What if the wolf was one of the new breeds? Stronger, faster... smarter? What if it had heard about the Chronicles being in the library and decided to sneak in, get it, and had just stopped off for a bit of a snack before coming across Spike and turning tails?

Narrowing his eyes as he continued to ponder over this, Spike thought he might know who the werewolf in question was. He hadn't heard about any new lycanthropes coming into town, and there was only one that could be considered part of this new generation: Robbie. The boy still didn't have complete control over himself, and he had been there when Doyle announced that the Chronicles were located in the archive section of the library. True, Spike recognized Robbie's wolf form, but it changed little by little every month, depending on which night of the full moon it was.

Just when he decided that he would be able to smell the nauseating stench of rabid werewolf in the hall, Spike picked up on another scent. It was softer than he had expected, but not at all unfamiliar. Rolling his eyes, he muttered, "Crap."

Coming across an open doorway with a small cylinder of light shining through, Spike peered through and saw Marissa Harris sitting on a desk, a large tome spread open on her lap as she flipped through the pages in the meager illumination provided by a penlight.

She blinked as the overhead lights came on and the door shut behind Spike. Seeing the vampire in question, she didn't even get a chance to say anything before Spike noted the broken glass of a nearby display case and spoke up. "Punch your way to the goods, then? I might not know a lot about work etiquette, but I'm sure that would probably get you fired." As Marissa shut off her flashlight, Spike noticed the raw skin on her knuckles. She really had punched her way into the display case.

"What's the matter, Spike?" Marissa asked, closing the book and holding it against her chest. Spike narrowed his eyes, not liking the empty smile she flashed him as she added, "Upset that I'm taking a page out of your book?"

"Don't know how literal you're being," Spike remarked, "and I don't think I care to find out. If that's the Originis Chronicles-"

"It is."

"-then I suggest you hand it over."

"Why?" Marissa got up to her feet, still clutching the book against her. "You wouldn't even know about this book if it weren't for me. I told Doyle about it, and I'm the one who had the keys and the balls to get to it. It's my ass on the line once the library discovers it missing, so I think I've got a right to look at it."

"Won't disagree," Spike told her, wondering if he should attempt to approach her. There was something chilly about her gaze, something eerily familiar. "Still, you'd have to admit that it's a bit foolish sitting at the scene of the crime. If you want to look at the pretty pictures, you-"

"This isn't about me glancing at it before leaving it with you and the rest of your little team, okay?" Marissa shot back. "I need this book. It has information I want."

"What, a nice little spell for how to further torment your vampire friends?"

"Not everything's about you, Spike," she darkly replied. "This is about me. Something's happening to me, and I need to figure out what it is."

Spike paused for a moment before nodding. "Seems that way. Care to tell me about it?"

"I think you know, don't you?" Marissa remarked. "You know even better than I do. And this book knows even more. I didn't understand it at first, didn't quite get it. But there's a feeling... like suddenly being free without ever knowing that you were trapped. And part of me feels like I should be disgusted, but the majority of me just doesn't care."

Spike suddenly felt a cold stab of something travel down his spine. Pity? Fear? Maybe it was just a disgusted sort of bewilderment. Whatever it was, he whispered, "You've lost your soul."

She stared at him for a long time before nodding. "Yeah. That's what I've managed to figure out from the book. Didn't think humans could survive without a soul, but hey, guess I was wrong."

"And you think some little instruction manual's gonna help you get it back?"

"Oh, you're dense, aren't you?" Marissa laughed. "I came here figuring that you or one of your buddies would want the book, and I thought it'd be fun to see if I can actually get to it without getting caught and then pass it along like a peace offering. You don't bug me, I don't bug you. But then I looked through it and realized that there was a lot of stuff here about the nature of souls, and how 'God' realized that humans were no different from animals without having a bit of Heaven's light inside of them. That's how Brother Montgomery describes a soul. 'Heaven's light.' Without it, humans are cold, empty, instinctive... everything you were when you didn't have a soul."

"That sounds about right," Spike agreed, finally ambling towards her slowly. "Humans without souls are just animals. Worse than that, they're demons. Animals don't have any sense of logic or understand the concept of right and wrong. But humans do. And if they ever manage to lose their soul, they figure they don't have much else to lose, so why not experience with wrong?" In a quieter voice as though trying to comfort her, he added, "We can fix this, pet. "

"Pet? I thought I was a vain bitch," Marissa brought up. "The funny thing is, you were wrong. I wasn't vain. I worried and cared and felt. And now? I just don't. But what you and Doyle don't get is that there's nothing to fix. Not anymore. This is the way I was created. Nothing's broken. Something's gone, but nothing's missing."

"This is the part where you speak in parables, then?" Spike asked, knowing full well that he wouldn't be able to convince her that she was wrong. He knew what it was like being soulless. You didn't want a soul. You didn't want that burden again. You just wanted to be. He was the only known exception to that rule, and he had only learned that after years of indulging in his darker urges. "You're free, fine. I get that. So go off and enjoy the night. All I ask is to be able to get a look at that little book you've got with you."

"So that you can save the world?" Marissa scoffed. Spike had begun circling around her, and he saw that she was circling backwards, not willing to give him any kind of advantage.

"You don't give a piss if the world gets saved or not," he told her. "Like I said, I get that. All you care about is the here and now, and you're not as psychopathically deranged as Angelus, so I don't think you're out to destroy the world or anything. So how's this for a barter: put the Chronicles down, and I won't bother tracking you. You can go and have fun, so long as you don't hurt anyone or get in my way."

Marissa tilted her head at him, gazing at him quizzically. They had circled enough so that she was nearly at the door. Spike was certain that she believed she was some sort of superhuman now and would be able to outrun him. A little freedom can give one some funny ideas about what they're capable of.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Marissa inquired. "I know now. I know what a soul does to people who consider themselves 'good.' You couldn't let me walk out of here. Not when there's a chance I'll be a bad, bad girl."

"One thing I'll say for you, pup," Spike replied. "You're not stupid."

Marissa hardly had the chance to move before Spike was already at her side. She swung a fist at him, but the large book made her punch awkward, and he easily deflected it. Grabbing her shoulders, he flung her to the side, forcing her back against the wall. She let go of the book to steady herself against the wall, and it was only Spike's quick reflexes that allowed him to catch it before it could fall to the floor. Yellowed pages were already loosened from the ancient binding, and Spike really didn't feel like sitting on the floor and trying to arrange the fallen pages correctly.

Momentarily distracted with making sure that the book was intact, Spike looked up just as Marissa lunged at him. He took a step back, but she grabbed onto the book and tried to pull it away from him. "You can't have it," she yelled at him.

"Sorry, how were you planning on stopping me?" With that, Spike shoved the book into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her and forcing her back. He reached out for her again, meaning to hit her hard enough to daze her, but her hand had gone to her chest and grabbed at something, which she shoved into Spike's hand. He hissed as the crucifix burned his skin.

Seemingly strengthened by his pained sound, Marissa dove for him again, colliding with him and landing on top of him as they hit the floor. Spike screamed as she pressed the small cross into his cheek, and he felt the book being taken away from his hands. "Vampires are easy to stop," she uttered.

