Perhaps they've begun anticipating his daily order of basil beef and shrimp pad thai -- though he's never had any display of recognition from either the woman who takes his phone order, or the bored teen who brings it.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway is as light as the delivery boy's, but less certain. Feminine, from the sharp staccato. Wesley slips his credit card back in his pocket, reaches for the dagger resting on the hall table, its blade wiped down with holy water.

His visitor's knock is more confident than her tread. Wesley peers through the peephole, greeted by a glimmer of blonde hair and a face he doesn't know.

Opening the door a crack, he says, "If you've come about my salvation, I assure you I'm not interested."

"Actually, Charles Gunn sent me. He thought you might be able to help me."

That means Gunn -- or someone at Wolfram & Hart -- has kept track of him. He'd said he was getting away for a few days, and that had been the actual plan, evidenced by the travel brochures scattered throughout his flat. So this visit is in fact regarding his salvation -- it's just that this girl doesn't know it.

"I'm Anne Steele. We met a few years back, but you were a little distracted by bleeding nearly to death."

"Of course. The shelter." He remembers the flowers she'd sent to his room in ICU, too; he'd had to ask perhaps a dozen times through the morphine haze who'd sent them, but it finally stuck. It had been quite a dramatic arrangement. Wesley replaces the dagger, steps back and swings open the door. "Please."

She steps in, taking in the airless, lightless room and the clutter on every surface. "Have I come at a bad time? Seems like you're in the middle of something."

Isn't he always? In the middle of the epic string of failures that is his life. In the middle of dealing with the memory of emptying a gun into his father's body -- well, not dealing, precisely. Punishing himself. "A break is always welcome." He clears off a chair for her. "What is it I can do for you?"

"There's a man who's been hanging around the shelter. I'm pretty sure he's homeless. He's definitely mentally ill. Most of the kids I serve are pretty tough, but he's scaring them."

"I can scarcely think why Gunn thought I was necessary. The police should be able to take care of it."

"I'm not so sure. I think there's something supernatural involved."

Wesley perches on the arm of his sofa. "What makes you think so?"

"He keeps raving about Sunnydale."

Interesting that she knows there's something supernatural about Sunnydale's disappearance. "Still. Schizophrenics can often seize upon some recent event, shape it to fit whatever form their madness takes. I think the police would be your best bet."

Anne shakes her head. "He's not just fastened onto some random event. He paces the sidewalk outside the building, raving that I should be there, that Sunnydale wants me back." A sudden shiver overtakes her, and she rubs at her arms, looking a bit sheepish. "Sorry. That really creeps me out. He means me. Whenever I come or go, he follows me, saying the same kind of stuff."

"No doubt he says the same things to anyone who passes by."

Another shake of the head. "The kids have told me he looks them over really closely, and then he says, 'Not you, not you.' Some of them have started sleeping in the street again rather than pass by him. He's affecting my ability to do my work."

"He's fixated on you for some reason, that much is clear. But just because he speaks of Sunnydale, that doesn't mean there's anything supernatural at work here."

The downstairs buzzer rings again, startling them both.

Wesley rises. "I'm sorry. I don't believe I can help you."

"Wait. There's one thing I haven't told you," Anne says. "I really am from Sunnydale."

***

The delivery boy peers at his signature on his card, checking it against the receipt as if they haven't performed this ritual ten times in as many days. Wesley wonders if he really is that invisible, or if the kid just relishes this one small show of power. He tips the boy in cash and closes the door behind him.

Though he has no desire to share his meal with her, Wesley turns to Anne and makes the invitation. "Shrimp pad thai?"

She smiles. "Thanks, but no. Shellfish allergy. You go ahead. "

"That's unfortunate," he says. He's not quite as sincere when he adds, "There's basil beef. You're welcome to that instead."

Her acceptance upsets the routine he's developed -- the beef was intended for tomorrow's lunch. Then again, everything about this intrusion has thrown him off balance. He rummages in the cupboard for plates, sweeps aside the scattering of brochures on the table.

"Tell me," he says when they've settled in. "Have you spoken with this man?"

Anne is shoveling in the beef like a trucker. "No. That's the odd thing. Homeless people, even the unstable ones, don't scare me. I treat them like people, but I won't tolerate them scaring off my kids. I kind of have a reputation, so I rarely have trouble anymore."

"Yet this man--"

"He freaks me out. He's intense. He paces and gestures like a TV preacher, with a large side of crazy. But it's not so much that as the Sunnydale thing. I'm not even using the same name I did then. How would he know with such certainty that I come from there?"

"It's the fact that it's Sunnydale that makes you believe the supernatural is involved?"

She nods. "I guess you wouldn't know unless you'd been there. The town's -- it was, I mean -- a hotbed of weirdness. I got mixed up with some vampires when I was a stupid kid. I heard lots of other rumors. Or maybe it's me -- it's not like life's been that much quieter since I came here. Maybe I'm some kind of demon magnet."

"I very much doubt that," Wes responds. He struggles with the pad thai, but the sticky noodles aren't made for graceful eating. Fine for solitary dining, but.... "But its destruction could have been a natural phenomenon."

Anne shakes her head. "Something sucked that town right into hell, I'm convinced of it. If there really is an actual devil, he's probably choking on it."

He likes that she's firm in her convictions. "You're right. Angel was there shortly before its destruction. Things were heading toward a considerable battle."

"Who won?"

"Our side."

Her laugh is without humor. "I'd hate to see the other guy."

He squeezes lime onto his noodles. "I spent a little time there myself. Hardly more than a month or two."

"Enough to catch the general vibe?"

"Most definitely. I can't say it was a very happy time in my life." Then again, when has been?

"I'm not surprised. I'd hate to meet the guy who spent the best years of his life there."

Or the thing, Wesley thinks, but he decides to keep that sunny thought to himself.

***

Anne's teen center, it would seem, is one of the few places in L.A. where parking isn't at a premium.

"People around here have come to realize I won't tolerate vandalism from my kids," Anne informs him, "so it's all due to this guy."

As Wesley pulls the SUV into a space, "this guy" is sitting on the shelter steps, long legs splayed to take up maximum real estate. He's hunched over a small book, fingers wound through his lank hair, rocking slightly. He's much younger than Wesley had expected, his dark hair not yet threaded with gray. The surplus army jacket and pants hang on him.

Wesley signals to Anne to remain in the car and slips out, leaving the door ajar. He approaches as quietly as he can, drawing closer to the steady stream of muttering.

"Should be someone I love, right? I mean, that's obvious. But that's the trap. The answer's never obvious, it's always obscure. It's obvious, but it's selfish. What's the right answer, then? Why do I have to be the one? I'm not smart enough for this. Anyone with half a brain can see that." He sniffles and draws the back of his hand beneath his nose. "They picked me, so it's my choice."

Abruptly he looks up, directly at Wesley. The eyepatch gives Wesley a jolt. Between that and the cut that slashes down his right cheekbone into the scruffy beard, it's clear Anne's visitor has had a rough life.

You wouldn't know it from the smile that suddenly lights the young man's face. Or the white, perfectly cared-for teeth. "Hey, lookie what Annie brought me. Do you count? Yeah, of course you do, or she wouldn't have picked you." He flips through the pages of the book -- Wesley's close enough now to see that it's a blank-paged book for sketching, bound in black -- then digs in a jacket pocket for a stub of a pencil. He writes something in precise, remarkably tiny penmanship, then snaps the book shut. "If I were you? I would not mention the Chantarelle thing. She doesn't want anyone to know."

Wesley casts a glance at his car. Anne is cautiously easing herself out, keeping near the door, ready to dive to safety.

"Annie, Annie, Annie," her madman says. "Clever girl. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow. You brought me a substitute. I don't know if that's allowed. I'll have to consult the rules."

"We'd like to help you," Wesley says.

"Is that 'help' as in chain me up and lock me away? I probably don't get the free trip to England, though. Council couldn't give a shit about me, I'm sure."

Wesley's jaw drops. Anne's clearly right; this is supernatural. How could he possibly know--

"Really want to help? I'm looking for Cordelia. She's dropped off the screen. She goes on the list, but I have to find her first."

Cordelia. Of course. Christ. Now he sees beneath the facial hair and the grime. They'd broken up before Wesley had met them, trading hostile little potshots at one another, but at one time Cordelia and this young man had dated. Wesley struggles to come up with his name.

He rises abruptly, causing Wesley to take a startled step backward. "I'll see if this is doable. I'll get back to you."

Before either of them can react, the madman sprints into traffic.

***

They scramble for Wesley's SUV, but he's lost to their sight by the time Wesley pulls into traffic. They drive slowly down all the streets surrounding the shelter, but he's somehow melted into the landscape.

"Okay, that?" Anne begins. "That has the hairs standing on the back of my neck."

"He knows me," Wesley tells her. "He knows both of us. He said I shouldn't ask you about Chantarelle."

"That's way back in high school."

"Yes. He was Cordelia Chase's boyfriend for a time. One of Buffy Summers' friends, but his name escapes me."

Anne sucks in her breath. "Xander Harris."

"Yes."

"That's such a shame. I never really knew him that well, but he was a decent guy. Joked around a lot, in that way that I know now covers a lot of anger." She falls silent, troubled.

"For what it's worth, I don't believe his was a long, slow slide into madness. If he'd been on the street any length of time, his teeth wouldn't look as good as they do. Whether it's supernatural or everyday psychosis, I'd say it's sudden and recent."

"So how do we help him?"

He glances at her. "I thought you just wanted him away from your clients."

"Buffy saved my life. A couple of times, actually. If one of her friends is in trouble, then I do something about it. But I can't help him at the shelter. I don't have the resources to cope with mental illness, and he's past the age set out in the bylaws. Any ideas?"

"Find him, of course." Or, says the voice of his father in his brain, so much stronger now than it's been in years, you could simply not have lost him in the first place. "Until then, we should talk to some people who know him better than you or I do." He turns the SUV toward Wolfram & Hart.

He forces down his rising tension by asking Anne, "So what did he mean, don't ask you about Chantarelle?"

***

"Hey, wait a second," Anne protests as Wesley waves his ID at the card reader screen and proceeds down the ramp into the underground parking garage. "What are we doing at Wolfram & Hart?"

"Didn't you say you'd spoken with Gunn?"

"Sure. What's that have to do with it?"

"He works here now. As does Angel. As do I."

"That's the craziest thing I ever -- okay, clearly not. Not even the craziest thing I've heard today. But it's a close second. The first time I met Angel, he told me Wolfram & Hart was full of cheats and crooks -- and then there was the bad element. And he was right, they tried to steal hundreds of thousands in donations from my shelter. You're telling me they offered Angel a job and he took it -- you all did?"

"Actually he runs the L.A. branch."

"I don't beli--" She abruptly stops as Wesley glides his car into the space marked W. Wyndam-Pryce.

"Gunn didn't tell you?"

"We barely spoke at all. He sounded very rushed, and half the time we spent on the phone he was barking orders at people in the room. He gave me your address, said just go, don't call ahead."

Wesley exits the car and comes round to the passenger door, but she's let herself out by the time he reaches her. He ushers her into the express elevator just off the VIP parking area.

"I think I liked your grungy little storefront a lot better," she says.

It's not until his ears pop from the fast ascent that Wesley pauses to think about his appearance. It's not how he'd have chosen to come back after everything that happened. It's been at least three days since he shaved. At least he's changed clothes slightly more recently.

How very amusing that he thinks he can help a raving madman.

Wesley hopes Anne doesn't see him flinch as the doors glide open to reveal the lobby. He gestures for her to precede him.

This was a terrible idea. He's not ready for this.

But Wolfram & Hart has forgotten all that happened, or at least moved beyond it. Men and women -- and the occasional demon -- in suits bustle past them, intent on their own business. (He tries not to think what that business involves.)

Lorne is descending the stairs, chattering on his cellphone. "I know, Liza dumpling, but it would be a lot less costly finding yourself a vengeance demon -- hold on a sec." He lowers the phone. "Wes, how divine to see you. You look -- er, like you've taken full advantage of your time off. And who's this scrumptious cupcake?"

"A friend. Anne Steele. We're hoping Angel can help her with a problem."

"Good luck. When I say he's in a snit, I mean inhabiting it fully, moved in with his piano and 56" screen TV."

Perhaps so, but Angel swallows most of his impatience when he sees Wesley, displaying relief at first, and then a bit of concern. Wesley deflects his scrutiny by offering up Anne and the problem she's brought to him.

"So Harris has gone daft, has he?" says a voice from behind them. "How can you tell?"

Wesley's growing beyond weary of Spike's haunting of Wolfram & Hart. Perhaps he'll look up a few of the 5,739 exorcism spells indexed in the library. Except -- Spike leans against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest, quite corporeal. His leather duster looks rather the worse for wear. Wesley turns back toward Angel, about to express his shock, but Angel's already speaking.

"I have to say, I never liked that kid. But I've been through a near apocalypse or two with him. He's a soldier we want on our side. Whatever resources you need to help him, they're yours."

