In Xander and Spike‘s new apartment, action figures on the shelf behind her looking like her mythical back-up army, Buffy Summers has a look of anger on her face. One might even call it ‘righteous fury’. In fact, Spike and Xander, looking up at her sheepishly from where she’s ordered them to sit, have only seen that look on Buffy’s face when she’s about to stab something.

To death.

And then she speaks at them, not to them. Her voice is slow and deliberate. She needs to be 100% clear on this.

“You did not just tell me ‘the book’s gone.’”

She doesn’t wait for an answer. She simply continues, but the calm fades away with every syllable. “The book? The Vampyr book Giles gave me when I was a rookie Slayer, with all the rules of magic in it?”

Buffy stands, moves closer to them now. Xander’s heart begins to pound. He thinks it may come out of his chest.

“The book that, now that magic’s been rebooted, anyone could use to set new rules? That evil creatures could use to make evil things happen just by writing evil words in that book?”

Xander frowns at the Slayer. Picks his moment unwisely. “Okay, you’re using a lot of words to oversimplify a very complex…”

She cuts him off, pointing in his face. “Don’t even, Xander. I asked you guys to guard it while Willow cast protection spells on our new place. You said, “Jolly good! Bob’s your uncle!”

She’s pointing at Spike now. “I honestly don’t believe I have ever said…”

But Buffy’s voice overpowers his – and gets louder. “I asked you to do one thing! One crucially important thing that you agreed to! Who is responsible for screwing up?” She yells now, frustrated, tapping her boot on the floor, waiting for an answer.

Spike and Xander don’t look at each other – they daren’t take their eyes off the annoyed Slayer. They both raise their hands – and point to each other.

Xander starts to get frustrated now, feeling all ganged-up on, and bounds out of his chair, seriousness in his tone. “Actually, I’m not trying to deflect blame, but it’s really totally Willow’s fault.”

Willow glares at him for a moment, softly. Xander points at her, not so softly. “She said it was already protected.”

Willow shrugs, not knowing what happened. “It was. It is. No one should be able to leave with the book, except one of us. I sent Dawn to Giles’s apartment… maybe he took it to study.” Xander points at her, this time to back her up. “Or just took it. I love the guy, but he’s not the wise old mentor anymore. I mean he gets killed, then resurrected as a pimply, hormonal adolescent…”

He’s interrupted by a jab in his back. Turning and then looking down, Xander jumps out of his skin as Giles interrupts him. “I will stack my adolescent behaviour against yours any day, Xander,” he says, seriously. “I have no idea where the book is. I can, however, confirm that Willow’s spells are intact.”

Spike turns to them all, having been listening with nothing to add. “Then it’s an inside job then,” he says, pointing at the young Giles. “Let’s Prime Suspect it, shall we? Who benefits? Who could use the book’s powers for personal gain? I also nominate the formerly middle-aged librarian who’s probably desperate to make himself old enough for a legal shag!”

Giles looks back at the vampire in disgust. “I’m hardly the only one with motive, Spike. Both Dawn and Xander would like to repair their relationship by restoring her emotional memories of the last few years.”

Xander seems surprised at this, and looks at Dawn. “Really? You have motive too?”

Dawn tries to avoid his gaze. “Xander, I didn’t ask to not be in love with you anymore.”

Buffy shakes her head, speaks over them now. “Okay. Wait. Let’s not turn on each other. We’re not Real Housewives.”

Giles then looks around the room, his fingers on his chin. “One moment,” he asks, looking around once more. “Has anyone seen Andrew?”

Elsewhere, in the parking lot, outside his truck, Andrew Wells rests his head on it for a moment, thinking. Is it too late? Should I go back? He ignores his thoughts, and looks around, making sure he’s not seen. He gets in the truck.

He grips the Vampyr book like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. His breath fogs the windshield. He doesn’t look back.

Upstairs, Buffy is incensed at Willow. The witch has just listed the people allowed to touch the book, and Buffy is stunned that Andrew’s name is on it.

“I just said ‘us’. I didn’t specifically include him.”

Buffy gets louder now. “You should have specifically excluded him! He roofied me and put me in a robot body! He was a supervillain! His scumbag friend Warren…”

Willow is quick with her next words. They’re filled with a mixture of anger, sadness and regret and she looks away from Buffy.