She made a startled sound as the heel of Spike's hand collided with her chin, forcing her teeth to clack together. As she backed off, Spike forced himself get up and wiped at his cheek with his sleeve, wincing at the burn. "Then why haven't you managed to stop any yet-?"

The question was cut off when Marissa suddenly kicked him hard in the groin, causing him to double up. Rather than wait around to exchange another round of snide remarks, she grabbed the Originis Chronicles and jumped to her feet, striking him hard in the face with the book. As Spike fell backward, she turned around and sped out the door. Though it didn't take Spike long at all to recover from the hits to the more sensitive areas of his body, by the time he righted himself, she was gone.

"God," he muttered, "I really hate that bitch."

"How can you be sure it was a possession?" Oz asked.

Doyle looked up from his books. He, Oz, and Jordy were sitting in the basement while Robbie, in his wolf form, was standing in his cage, wishing that he could help. "I can't," Doyle admitted. "But she wasn't acting like herself. It wasn't even a matter of her being drunk."

"Marissa's never been drunk in her life," Robbie offered, his words slightly muddled from speaking around a snout. "Even when she used to drink, she'd stop and drink water before she lost it. Didn't want to end up like her mom, she'd say."

"Yeah, and the throwing-caution-to-the-wind thing was another sign that something wasn't right," Doyle agreed. "The things she said and did... even her body language was different. She said that after her first drink, she decided to 'be me for real,' leading me to think that there was either something in the drink or that maybe her lowered inhibitions made it easier for some kind of spirit to possess her."

"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Oz replied. "Neon on a Friday night must be full of drunk people. Why prey on her?"

"Maybe whatever it was has it out for Spike," Jordy brought up. He was sitting on the beanbag chair, his prayer beads still wrapped around one hand as he thumbed them thoughtfully. "Maybe it couldn't get to Spike for some reason, but when it saw him talking to her, it figured it'd get to him through her."

"Then why didn't she go after him when he ran out?" Doyle asked. He was about to ask something else, but they all quieted down when the backdoor opened and Spike bustled down the steps.

Getting a look at everyone gazing at him, he raised his eyebrows and murmured, "I just love feeling like a bloody museum exhibit after a thoroughly disappointing night." It looked as though Oz was going to ask him something, but he paid him no mind and turned to Doyle. "So Irish, how'd the date go? From your early return, I'm guessing that you didn't manage to put a leash around the bitch. Also, since she jumped me, that's another clue that you didn't fare too well."

"She what?" Doyle asked, jumping up. "Where?"

"At the library," Spike answered, sitting himself down on the sofa. "After a stray werewolf shook me off its trail, I decided to see if I could get my hands on the Originis Chronicles. She beat me to it."

"Marissa was after the Originis Chronicles?" Oz asked. "But... why?"

"At first, just to see if she could actually get it," Spike replied. "It was the first little step down the road of being bad. But as she leafed through it, I'm guessing she stumbled across some information that she doesn't want anybody else knowing."

"Maybe it's the work of the First," Robbie realized. "Can the First possess people? Or maybe one of its minions came after her and used her to get to the book. Now that they have it, they'll probably kill her!"

"What the hell are you going on about?" Spike asked, raising an eyebrow. "Where did you get the stupid idea that she was possessed?" Simultaneously, Robbie, Oz, and Jordy all pointed at Doyle. Spike turned to the half-demon, shaking his head in disbelief. "You stupid git."

"Well, what other explanation is there?" Doyle huffed.

"The most obvious one that a lowlife like you can possibly come up with," Spike told him. "If you saw her long enough to know that something was off, then you should have guessed it. Her soul's gone."

There was silence in the room as everyone let this sink in. Finally, Robbie breathed, "Her soul? How can a human be alive without a soul?"

"Well, I managed it quite well for most of my unnatural life," Spike said. "A telly without an antenna or cable box can still work, but all it shows is static. It's the same way with humans. They can still breathe and feel, but they're hollow. It's gradual at first: they get moody, restless, start relying on instinct. But if you leave it be long enough, they become full-fledged killers. Worse than animals, they've still got human brains and desires, but nothing to keep 'em from doing whatever they want."

"Like vampires," Jordy concluded. "Soulless ones, anyway."

"Exactly," Spike responded.

"So how did she get like that?" Oz asked.

"More importantly," Robbie threw in, "how do we get her back?"

"The drink," Doyle realized. Seeing Spike look at him, he told him, "She had a stain on her shirt, and she told Jordy and me that it was from your drink. Half of it she spilled, the other half she drank. After that was when she decided to 'let go.' I'm guessing you didn't put anything in your own drink."

"Damned right, I didn't," Spike remarked.

"Then did something happen?" Doyle persisted. "Someone try to slip you a mickey?"

"That's absurd," Spike proclaimed, but quieted down when he thought about it. He had entered Neon. Bought a drink. Went to sit down. "Oh damn it," he nearly yelled. "Bloody irritating, stupid, evil, disgusting cow!"

"Something tells me he just remembered something," Jordy remarked dryly.

"There was a vamp there," Spike explained. "Bumped into me. Now that I think about it, she was saying things that'd keep my attention on her. Either she or some crony of hers must've messed with my drink when I wasn't looking."

"So then this has nothing to do with Marissa," Robbie realized. "Somebody slipped you some kind of potion that would make you lose your soul. But... why?"

"I don't know," Spike remarked. "Maybe the First is behind it. Maybe it thinks that without a soul, I'd be evil again and will join its ranks in the next apocalypse. Of course, I would've thought that the First would be smarter than that, since I wasn't strictly evil even before I got my soul back."

"That's a matter of opinion," Oz stated.

"Shut your trap," Spike shot back.

"This wasn't the First," Doyle declared. He was looking down, though not really looking at anything. Finally turning his eyes towards the others, he explained, "There's no magic potion that can just make someone lose their soul. It'd have to be a spell or a curse, and a pretty powerful one at that. But paranormal science has grown as a field in recent years, and I know this low-life, drug-dealing, son of a you-know-what that's made a name for himself in the demon world. Most of his pills and shots are used for recreation, meaning that the demons get to kick back and laugh while some poor human somehow gets his life torn apart after being infected."

"Jay-man," Spike murmured. "And here I thought he was just a myth."

"No myth," Doyle replied. "And if you've been killing as many naughty types as you've been claiming, I'm guessing you're pretty high on the list of people he doesn't like. Probably ganked a good deal of his clientele. If this female vamp you bumped into had a reason to discredit you, Jay-man would be all too happy to give her a hit to pass along and watch you burn."

"Demonic drug-dealers?" Jordy asked. "You're saying Marissa Harris molested me and stole a rare book out of her own workplace because she's the victim of demonic drug-dealers? Wow, because my life just wasn't weird enough."

"All right, so we track down this Jay-man," Oz concluded. "Find out if he sold anything that could have done that to Marissa, and see if we can coerce him to give us some antidote."

"Lot of good that'd do," Doyle said. "Can't give her an antidote when we don't even know where she is. And for all we know, the Originis Chronicles may be the only place that tells how to get a human soul back."

"I don't think so," Oz told him. "Willow got Angel's soul back for him once. It's possible, but involves some heavy magic. What I'm more concerned about is Marissa destroying the Chronicles before we can look at it, or her doing something that she'll regret once she gets her soul back."