***

"Oh, Jesus god," Anne breathes, standing so abruptly she nearly tips her chair. "That guy is a vampire."

"Well, yeah," Spike says. "Not exactly a news flash." He doesn't even budge from his post at the door.

"It's all right," Angel says. "He works with me."

"He tried to slaughter me and a group of my friends."

That brings Spike to attention, both feet on the floor, hands on hips. "I never! I've never gone fangy in L.A. Even if I cared to, I doubt the quality would --"

Anne looks from Wesley to Angel, both men still lounging comfortably in their chairs. "This was a mistake. I'll handle this problem alone." She plunges her hand into her cheap leather handbag and comes up with a stake. "Let me out."

"Hey, now!" Spike protests. "Been in L.A. barely a month now, and was a ghost up until a few days ago."

"I'm talking about Sunnydale." Her grip tightening on the stake, she casts a fleeting glance toward Wesley, then back on Spike where he blocks the door. "I can't believe that you -- that's it. You're not who you look like. None of you. I should have known that wasn't Gunn, he sounded nothing--"

"Anne," Wesley says gently. "You're safe here, I assure you. Spike, go -- go have a nooner with Harmony." This much he's picked up, despite his absence. "Anything. Just go."

Spike, looking startled and vaguely insulted, backs out of the door. "Got a soul now, don't I?"

Wesley's head aches. "Go." He rubs his temple. "Anne, you're free to leave whenever you wish. But I hope you'll stay. I'd like very much to help you help Xander."

Gazing into the hallway where Spike disappeared, she jerks backward as Lorne flashes by again in his vermillion suit and lime green shirt. "Can we not do it here?"

Wesley rises. "Of course. We'll get some supplies from my office. Angel, thank you. When we know what's needed, I'll call on you." He ushers Anne out of the corner office and toward his own.

"Hey, head boy."

Wesley is half inclined to turn round and stake Spike himself. He keeps walking, as if he hasn't heard.

"For what it's worth, Harris wasn't crazy when I saw him last." His voice, as serious as it ever is, makes Wesley pause and look back. "That was the day Sunnydale caved in. Not saying that couldn't have driven him round the bend, but he was right in the head when we got the whole mess started."

"Thank you. Every bit of information helps."

Spike shrugs. "I've been crazy. Don't wish it on anyone. Another thing." He jerks a thumb back toward Angel's office. "Corporate wanker. Resources. Time comes you need help, I'll help, not call my bleedin' people and mobilize my resources. Understand?"

"Yes." He thanks Spike again, then shepherds Anne on to his office, intent on facilitating her escape from Wolfram & Hart.

***

"There are calls I must make," Wesley tells Anne as he pulls the SUV into a space in front of the shelter.

"You're welcome to make them from here. I've got two lines; I thought I'd check some of the adult shelters and soup kitchens in the area."

Wesley stammers an excuse about having left his address book at home, dropping Anne off with an invitation to contact him any time, night or day, if Xander reappears. Then he stops at his neighborhood liquor store for a bottle of single malt. One glass for before, and after --

Well, as many as it takes.

He breaks the seal and pours a finger, knocking it back as if it's some no-name brand from the well. A sin, really, but it's one he'll make up for later.

Then he searches the pages of his tattered address book until he finds the most recent entry for Rupert Giles. He pours another glass and sets it before him, the smoky amber a promise, an incentive.

He sighs and begins dialing the long string of numbers.

His father planted the seeds. Inadequacy. Shame. The certain feeling that he was a fraud just heartbeats away from being found out and exposed to the world.

Though it wasn't very long that Wesley knew him, Giles carefully tended every seed his father had planted. Wesley can't imagine more abysmally bad timing for a conversation.

Of course, he's forced to jump through hoops before Giles comes on the line. How very comforting that some Council traditions survive, even in the new order.

Though he knows full well that someone's told Giles who's on the line, he identifies himself.

Giles's response is a cool, "Yes."

He reminds himself that he's not a supplicant here, that he's trying to help a man who, last he knew, was Giles's friend. He squelches the urge toward meaningless, polite inquiries after Giles's health, and plunges in. "I'm calling about Xander Harris."

"What is it you want? He's in Africa. I'm afraid he's out of touch at the moment." The tone of his voice indicates that he wouldn't put Wesley in contact with him even if he could.

"I agree with your second point," Wesley says, "but you're very much mistaken concerning his whereabouts. He's currently in Los Angeles. I'm sorry to say he's quite insane."

If it weren't for the news he's bearing, Wesley would feel almost inclined to gloat at the shocked silence on the other end of the line.

"Surely you're mistaken."

"I've seen him myself. He's at least living on the fringes, if not on the street. He's been raving about Sunnydale, according to the woman who asked me to step in and help. When was it you last spoke with him?"

"He checked in from Mombasa some--" Wesley hears the rustle of pages -- "six weeks ago."

"Did anything seem unusual then?"

"He was more keyed-up than normal, but nothing that raised a red flag."

"Did he speak of anything in particular?"

"Just that he was glad to be in a city again. He'd found an American bar with hamburgers he approved of. He said he was going back that night for the third night in a row. It sounded entirely in character. In fact, I thought he sounded better than he had in a while. The work there's been difficult for him."

"Work?"

"Yes." There's definitely a tone there. Wesley can't quite read it, but he doesn't like it. "He's been seeking out the new slayers."

Right. The infection, his father called it. He believes that spell will mean the eventual destruction of the slayer line. Wesley's not sure what he believes himself.

"He's been in the field, so we only have contact when he can get to a phone or internet connection. How long do you believe he's been in the States?"

"I can't say. I came into this because he's been seen around a youth shelter, and he's scaring off the kids. Anne didn't say precisely how long he's been around, but she's not one to let her work suffer very long. I'd guess a week at the outside."

"Where is he now?"

Wesley closes his eyes, suppressing a sigh. "I don't know."

"You let him get away?"

"We conducted an extensive search. He's remarkably good at--"

The sigh comes from Giles's end. "Never mind. I'll be there on the earliest flight I can arrange."

"No,"Wesley says abruptly. "I can't recommend it."

"And why not?" The icy tone is a perfect echo of his father's.

"His madness is centered around Sunnydale. He grew more agitated when he recognized me, and that's what prompted him to run off."

"You're certain it wasn't you specifically? I doubt he has the happiest associations with the events surrounding Faith."

It's a cheap shot. It's also the truth. He proceeds as if Giles hasn't spoken. "It's too great a risk. I believe we need to handle him with utmost care so we don't lose him completely."

There's a long pause on Giles's end. "I want a daily report. In detail. And I reserve the right to come there, if I deem it necessary."

"Yes, of course." He hates the whipped-dog tone in his voice. The voice of the unloved son, the perpetual disappointment.

When he replaces the phone on its cradle, his hand is shaking. He rises, leaving the scotch untouched. Instead he walks into the bedroom, opens the door to the spare closet.

He's dismantled the cage that was there, which had held the girl who'd banded together with a demon and trapped Angel at the bottom of the Pacific. Though it's been a year since he'd freed her, he can feel her fear and despair so strongly in this tiny space that they almost have a sense of presence. A curl of nausea unfurls in his belly.

It makes him feel very much at home.

He closes the door and settles on the bare floor, knees pulled up to his chest.

He sits in the dark as he did when he was ten, replaying in his mind a litany of his failings. He stays until his back muscles are afire, and then he stays another hour for good measure.

When he comes out there's no father to find and present with an apology, but he says it anyway.

"I'm sorry, father." He reaches at last for the glass, but first he fills it almost to the brim.

***

It's another two days before Xander Harris turns up again.

Wesley takes one last day to (indulge himself in useless brooding) complete his leave of absence. Americans' fondness for wallowing in their feelings is one of his father's favorite themes. He always makes certain to drop into the same conversation the observation that Wesley has become thoroughly Americanized.

At least he'd approve of the single malt Wesley uses in place of a therapist.

When he makes his official reappearance at Wolfram & Hart, Wesley is better groomed, if hung-over. He pulls the blinds and, for lack of anything more productive to do, begins a search for prophecies regarding the closing of a hellmouth.

It's past quitting time when the phone drills a hole in his skull. He snatches it up, presses the blinking button that corresponds with his private line.

It's Anne. "He's back," she says simply.

"Have you engaged with him at all?"

"Believe me, I'm not in a big rush. He's just sitting on the steps. The few kids who had nerve to pass him and come inside said he asked if they'd come to be sorted."

"Wait until I get there before you approach him. If he has anything new to say, I want to be there to hear it."

"I have no problem with that."

"I'll be there as soon as traffic will allow."

By the time he arrives, Xander is up and pacing the sidewalk, gesticulating. Not the wild, uncontrolled gestures Wesley would have expected of a madman, but the same expressive movements he'd used as a teenager, choppy, yet somehow graceful. Wesley had forgotten that about him.

He signals Anne on his cell, then steps out of his vehicle. "Xander, I'm glad to see you again. We've been quite worried about you."

Xander laughs. "Worried about me? That's funny. I'm under protection, you don't have to worry about anyone screwing with me. I came to see Anne. You're involved, sure, but it's her I need to talk to."

"I'm right here," she says from the top of the steps. "Who's protecting you?"

"Can't say. It's not allowed. So look. I can't get an answer about the substitution. Not until I find Cordelia. Her name has to be in the book before I can talk to them. I have to see her before I can write her name." He whirls toward Wesley. "She hasn't been swallowed by the wolf, has she? I can smell them on you, the wolf, the ram and the hart. But she's outside of that."

"She's elsewhere, yes."

"Her name has to be in the book. I have to see her before I can write her name."

"Tell me about the book," Wesley says in a tone of casual curiosity.

"You're in the book," Xander says. "Don't need to worry about that."

"Could I take a look at it?"

"It's not finished." He slaps his hand over one of the cargo pockets on his jacket. "Can't show anyone until it's finished. I'm the keeper of the book, have to follow all the rules."

"I see. I work with books," Wesley says soothingly. "You remember. I completely understand."

"There are rules." Xander rakes his hand through his hair.

"Please let me know if I misstep," Wesley says. "I respect your rules, but I don't believe I know them all. I do know you can't finish it until Cordelia's name is written down."

"Written down, maybe crossed off. They haven't told me that part."

"Ah. Where do you go when you need to find them?"

"I don't find them." His voice is edged with contempt. "Can't believe you don't know that. I don't find them. They find me."

"Yes, of course." He hears the echo of his submissive murmur to Giles.

Xander stabs the air with his finger. "'Yes! Of course!' What would you know about it? I have to do this alone, so don't act like you know." He whirls toward Anne. "He's a Watcher, Annie. I don't know if you knew that. They act like they know things, but you can't always trust what they think they know."

"He wants to help you, Xander. We both do."

Wesley takes a gamble, hoping this isn't a dreadful mistake. It wouldn't be the first time. "I can help you find Cordelia," he says softly. "I might be able to take you to her. You'll need to clean up a bit before you can go. And perhaps you'd like a good meal. How long since you last ate?"

"Do you think that matters?"

"You have a mission, I understand that. But you'll need strength to carry it out properly."

"Sometimes I eat, sometimes not. I'm given all the strength I need." Suddenly his attention shifts to someone behind Wesley. "You can't be here."

Wesley turns to see a figure swaddled in a ratty wool blanket. His first thought is that it's another homeless person, infringing on Xander's territory. Then he realizes --

Christ. It's Spike.

Xander makes a chopping motion with his hand. "Who brought you here? Who made the exchange? This is not right, it's not going to work. The book --" He gives his head a tight shake. "That's it, I have to go."

Once again he turns and sprints into the street.

But Spike tears off after him. "Come back here, you stupid git!" They both dodge traffic with a raw grace that's almost beautiful.

Spike tackles Xander at the far side of the street, sprawling him on the sidewalk. As Wesley makes his own far more hesitant crossing, he sees Spike rear up, something clutched in his hand, unmindful of the slanting sunlight as his blanket slips. He stabs downward at his struggling captive, and Xander roars with pain and rage.

Wesley fumbles in his jacket pocket for his stake, but Spike turns toward him with a pleased smirk and a hypodermic in one smoldering hand.

"That ought to hold him."

***

With Anne's help they get Xander bundled into the back of the SUV. Spike, standing in the long shadow cast by the shelter, lowers the blanket. "Thought you might need some help."

Wesley squelches the urge to stake him, which is probably a carryover from last week's Don't feel bad, I killed me mum pep talk. "Spike," he says in the most reasonable tone he can muster, "I didn't need help until you showed up."

"Well, you saved time then. At least if you stop arsing about. Where we takin' him? Back to Wolfram & Hart?"

And install him where? In the cage where Nina resides three nights a month? In the lab, where he can be studied by that certain sociopath, Knox? (Or Fred -- but he's not yet ready to approach her.)

"We aren't doing anything. Thank you, Spike. Have a wonderful evening."

Anne returns to the car with an armload of clothes, a blanket and pillow. "These should fit. My talent for sizing by eyeball is justifiably famous."

"Too young for the PTA," Spike says speculatively.

Anne looks at him quizzically.

