As Faith Lehane continues to fight off demon after demon, Pearl and Nash, the two half-demons who once worked for Twilight, float above her, eyes glowing with green energy, their hands powering up the same way. Pearl is grinning. She has Angel in her hands, by the throat. She’s rather disappointed – their former boss doesn’t seem that powerful anymore, which she thinks takes the fun out of killing him.

Faith reacts, turning and swiping her sword in Nash’s direction, disturbing Pearl before she can do anything. “I’m the fun one,” she quips, but Nash is too fast for her. He grabs a hold of her hair and drags her away from Angel: “No. You’re trash. Now please don’t ruin the moment.” He pulls Faith closer towards his face, his teeth clenched in anger. He thinks this a chore: after all, how different can Faith be from the fifty other Slayers he’s already killed?

Unfortunately for Nash, all his comments do is anger Faith even more, and she swipes at his throat. His eye beams that were targeted at the Slayer go wide, striking Pearl in the back of the head. Angel takes advantage of Pearl’s confusion and, telling her how she always wanted him to be more ruthless, plunges his fangs into her pale, chalk-coloured neck.

Nash is incensed, throwing Faith to the wayside and zapping Angel with his beams: “Get your filthy mouth off my sister!” he screams in defiance. Pearl recovers from the shock, kicks Angel in the face and declares that she liked the bite: it was a rush. But she prefers her thrills more refined – things like pain, hate and fear are like the finest wine to them.

Nash agrees and swats Faith aside a second time. “We’re so far beyond you,” he boasts, hands crackling with that eerie, green glow. “Beyond what you can even imagine.”

The twins raise themselves up on the air. They address everyone in the room. It’s not their fault they can only reach so far in their existences, they proclaim. “In the end, we have to evolve, or die.” The energies surrounding the two get bigger and more stronger, the light growing more intense.

Suddenly Faith points directly at them. She yells at the demons still assembled, still looking for their precious cure. “Look, the last of the Mohra blood!” Nash and Pearl look confused, just as Nash places his hand in his pocket – Faith has deposited a vial of the green liquid in Nash’s pocket during the fight. The demons roar in rage and rush forward, determined to secure the vial for themselves, no matter who or what gets in their way.

As the demons start working together, Angel ensures that Faith kept a vial. She grins and then notices that most people are fleeing. They should go, she tells him, plan an attack and take on Pearl and Nash on their own terms. Angel agrees, but first he wants to check the basement of Fraser’s club: something doesn’t smell right to him. He asks her to trust him as he heads for the basement.

Below, Faith is questioning whether she can trust Angel. Normally with my life, but he left normal behind when he got the idea he could bring Giles back to life. She considers her options: she could smash the vial over his head, get it into Angel’s blood stream that way, force him into humanity. But what if the demon twins come after him and he’s powerless? What if Angel’s already dicey mental-health can’t handle it?

As Angel forcibly opens the door to a lab, Faith grabs the vial from her pocket and, after deciding that there can be no turning back, raises it above an unsuspecting Angel’s head. Just as she’s about to bring it down however, his reaction to what’s inside the lab stops her.

Inside, there are dozens of cages, all with screens so that the occupants can be seen. There are creatures, what can only be described as blobs of flesh, moving about in each one. Some are strapped down, clearly being worked on medically somehow. Others are making noises that sound oddly like tears. Faith takes one look around the room in horror. Angel tells her that he was afraid of this. Faith almost can’t get her words out: “What… What are they?”

One of the mounds of flesh, the one that’s strapped down, suddenly talks, although Faith and Angel cannot see a mouth. It’s just a mound of flesh, but it says it’s name is Reggie and he would like to know if his wife and children are okay. Angel tells Reggie that they are, as Faith realises the true horror of the situation: these are the missing customers – the one’s who bought Mohra blood from Fraser.

Angel explains that they are Fraser’s clients. After the Seed was destroyed, magic in this reality ended. These clients took the Mohra blood, but the lack of magic had changed it: it now still regenerates, no matter what. The body’s cells keep growing and growing, like a cancer that goes on forever.

Faith drops the vial of Mohra blood on the floor where it shatters, the liquid spilling into nothing. Another of the customers begs them: some of them can’t talk anymore, or scream, and they’re minds are broken. Fraser has people trying to cure them, but everything they try seems to make it worse. They’ve tried to commit suicide or kill each other, but it never stops. He begs Angel. “Can you stop it? Can you end it?”

Angel looks up at them, resolute. “I can. And I will. But first I need your help.” Faith looks at him and raises an eyebrow, curious as to what Angel’s plan, that he again hasn’t told her, entails.

Above in the main function room, Nash and Pearl are getting bored of indiscriminately killing demons and have left a pile of bloody corpses in their wake. Just as Nash thinks the tedium is over, one of the customers from the basement enters the room and takes him by surprise. The other customers, all having been freed by Angel and Faith, swarm into the room, attacking everything that moves with ill abandonment, knowing there are no consequences to them save possible death.

As the demons give up and flee from the flesh, Pearl and Nash swipe an energy blast around the room and clear their path. They both fly up again, above the crowd. They declare that while they came here for nothing, they have realised now that Angel is nothing. And as such, they can take their time with him. He’ll keep for when Britain’s Got Talent is off the air!