"Then let's stop talking," Spike remarked. "Doyle, do you have a good idea of Jay-man's haunts?" When Doyle nodded and said he thought he could find him before the night was through if they searched quickly enough, Spike continued, "Doyle and I will go after Jay-man, see if we can't figure out not just how to bring the pup back but also who's got it in for little old me. Jordy and Oz, you go after Marissa."

"Jordy's not going anywhere," Oz proclaimed.

"Oz-" Jordy tried to argue.

"Are you nuts?" Oz asked him. "You nearly turned tonight after coming across Marissa like that. I'm not going to risk it happening again."

From his cage, Robbie brought up, "Hey, can I go?" The four men turned to look at the humanoid wolf. "We've pretty much decided that I'm always in control of myself except for the second night of the full moon. I should be safe. Besides, I know Marissa's scent. If Oz is there to keep me in check in case something goes wrong, we're likely to track her down and bring her back even before you can locate this dealer."

After considering it, Spike shrugged and looked at Oz. "Hercules has a point. Think he's up to it?"

Roderick was awoken by the sound of someone pounding on his door.

After rolling off the sofa, he trudged across the not-at-all considerable expanse of his studio apartment. He didn't exactly have a wide array of callers, and so he sincerely hoped that he hadn't been woken up by a Jehovah's Witness. Then again, he remembered that it was late on a Friday night, so the chances of getting a Bible thumper at this hour were thankfully slim.

Wrenching the door open, it took him a long time before he recognized the smirking girl on the other side of his threshold. Soon enough, however, he realized who he was staring at and widened his eyes as he tried to throw the door shut.

"That's very rude," Marissa chastised him, catching the door and shoving it against him. He let out a small cry and staggered back a few steps as she entered his domain. "For crap's sake, Rod, I expected more from you. After all, you pulled Spike's past self into the present, brought back his sire, made his sire do really unspeakable things to me, and led me by the hand into a near-homicidal mania. And now you can't even say hello to an old friend?"

Moving behind the sofa and keeping it between them, he grabbed for the closest thing and came up with a battered leather wallet. "I'm w-warning you," he tried to say firmly. "A-a-another s-step, and I'll use e-every charm in here on you."

"Rod, baby," she cooed, approaching the sofa and kneeling on it. Leaning over the back of the couch and arching towards him, she remarked, "Don't you remember? You already used a charm against me. Or some kind of abracadabra type magic. Though, I think we both know that I wasn't the intended target."

"The drug," he murmured, gaping at her. "I thought I saw you take Spike's drink."

"And I thought I saw you sitting with some cheap floozy at Neon," she replied. "Funny thing, though; by the time I gathered myself up, you had split. She was still around, though. Had myself a little run-in with some pals, and then I gave them the slip and found your partner in crime trying to grab herself a late-night snack. Gosh, these vamps just don't expect people to go around with holy water and wooden stakes in their purses, do they?"

"Let me g-guess," Roderick ventured. "Being soulless, you had no qualms t-t-torturing her un-until she told you my wh-whereabouts, then you mercilessly killed her, t-tracked me down, and expect to do s-s-something s-similar to me."

"Wow, you're good at this!" Marissa exclaimed. "Except, no on that last bit. See, you learn the most interesting things when you're hanging around at the library on a Friday night." At this, she reached into the messenger bag she was wearing and withdrew what looked like a large book. Roderick looked at it quizzically, wondering what sort of medieval torture techniques she had stumbled across on her academic journey.

"This here's something called the Originis Chronicles," she explained, flipping through it. "It's basically a recipe for how to create your own universe, complete with laws and spells and lots of other neat junk. Including-" With a bit of effort, she turned the book around to show Roderick a particular passage containing an illustration of a horned demon. Even before she continued, he recognized the demon as his former boss. "-a bargaining ritual for a big-league demon called D'Hoffryn."

A long period of silence followed. With a small smile, Marissa asked, "You don't follow me, do you?"

"I w-wouldn't follow you if y-y-you were the last r-rem-remotely female thing on Earth."

"Cute," she shot back with a scowl. Sitting herself down on the sofa and keeping a cautious eye on Roderick, she went on, "You told me that you were going to seek your immortality by proving yourself to D'Hoffryn. Doyle told me that vengeance demons are given their power through a demonic higher-up. Putting two and two together is a specialty of mine."

"S-so what?" Roderick snapped. "Y-y-you plan on b-bargaining with D'Hoffryn? Came here t-to gloat while he turns you into a v-ven-vengeance demon? It's stupid to p-play around with th-that sort of thing and test the t-temper of a-"

"Wow, you haven't been paying attention at all, have you?" Marissa asked, glaring at him icily. "I hate demons. Hate. Why would I want to become one?" When Roderick didn't answer, Marissa turned her attention back to the book. "I was looking through this to see if I could figure out what had happened to me. I lost my soul, that much is obvious, but nothing in here talks about drinking a potion that can do that. And I don't think there was any chanting, blood sacrifices, or anything else described in these pages going on. So I came here to find out what you did to me." Looking up at him dispassionately, she added, "And maybe we can make some kind of deal."

"Wh-what kind of-?"

"Just tell me what you did."

Roderick gazed at her suspiciously, though he couldn't deny that he was intrigued. What sort of bargain would a girl like Marissa Harris have in mind that would involve him and D'Hoffryn? And, more importantly, was this a trap?

Regardless, as the effects of the drug would probably wear off within another few hours, he saw no harm in explaining it to her. He told her about the drug he had acquired from Jay-man, and how he had slipped it into Spike's drink with the intention of making him temporarily lose his soul. After the vampire came back to his senses and took in the havoc he had caused, it would both prove to be a psychological strain and would serve to get his allies to lose faith in him.

He was quite pleased with his own cunning, which made it all the more disheartening when she scoffed, "You idiot." Rolling her eyes, Marissa murmured, "Spike regained his soul of his own free will. Meaning that before he even had a soul, he was already fairly reformed. Taking his soul away would probably confuse him more than damage him."

Roderick looked down. As much as he hated to admit it, she had a point. Spike's soul wasn't the embodiment of good; it was simply the proof he had needed to show that he was good. Whichever way he looked at it, his endeavors had been wasted.

Even as he was silently cursing his own shortsightedness, Marissa asked, "Then it's like I thought? My soullessness isn't permanent?"

Looking up at her, Roderick was surprised to see that she seemed somewhat disappointed by this. "Y-you have about another f-four hours. M-maybe less." He continued to gaze at her, wondering if he could somehow turn her feelings to his advantage.

"Then that's where the bargain comes in," she shocked him by saying. With a slight smirk, she told him, "Souls are awfully cumbersome. And I'm none too anxious to be encumbered again." She placed a hand solemnly on the Chronicles, proclaiming, "We summon D'Hoffryn. You give him a human soul in exchange for the return of your powers. You go ahead and be all demonic again. I go ahead and have fun for the rest of my natural life. Very Faustian, no?"

Roderick could do little else but gape at her for a long time. While he had to admit that he was just as anxious to shed his humanity as she was eager to be rid of her soul, it still came as something of a surprise. For a human who so loathed anything remotely inhuman to want to make a Faust-like bargain... it just boggled the mind. It only made him all the more certain that humans really were an idiotic bunch.

"Y-you do realize," he felt the need to tell her, "that once I get my p-p-powers back, you and your stupid f-friends will be the f-first ones to die?"