"Didn't really go in for the mass killing scene when I was evil. There was only a time or -- oh." He suppresses a snort, rather unsuccessfully. "You were one of them. The Lonely Ones," he says in a theatrical tone.

Anne's mouth quirks up wryly. "Bye-bye now." She closes the passenger door. Settling herself in and arranging her seatbelt, she turns to glance at Xander. "Out like a light, but he's still protecting that book."

When he looks back, Wesley sees that Xander has gone from his boneless sprawl to a tight fetal position, his body curled around the pocket bearing the black notebook.

"You must be dying to know what's in there," she says. She flicks a look at him. "He's gonna be out for quite a while."

"To say I'm tempted may well be the understatement of the year. But I won't try it. That would completely destroy any degree of trust that may be left after Spike's stunt."

"Tell me again why he's on the no-stake list."

"Believe me, sometimes I wonder myself."

"He said he's got a soul?"

"Yes. Apparently he underwent a series of trials to have it restored. Afterward, he helped Buffy avert an apocalypse."

"The Sunnydale thing?"

"Indeed." He wonders how to describe Spike's redeath and resurrection, decides it's unnecessary.

Anne shakes her head. "Can't tell the players without a scorecard. Especially with everyone switching teams." She aims a pointed look in his direction.

"Not teams," Wesley says. "We're just playing in a different ballpark. And I'm dropping the sports metaphors now because I loathe them. But I assure you, Anne, we're doing the same work, we just have world-class resources to help us do it."

She doesn't look convinced, but their conversation takes a more logistical turn as they approach Wesley's flat. Removing Xander from the SUV is exponentially more difficult than getting him inside had been, and by the time Anne and Wesley manhandle him into the apartment, they're nearly disheveled as Xander and wringing with sweat.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Anne asks as Wesley opens the fold-out sofa. "He's not going to know the difference if he sleeps on the floor. It's just as comfortable and probably safer than where he's been."

Wesley shakes his head. "Whatever's done this to him, whether it's supernatural or not, it's very likely a result of fighting demons. I'm not about to have him sleeping like a dog in my home." It's not as though he's ever had a guest to use the sofa before this. Not even Lilah ever stayed the night.

"Let me run to the car and get the bedding first. We get lots of donations, direct from the makers. You can pitch it out once you're finished."

As he waits for her return, Wesley regards Xander, curled on the floor. She's right, it's not as if he'd even be aware of his surroundings, not until the sedative wears off. But Wesley would know. This is not a life that's generous with its rewards. The least he can do is show the respect of a fellow soldier.

You can't save everyone. He knows that. But the least you do is give as much human comfort as you can.

***

As Anne predicted, it's a long time before Xander wakes. Once he resettles himself on the mattress to curl his body around the book, he remains perfectly still.

Anne stays on for a bit, and Wesley makes tea. For the second time in a few days, they sit together at the small table by the window. She kicks off her shoes and tucks her bare feet under her, telling him what she remembers of Xander in Sunnydale.

"What was that Spike said? Something about lonely ones?" She'd evaded his earlier question about Chantarelle.

"Can I get around answering that by just saying I was incredibly stupid when I was in school?"

"All I can grant you is a postponement, I'm afraid." He feels a distant sense of surprise. He's never had any facility for flirting, but he gets the sense this may be how it goes. But as most things he tries do, it goes somewhat astray.

"Speaking of which," Anne says, "I'd better get back. It always gets a little nuts in the last hour before curfew."

Wesley insists on calling a car for her. He starts to dial the livery service Wolfram & Hart uses, but abandons the call and finds another company in the phone book. Paranoia, perhaps, but as unattractive personal traits go, it sometimes has its uses.

Once she's gone, he watches Xander sleep for a while. His face is almost completely obscured by his long, unwashed hair and the hand curled on the pillow almost touching his skin. His thumbnail is visible, a pale oval edged with a half-moon of black.

Wesley wonders what the past few weeks have been like for him. How had he gotten here from Kenya? The Council had no record of his travels since Mombasa. Had he undertaken the journey while mad?

The thought of the Council reminds Wesley to notify Giles that Xander's been found. He realizes that it's worry that makes Giles so abrupt, but it comes across as superciliousness, and Wesley parts with the least information he can. "We don't know yet. He's under sedation for the moment, we won't learn anything new until he comes around. I assure you, he's been well taken care of -- not," he says yet again, "at a Wolfram & Hart clinic. It's a private facility. I'm sorry, I have to go." He hangs up on Giles's order -- more an entreaty this time -- to report in when he has more information.

"You can be one passive-aggressive mother when you want to be," he can hear Cordelia say. She's noted this more than once.

Cordelia. He thinks of this broken man's desperation to see her -- why her, in particular? How will he react, Wesley wonders, when he sees that she's broken as well? It took a god to break Cordelia; what has done this to Xander?

He turns to his books, though he doesn't expect any answers. The act provides some comfort, and helps him stay awake. At the last, however, he finds himself nodding off over the books, so he rises to make more tea in his small kitchen. Once he's filled the kettle, he turns and gasps to find a hulking figure filling the doorway.

It's Xander, the blanket draped over his broad shoulders. The ruin of his left eye is no longer covered by the patch. Wesley finds it impossible to look away.

"Nice magic trick, Wes. I didn't know that was a hobby of yours." His speech is slower than the rapid-fire patter of before, and slurred. "Now you see it, now you don't. What did you vanish, Wes? Hours? Days? Where did they go? In the closet with the lady?"

Wesley nearly drops the kettle at this.

Xander gestures clumsily, skinning his knuckles on the door frame. "Let's have a hand for my lovely assistant, Carol." He weaves on his feet. "Lots of things have vanished lately. Mostly they don't come back." He blinks, gives his head a shake. "Have you seen it? The crater? Something's gotta be done."

And then he crashes to his knees on the kitchen floor.

***

He leans over Xander, brushing the lank hair away from the eye with his fingers, murmuring soothingly. Xander hasn't displayed any violent behavior to this point, but Spike has escalated matters with his sneak attack. Wesley feels vulnerable, this close to a raving madman, but there's nothing to be done about it. "You're right, Xander. Your eye does need immediate attention. Let's get you into the bathroom where the light is better."

Xander doesn't fight him, but he doesn't provide much help. After a struggle, Wesley hoists him to his feet and helps him stumble to the small bath, sitting him down under the glare of the over-the-mirror lights.

Wesley's lost count of how many bullets he's dug from Angel's cold flesh. But this is different, sickening. What he's looking at goes beyond damage to destruction. The eye is never going to repair itself, and if Wesley doesn't do something, it's never going to heal. "Xander, I don't like the look of this. I'd like to have a doctor take a look." Wesley knows one who'll make house calls, if the circumstances warrant and the triple fee is in cash. Wesley has sufficient money on hand, stashed in his go bag.

"No doctors, no drugs. No more shots." Xander rubs below his shoulder, where Spike had plunged the needle.

"Yes, well, I'm sorry about that. I didn't know Spike would do that; I hadn't even told him where I was going. I intended for you to come here of your own free will."

Xander laughs. "Free will, yeah. Free Willy. Fun for the whole family. Not so free, though. Gotta do tricks for the people. Jump through hoops. Make the people go aaaah, and get a piece of fish. No doctors."

"I understand. But the eye socket is inflamed. If it becomes infected, you'll be in danger of becoming quite ill. You do understand what I'm saying? The infection would very likely reach your brain."

"Can't have that. Poison running around the brain," Xander says.

"Exactly. You'd be much too ill to carry out your mission."

"Wouldn't want to lose my missionary position. You do it. No doctor."

Wesley sighs. "I'll do the best I can, then. I've done a fair bit of field medicine, working with Angel." What he really hopes, however, is to regain Xander's trust and get a doctor in here. This is really beyond him. "What I'd like to do first is get you cleaned up. That'll go a long way toward cutting the risk of infection. I'm sure you'd enjoy a hot shower after these last few weeks."

"No. Can't let go of the book, can't get it wet. No shower. No doctor, no drugs, no shower."

"I promise nothing will happen to it. We'll put it in a plastic bag, zip it shut, and you can put it on the ledge there where you can see it the entire time. It's completely out of the spray, but right within sight."

Xander clutches the book through the cloth of the jacket pocket, pressing it against his belly. "Can't let it go, can't get it wet. There are rules. I've told you this."

"All right, we'll try something else. I can help you wash just a bit at a time, here at the sink. You can keep the book with you -- we'll still put it in plastic, so it doesn't get splashed."

"Can't get it wet."

"We'll be quite careful. I must insist. It's absolutely vital that we keep your eye and the area around it as clean as possible. Look at your hands." Wesley has a sudden inspiration. "It'll keep the book cleaner, too. I'm sure that's been difficult to do while you've been living rough, but it'll be much easier now."

Xander smiles. "You're very skilled at this, Wes. That's something new." He sounds perfectly lucid. "The thing about skill, though -- it's obvious to anyone who looks." He shrugs. "Sure. Let's do it."

Wesley releases a breath. "I'll just get a plastic bag, then. Don't move."

He makes it as quick as he can, grabbing the whole box instead of taking time to extract one Ziploc, but when Wesley returns to the bathroom Xander is on his feet, rummaging through the medicine chest.

Xander turns toward him, Wesley's straight razor in his hand. The blade gleams in the too-bright light. "Think you could use this on another man?"

***

The box slips from Wesley's grasp, clattering on the tile floor. His heart hammering, he tries to think of a calm, measured way of telling Xander to hand him the razor, but words are beyond him. He finds it difficult to breathe.

Xander flicks his gaze downward, just below Wesley's face, then upward again. "Maybe not. Could have a slip. Slips are dangerous, I can see you know that."

Wesley recovers himself, holding his hand out, palm upward. "I can help you shave, if that's what you're asking."

Taking the blade between the thumb and finger of his free hand, Xander offers Wesley the razor handle, just as they teach in Boy Scouts. "No slips," he says, still holding the blade.

"No," Wesley echoes, and Xander releases the razor.

Wesley doesn't quite know how to set about washing another person one part at a time. It seems to make sense to begin closest to the affected area, then his hands, and work his way from the neck down.

He's never washed another person's hair. It requires some logistical planning. The kitchen sink is larger and has a spray attachment, which would surely make the task easier, but Wesley resists the idea of scrubbing such filth off Xander and down his kitchen drain. There's bound to be splashing. As he's considering, Xander busies himself with the box of Ziploc bags (which Wesley will remind himself to bin when this is over). Once he's gathered his supplies -- shampoo, antibacterial soap, washcloths and towels, a small plastic basin -- he turns to find Xander has wrapped his book in at least four layers of Ziploc bags. He clutches the sketchbook so tightly Wesley can see his knuckles shining white even under the layer of grime.

"Your book is quite safe. You're safe here as well." He lays a hand on Xander's shoulder. Xander flinches slightly.

"No Spike," he says. "No spikes. No slips."

"None of those things. We'll get you cleaned up, then find you something to eat. Off with your jacket and shirt, and we'll get started."

That first stage is complicated, of course, by Xander's refusal to turn the book loose for even a moment. Wesley tamps down his impatience, even as he wrestles with the dirty jacket and the thin cotton T-shirt beneath. The lines between filth-caked skin and merely dirty are demarcated by the jacket; the shirt marks the borders between sun-browned skin and the pale. A medallion of some sort rests just below the hollow of his throat, suspended from a blackened leather cord. Under the grime, it's not quite apparent whether it's tarnished silver or pewter. The design is difficult to make out. A dragon, perhaps.

"Perhaps you'd like to put this aside until we've finished."

Xander gives a hard shake of the head. "It never comes off. Cheerleader Cordy gave it to me. Golden girl. Before everything vanished for her, too. She was my girl for a little while, did you know that?"

"I did." Odd. Even in her less acerbic days, he can hardly picture her doing anything but dismiss the medallion as a "cheap, hippie-dippy piece of crap." He lets the thought go, turning on the taps and gesturing Xander over toward the sink.

Strange to think that washing another person's hair is the most intimate thing he's ever done, but somehow it seems true. To be so close he can feel the heat of another body. There's a peculiar vulnerability involved -- especially in Xander's case, but surely it must always be present at a moment like this. He wishes he'd shared this with Lilah.

He draws the wet strands through his fingers, lathering them four times before he's satisfied, while Xander holds a washcloth to his damaged eye to keep the water and soap out. Xander seems agitated at first, muttering under his breath words that Wesley can't make out, but the warm water and rhythmic movements of Wesley's fingers seem to calm him. When they're finished, streaks of grey water track down the sides of Xander's face like tears.

"Let's see what's under there, shall we?" He takes extra care washing Xander's face, making certain to use a light touch around the injury, and that no contaminated water runs into the socket.

The closer he works to the ruined eye, the more visible Xander's effort to contain himself. He practically quivers under Wesley's touch as Wesley takes the washcloth from him. "Tell me about your travels," Wesley says. "Mr. Giles told me you were in Africa. You must have seen a great deal of beauty there."