Faith is convinced that they’re planning a trap, but Angel tells her they’ve gone: they’ve extended too much energy during the battle and they’ll need to recharge. One of the transformed customers approaches the pair and asks if they’ll help them. Angel kills one of them, confirming that the only way is decapitation, as it disconnect the body from the brain. He apologises that this is the only way to end their suffering, but they’re happy with it: they just hope they don’t miss.

Sadly, Faith and Angel both raise their blades and grant the wishes of the former human customers. Afterwards, Angel asks Faith if she’s okay. She’s thinking about what she almost forced on Angel, that the fate of the customers could so easily have been his. He tells her that they need to focus on what is in front of them, not their past deeds, but he’s referring to the fact that if he had used the Mohra blood on Giles, the results would have been disastrous. Faith doesn’t answer him. She just wants to get the hell out of there.

Reporting to a house in Kent, Pearl and Nash enter to find Whistler stretched out in leisure on a chair, paper in one hand, cigar in ashtray, whiskey in the other hand. Nash hands him the vial that Faith placed in his pocket. He warns him that without magic, the blood has been altered and now makes the user almost immortal, but living forever in perpetual agony. Pearl smiles and approaches her brother, raising a martini glass. “In other words,” she laughs, “it’s even better for what we’ve got in mind.”

The next day in London’s Hyde Park, the sun is shining yet again. Nadira and Faith are walking, to talk about her anger. Faith tells her that Pearl and Nash are in London, or at least were, and are in England somewhere. Nadira immediately perks up and bombards Faith with questions. Faith calms her down. “We’ll find them, I promise you. And we’ll make them pay for what they did.”

Nadira is ecstatic at this, jumping off her chair and throwing her arms around a surprised Faith. She’s shaking with gratitude, or relief, tears filling her eyes. “Thank you. I’ve felt like I’m going insane. Lashing out at everyone, people I don’t even know, my best friends…” Her voice starts to quiver, and she still hasn’t let Faith go. “I can’t tell you what it means that there’s a chance to make this right. And after them, I’ll find and kill Angel. And maybe then I’ll have some peace.”

Faith doesn’t respond to Nadira, but after she’s left her, Faith notices she’s being followed once again. She turns to Alasdair Coames and tells him that if he’s not stalking her, he’s doing a great impression of it, and the trench coat and the hat are giving him away. Also: creepy.

Coames smiles and joins her on her walk. “I heard about the incident with the Mohra blood. Tragic. And typical of the sort of thing happenings with magic gone from the earth.” He asks her is she’s given any thought to talking to Angel.

Faith starts getting slightly angry at the older man. “Y’know what I’ve been thinking about? That I’m lying to everyone in my life. Everyone who’s supposed to be my friend. Just like I used to in the bad old days.”

Alasdair assures her that he knows nothing about her past and doesn’t find it particularly relevant. What is relevant, he says, is that she appears to be someone who saves her friends, even if it’s from themselves. “You know Angel far better than I. He needs someone close to him to dissuade him from his mad plan. How best that’s done, I leave to your judgement.” Faith tells her that she doesn’t trust her judgement since, last night, it almost got Angel killed.

At home in the apartment, Faith finds Angel up a step-ladder, perusing books on a high shelf. He’s wearing glasses, which Faith didn’t think was a thing for vampires, but Angel smiles. “They’re just reading glasses. These monks loved their tiny cursive.” He’s been researching other ways to restore a physical body and has found some small references. Faith asks for a moment and he asks what’s wrong.

Taking him to one side so they’re standing face-to-face, Faith tells him that she understands everything he is trying to do to bring back Giles. She gets it and his reasons and will always have his back.

However, she continues, she doesn’t think it’s possible to do. She’ll support him, but the moment Angel crosses a line, she will stop him, permanently if she has to. Angel places his hands on her arms, gently. “I know,” he tells her quietly.

“Why do you think I asked for your help? I know I can get a little obsessed sometimes and the last thing Giles would want is for me to bring him back by hurting people.” He tells her that as Twilight, he didn’t have anyone by his side he could trust, no one willing to tell him that he’d gone too far. “That’s what I’m asking you to do, Faith. I know it’s a lot. It’s not your responsibility and if you don’t want it…”

She stops him. “I got your back. Don’t make me put a stake in it.” She smiles. She asks him if he wants some dinner. She’s planning on nuking left overs and could heat up some blood. Angel barely looks up from his book, adjusts the glasses on the end of his nose. “A spot of tea would be delightful if it wouldn’t put you out.”

Faith has already gone into the kitchen, her back to Angel. “Hey, that was awesome!” she states. “You sounded just like him!”

Angel looks over the top of the glasses at her. “Just like who?”

Faith turns to look at him and is about to say that he sounded just like Giles, but as she turns around, she changes her mind. The glimpse of him, just for a second as she turned, she could have sworn that was Giles. She looks again, Angel studiously going through another volume, holding a familiar librarian-esque stance, at least from where Faith is standing.

Hesitantly, watching Angel as she goes, she tells him that some Earl Grey is coming right up, a worried and suspicious look emerging on her face.