He thought that saying this to her would wipe the cocky expression from her face. He thought it would make her rethink her proposition long enough for him to make an attempt to grab the book and deliver a decent blow against her.

A deep, cold gloom settled over him when she smiled and answered, "What makes you think I don't have that eventuality covered?" Leaning back against the arm in the sofa and continuing to gaze haughtily up at him, she told him, "We play nice for just long enough to get this done. Once my soul's safely in D'Hoffryn's hands to do with it as he will and you've got your special little powers back, we can go ahead and be like Spy vs. Spy, for all I care. So, what do you say?"

Knowing that he would have to time everything just right, Roderick quickly replied, "Deal."

"I still can't believe she kicked your ass," Doyle laughed.

Getting quite tired of explaining it over and over, Spike repeated, "She didn't 'kick my ass,' okay? Blindsided me with a bloody cross, hit me where it hurts, knocked me over, and ran off before I could retaliate."

"Like I said," Doyle told him, "kicked your ass."

Doyle stopped in his tracks when Spike spun around, his vamp-face having emerged as he grabbed the man by the collar of his jacket. They were walking along a dark street in a seedy neighborhood, and the only people within sight didn't seem like they'd be all too eager to break up the fight.

"Just because I'm not evil doesn't mean I'm good," Spike warned him with a snarl. "Chaos, remember? Can't predict when I might snap, or what I'll snap while I'm at it. And your use is wearing thin, what with your reception to the soddin' Powers That Don't Do a Damned Thing being all wonky." Shoving Doyle away, his face reverted to normal, but that didn't lighten the glower he cast upon the half-demon. "If this place doesn't turn out to be our quarry's little hidey-hole, I'm going to break your scrawny little neck, you get me?"

Adjusting the lining of his jacket and absently reaching out to touch his throat, Doyle nodded before quietly remarking, "Yeah. Yeah, of course." As they continued walking, he muttered, "Good luck breaking my neck when I'm in my demon form."

"Who said I'll give you time to change?" Spike asked.

"You're awfully cranky," Doyle observed. "I would've thought that years of tussling with Slayers would've made you used to getting beat down by a girl. True, Marissa's human, but not having a soul's gotta make her fight without inhibitions, am I right?"

"As much as it seems to tickle your funny bone," Spike retorted, "my encounter with your rogue date isn't what's weighing on my mind. We gotta get her stupid soul back from some stupid pusher, then figure out who it was that was trying to spike my stupid drink. All of this might or might not have anything to do with, I don't know, the apocalypse. You know, that big, world-shattering thing that might be crashing down on us at any moment? That thing that not only involves the First Evil, but quite possibly the psychotic ex-girlfriend sire from Hell?"

"Oh, that," Doyle realized. "You're not buckling under pressure, are you?"

"It's more than pressure," Spike mumbled. Grabbing in his pocket for a cigarette, he didn't really feel like relating any of this to Doyle, of all people. Still, he didn't really have a large array of choices if he ever wanted to sit and have a heart-to-unbeating-heart. None of the people he's met up with here in Woodridge could rightfully be called his friends, but they really were all he had.

"I'm not a leader," the vampire finally bemoaned after a puff of his cigarette. "I've got balls of steel and the occasional bright idea, but I've always been somebody else's lieutenant. Even in my glory days, everything I did was to live up to Angelus or to keep Dru happy. I don't mind doing the legwork or the creative thinking or even working on my own, but being the go-to guy for a noble cause? Not my forte. And now that this is the closest I've ever come to leading a mishmash group of saviors, what have I actually accomplished? A whole lot of nothing. Sitting around, waiting for people to bring me books or trying to interrogate ghosts that can't be intimidated. And then there's this stupid little pup who constantly gets herself abducted, violated, tortured, and then gets her soul ripped out of her."

"Are you actually blaming yourself for what happened to Marissa?" Doyle asked, surprised.

"Oh, hell no, don't be foolish," Spike replied. "Leaving this craphole town was the smartest thing she'd ever done, and then she had to go and prove that she really was a Harris by coming back. It's her own damned fault, even if I'm more than likely to end up getting blamed and punished for it, in her mind."

Pausing long enough to take another drag, he continued, "Point is, when I was up having a chat with that Higher Being, she told me that everything I need is going to come to me, and I just gotta recognize it when I see it. And as cryptic as that was, I can't deny that that dumb bint keeps crossing paths with me one way or the other. So now I have to wonder: do I need her?"

"No." Shocked by the speedy reply, Spike shot Doyle a quizzical glance. Shaking his head, Doyle explained, "She's just a teenaged girl-"

"Just like the Slayer and her friends were, once upon a time."

"She doesn't have any special skills," Doyle protested.

"Neither did Cordelia."

"She's not exceptionally smart or vamp-friendly."

"Just like Xander."

"Spike," he finally brought up, "she's a normal human being. No magic, no visions, no super strength, and she isn't even tolerant of non-humans as a whole. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure all of the recent events are probably going to see to it that she's buckets of crazy at the end of everything, if she ends up alive. I don't know how the Powers work, I don't know what they want or what they see, but I'm almost positive that Marissa is just the hapless victim."

"The hapless victim who always manages to end up side-by-side with the heroes," Spike clarified. "Who doesn't look like much, but surprises you every so often. A bit like her kin, eh? Her kin who's now sitting at the Slayer's right hand?"

Though he said nothing else on the matter, Doyle continued to shake his head. Sure, Marissa was older than Buffy had been back when Doyle first met her, and he had already seen the Slayer as an accomplished warrior by then. And fine, so whether she did "kick Spike's ass" or happened to favor a speedy retreat, she had managed to get around the strong vampire fairly unscathed. And yes, it did seem a little odd that she always crossed paths with either Spike or one of Spike's allies. But he didn't want her to get involved.

In a way, Doyle saw Marissa as another Cordelia. He wasn't in love with her, and she wasn't as beautiful or charismatic or alluring as the former Sunnydale cheerleader. But like Cordelia had been way back in the day, Marissa was simply a normal girl who was trying to live her own life. And Cordelia had gotten too caught up in the fight, both because of her loyalty to the cause and because Doyle had forced his visions on her before he died. Doyle didn't want another Cordelia. He didn't want another innocent person getting hurt so badly that the Powers decide to reward her after years of torture resulted in her untimely death. Leave Marissa to the fate of the masses. Whatever that fate was, it was an easier road than the ones the heroes needed to travel.

Fighting back the urge to continue telling Spike that he was wrong about Marissa, Doyle led him up towards a bar and opened the door. Stepping in, he waited for Spike to stand besides him before he quietly declared, "Demon pub."

Looking at the patrons, Spike replied, "Doesn't look like it."

"Not from out here, no," Doyle told him, trying not to notice the various gazes they had drawn as they walked towards the bar. "We might be at the very outskirts of Woodridge, but they've still got to keep up appearances. The main room's for humans and for people like me; the ones that can pass."

"And Jay-man?"

"That's what they've got backrooms for."

"Evenin', Glenn," the overweight bartender greeted as Doyle sat down at a stool. He gave Spike a cautious glance before returning his gaze to the half-demon. "Your usual?"

"Make it two, Mac," Doyle replied as Spike sat besides him. "One for my buddy."