In response, Xander murmurs what sounds like a series of names. If they're place names, they're too obscure for Wesley to recognize. "Most of them aren't going to make it," he says softly. He stares off past Wesley, his gaze thousands of miles away. "So little I could do."

"In the end you always feel that," Wesley says. "No matter where your slayer lives. In the end that's always true." He's come to recognize that the Council -- and the tradition that came before it -- is a juggernaut that crushes watchers as surely as it does slayers.

Wesley suppresses the useless anger this realization always produces. He turns to the sink, pulling the chain on the drain plug to let the black water swirl away. Rinsing out the basin, he fills it again with warm water. He takes a clean washcloth from its wicker basket.

"Give me your hand," he says.

Hesitantly, Xander loosens one hand's grip on the book and offers it to Wesley. The touch of it surprises him. It's the rough hand of a laborer, callused palms and split nails. So different from the hands of the watchers and trainees Wesley knew. It's Xander's hands that have borne the brunt of the life he's been living since he returned from Africa, black as a chimney sweep's, abraded and crisscrossed with cuts. Wesley envisions him picking through dumpsters and streetcorner trash barrels, searching for scraps of food or something worth selling. Anything he's managed to find to eat, he's handled with these filth-coated hands.

It takes several sinkfuls of hot water, a nail brush and one formerly white bath towel to see pink on the palms of his hands. Wesley's back is beginning to protest, but he's barely begun his task.

"You've hurt your hands," he says, to break the silence. He works the lather up Xander's right arm.

"Slips," Xander mutters. "Can't avoid them. Nobody can, not for long."

Wesley takes a gamble. "You had quite a serious mishap with your eye. Did that happen in Africa?" Giles hadn't mentioned it -- did he know?

"Mishap," he repeats, as if there's something amusing about it. "Not a mishap. A slip. Not Africa. Sunny, sunny California."

"Sunnydale?"

"Garden spot of the state. You know what happens in gardens, don't you? Talking snakes and girls who don't know any better. Not a good combination."

He hadn't heard. He wouldn't have believed that the rift between the Council and Angel's people was so irreparable that Buffy wouldn't have shared this news with Angel. "What happened?"

"Thumb of a preacher man, yes it was, it was, ooh, yes it was. But enough about me. Show me your slip."

"Give me your other arm."

Transferring the book to his other hand, Xander presents his arm. "It's a secret, then? You can say. I'm good at secrets. Everyone knows. Tell Xander a secret, he'll die before he lets it out."

Wesley feels a fleeting urge to confess himself, telling Xander about the bizarre experience of gunning down his own father -- and then discovering he hadn't at all. Not an encouraging indicator of mental health, this impulse to bare his soul to a madman.

"You'd rather die too. Too bad they've got their quota. Otherwise, they'd recruit you for sure."

"Tell me about them, Xander. Who are they?"

"You weren't listening. The secrets stay inside." He proves what a reliable keeper of secrets he is by refusing to talk further. It's nearly two hours more before Wesley finally finishes his task. His back is on fire, his legs are numb -- and every last bath towel and washcloth he owns is in far worse condition than the disposable blanket and pillow Anne had sent along.

He has to tug the old clothes out of Xander's hands. "Anne sent you some new things. These are ruined." Once he pulls them away, he stuffs them into a black bin liner. His own clothes, plastered to him by vile black water, are just as unwearable.

"I'm keeping the jacket."

"Xander, you must keep your eye clean. You cannot touch that jacket and then put your hand to your face. Here --" He thrusts the pile of donated clothes toward Xander. "There's a pair of cargo pants. They have a pocket for the book. Perfect size, as if it's made for it. We'll find a new jacket tomorrow, as well. But you must give that one up."

Gradually Xander relaxes his grip on the jacket.

"I understand," Wesley says. "It's been your protection. But you're safe for now, and the jacket can't shield you from anything, only increase the chances that you'll become ill. We'll find you a new one tomorrow."

Xander lets it go, and Wesley stuffs it into the bin liner with everything else.

"Wash your hands again, and then you can get dressed."

While Xander's occupied, Wesley walks to the trash area with the black bag. Mrs. Rosario, who misses nothing, spots him in the hallway, taking in his own grime-smeared skin and clothing.

"Just a little DIY project," he tells her. "I'll keep the noise to a minimum."

"There won't be hammering, will there?"

He hopes to god not. Making an excuse, he hurries back to the apartment, where Xander shambles, clothed but barefoot, from the bathroom.

The book has vanished from sight, but Wesley sees a telltale rectangular bulge in the cargo pocket. Anne has given him a polo shirt the color of the high California summer sky. The sleeves are shorter than he's been wearing, and bands of pale skin are visible on his arms. It makes him look more vulnerable somehow.

"Do you keep your promises as well as you guard your secrets?" Wesley asks.

"No slips. That one time with Anya, but that was necessary. I keep my word."

Wesley extracts a promise that Xander will stay inside the apartment while he makes a swift cleanup of the bathroom, finished by a shower. "Then I'll examine your eye, and we'll see what can be done."

When he emerges, skin pink and sensitive from hot water and scrubbing, he finds Xander sleeping on the sofabed, atop the clean blanket Wesley had supplied. The book is tucked beneath his leg, safe in its pocket; his hand curls loosely around the medallion.

He looks at peace. Wesley decides to let him sleep. They both could use the rest.

***

He finds himself staring at the dark hollow below Xander's left eyebrow. What had he called it? Not cavity.

Crater.

The word makes him shiver. It's more accurate, in a way. Cavity doesn't begin to suggest the damage here, the violence that caused it.

Wesley wants to have the full story, but he's not likely to get it from Xander, not in a way he's likely to comprehend.

Giles, no doubt, can tell him.

He imagines this conversation for a moment, then he carries the phone into the kitchen, thumbs in a number he knows by heart.

"Harmony. This is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Find Spike. Yes, I mean now."

***

He waits by the window, watching for the Viper with the necro-tinted glass. It's full dark now. The assignment he'd given Spike had required it. When he sees the car pull up in front of the building, Wesley slips out of the apartment to let Spike in before leans on the buzzer and botches whatever progress Wesley's made with Xander.

"Into the hallway," Wesley says as Spike appears at the front door. "I need to keep an eye on my flat."

"The hallway," Spike says, affronted.

"He's sleeping at the moment. It took an enormous effort to regain his trust after your brilliant maneuver." It's safe to conduct business in the hall; Mrs. Rosario is always in church at this hour.

"Right, but you wouldn't have him here so you could whinge about his trust if I hadn't bleedin' captured him for you."

"He didn't run until he saw --" Why is he bothering to argue with Spike? He can't imagine a more fruitless activity. "Did you get what I asked for?"

"I came, didn't I?" He hands over a white paper bag with the logo of a local pharmacy. "What'd he do, go and get himself a dose over there?"

Ignoring the question, Wesley rummages in the bag, sorting through the large pharmacist's bottles of various antibiotics, bandages and fresh eye patches. "I thought we should get an assortment of drugs, in case it turns out he's allergic to any of them." Wesley hopes to god Xander can tell him if he is. "I'm afraid that eye is going to become infected. What's this?" He fishes out a huge bottle of OxyContin.

Spike snatches the bottle away. "That's mine. What? I wanted it to look like a real burglary."

"It was a real burglary."

"Yeah."

Wesley decides not to think about what that grin signifies, though he suspects Spike will not be hurting for cigarette money for a while. "Were you in Sunnydale when that happened? The eye?"

Spike's self-satisfied smirk drains away. "Yeah. I was right there. Christ. It was during the build-up to what happened to Sunnydale. We were fighting this thing that called itself the First Evil."

He remembers this from Giles's diaries. "Buffy encountered it once before. Just before I came to Sunnydale."

Spike shrugs. "It came back, then. It had a lieutenant. Minion. Whatever you want to call him. Wore a priest's collar and called himself Caleb." He reaches into his coat for a pack of cigarettes and Wesley doesn't stop him. "Wouldn't guess it, seeing what a stringy little shit he was, but he was strong. Nearly beat Buffy down, a time or two. There was a battle, and Caleb killed a couple of the potential slayers, who'd started making their way to Sunnydale -- I don't know how much of this you know."

"We saw Willow when this was beginning to come to a head. But we had our own apocalypse brewing."

"Right, you'd think the gits could coordinate their efforts." Spike takes a drag on his cigarette. "So yeah. Battle. Dead baby slayers. Xander went back to help one he'd knocked about, and Caleb got his hands on him."

"How was he after that?"

"Not crazy. He and Buffy went through a bad patch, but he wasn't the only one. Even her sister broke with her over it. Wasn't long before he was back fighting beside her again. Whatever made him like that --" he jerks his head in the direction of Wesley's flat -- "came after I went up in flames."

"When you heard me telling Angel how I'd found him, you said something like, 'How can you tell?'"

Spike gives a dismissive wave of his hand. "The usual shite I say about Harris. We have a long history of pissing matches. Stopped being anything but words, toward the end. He was thrown by what happened, but he was sane."

Wesley nods. "Unless his friends were completely oblivious to his mental state, it had to be something that happened in Africa."

"Plenty of the ancient and dark magic there, I can attest." He drops his cigarette end and mashes it beneath a boot.

Before he can say more, a strangled cry issues from Wesley's flat, and they head toward it at a run.

***

When he feels the thin mattress dip beneath her weight, he doesn't ask how she found him. It doesn't occur to him to wonder. She found him in Mombasa, when she made him hers. She's found him all these times since, even in the squat near Chantarelle's shelter.

He gasps at her beauty. It's so much more than his mind can hold, each time he sees her is like the first. He does better with her name. It's beyond the capabilities of his tongue, but it sings in his mind. It's driven out a lot of things that used to be there, but he doesn't miss them.

He worried whether he'd angered her, letting himself be taken in by the Watcher, but she gives no sign one way or the other.

Or maybe this is the sign:

She rides him the way she first did in Mombasa, straddling him, her hands pinning his shoulders to the mattress. He's never shared anything like this with another woman. It's wilder, more intense, yet time seems to stretch out forever. She never brings him to release, but she leaves him trembling with exhaustion, every nerve ending buzzing.

She has two gifts for him, she tells him. One will come to him from one of her servants -- he'll know when the time arrives. Once he has that gift in hand, the other will be possible.

It's an intricate Celtic knot of a gift. It is something he will give to her, but it will circle back around and be a gift for him, too. He'd thought at first he would only be given one, but now she tells him he has pleased her, that ultimately there will be five.

He never speaks in her presence -- he doesn't need to; she knows his heart. It's even more of a relief at this moment -- he's so overwhelmed he wouldn't know what to say.

She touches two fingers to his lips, then presses her own lips to the medallion he wears.

When she draws away from him, her absence is so painful it makes him cry out.

***

Spike reels back from the doorway, shaking his head to clear it. Wesley shoulders past him and inside the flat, closing the door on his muffled protest.

Xander lies sprawled on the sofa bed, his head thrown back, his breathing ragged.

Gingerly, Wesley reaches out to touch his shoulder. "Xander, it's all right. You're dreaming, that's all."

Xander gives his head a shake. "Light went out. "

Wesley had left a low-watt lamp on in the corner of the room, but had turned off the others as Xander slept. He switches on the closest light. "No, it's all right."

"She goes, she always goes, and I'm not ready."

"Who goes? Tell me," he urges gently.

Xander grows still for a moment, a crafty, shuttered expression crossing his face. "Anya. She died in the crater, you know. Never, never coming back. Just in dreams."

Wesley vaguely remembers an Anya. Surely he's not speaking of that one.

"I'm sorry. Why don't I make you some herb tea. It will help settle you. I need to attend to your eye."

"Herb tea." He says it as Wesley had, pronouncing the H. "Don't want to ask."

"It's just chamomile. It'll help you sleep."

"Maybe she'll come again if I sleep. No. It's too soon. She always goes, and I'm never ready." He fingers the medallion at his throat.

"What's that?" Wesley says sharply.

"What? It's nothing. Nothing here, nobody home."

"At your throat. It looks like a burn. Move that aside, please."

Agitated, Xander closes the medallion in his fist, drawing it up toward his face. On his skin where the medallion had been is a perfectly round mark, raised and reddened.

As if Xander had held the medallion in a flame, and then clasped it back at his throat.

***

Xander submits to Wesley's examination, even agreeing to take some antibiotics to ward off infection. Lost as he is, Xander manages to respond to Wesley's questions that he's allergic to penicillin, which gives Wesley some hope that he's not going to blunder and kill his patient.

He also tends to the burn mark at Xander's throat. "Perhaps you should take the medallion off for the time being. Give this a chance to heal."

"It never comes off. Told you that."

"Yes, I remember. I'm just concerned that --" He suddenly realizes that the medallion itself is now bright and untarnished; the leather cord, while weathered, has gone from black to brown. "Do you know where this came from?"

"Told you that. Anya gave it to me."

Wesley frowns. "When was that?"

"Years ago."

"Do you know where she got it?"

He shrugs. "Magic Shop probably. It's for protection. I'm breakable, she said. He said it first. Her ex. But she said so too. Little too often."

"But Cordelia --"

"I need to see her. Her name belongs in the book. Especially now."

"Why is that? What's changed?"

"You ask too many questions. Even worse than lectures all the time. Watchers." He shakes his head. "You said I could see her."

"It can't be done tonight. There are visiting hours, procedures that must be followed."

"Always rules."

"Exactly."

"Firm believers in the rules, you watchers. Why?"

He stammers a moment. "Rules ensure that things run smoothly--"

"Not that." His voice is on the edge of contempt once more. "Cordy. Why visiting hours, why procedures? Nobody tells Cordy when to do things."

"No," The note of sadness Wesley can't keep out of his voice makes Xander look at him sharply. "They never could. She's in hospital right now," he says, as if there could ever be a day when she's elsewhere. "She's been ill."

Xander slaps his hand against the bathroom wall. "Cordy. Doesn't. Get. Ill."

Wesley's heart thumps, but he works to project calm, to absorb Xander's anger without making him feel threatened. "Yes. That used to be true."

"Just that one time. I staked her. She fell, it was an accident, but it was my fault. She wouldn't see me then, but I have to see her now. Her name has to go in the book."

"I'll take you to see her tomorrow."

"No matter what she says."

Wesley's breath catches at this. Looking away, he fusses with the first aid supplies. "Yes. No matter what she says." He closes the door to the medicine cabinet, gets an unwanted look at his own face. "I'll make the tea now."

***

The Watcher says the tea's supposed to help him sleep, but it does nothing. It tastes like boiled grass.

The truth is, he never sleeps after she comes to him. Not for days.

But he pretends for his host's benefit, so he'll finally give in and sleep himself, instead of sitting in a chair and watching him.

He lies perfectly still on the fold-out couch, the book tucked in its pocket beneath his leg, while his mind races.

Five.

In some ways, this unexpected gift simplifies the choices he has to make. Yet at the same time, it complicates his part in things.

But she chose him because he can handle it. He knows this with the first utter certainty he's ever felt about himself.

He will bring her the five, and receive his five-fold gift.

***

Sometime before dawn, Wesley shifts suddenly from a dream to complete wakefulness. In the filtered orange glow of a streetlamp through the filmy curtains, he slips out of bed to check on his guest.

Xander stands at a window, one scarred hand drawing the curtain aside no more than two inches or so. Gazing out at the street, he remains as motionless as he had been curled up in sleep. Though he gives no other sign that he's aware of Wesley's presence, he says, "Not a nest, just the one."

"A vampire?"

"Viper. Nest of vipers. You know that phrase. This one has one tiny red eye, winking on and off."

Damn Spike. He's going to bollix this up yet. "It won't hurt you."

"No. Crawl off to its nest soon."

"Why don't you come away now. Let me look at your eye."

"It doesn't hurt."

"I'm glad. I'd still like to see it."

Xander lets the curtain fall closed, turning toward Wesley.

Switching on the light, Wesley asks, "How do you feel?"

Xander smiles. "Five by five."

Funny how that phrase can send a thread of nausea uncurling in his stomach.

"She marked you too," Xander says. "I heard that. After she was Buffy. Did she make you hard before she hurt you? Or maybe during? She did me. She specializes in that, you know. She could make a good living."

Wesley knows this. He's paid money for it himself, that exquisite blend of pain and pleasure. He'd thought perhaps it might erase the shame he felt over his body's response to the memory of Faith squirming on his lap. It hadn't worked out that way.

"Come into the bathroom. I want to look at that in the light."

Xander complies, saying nothing more. To Wesley's relief, the tissue around his eye looks healthier, and he seems less feverish than last night. He delivers this piece of good news.

"Now all I need is the blade," Xander says. "Sharp and shiny. It's the one last thing. Cordelia hates beards."

Wesley lets out a relieved breath. "Yes, I can help you with that."

***

There is a strip of terra cotta-hued tiles running down the center of the corridor on Cordelia's ward. As many times as he's walked this way, Wesley has never noticed it until now.

Xander treads only on these, nearly heel-toe fashion, like a tightrope walker. His loose-limbed grace has deserted him, tension evident in his every step. Uncharacteristically silent on the drive here, he now counts softly under his breath.

He smells of soap and shaving cream. Wesley walks close enough to be aware of it, close enough to tackle him if necessary, to use the hypodermic Spike brought with the other supplies last night.

He hopes this isn't a terrible mistake, the latest in a very long line. "It's just ahead," Wesley says quietly, pointing to a door on the left.

"Thirty," Xander says, and for a moment Wesley has the strange thought he's offering an accounting of Wesley's mistakes. That number would include only the most major ones. "That's six times five."

"Yes," is all he can think to say.

"Thirty doors," Xander says impatiently.

"Oh. Of course."

Xander turns toward the door, but his feet remain on the center strip of tiles.

"Are you ready?" Wesley has warned him, in the most gentle terms possible, not to expect the Cordelia he remembers.

Xander makes no reply, but his breath has quickened. He fingers his book through the cloth of the cargo pocket on his upper leg.

"We don't have to do this."

"We don't. I do. Her name goes in the book. I can't write it until I see her."

Wesley nods. "Whenever you're ready."

Xander looks down at his feet, neatly aligned at the edge of the terra cotta tiles. Taking a breath and squaring his shoulders, he steps off.

Lightly touching his elbow, Wesley guides him to Cordelia's bedside. He speaks in a tone of false cheer. "Cordy, I've brought an old friend to see you. Xander Harris is here." He turns to Xander. "It's all right if you'd like to take her hand."

Xander gives no sign that he hears. His hand clutches the metal bed railing instead. After a moment, Wesley takes her hand himself, rubbing a thumb over the papery skin below her knuckles. Despite the attentions of the staff, her skin is so fragile, and her hair, always so phenomenally shiny, looks dull and lifeless.

"Xander's done quite a bit of traveling. He's recently come from Africa."

"Spike," Xander mutters. "Who made this happen?"

"Spike had nothing to do with it, Xander. She's been like this for months. Well before he turned up again."

"It's obvious. Living death for an undead life. Any idiot could see."

"No," he insists. "Spike was in Sunnydale. Cordelia -- she was used as a vessel for the birth of an ancient god. It was too much for her. I'm sorry. I know you had feelings for her once. And I grew very fond of her these last years." So much so that he's sorry he brought Xander here. Until now, his visits have been private occasions. He talks to her, speaking of Wolfram & Hart and this strange restlessness that comes over him. He massages her scalp, or smoothes moisturizer onto her hands. Sometimes he plays music for her, or brings in a portable TV and VCR to play one of her favorite shows. The nurses encourage him, but now, in the presence of a madman, he feels like an utter fool.

"This can't happen. Not this way. There are rules. She can't go in the book now."

"Tell me why," Wesley says as casually as he can. "I'd like to understand more about the book."

White-knuckling the railing, he speaks while looking at Cordelia, not at Wesley. "There's nothing in there."

"But I've seen you write in it. There was writing on the pages."

"Not there," Xander says angrily. "Here. Nothing inside her, nobody home. You think she's some fairy princess under a spell? Is that why you come? Think the prince can kiss her, bring her back? Talk and talk and talk all you want. The princess is long gone. She doesn't belong now." He slams the heel of his hand against the railing, then stalks off to the window. There's no view but a brick wall.

Wesley had thought of that wall as a metaphor. That Cordelia was walled inside a body that had failed her. Not that he's been holding out any hope -- he's believed for some time that she's as trapped as Dennis was behind his own wall.

How stupid to feel her loss so much more acutely now. To feel it as he had in those first days after the balm of Jasmine's presence had been taken from him. He strokes her hand one last time and transfers his grip to the railing, holding on as if otherwise he will fall and never stop falling.

"We should go now," he finally says. "Let her rest."

Xander makes a faint, derisive sound, but he turns from the window, accompanies Wesley out into the hallway. He doesn't, as Wesley does, pause for one last look.

Neither man speaks in Wesley's SUV. Xander is a jittery presence beside him, transferring his tension to Wesley. What, exactly, does he do with his guest now? What had he hoped to accomplish by taking him to see Cordy? Had he hoped to give Xander something, or take yet another thing from him? He'd hoped to learn something, this much he knows is true, but isn't that what the vivisectionists say?

Wesley is worse than a fool.

A thought which is reinforced as the car idles at a left-hand turn light. Xander slips the seatbelt and bolts out into traffic a split second before the light goes green, darting through cars to the righthand sidewalk. Before Wesley can even react, he's cut off by two lanes of fast-moving cars to his right, assaulted by horn blasts from the vehicles behind.

Rattled, Wesley floors the accelerator, making a sloppy left. By the time he can reverse his course, Xander is nowhere in sight.

***

When she came to him, she never said anything about this. He'd understood the book was his and his alone. If the plan had changed, wouldn't she have told him?

The Watcher would have him believe it's entirely random. Does he think Xander is stupid? No one from Sunnydale believes in coincidence or chance.

"Intelligent design," he says to a woman waiting at the corner for the light. "Malignant design, that's the usual." She decides to cross the other way, where the light is already green.

He sees the Watcher's SUV up the block, headed his way. He cuts toward the umbrella-dotted terrace of the Starbucks. There's an empty table littered with an abandoned drink and half a pastry. He settles himself on the chair. As long as he's washed and dressed in clean things, he fits in. As long as they think he's paid his money, he fits in.

The Watcher fed him well this morning, but his weeks on the street have taught Xander not to waste an opportunity. He tears pieces off the abandoned crumb cake and delicately pops them into his mouth.

He pulls out his book and bends over it. Everyone has a book here, or a computer like Willow's, or a pen and paper.

He fits in.

He pages through his book with its neat script and complex system of symbols. "What now?" he mutters, but he quickly looks around, aware that he can't talk to himself, or he won't fit in.

Does Spike count as one of the five? Not the first five, he knows that. Even walking around, he is dead. No one dead can be in the first five. But is he walking around because he's in the second five?

Spike's not who he'd pick. Xander didn't mind him so much by the end, but there are others he'd choose first. And it was his to choose, she'd told him that.

She'd bestowed this favor on him. Nobody else.

He will still make it five.

***

Stuck at a traffic light, Wesley calls Anne's shelter on his cell. Once he's reached her, he says, "I thought I should give you fair warning. Xander's roaming around loose again. He may come to find you."

"How is he?"

"Quite agitated. I suspect I made things worse."

"Whatever's making him worse, if he is, is inside his head," she says. It's hard to believe that a woman this wise is a contemporary of Buffy and Xander. "Can I help somehow?"

"I'm just driving around looking for him. Two sets of eyes would make that easier."

"You know where I am."

"I'm approximately ten minutes away," he tells her. "I'll see you then. And thank you."

***

He knows who will be first, of the second five. He's thought long and hard about this.

It will be Jenny Calendar.

For Giles, because he's never asked for anything. Because that summer when Buffy had run away, he never let them see that he was mourning what else he'd lost. That's what he did, shoved his own troubles far into the background and took care of "the children," as he used to call them.

So Xander can follow his lead, just this once.

Second, though, will be Anya. Because he's not as good as Giles, and never will be. Because, after all, he loves her. Because she earned it.

Third and fourth keep switching back and forth in his mind. He's finally settled on Joyce for the third. Because he can make both Buffy and Dawn happy with the same choice. Because he misses her too, more than his own mother.

Fourth is Tara. Not because it will erase what Willow did, but it will ease some of the damage she did to herself. Because of Tara's soft eyes, the grace they could pour onto him when she felt his hurt. Because of the charm she gave him that year on his birthday, which he still wears around his neck. Because her death made the world a more fucked-up place.

Last is purely selfish. Jesse. No one seems to miss him the way Xander does. His parents moved two years after he disappeared. Willow never mentions him, and Buffy barely knew him. He was Xander's brother, his mirror, his better self.

The second list, which is actually the first, is much harder.

***

Because he knows the torture will be finite, Wesley calls Giles on the drive to Anne's and admits, in not so many words, what an ass he is. "I'm searching for him now. At least he's clean and fed, and he's had some attention paid to his eye. He needs his antibiotics, however, or he'll be in worse shape than before."

"Explain to me what happened to Cordelia."

"Nothing. Nothing recent. She's been in a coma since spring. I'm fairly certain she's not coming out of it."

"And it never occurred to you that her friends here might care to know that."

No. It hadn't. They'd all been thinking of their own loss. It's not as if her Sunnydale friends had kept in touch with her. "You're quite right. Because you'd have been the first to let us know if one of your key people had -- oh, I don't know -- say, been half-blinded in the line of duty." There's a silence, and Wesley knows he's scored a point. Which leaves him only several hundred points in the minus column. "I haven't much time," he says. "I called to ask about a medallion Xander wears around his neck. I can't help thinking it could be significant. He says he's worn it for a long time, but he's given me two different stories about where he got it. Do you remember it? He says he's never taken it off."

"Not that I recall. Can you describe it?"

"It's silver. Approximately the diameter of a quarter, though it's thicker. And the design --" There's a vagueness that slides across his mind, as the shadow of a cloud moves across the landscape. It's an almost unpleasant sensation, causing him to shiver.