After the bartender turned away, Spike asked Doyle, "Glenn?"

"Can't go around using my real moniker," Doyle whispered with an absent smirk. "That's how I got myself resurrected to begin with. If I should find myself on the wrong side of a burial ground again, I don't want any of these scuzzbuckets knowing my true name and bringing me back for a third go."

As Mac placed two bottles of Heineken on the counter before them, Doyle leaned in and told him, "Mac, got a question."

"You and everybody else in this dive," Mac replied. "Trouble with you is, you're so stupid you think that everyone's hearing is as bad as yours. What's a crumb like you looking for Jay-man for?" Lowering his voice, he nudged his head towards Spike and added, "And while we're on the subject, why'd you bring this bastard in here?"

"Hey!" Spike cried.

"Sorry, did I offend your sensibilities?" Mac asked sarcastically. "I tend to get a little testy when I'm looking into the face of the guy who's been killing off a good deal of my customers ever since he blew into town."

"Oh," Spike remarked, surprised. "I guess I've made a name for myself."

"Yeah, and it's that name that's gonna get you run out of here if you set a single fang out of line," Mac asserted. "I'm not looking for trouble-"

"Whoa, whoa, Mac," Doyle interrupted, "you've got us pegged all wrong. In all the long weeks that you've known me, have I ever caused trouble? ...Trouble that couldn't be cleaned up soon enough, I mean? We've got no problem with Jay-man. He's a vendor, we're potential buyers. All nice and legal-like, or as close to it as you can expect."

Mac looked at Doyle for a long time before turning to gaze at Spike. At length, Spike let out an irritated sigh and rolled his eyes as he said, "I'm just here to talk. I've got enough things on my mind without worrying about the entire local demon community coming after me as I sleep."

After a while, Mac's eyes turned to look somewhere behind Spike. Peering behind him, Spike saw that he was looking towards a door that claimed to be the entrance to the men's restroom, an "Out of Order" sign hanging from the doorknob. Sitting at a small table besides the door was a pair of the most conspicuous-looking bouncers Spike had seen in a long time.

He made a move to get up, but stopped and turned back when Mac grabbed his arm. Leaning in towards him, the bartender solemnly stated, "You better just be here to talk, vampire. Because we've got demons in here who hate you enough to make sure you'll do nothing but sleep for the rest of eternity."

Narrowing his eyes at Mac, Spike grabbed the bartender's chubby wrist and discreetly squeezed it hard enough that the demon would need to dunk his hand in an ice bucket for the rest of his shift. "You waste my time," Spike told him, "and eternity's gonna end a lot quicker than you think, tubby."

Shoving the man's hand away from him, Spike swiped his beer bottle and motioned for Doyle to follow after him. As the pair of them approached the door Mac had pointed out, the bouncers stood and glared at them guardedly. Stepping in front of Spike, Doyle held up a wad of currency and remarked, "We're here on business, all right?"

After several exchanges of eye contact, the two monoliths sat down and Spike and Doyle walked through the door. In the dim back room hung the heavy stench of incense and through the haze they were able to see a trio of demons sitting on a couch in the rear. "Ahh, it's just like my college days," Doyle commented.

"Well, well, well," came a voice from the smoke. Spike was pleased to hear that it was laced with a bit of trepidation as it remarked, "It's Spike, isn't it? I've heard a lot about you, brother."

"Same here," Spike replied. "Though, I think if I'm as famous among the scumbags of the world as you are, you'd have heard enough to know that you should be soiling your trousers, mate."

As their vision adjusted, they saw two horned demons rise, leaving behind a tall, dark-skinned, dreadlocked demon seated on the couch. Spike smirked as the two lackeys approached him, the classic henchmen to some two-bit underworld bigwig. "Now, boys, I'm just here to talk."

"Still got a soul," one of the stoolies commented.

"Not for long," proclaimed the other.

Apparently ignoring Doyle altogether, both of them headed straight for Spike, causing the vampire to once again roll his eyes. As the one on the left reached out for him, Spike smashed his beer bottle against his hand, using the jagged remains to puncture through the other one's scaly torso. Both of their cries were cut short when he grabbed each of their throats and rammed them back against a wall.

"Of course," Spike remarked, "I forgot to mention that I prefer communicating in Morse code." Taking turns bashing each of their heads against the wall with each word, he said, "Dot, dot, dot, dot-" Knocking both of their heads together, he finished, "Dash!"

Jay-man leapt to his feet and tried to go for a side door, but he was intercepted by Doyle, who held his beer bottle in front of him like a talisman. "I really don't feel like wasting a perfectly good beer on you," Doyle commented. Reaching behind him, he added, "Luckily, I've got this gun back here...."

"You don't know what you're getting yourselves into," Jay-man insisted.

"That's something that can be said for you," Spike corrected, leaving the unconscious lackeys to fall on the floor as he approached Jay-man. "I've got this niggling feeling that the lot of you were surprised to see that I've still got a soul. Care to relate to me who it was that would make you think the opposite?"

The door through which they had entered opened, and the two mammoth-sized bouncers appeared. Doyle nearly laughed at the sight of the two of them trying to squeeze in the doorway at the same time, but instead used the moment to shift into his demonic form. Seeing the red eyes, green skin, and blue spikes appear over the once-complacent face in front of them, one of the bouncers gasped, "What the-?!"

For all their apparent muscle, it didn't seem like either of them had enough faith in their own prowess to face up to something that looked as vicious as a Brachen demon, especially when said demon was holding a gun. Watching them scramble away, Doyle grinned and shook off his inhuman appearance as he lowly remarked, "Well, not my style, but it works. Thanks, Dad."

As Doyle moved to close and bar the door, Spike grabbed Jay-man by the back of his neck in a strong enough grip to prove that he could crush it beneath his grasp, if he so wanted. "Now that the distractions are out of the way," he told the shaking demon, "how about you answer my question?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Jay-man declared.

After a moment of looking about, Spike dragged Jay-man over towards a small table, brushed a space clear of various test tubes and syringes, and slammed Jay-man's face down against it. Doyle flinched at the sound of the demon screaming, wondering if one of its small black horns had broken off.

"Shall we try that again?" Spike asked, forcing Jay-man up.

Between the sniveling and the shuddering touches to his own face, Jay-man eventually choked out, "Ah... what was the question?"

Hearing a commotion on the other side of the door, Doyle and Spike exchanged furtive glances before Spike smashed Jay-man's face against the tabletop again. "You sold a drug. Tried to get me to lose my soul. Who did you sell it do?"

His voice muffled from the table, Jay-man uttered, "I don't know! Believe me, I don't know!"

Getting impatient, Spike shifted his grip so that Jay-man's left cheek was forced against the table, leaving the demon's right eye gaping up at him. Spike arbitrarily grabbed one of the nearby syringes and, after assessing the dark green liquid within, held it within inches of Jay-man's eye.

At the sight of the needle so close to him, Jay-man screamed and unsuccessfully tried to buck Spike off, loudly protesting, "I don't know! I swear to God, man, I don't have a clue! Never saw him before! He was a human!"

"A human?" Doyle queried.

"I don't believe you," Spike growled, pressing down harder on Jay-man's head.

"It's true!" Jay-man cried. "He was old, but definitely human. But he didn't look old, you know what I mean? Like he wasn't always human. But I don't know, man! I don't ask questions! He wanted the product, he told me what it was for, and I gave him a good deal! That's all!"