"Yes?"

"I've quite forgotten," he finally says. What's one more humiliation after so many?

There's a brief pause from Giles's end. "That's not like you at all. Not the Wesley I remember. Do you think there could be a ward or a glamour of some kind that's preventing you from getting a closer look?"

Wesley blinks. In his past interactions with Giles, he can't recall any occasion on which the other man had given him the benefit of a doubt. That's not like you at all. "I -- That could be the case. It hadn't occurred to me."

"It wouldn't. Not with a well-made ward." He gives Wesley the name of a text that depicts a great number of amulets and charms. "Perhaps it'll prod your memory. I'll put in some research on my end, and ask Xander's other friends if they've had any odd communications from him recently. There may be a key in all his ramblings."

"I'd appreciate hearing anything you can find out."

"Of course. And I'd ask the same in return. He's very important to us." Giles makes a gruff goodbye and rings off.

Wesley can't quite say why there's a tightness in his throat as he phones Anne to say he's a block away.

That's not like you at all.

It rings in his mind almost like praise.

***

The second list -- which is actually the first -- makes his head ache. There's a smaller pool, for starters, and it's scattered far and wide. Scattered like the stars.

There are correspondences, too, that have to be taken into account. The lists have to balance. Thus the need for the system of symbols. He doesn't want to make a mistake.

The first rule is this: no one's name can go in the book unless they've spilled their blood in Sunnydale.

The Watcher, blowhard that he was, never shed his blood in battle, but Xander has a crystalline memory of him appearing in the library with a tiny piece of toilet paper pressed to a shaving cut. Stuffy man in a stuffy suit, made ridiculous by a scrap of white with a red-brown dot. Made even more foolish by his embarrassed reaction to its discovery.

Always brought down by a tiny detail, that's the Watcher with the two last names.

His carelessness with a razor, a minor injury long forgotten, earns him a place in the book.

Chantarelle's a girl, and lived in Sunnydale far longer than a month. Her name belongs too, no question.

Finding the correlations, that's the tricky part.

Suddenly restless, he stands and tucks the book back in its pocket, along with the pencil stub. He carefully buttons the flap closed over the book, finishes the last bite of crumb cake, and sets off for the park.

Something is there for him, he feels it.

He brushes his fingers over the warm metal disk at his throat. He feels her love for him, the one she's chosen.

She has a gift for him.

***

Anne's presence doesn't really help -- Xander's far too good at fading away on the streets -- but it makes Wesley feel less alone, less of a bungler.

She's noticed the medallion as well, but she can't describe it. "I think you're right, though, that it's worth checking out."

"There's a library at Wolfram & Hart. I'll find the text I need there. Would you be willing to come too? Perhaps you might recognize the insignia if you saw it."

Anne hesitates, but finally agrees.

"I understand your reluctance," Wesley says. "I know you've had experiences with Wolfram & Hart that make you wary."

"I've had experiences with Angel that make me wary."

He forgets, sometimes, that there are clients in Angel's past who don't view him as a savior. "Ah. You must remember, he was going through a dark time at that point." Wesley's not sure why he feels the impulse to make excuses.

"How do you know he's not going through a dark time now?"

Wesley has no answer to that.

She touches his arm as they wait for the parking garage gate to open. "Listen, I don't mean to sound so argumentative. I spend so much time fighting for my kids, it's getting to be my default mode."

He smiles at her. "It's not a problem at all."

Once they've reached his office he settles her on the sofa. She contemplates the soda and mug of tea Harmony has brought in to them and says, "If you wanted to reassure me about this place, having Harmony Kendall as the first person I see when I walk in the lobby isn't the best way to go about it."

Startled, he asks, "You know Harmony?" Harmony had given no sign of recognition.

"Sure. I went to school with her. She was in Cordelia's little clique."

"I keep forgetting you have that connection. Neither one of you mentioned it back when you came to us -- well, to Gunn -- for help."

"She wouldn't have recognized me from my high school self. I'm not even sure I was on her radar anyway. And she'd changed too. Not just the hair and clothes, but the whole vibe she gave off. It didn't click right away who she was."

Selecting one of the templates from its shelf, he murmurs the name of the text he seeks. He sits close beside her on the sofa. "The amulet we're looking for -- there's a good chance it's protected magically. I've seen it up close, but the details refuse to stick in my mind. So I want you to tell me if anything you see sparks any sense of familiarity at all. Even a faint glimmer. Or a powerful feeling that it's notthe one we're looking for. If you feel any reaction at all, be certain to tell me about it."

She nods, and Wesley settles the enormous book over both their laps. She is close enough that he breathes in the scent of her hair, feels the warmth of her body next to his. If their task wasn't so urgent, perhaps he wouldn't mind that they pore over hundreds of pages with no result.

"I can't even focus anymore," she finally announces. "I think I need a break."

"I'm in the same state," Wesley says. He turns a page and inserts an index card to mark their stopping point. "Why don't we get up and stretch a bit?" Carefully he lays the text on the coffee table, and they rise and look out over the city, lights winking on as dusk falls.

"I'd better call the shelter, tell them they'll need to handle things without me."

As she borrows his phone, he heads for the nearest break room to get more soda and tea. He sets his mug down to steep next to the cold tea he'd abandoned, and hands Anne her glass where she stands admiring the pink streaks beginning to tinge the western sky.

"I'm not exactly known for my imagination," Anne begins.

"I don't know," Wesley says. "Many people would see a group of street youths as slackers and thugs. You see kids who need help, young people with potential."

She smiles. "That's more about memory than imagination. I was one of those kids. Anyway, what I was going to say, when you brought that book over, it seemed like the words and drawings just flowed onto the page out of nowhere."

Nodding, he says, "The book -- all those, on that shelf there -- are magical templates. You speak the name of the book or scroll you require, and the text appears. Wolfram & Hart owns thousands of resources in their library, but this way they're always at hand."

"So these things belong to Wolfram & Hart too."

"Yes."

"And you trust them? I mean, how do you know that the entire book is there? Or that it's not changed somehow, to skew the information you need? Angel told me years ago, Wolfram & Hart is pretty much the home office of evil here on earth."

Wesley feels as though he's stepped out of his floor-to-ceiling window. Falling, falling, falling into the darkness below, with nothing to catch onto.

How can he have never contemplated this?

Fool.

***

There's a market set up in the park. Ponytail-wearing Birkies selling organic vegetables to the SUV crowd. Not really a market. A real market has live chickens squabbling underfoot, children calling out like crows, begging for his coins or his attention. A real market is rows of ratty blankets spread with imperfect fruits and vegetables, teetering stacks of baskets, piled with more blankets.

A real market feels like a fever dream, noisy and dusty, with colors made sharp and painful by the relentless African sun.

A real market has an old witch-woman.

The same old witch-woman in every village, he'd almost swear it. The first time, he'd talked to her, hoping she'd present him with a slayer.

Her talk confused him at first. She spoke of a girl or woman. No name, just she. He asked for more in his halting Kiswahili until his guide roughly tugged him away from her.

"What? I couldn't understand."

His guide wouldn't say, but Xander persisted. It had never occurred to him until then that a black man could blush.

"What did she say?"

"Bad things. I don't have the English."

The hair pricked up at the back of his neck. "You can tell me." He could consult with Giles next city he reached, see if it was a curse or something.

"Fuck you," the guide said, fast and low.

Xander's jaw dropped.

"That's the only word I have. She say that, and more. Disgusting things. That she will fuck you, make you hers."

His head whipped around, though the witch woman was already out of sight. "Her?"

"No. Some other. She say she. Not I."

He laughed and said he'd have a story to tell back home, but he knew and the guide knew that he was freaked out.

After that, Xander steered clear of old women at the markets. They always seemed to look like the first. After the third market, the third old woman, Xander's guide found other employment.

This is not a real market, and he's a little bit glad.

He passes a man with a guitar (He thinks of Giles, the gift he's planning to bestow on him), a table covered with handmade bracelets and earrings (He remembers how Cordy scorned glass beads), another table piled with fruits and vegetables. The woman behind the table is turned away, packing away things she hasn't sold for the trip home, and because he is washed and dressed in clean clothes (He fits in), he can sneak a couple of plums as he walks by. He keeps his walk slow, casual, and no one even notices.

He drifts until he is nearly at the far edge of the park. There at the end of the row is a blanket spread half on grass, half on sidewalk. It is covered with bad carvings, mass produced African masks made in China. A man sits in a canvas chair, bored, reading a fat paperback. His face looks like a bad carving, his cheekbones too sharp. He looks up. "I've got something I think you'll be interested in."

Looking over the Pier 1 knockoff masks, Xander doesn't think so, but the man turns away from the blanket, rummages in a battered duffel. He comes up with a bolt of cloth, a kente of reds and golds and greens and black. Something makes it hard to breathe even before the man folds back a corner of the cloth to reveal what's protected there.

The hilt of a knife. Its surface is carved, too, with the same insignia he wears around his neck.

The man peels back more of the cloth.

The blade is bright and shiny, yet covered in intricate script. The characters writhe and dance in the flat sunlight, swarming like ants on the silver surface.

Xander drops the plums into the dust.

***

"I've been seduced," Wesley says. "We all have. And they knew just what it would take, for each of us."

"So what now?"

Now he decides whether he walks away from everything he ever wanted. From his work. His friends.

What is there to walk to?

Now is not this minute, however. "For now we continue looking for the amulet. I'll check whatever we find against a source I can trust."

"That makes sense."

They return to their places on the sofa and Wesley settles the book back on their laps. After they've browsed through another five or six pages, something occurs to Wesley. "You said you couldn't focus anymore."

"I'm fine now. Keep going."

"I just realized. I felt it too. Complete fatigue, inability to concentrate."

"You're still too tired?"

"No. That's just it, do you see?" He flips back several pages, and suddenly he's hit with overwhelming weariness.

"Wow," Anne says.

"It's the ward." There are four illustrations on the page. "Can you see one you recognize?"

"No," she says quickly. She's not even looking at the page.

"If you could just try --"

"It feels bad." She pushes the book back at him, slips out from under it.

Bad is a beginning. His palms are clammy and his heart races unevenly. He forces himself to look.

One of the four looks right and yet wrong. He makes himself concentrate, until he's forced to shove the book aside and bolt for his private washroom. After he's emptied his stomach, he splashes water on his face, and that's when it comes to him. It's not the image on the medallion he recognizes, but its reverse, the pattern burned into the flesh below Xander's throat.

He's still covered in a cold sweat when he emerges from the washroom.

Anne rises from the sofa. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine." He hopes this is true. Wesley bypasses the phone on his desk, flipping open his cell. Once he's put through to Giles, he says, "I think I've found the amulet. The copy I have of the text, however -- there are reasons I'm not certain I can trust it. I'll need your help."

"You have that, of course."

Fighting nausea, Wesley finds the page once more. He reads the inscription, then slams the book shut before his stomach revolts again.

"Bloody hell," Giles murmurs. "Not another ancient unnamable."

Wesley hears the riffle of pages on the other end. He closes his eyes in the hope that the room will stop whirling.

"All right, I've found the page."

"If it's the same version, it's the upper left--"

"Christ Almighty," Giles says.

"What? I can't make it out, the ward is too strong."

"Christ, this is bad. It's a hyena."

***

He walks out of the park carrying the kente-wrapped knife and a slip of paper, both given to him by the carved face man.

The square of memo paper has the name of a hotel printed on it. A room number is neatly written in black ink on the cream-colored paper. Though the paper is passed to him without a word, Xander knows who waits in the room.

Though she mostly comes to him, she brought him to her once before.

His third night in Mombasa. He'd seen her twice before this, both times at the American bar.

The first time he caught sight of her across a barroom jammed with people. It's bad to stare, but he found it hard to look away from her. He'd never seen a woman this beautiful. One time that night her gaze swept over him, that's all, but that moment burned in his mind all night long.

The next night when he went back, he edged his way through the crowd toward the men's room and found himself near her. She smiled and said something about seeing him twice in a row, and he said he came for the American hamburgers. She asked what else he missed.

"My friends. Long hot showers. I'm not sure in what order."

She laughed, and it flowed through him like a cool, soft breeze during the heat of the day.

He had to step back to let a party of drunk men pass, and when they had gone, so had she.

The third night he came back. One last hamburger before he went back into the field, he told himself. But when she didn't show, he found himself lingering until last call. It wasn't until he was making his way from the men's room that he saw her standing in the middle of the deserted barroom. Relief tore through him, stronger than any he'd ever felt: stronger than hearing that Cordy would survive her fall and impaling; stronger than seeing Willow alive and unvamped; stronger than seeing Buffy again after those long months after Glory.

He said something inane, like "Nice night, isn't it?"

"I don't have a shower," she said, "but would you like a long hot bath? I have a private bath house that's fed by a hot spring. It's the least I can do for an aid worker, I think."

It didn't occur to him not to accept. Still, the situation was so odd that he could only imagine himself submerging for ten minutes or so before feeling he should dress and join his hostess.

Things didn't turn out that way. The water was hot and uncommonly silky against his skin, stinking slightly of sulfur. He settled back into its liquid embrace in the massive clawfoot tub, time completely forgotten. When he finally roused himself, he discovered his dusty clothes had been taken away. Shrugging, he put on the white cotton shirt and pants that had been left for him.

"Sorry to be so long," he said once he emerged. "I must have fallen asleep."

She smiled. "The waters will do that. Lithium is one of the substances that occur naturally." She opened a bottle of water and poured him a glass. "You should drink."

It cleared his head a little. He wondered about getting back to his hotel. The streets of a port city are never a good bet after closing time.

She approached him, an ornate jar in her hand. "I find this helps, too." She dipped two fingers into the jar, smeared something on his forehead. Though he expected nothing at all, he suddenly felt sharper, more awake, yet weirdly things also felt hazy. "Come," she said, and led him to another room. There was a bed there as large as his entire hotel room.

"I really--"

She opened his shirt and touched another two fingers of stuff from the jar to his chest. "Give me your hands."

Without speaking, he presented them. She smeared them with the oily stuff from the jar. Its scent now seemed to fill the room. Keeping her grip on his right hand, she led him across the layers of ornate rugs to the bed.

"I think that--"

She gently pushed him until he sat on the edge of the bed, then lifted his feet, one by one, to anoint them too.

Then he was lying in the middle of the bed, naked and erect.

And then she was getting naked. "Your mind, your heart, your hands, your feet. You have given them to me. To my will."

"Wait, I--" The words drifted into smoke before they even reached his lips.

"I called you a long time ago. This only seals it." Then she straddled him, surrounding him with her heat. As she moved atop him, he had a fleeting memory of Faith.

After about five seconds, he had no more thoughts at all.

***

After he finishes the conversation with Giles, Wesley stands and stretches. "Mr. Giles is following up," he tells Anne. "He'll be in touch when he knows something more. What would you say to the notion of getting out of here?"

Anne turns from the window, where she's been admiring the blood-red sunset. "Something on the order of yee-haw."

He smiles. "Somehow I get the feeling those words have never crossed your lips before."

"Good guess. Probably never again." She looks around for her handbag, which Wesley finds and hands to her.

"Could you possibly eat?"

"Actually, I'm starving. Once you put that book away, I was fine."

Wesley nods. "My experience exactly." He suggests a local hangout known for comfort food, though he's aware that American comfort food is worlds apart from its British counterpart. Her eager agreement, however, makes it worth his sacrifice.

He watches her tucking into her meatloaf, pausing only for a small dissertation on the importance of swaddling the meatloaf with catsup. "It has to be baked on, like this, not just poured on after. So gravy is just wrongness."

"That much is completely obvious to anyone," he deadpans.

Anne's mouth quirks up. "Go ahead. Make fun. How's the mac and cheese?"

"Perfect." Why, he wonders, hadn't he looked Anne up after the shooting, stopped by to thank her for the flowers? "Mr. Giles, the friend of Xander's I was talking to, told me about an incident in your school some years ago. I was wondering if you might remember."

"I left before my senior year, but if it happened before, I might recall something. What is it?"

"He told me the school principal was attacked. The official story was wild dogs."

She actually pauses, her fork hovering over her mashed potatoes. "Poor Mr. Flutie. I haven't thought of him in a long time." She gives a ladylike snort. "Wild dogs. Typical Sunnydale official story if I ever heard one."

"Do you know what really happened?"

Shaking her head, Anne says, "My money's on the supernatural, though."

"There was a group of students who were possessed."

"The whole Satanic bit? I'm surprised I don't remember that. I was a little more aware of the Sunnydale vibe than most, being a goth girl."

"No, not possessed in that sense. In this case they were possessed by the spirits of animals. Hyenas, Mr. Giles says."

Her mouth twitches a bit. "Hyenas. As in laughing hyenas."

"Perhaps it sounds ludicrous to you. But these students killed and ate your Mr. Flutie."

Her fork clatters onto her plate. "That's -- Jesus. I never knew. I never believed the dogs thing, but I never really thought about what did happen. We all had a knack for not really thinking, goths or not."

"Mr. Giles told me Xander was one of the students."

"Oh, god. He ate--"

"No, no. He was proven to be elsewhere when that occurred. I was wondering if perhaps you could search your memory, come up with any details about the others. You've heard Xander talking about this book, about writing names in it. Giles says the amulet represents a hyena. Perhaps it's these other students he's trying to find." He's not completely convinced, however. Cordelia wasn't in that group, yet Xander had been dead set on adding her name.

She leans back in the booth, lost in thought. "I was a sophomore that year. I was never in his circle, never even near it, but I usually had a bead on the social land mass. Continental drift, seismic shifts, your occasional Krakatoa sliding into the sea." Cupping her chin in her hand, Anne stares out the window at the street. "Xander broke off from his friends for a short while that year," she finally says. "Things weren't quite stable anyway. His best friend had disappeared earlier in the year, and Buffy transferred in, and she joined their little clique." A fleeting smile. "A little like my clique, a clique of outsiders. But we were different sorts of uncool, so we didn't really cross over. Anyway, he started hanging with this group of mean kids." She starts tying her straw wrapper into knots. "That wasn't really like him. He could be sharp-tongued now and then, but this group went out for the flat-out vicious. God, they were creeps. They'd do something cruel -- as publicly as possible -- and then they'd swagger off, laughing like a bunch -- oh. Yeah."

"Any idea what happened to the others?"

"Now I remember, there were all these rumors flying after Mr. Flutie died. Not connected at all, but three of them just disappeared. One of the girls was supposedly pregnant and went off to live with a relative. One of the boys got shipped off to a mental hospital, I heard. Kyle -- he was the ringleader, always the instigator -- was the one who stayed behind. He was kind of a ghost after that. You'd see him in the hallway, but he never spoke up, never was seen with any friends, never even gave anyone a hard time after that. Sometime during junior year, he shot himself. The last one, Rhonda -- they said she ran away, and I thought I saw her in L.A. She looked really different -- which is a long story that's completely unrelated -- but I thought I recognized this beaded necklace she always wore. I called out her name, but she just said, 'I'm nobody' and kind of scurried off. So maybe it was her, maybe it wasn't. Wow. That explains a lot. How do you come back after doing something that crazy? Even if you were made to do it."

"Precisely," Wesley says softly, and Anne shivers.

"We'd better find him, then."

***

It feels less like a hotel than a palace, with vast marbled lobbies where he'd have felt out of place even when he was a builder in a suit. Though he knows he'd have been arrested just days ago for daring to cross the threshold, he walks in without fear or hesitation. He is her servant, her chosen one; there's no place in this world he doesn't belong if she sends him there.

The entire top floor is hers, the elevator opening into a private lobby. She answers the bell herself, and he falls to his knees in her presence. He was too ignorant to pay her such respect the first time she summoned him, but now he knows.

She holds a slender hand out to him, drawing him back up onto his feet. She wears no jewels on her hands, at her throat. He can't imagine any gemstone that wouldn't look squalid in the light of her beauty.

She favors him with a smile, pleased at his thought. There has been no need for words between them since the night in Mombasa when she first took him, marking him as her own.

Before she can sanctify her gift and make it truly his, he must bathe and be anointed. The water cascading into the tub doesn't have the overpowering odor of the hot spring water in her homeland, but she spills a vial of scented oil into the waters.

She caresses his cheek as she turns back from the tub, and it takes all his strength not to fall to his knees again. She whispers her name into his ear and then holds her hand out for the book. He fumbles to unfasten the cargo pocket, then reverently places the book within her hand.

After she withdraws, he doesn't know how long he stands there, her name singing in his mind. The waters are just warm when he finally thinks to shed his clothes and step in.

Her name is still shimmering inside him when she calls him into her presence. He dresses in the things which have been laid out for him and walks out to meet her.

He offers himself to her to be anointed. The salve she touches to his forehead, chest, hands and feet has a different color and scent this time, a fact she chooses not to explain.

She unwraps the kente cloth, takes the knife into her hands, the blade flat between her palms. Then she presses the flat of the blade against the paler skin at the inside of his right forearm.

He feels nothing but a faint sensation of warmth. When she takes the knife away, its shape and the words engraved on it are branded onto his flesh. She tells him without speaking that now the knife is consecrated for the use of her priest.

Next she returns the book to him. She has worked out the correspondences for him, calculated the necessary balances. He has done well in trying to work this through on his own, she assures him, has earned the answers she is now giving him.

The book falls open to the first list, which she has filled in for him. As he holds the book in his right hand, the knife branded on his arm points directly at the list.

He sees the names she's written there and is jolted out of the communion they share. Pain flares along the synapses of his arm, and he nearly drops the book. "This can't --" he says out loud.

The contact between their minds is not severed, however. These are the ones I require, she tells him, the message riding on a wave of love for him. You are the one I've chosen. You can do this.

His correspondences are all broken down. Giles cannot be on the first list, because then the second makes no sense. The same is true of Dawn. And Cordelia --

"This -- I can't."

My reasons are not your reasons. You are my priest. She touches her fingers to the place on his forehead where she anointed him. She not only reads the thoughts there, the protests and reasons. She draws them out and consumes them. In their place she leaves his mission, her name.

She touches her lips to his, something she has never done before. He drowns in the soft heat of her mouth, the electric touch of her fingers on his skin. When she steps back to lead him to her bed, he nearly cries out, bereft.

She makes him her priest.

She rides him, as she has done before, but for the first time she does more with her hands than pin him to the mattress. For the first time she allows him to touch her with his own hands.

She takes him to a place where he can't tell if his mind is unbearably full or completely empty. Her touch is like ice and like fire. She says his name and it sounds alien, harsh. When she commands him to repeat it, the only name that will come to his tongue is hers.

She is pleased.

She rides him as she always does, to the quivering edge of release, drawing away just as he would tumble over the precipice. This time he does cry out, reaching toward her.

This time is different. She seizes his legs, pulling him toward the edge of the bed. She pushes his legs up, shouldering into them, raising his hips just off the bed. Her fingers glistening from the contents of another ornate jar, she reaches between their bodies and makes him ready.

Holding his gaze, she enters him.

There is nothing in this that surprises him.

Thrusting inside him, she bids him again to repeat his name back to her, but once more, her name is all he can utter.

She lets him climax then, for the first time in all their couplings. It rolls through him and through him, wave after wave, like the sound of thunder in a tropical rainstorm. He soaks her up like the rain, he's been so parched, so cracked and dry and withered.

When she withdraws from him at last, he feels like drought has come upon him again. She lies beside him (another thing she has never done before), and he touches both her breast and her prick. She laughs at this, and he takes this to mean she is still pleased with him.

She rises then, allowing him to rest as she prepares a tray of food for them. He can barely eat in her presence. Her silk robe falls open as she leans forward to offer him a piece of fruit. She makes no move to close it, and he sees her body is now the way he remembers, wholly female.

She promises him more of this, once he has accomplished his mission. She wants him to come with her to her city.

Of course he will go. He's her priest.

Bathed and dressed once more, he takes his leave, the book once again tucked in its pocket, the knife concealed beneath the long black trenchcoat she gave him.

He stumbles as he leaves her suite, tripped up by a pile of newspapers at her door.

An entire week of the Los Angeles Times.

***

Wesley stands at his office window, watching the sky streak with red and orange, threaded with purple.

He'll miss this view.

He'll miss having unlimited access to any rare text or scroll he's ever wanted. Miss the shaky, adrenaline-tinged exhaustion of an all-night search through the library. But Anne's right. How can he trust these texts, knowing their source? Especially when he's seen the type flowing like water onto blank pages. How reliable can these be?

Wesley tries to imagine the kind of damage that could result from a prophecy that was skewed, or even made up from whole cloth.

He should have known better than to sit down to play cards with Wolfram & Hart. They have so many inventive ways to stack the deck, so many reasons. A smart man knows when to walk away from the table. Wesley may not have won, but his losses are few.

"I heard you was doin' this," a voice says behind him.

He turns to face Gunn, who's eying the last of the boxes, sitting half-packed on his desk. "Yes. Harmony would be the soul of discretion, but for her complete lack of a soul."

"You haven't been around much lately."

No. He's been busy exhausting all leads trying to find Xander, who's gone to ground. He's even been to the city morgue twice; who'd have thought L.A. was so well supplied with one-eyed transients? "I've had projects to work on," he says.

"My friend Anne, did she look you up?"

"Yes. We've been working together on her problem."

"That was supposed to get you back with the program," Gunn says irritably. "Not send you spinning off on your own."

"Gunn, have you ever stopped to consider how perfect this place is for each of us? How it offers us everything we could possibly want?"

"Damn straight I have. Me, I'm in the praise be and hallelujah camp. While I'm thinking you're about to lay some Calvinist buzzkill on me. Beware of snakes offering me the knowledge to choose my own destiny."

"It's an apt analogy, and you know it. We've all made a devil's bargain."

"You think I'm giving it up, going all Flowers for Algernon at this stage, take another guess."