Wasn't always human. Spike and Doyle once again exchanged glances. Sadrahd. Harmony's former vengeance demon boyfriend. Well, that wasn't as bad as it could have been. Robbie and Oz already knew his scent, so tracking him down and putting him out of his misery wouldn't be too difficult.

"Can you reverse it?" Doyle asked, walking towards the table and setting his beer down.

"He's still got his soul," Jay-man noticed. "Why do you need to reverse it?"

Grabbing the demon's deadlocks and giving him another swift bang against the table, Spike told him, "You said you don't ask questions. Now is a bad time to start. We need an antidote, or you're gonna get a little prick with this very nasty-looking needle."

"There is no antidote," Jay-man told him quickly. "It wears off on its own."

"In how long?" Spike demanded.

Biting back the pain, Jay-man asked, "Who drank it?" Feeling Spike getting ready to hit him again, he quickly added, "I need to know to give you a decent answer! Was it a human? A man? A chick? Tall? Short? Fat? What?"

"A girl," Spike acquiesced. "A human girl. Teenager. About five-and-a-half feet tall. Average-sized, maybe a little chunky."

"Did she drink it straight, or was it mixed with something?"

"Mixed with whiskey," Spike replied

"A full glass?"

"No," Doyle responded. "Only about half of it."

With a groan, Jay-man mumbled, "Half a dose of product, gone to waste."

"I know a bloke who wears a patch," Spike told him, bringing the needle a bit closer to his eye. "Want me to get you in touch with him so the two of you can form a club?"

"It was a weak dose," Jay-man quickly answered. "It wasn't supposed to last more than six hours. She drank half; with her body type and average human metabolism, should be about three hours. Maybe less if she's been scuffling or screwing, or doing anything else physical."

"Three hours?" Spike asked. As Jay-man nodded, he looked to Doyle. "How long ago did she drink it?"

After a moment's thought, Doyle replied, "Not sure. Just after you left Neon to deal with the werewolf, so it's been at least two hours."

"It's been more than two hours, then," Spike mused. To Jay-man, he barked, "Are there any side effects? Anything going to be off with her once she comes back into herself?"

"There's always side effects," came the response. Spike didn't like the veiled laughter hidden in the words. "With something like this, man, with something that can lock the human away for a little while, the main thing you've gotta worry about is that she doesn't do anything she'll regret once the hamster's back in the cage. Because I think you know what that's like."

"A little slice of Hell," Spike muttered. After a moment, something outside collided with the door, making Doyle tense up with the gun. Spike had never seen Doyle in a full-on fight, but he knew well enough that the sheer force of numbers could often cancel out any demonic abilities. "Alternative exits?" Spike asked Jay-man.

Pointing as best as he could given his awkward angle, Jay-man answered, "The side door. Leads to a back alley." He groaned as Spike forced him up, dragging him backwards towards the door in question.

Doyle followed and cautiously opened the door, confirming Jay-man's words. Shoving the drug dealer onto the floor, Spike said, "Very nice, Jay-man. You did well, behaving just like the sniveling, cowardly little toad I always knew your ilk to be. I should be in a good mood, but somehow, I'm just not."

As though realizing something, he commented, "Oh, I know why. I haven't killed anything since yesterday." Ignoring Jay-man's protestations, Spike held his hand out for Doyle's gun. Stony-faced, Doyle handed it over.

As the gunshots rang out into the room, the main door burst open and the bar patrons flooded in, screaming out against the bloodshed. Rather than shoot them, Spike fired a few empty shots in front of them to keep them at bay before slamming the door shut. Together, he and Doyle scaled a nearby fire escape and ran across a few rooftops before eventually coming to a stop ten blocks north of the bar.

"Well," Doyle huffed, leaning his hands on his thighs as he tried to catch his breath, "good talk."

Standing on the rooftop of Roderick's apartment building, he and Marissa stared one another down.

They had relocated to the top of the building because the bargaining ritual had required an outdoor venue, and it seemed like the most private place they could easily get to. Roderick would have preferred the cemetery, but it appeared as though Marissa was anxious to get the spell over and done with.

However, now that it came time to get a blood sample from each of them, both found that they were too wary of the other to get it done. They stood within the circle of D'Hoffryn's symbol that Roderick had drawn on the floor, but neither dared to use the knife in their hands. Roderick was certain that, as soon as he cut his palm open and instinctively flinched from the pain, Marissa would use her knife against him. Marissa was just as concerned.

"So are we going to stand here all night?" Marissa finally asked.

"Y-y-you're the sacrifice," Roderick told her.

"My soul's the sacrifice," Marissa shot back. "And technically, it's the 'bargaining chip.' My blood just binds my concession to the contract. Since you're the one who's supposed to be summoning D'Hoffryn, it's really your blood that's most necessary."

"Fantastic," Roderick sneered. "S-s-so you know how to r-read."

"This is stupid," Marissa finally groaned, lowering her knife and stepping backwards out of the circle. "How about you cut yourself, then back away long enough for me to do the same, and then we don't have to worry about whether one of us is going to gank the other when it seems convenient?"

Roderick thought over his options. She seemed to genuinely believe that her suggestion was an intelligent one. Apparently, she hadn't read the conditions of the bargaining ritual as carefully as she thought she had.

Trying not to smirk, he sliced his blade across his palm and allowed himself to bleed over the black icon he had drawn with charcoal. "Th-there," he said, hoping he didn't sound as smug as he felt as he took a step back. "Your turn."

Seemingly grateful that things were finally going somewhere, Marissa stepped into the circle and grimaced as she cut her hand. As the drops of blood rolled off her palm, Roderick suddenly brought up, "Oh, I f-forgot. I glanced at the d-directions when we were s-setting up. Your b-b-blood doesn't figuratively bind you to the contract."

Marissa gaped up at him, but found that she couldn't say anything. As soon as her blood splattered on the floor, she felt a strange emptiness wash over her, as though hollowing her out. Being soulless, she hadn't even known that there was anything left to hollow out, but it was a profound emptiness that swallowed her as Roderick sidled up towards her and remarked, "I-it's quite l-literal, you see."

As though he found the whole thing to be rather amusing, he blew a sharp breath towards her, watching as she rigidly fell over backwards. "Typically, the human soul is sacrificed by w-way of the human's d-death," he explained laughingly. "The human is - for all intents and p-purposes - dead throughout the entire r-ritual. Should I have m-m-mentioned that earlier?"

Seeing her throat uselessly working in a futile effort to scream and curse at him, Roderick couldn't keep back his gaiety and laughed directly down at her. Did the stupid girl actually think that she could make a bargain with the likes of D'Hoffryn? She had no power or talents; the only one of the two of them that D'Hoffryn would listen to would be his former follower. And since her soul was already cast from her body, she'd become nothing more than a conscious corpse until Roderick once again became Sadrahd and could thus exact a bit of his own vengeance upon her.

Turning back towards the open book he had laid upon the floor, he taunted, "D-don't worry. I'll m-m-make sure Xander receives your body. I've already got all the b-boxes I plan to ship it out in. I've b-been waiting for this for a l-long time."

Marissa found that she couldn't even work her throat enough to swallow, nor could she force herself to blink. Her heart was still pounding in her chest, but she was horrified to discover that Roderick had indeed been right; it was like retaining sentience even after rigor mortis set in. She was as helpless as a person experiencing a night terror, and it wasn't long into Roderick's chanting that she came to a startling realization: she was no longer cold.

My soul, she realized, panicking even more. It's coming back in, just to be kicked back out. Great, nice timing, dumbass. You couldn't show up before I stabbed myself and bound myself to that little gnome?

After a few moments of chanting, Roderick thought he heard something echo in the night air. He paused for the briefest of moments, trying to decipher what it was. Then it sounded again. A howl. His eyes widening, Roderick looked up into the sky and realized for the first time that the moon was full.

As much as he wanted revenge on Robbie Wilson, he knew he wasn't prepared to take him on. He needed to summon D'Hoffryn as quickly as possible, regain his powers, and then he could properly deal with the werewolf. Or werewolves. There were at least two of them in town that he knew of, and he was standing in the open air besides freshly-spilled blood. He needed his powers back now.

Unfortunately, the faster Roderick attempted to speak, the more pronounced his stutter became. It didn't take long for his beckoning to D'Hoffryn to become nothing but jumbled garbling, and a glance at Marissa's twitching arms told him that the ritual was failing. D'Hoffryn wouldn't come. And the paralysis would wear off soon. And the howling was getting closer.

If he couldn't return to his former glory, Roderick was determined not to let the night be a total loss. He dropped the aging book to the floor and, mindless of the loose pages that scattered about the rooftop, he grabbed for his knife. "Y-You can't say I'm n-not opportunistic," he growled under his breath.

Stepping over the useless markings he had so carefully sketched, Roderick approached Marissa and stooped down besides her. Grabbing a handful of the shuddering girl's hair, he pulled her head upwards to reveal her throat. Too many opportunities had appeared this night for him to let them all fade away.

Just as he was about to strike, Roderick heard the door leading back into the building crash open. Fearing the worst, he whirled around and quickly decided that the girl would now have to be used as a way to bargain for his life. However, Roderick was relieved to see that the person who now arrived on the rooftop was only Oz. In his human form, no less.

"W-well," Roderick remarked chidingly. "C-Come to play the knight in sh-shining armor?"

Breathing hard from running, Oz shook his head. "No. I'm just playing the part of the sidekick tonight. Since I look human, I could walk through the front door. The hero, though, needed an alternative entrance."

At first, Roderick didn't comprehend what Oz meant. It wasn't until he heard the sound of a heavy thud behind him that he understood. Turning, he came face-to-face with the wolf version of Robbie as he finished climbing onto the roof, and he didn't look all too pleased to see the way Roderick was handling his former girlfriend. Oz had come in from behind him; Robbie in front of him. He was hedged in.

It was at this point that Roderick knew it'd be pointless to expect either of them to spare his life, and so he made a final effort to have this night mean something. Quickly turning his attention back to Marissa, he slashed out with his knife.

Hardly a moment before the blade would pierce the skin, a clawed hand grabbed his wrist and yanked it away. Looking up, he saw Robbie's light brown eyes glaring at him furiously just before he was forced backwards. Robbie fell upon him, going for his throat, and Roderick marveled over the fact that he was now grappling for his life with a werewolf twice his size.

Oz sidestepped the fighting pair and moved towards Marissa. Crouching besides her, he observed her face and decided that he didn't like her wide-eyed expression or her convulsive movements. For all he knew, she was having some kind of seizure.

His thoughts were interrupted when a loud yell of pain sounded. Looking up, he saw that Roderick had managed to reach for the knife Marissa had dropped and wounded Robbie. Though he was bloodied and battered, the small man managed to throw the werewolf off of him and get up, racing for the door through which Oz had entered moments before.

Not wanting Roderick to get away and knowing that Robbie's healing factor would protect him from any immediate danger, Oz jumped to his feet and raced after the escaping former demon. It wasn't long before he caught up with him in the stairway and jumped for it, successfully tackling Roderick and forcing them to fall onto the first-floor landing.

Roderick squirmed and twisted, and at last he did what all cowards ultimately did. He screamed. Oz squeezed his hands around the other man's throat, initially not caring about the cries. However, when he heard someone open the door to the stairwell, he realized too late what this looked like.

"What the hell?" Oz looked up to see an unfamiliar woman standing at the doorway, looking both terrified and enraged. "Get the hell off of him! What the hell did you do? I'm calling the cops!" As she reached for the cell phone clipped to her waist, Oz knew that the last thing he needed was to get himself arrested.

Glaring down at Roderick, he fiercely whispered, "You'd better hope you never heal," just before punching him soundly across the face. Ignoring the woman's screams, he dashed up the stairs and knew that the only way he'd get out of here without getting ID'd would be to exit the same way Robbie had entered.

Back on the roof, he saw that Robbie had one clawed hand over his left shoulder, which is where a long diagonal slash began, and was staring down at Marissa with some concern. Hearing Oz re-emerge, Robbie turned to him and uttered, "I don't know what to do. If I get too close, my blood... would it...?"

"I've got her," Oz told him, taking a moment to shift into his wolf form before quickly picking the girl up in his arms. "Grab the book and come on. We need to jet before the boys in blue try to throw the book at me for beating up an evil son of a bitch."

Without waiting for an explanation, Robbie did as he was asked and followed Oz as he leapt off the rooftop.

When Marissa finally became aware of her surroundings, she thought she was still hallucinating.

She was lying in her bed and, sitting at her desk a few feet away, was Spike. He had turned the chair to face her, and he seemed to be reading her copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. If she hadn't known that his mortal self had been a poet, the incompatible sight would have been a certain sign that she had suffered severe head trauma.

When she slowly sat up, Spike, without looking up from his reading, told her, "Not a word. There's water on the nightstand; drink the entire thing before you attempt to talk." As she opened her mouth to speak, he raised his eyes to look at her sternly. "I think I know a thing or two about how you're feeling right now, so do as I say for once, yeah?"

Though she was highly disturbed by the way she likened his behavior to that of a strict father, Marissa looked to see that there indeed was a glass of water on the nightstand. She reached out with a shaky hand and took it.

Spike watched her as she drank the water, and finally closed the book as she put the empty glass down. "Now," he said carefully, "you're gonna tell me exactly what you did while the real you was taking a holiday, and you're not going to leave out a single detail. Do we understand each other?"

Marissa nodded and, though it was a difficult start, she managed to relate the tale of how she had found D'Hoffryn's summoning spell and decided that she would enlist Roderick's help in order to permanently lose her human soul. Her plan had backfired when a clause in the ritual paralyzed her and made her helpless in front of Roderick, and after that, her memories got hazy before altogether fading away.

Spike said nothing for a while, and Marissa found herself wondering if he was even more disgusted with her hypocrisy than she was. After a few moments, he leaned back in his seat and tiredly said, "We know allthat nonsense. The wolves looked through the Originis Chronicles and matched the symbol they saw on the roof with one of the ones in the book. Having been soulless for an indecent amount of time, I figured out what it was you probably wanted. No, what I want to know is whether you offed somebody or sexed someone up."

"What?!" Marissa exclaimed, aghast. "Why would you want to know that?"