"For Christ's sake, Charles! You are not mentally challenged."

Gunn shrugs. "So I'm 1 for 2 in the analogy department. Does it matter? I like who I am. Why should I go back to who I was?"

"Because I'm not sure you can trust what they've given you. It was your friend Anne who pointed this out to me."

"She's smart about street kids, maybe. Wolfram & Hart is a whole different league."

What is it about Wolfram & Hart that brings out the sports metaphors? That alone is a definitive indicator of evil.

"C'mon, Wes. Stay with the team." Irritation crosses his face. "What's that laugh about?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry." He sees the wariness that shutters Gunn's expression, though, and realizes it's exactly this insecurity that has driven him to make this bargain. "Anne and I had a joke about sports metaphors, that's all. Come with me, Charles. We can go back to what we were in that little storefront."

Gunn turns his face aside. "We can't never be what we were. We had Cordelia then. I'm not even talking about her access to the Powers That Be. We lost our heart."

"Would she want--"

Gunn sweeps the unsealed carton off Wesley's desk. "Don't you fucking start with what she'd want. Do whatever you want, but don't you use Cordelia." He spits a curse, then turns on his heel and stalks out of the room.

Wesley stands for a moment regarding the empty doorway, then kneels to right the carton and begin repacking it.

"I guess Charles has been by to give his opinion on matters."

It feels like such a long time since he's heard Fred's voice. A moment passes before he can look up from his task and offer her a smile. "Fred."

"I should have come to find you long before this. I thought you needed time, after everything that happened." She comes in and plops onto the sofa, all knees and elbows and awkward angles. "You have to remember, Wesley, that I spent my best years in a cave. Sometimes I miss things."

His throat tightens, but he forces the words out. "Not at all. It's just -- well, I can't overlook where all this is coming from. Not anymore."

She cocks her head. "The old 'lie down with pigs' thing." She blushes furiously, flutters a hand. "God, not that I meant --"

Lilah. He'd have never made that leap, if Fred's apology hadn't made it for him. Someday perhaps he'll find this amusing. But not for a long while.

"It's all right. Fred, I'm afraid I have to keep at this. I'd like to get this all home tonight." He must not only pack the SUV but unload it tonight. He's set to collect Xander's friend Willow at the airport in the morning. It was very nearly the whole lot of them, including Giles, but for an apocalypse brewing somewhere on the continent.

"Can I help?"

"I'm fine." He does this. Pushes her away, even as he wishes to be closer to her. It's a pattern he can't seem to change.

"Oh." She sounds so small and waifish. "I'll get out of your way, then."

He wants to stop her, but he doesn't.

He stacks the boxes on a chair, thinking about calling for one of the porters to help him carry them to the freight elevator and on to his SUV. But there's an appeal to the symbolism of carrying it all out of there himself.

Symbolism or wank. It's so difficult at times to tell the difference.

Later, as he lifts the last two cartons and elbows off the light switch, his cellphone rings. It's Anne.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything new to report," he tells her. "One of his close friends is arriving tomorrow. She may be able to reach him."

"I have something to report," Anne says. "He's here. And Wesley, I would never have seen how I could possibly say this, but he's so much worse than he was before."

***

It occurs to him this might be a good time to collect on Spike's offer of help. He finds the cellphone number Spike scrawled on his month-at-a-glance calendar on the desk and dials as he strides through the halls.

Quite a few office lights are still blazing. Associates hoping to make partner. Perhaps they still fear the infamous Wolfram & Hart purges. The break room light, not surprisingly, is out. The break room is not where the go-getters are.

As he passes, he hears the insistent ring of a cellphone, curiously synched with the sound from his own cell, buzzing as his call to Spike goes unanswered. Wesley pauses and retraces his steps, flipping on the light in the break room. Before he turns his head, he gets a quick glimpse of leather coat, a pair of shapely legs draped over the shoulders. A highly improbable -- make that improbably high -- pair of shoes.

How disturbing is it that the feminine moan is immediately recognizable to him as Harmony's voice?

Wesley reaches between the legs and grabs a handful of collar, yanking backward.

"Oi!"

He drags Spike out into the hallway. "I believe your phone is ringing, Spike."

"You could let a bloke finish."

"Yeah," Harmony calls out after them.

"Xander Harris has turned up again. I may need your help subduing him."

"Violence for the higher good. Now you're talking. Two cars or one?"

Much as he'd like to keep an eye on Spike, the notion of two vehicles makes sense. "Two. Not the Viper, he know that one." He punches the elevator call button, and steps in when the doors glide immediately open. "And do please wipe off your face."

Spike's tongue flashes briefly at the corner of his mouth, as if chasing after a last bit of cupcake icing. Then he wipes at his face, with his shirt tail.

Definitely two cars.

On the interminable elevator ride, Spike asks, "So what's the latest on Harris?"

"Anne says he's turned up at the shelter. Even crazier than before."

"Rupert hasn't come up with anything?"

"He's got an apocalypse on his hands at the moment. And when you're looking through indices under Ancient Beings, Comma, Unnamable, you have to sift through a great deal of dross." It annoys him that it's always Rupert come up with anything yet? whenever Spike drops in for a progress report. He's done plenty of late nights himself, primarily with his own texts, but a time or two he weakened and consulted the templates for a rare scroll. He'd of course have sought an additional source if he'd found anything there, but information of any kind has been elusive.

Wesley leaves all of this unspoken. Once he starts justifying himself to Spike, he really is in trouble. The elevator doors glide open at the garage level and they split up, each headed toward his own car.

He's halfway to the shelter when his cell rings. "He's taken off," Anne informs him. "I tried to keep him here, but you know how slippery he can be."

"I'll swing by. We can search together."

"I'll be out waiting."

He calls Spike then, tells him to cruise the neighborhood around the shelter. A moment later he's pulling in front of the shelter. Anne rises from her perch on the steps, flanked by two rather large young men. They walk with her, one of them opening the door of Wesley's SUV and taking a glance around inside, including sizing up Wesley himself.

"It would be a good idea to keep her from getting hurt," the youth says.

"I have every intention."

"And so do I," Anne says pointedly. The youth steps back to let her into the car. "Thanks, Benny. Rico. It's getting close to curfew, why don't you go settle in."

As he pulls away from the curb, Wesley says, "They care about you."

"They do. I'd be happy if it were a little less Must-protect-helpless-female, but you can't have everything." She points east. "He went that way, like before. He had on a long black coat, like those trench coat kids. He's had access to soap and water, so he'll blend in a little better, at least until he opens his mouth."

"What did he say? Did you have direct contact?"

"Oh yeah. One of the new kids let him inside. I guess he sounded normal for at least that long, or else I've got a kid with no survival skills at all. One of the others came and got me then." She points again. "There's always a crowd of kids hanging around outside that club. Let's take a slow cruise by. So when I got to him, he said, 'You're not required anymore. I thought I should tell you.' Um, what else? Something about how he'd thought it was just blood, but now he knew there was more. Power. 'You and me, Chantarelle,' he said, 'we've never had that.' It was like machine gun fire. It was hard to catch everything."

"Try. It's crucial."

"The number five kept coming up. That part really made no sense. First five and second five, and six fives. Something about she, a couple of times, then he switched it to they. Like he'd said something he hadn't meant to, like he was covering a slip."

"The first time I saw him here, he kept talking about Them."

"So maybe it's been She all along. He's more paranoid now, but less guarded, if that makes any sense. His filters aren't working as well."

"That may help us, if we can decipher what he's saying. Is there anything else you can remember?"

Anne considers. "All the five stuff. He got more agitated when he got to six fives."

This sounds vaguely familiar to Wesley, but he can't quite place it. "Six fives. Thirty." He feels a rising dread, but he can't put a name to it.

"Right. There was a string of babble, and the six fives kept coming up, then he said something about thirty. Then he bolted. Thirty something. Thirty doors."

Good Christ.

"Hang on," he says, and executes a U-turn in the middle of the avenue.

Thirty doors.

Cordelia.

***

Anne starts to release her hold on the dashboard as the SUV straightens out of its turn, then thinks better of it as Wesley floors the accelerator. "Okay, something in all that made sense to you. I just can't figure out what."

"Thirty doors. I took Xander to see Cordelia at the hospital. He counted the doors to her room. Thirty."

"That doesn't sound good."

He flips open his cell, hits redial. "Spike. He's on his way to Cordelia. We have to stop him." He gives the address and her room number. When he's broken the connection, he says, "Something's changed. When he saw her condition, Xander said she couldn't have her name in the book. What does he want with her now?"

"Well, he said it wasn't just blood, but power. I don't know what the blood thing meant, except we've all got five quarts or so. Does the power part make any sense to you?"

"Cordelia spent some time on another plane. She was, you could say, a higher power. Hang on." He blasts the car horn as he speeds through a yellow left-turn arrow.

"Wow," Anne says. "She always kind of acted like she thought so, when I knew her in high school. I never would have thought--"

"What in Christ's name was I thinking, taking Xander there?"

"He's on foot," Anne says. "You'll make it in plenty of time."

Wesley makes another hard left into the "exit only" opening to the hospital parking lot. Abandoning the SUV in the fire lane, Wesley runs full-tilt toward a side entrance, Anne's trainers slapping the pavement behind him.

They burst into the corridor in front of a nurse wheeling an old fellow on oxygen. Despite her scolding, they dodge the pair and keep running. As he runs, Wesley pulls the prepared hypodermic from his pocket, pulling off the cap that covers the needle.

The door slams against the wall as Wesley crashes into Cordy's room. Xander stands at the far side of her bed, a wicked-looking knife in his hand. He has just, it would seem, drawn the blade across the skin of his forearm. "First one of the first five," he says. "You can't stop this."

Then he switches his grip on the knife, raising it high over Cordy's still form.

Wesley goes for Xander the most direct way possible, lunging across her bed. He stabs the hypodermic into Xander's thigh just as the blade plunges down.

***

Liquid fire races through Wesley's shoulder and back. His own shout of pain and rage mingles with Xander's. Distantly he hears the knife clatter on the tile floor.

"The knife!" Wesley gasps, and Anne dives after it as he clutches Xander with all his strength, which is waning -- at a slower rate, he hopes, than Xander's.

"Ow!" he hears over the sound of his own struggle. "Fucking hell! Invite me in!"

"Come in!" Wesley and Anne shout simultaneously.

"Invite me in!"

Christ in a sidecar. This room is Cordelia's sole residence now; she has to be the one who invites him.

"Take this!" Anne shouts, and slides the knife across the floor, sending it skittering into the hallway. Then she tackles Xander from behind, pulling him off of Wesley. His reactions are slowing now, and he staggers backward, toppling into Anne and sending them both crashing to the tile.

Wesley pushes himself off Cordelia, dizzying as well. Blearily he checks Cordy over, tubes, monitors, breathing. The monitors chirp monotonously, and she seems completely unaffected by the mayhem literally on top of her.

Xander struggles to regain his feet for a moment, then collapses. Anne wrestles her way from beneath him before Wesley can even make his way to the foot of Cordy's bed.

"Oh dear," he says faintly, and crashes to the floor himself. He's fuzzily aware of a rich assortment of curses streaming from Anne's pretty lips as he's seized by the ankles and dragged to the threshold. He leaves a bright red smear behind, rather like a child's fingerpainting.

That's the last observation he makes for some time.

***

Wesley comes to briefly as he's slung into the car like a sack of potatoes. His forehead makes contact with something blunt.

"He's going to feel that in the morning," Spike notes, rather too cheerfully.

"Feel it now," he mutters. A Harris sized sack of potatoes is pitched in on top of him and the SUV roars off, becoming briefly airborne, it seems, before screeching onto the pavement. They barrel though a wall of sirens before making a nauseating zigzag through the city streets.

"Where do we go?" Anne asks. "Xander's gotten away from us three times, we need some way to contain him."

"My flat," Wesley says, but the comment is muffled by a large amount of drugged Xander.

"Christ, I dunno. Wolfram & Hart's got cages, but--"

"No," Wesley says, as loud as he can manage. "My flat. There's a cage."

Faintly he hears Spike say something about hidden depths before a roaring in his ears drowns out the rest and he slips under again.

***

He's never unconscious for the most painful parts. This seems to be a constant of his demon-hunting career. The fire in his shoulder rekindles with a vengeance as Anne struggles to help him out of the SUV.

Another disturbing constant: He always seems to find himself bleeding to death anytime he's in Anne's presence for very long.

He must have muttered some part of this without being aware, because Anne says, "You are not bleeding to death." The SUV chirps as she locks its door, then she slings his good arm over her shoulder and they stagger toward his building. Wesley is still rather lightheaded. "Xander twisted away as you got him with the needle, and the knife caught your shoulder blade. You'll have a nasty long scar, but it didn't go very deep."

"Wouldn't want that. Nasty knife scar."

"One's sort of rakish. Two is maybe overdoing it."

What a strange thing to say. "I'll take that under advisement. Lovely evening, Mrs. Rosario."

His neighbor glares at him as if accusing hi