"Because if you killed somebody," Spike replied in a surprisingly patient voice, "that can do a lot to that frail psyche of yours, and maybe I can play counselor while the others lick their wounds and try to make some sense of our new occult library. I don't offer that kind of thing often, but something tells me there's a reason you and me keep butting heads, and I know a bit about what it's like to wake up and discover that you were a monster for a while."

As though in afterthought, he shrugged and added with a grin, "And if you went out and got laid, I thought I'd offer congratulations."

"You're a pig."

"A vampire, actually. But decent guess."

Gingerly putting both feet on the floor as she cricked her neck, she asked, "How'd you get in here, anyway? Xander put a de-invite spell on the house."

"Your mum saw me carrying her comatose daughter up the porch," Spike answered. "What did you think she'd say?"

"Great," Marissa muttered. "Another round of questions. Just when she was starting to forget about the whole thing with...."

"With Angelus," Spike brusquely finished. "Or 'He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named,' if that's the sort of game you're playing. At any rate, I just told her you had a bit much to drink and that I'd like to sit up with you. She then offered me a nip, which I didn't turn down, though I did turn down her... other offers." After an almost imperceptible beat, he remarked, "You know, if I gave a damn about you, I'd worry over the kind of environment you grew up in."

"You and me both," she murmured. Meeting his eyes once again, she asked, "So if you don't care, why are you here? I would've thought Doyle would be the one playing nurse."

"While he'd probably look better in a nurse's outfit than me," he responded, "Irish never had to live without his soul. Oz and Hercules were about to take you to a hospital, but one look at you told me that your jabbering wasn't any kind of physical spaz attack. It came from up here." At that, he tapped a fingertip to his head before lowly concluding, "I just reckoned you might want to talk about the experience. I know I did, but there wasn't anybody around to listen. Unless you count the phantoms in my head."

Once again, Spike found himself observing Marissa's face carefully. She never answered his question concerning whether or not she killed anyone tonight, but he didn't think she'd need to. Though her gaze appeared a little hollow and immensely troubled, it didn't seem to be anything but the residual pain from the entire Angelus trauma. He didn't see any signs that she had become a killer, and he found that he was almost disappointed by this. It would have been a nice, twisted way to get her to finally see reason on the whole "soul" business.

"Right then," Spike muttered after a long while of silence. Getting up, he said, "I knew I was going soft, but it must be soft in the head if I actually thought you'd open up to me. I'll just go along and fight some evil things for a while before having Loverboy or Hercules swing by and give you a shoulder to-"

"Wait."

He had been heading towards the door when she called out to him. Mildly surprised by the request, he stopped and turned around. She hadn't moved from the bed, and he noticed with a large degree of irritation that she wasn't looking at him. "For Christ's sake," he snapped. "Make up your bleeding mind, woman. Am I friend or foe? I can't sit about all night waiting for you to have your pathetic moral struggles. I've got a world to save, you know."

"Yeah. I know." Taking a deep breath, it seemed to take Marissa a bit of effort to finally turn her head and look up at him. "And yet you're here. You keep giving me second chances, even though I don't deserve them."

"Soft in the brain, like I said."

"You got a second chance," she told him. "And you definitely didn't deserve it. So while you've got a list of better things to do with your time, and you won't waste the rest of forever waiting around for people to finally decide what's what, you're still willing to admit that people can change."

"Actually," Spike told her, having lost the mood for touching speeches, "a chat with a Higher Being's convinced me that everyone I've met has got some kind of purpose to serve in the upcoming apocalypse, so I didn't see the harm in trying to make sure you worked for me instead of against me, for once."

"Oh," Marissa uttered, surprised both by his frankness and by the prospect of having some kind of responsibility in what she thought of as the impending war against good and evil.

"Still," she continued, looking down, "the point is, I've been going on about how a soul doesn't change anything. How a soul can still be good or bad, and how you wouldn't do anything as a vampire that you wouldn't do as a mortal. And now... I mean, I didn't do anything too outlandish. I won't be able to ever look Jordy in the eye again and I'll be surprised if anyone ever speaks to me again after I almost brought that stupid vengeance demon back to full power.... But now I know that a soul actually does make a difference." With a sigh, she looked up and finished, "I guess what I'm trying to say is-" She stopped.

Spike had disappeared, uncaring of what she was trying to say.

While the idea of spending the night in the hospital was probably a smart one, Roderick knew that the smarter thing would be to get out of town as quickly as possible.

True, vampires couldn't enter a home unbidden. And true, there was now an entire month until the next full moon. But as his newly-bandaged hand fumbled to unlock his door, he knew that he couldn't depend on his security for much longer.

His meager possessions were in a sack, he had rigged a vehicle that would drive him as far away from Woodridge as possible, and he was going to travel for so long that he might even forget about the thirst for revenge... at least until he was fully healed.

If he had only managed to keep that book! He would have been able to grab any hapless innocent off the street and used them to complete the ritual at his leisure. With his powers back, he was sure he could find scores of people who'd make a vengeful wish against Spike and virtually anyone that associated with him. Roderick was smarter now; he knew there was no time for coy or complex plans. Just let someone wish death upon Spike and anyone he looked on as a friend, and be done with the whole thing.

After making sure he had everything he'd need, Roderick closed the door of his former apartment and ran for the stairwell. He knew he was a coward, but now he was a coward with his head on straight, and that had to count for something. Once he healed up right, he'd steal that book back, complete the ritual, and-

"Poor little jester."

Roderick nearly stumbled on the steps when he heard the unfamiliar voice behind him. Whirling around, he saw a woman standing just a few steps above him, despite the fact that he hadn't heard anyone following after him. He noted her pale skin and dreamy eyes, and he briefly wondered why she seemed so familiar. He knew he had never met her, and yet....

"Keeps running away and doing things he mustn't," she sighed, slowly descending the steps. Roderick carefully backed away, stumbling a few times until he reached the landing. "We didn't mind it at first, precious. We thought it was all rather entertaining. There's good, and evil, and there's the neutral. The Chaos. And you tried so, so hard to be evil."

Finally finding his voice, Roderick asked, "Who are you?"

"But that's the problem, you see," she continued, ignoring Roderick's query as she walked a rather right circle around him. Bringing her lips close to her ear, she whispered in a singsong voice, "You kept failing."

Roderick tried and failed to keep a shiver from trailing his spine. In a normal voice, she continued, "Tried bringing Daddy back and brought him back all wrong. And even when sweet William could have finished things, he was still stopped. And then you started getting creative, grasping at straws and hoping to use them as swords in your epic battle. But all you did was distract the prince when he should have been getting deeper and closer to us. You've gotten in our way, jester. And you're no longer funny."

A strangled cry left Roderick's lips as she grabbed him by the throat and slammed him hard into the wall. He had to blink a few times to be sure, but he soon realized that he wasn't just seeing things. Her pretty face had suddenly changed into something vicious, predatory. Vampiric.

"You're so old," she mentioned as she brushed her free hand over his terrified face. "One would think you were smarter than this. Or stronger. But I suppose that's a sign that your kind of evil is simply a thing of the past. We're the new trend, my sweet." As though she had just made a joke, she glanced down at his throat as her thumb went over his rapid pulse. "Sweet. There's one advantage to your age, then."

Bearing her fangs, Drusilla commented, "Your blood is aged just right."