“Killed Tara. You don’t have to remind me.”

The Slayer, realising what she said, throws her hands to her mouth, too late to stop.

There’s silence. And then Buffy walks to Willow’s side. She puts her arm around her, looks at her lovingly. “Oh, honey. Just magic my mouth shut.”

Willow smiles and then brings herself out of her meanderings. “No, you’re right though. I think Andrew means well. But I don’t really trust him. I should’ve been more careful.”

Spike is slightly horrified by what he’s hearing. Andrew has been by their side for years now. He picks up one of the action figures on the shelf. Fiddles with it as he speaks. His tone is, surprising to all, filled with affection. Somewhat.

“We ought to give the little git the benefit of the doubt. If I was looking for a Big Bad looking for a weak-willed nerd to mind control, I’d look no further.”

Xander, eager to make up for his mistake and aware of his past actions, backs Spike up. “Or Andrew could have been tricked. Convinced he’s doing something good. Bad guys are a devious and persuasive bunch.” Dawn places her hand on his shoulder gently, reminds him quietly that he shouldn’t feel bad – that he was trying to save her. “No one blames you now.”

Giles is ahead of them, conjuring a mist out of thin air from his fingertips. Willow is still impressed with how attuned he is.

A map forms out of the mist, with a shiny green sphere blinking in the centre. Giles looks at it with interest, as they stare at the direction of the dot.

“I suggest we focus our efforts on the book itself. Willow, the tracking sigil we placed…”

Willow is still amazed. “Yes! Magic G.P.S. We can find out where it’s going. There! Heading south,” she says, pointing at the dot.

Buffy looks at the mist, smiling for a moment. And then her face drops as she follows ahead of the dot, looks for a possible destination. Quietly, with a slightly grim tone, she sighs. “Toward Sunnydale.”

Xander is quick to point out that Sunnydale isn’t actually there anymore, which Giles agrees with. “More accurately into the Hellmouth, which is most definitely still there. I fear this leads credence to the theory that some malevolent influence is luring Andrew.”

Dawn looks at them and mentions that it’s Halloween. The others looks stunned. They hadn’t even noticed. Giles is quick to point out that supernatural forces shun the holiday, but Dawn interrupts him, waving her hands.

“No… I saw this online. Ever since the supernatural came out of the closet, people go to Sunnydale on Halloween. They call it a celebration of the Occult. At the town that proved its existence. Think ‘Burning Man’ with cosplay.”

Buffy sighs, puts her hands to her head and shakes it, in amazement. She nearly screams under her breath.

“So, this is the first Halloween since magic was restored, and there’s a bunch of people partying… on a Hellmouth? Those lunatics just made themselves the perfect sacrifice.”

Across the state, at the crater that used to be the town of Sunnydale, California, the night air is awash with music. People are dressed as a variety of creatures, some scary, some not. It’s a veritable festival of magic and horror, and everyone dances and sings.

There are beer kegs and drinking tents, horoscopes and psychics. There’s a burning bonfire. And all of this gathered around the crater, a quiet silent dread at the bottom.

In San Francisco, Buffy is adamant that they have to go after Andrew. Willow suggests that someone stay behind, but Xander warns them that the first rule is never to split up.

Willow deftly ignores his attempt at humour. “Buffy. You, Spike and I make a great field team, but we really need someone doing research, figuring out who, or what, we’re up against.”

Giles smiles next to her, his arms folded. “Good to know I’m still free to perform some adult duties.”

Willow tells Xander that it makes sense for him to stay behind – after all, he has a job lined up. And Dawn has school, so she can remain – and help Giles when she can.

Buffy puts her arms around Xander and Dawn, her face grinning widely. “Yes! Together. Bonding moments. With the looming threat of death spicing it up. That’s how all the best memories are made.”

Dawn looks at her. “And somehow you’re still single.”

Xander, however, is not as convinced. All the Big Big Bads come through the Hellmouth, he maintains.

Willow turns to him. “But if it’s luring Andrew there, this particular Big Bad obviously needs help. We move fast, I bet we can keep it on the Hellish side of the border.”

“And if you’re tardy?”

“Then we’ll be fighting a mega powerful Hell demon that can probably slaughter us in its sleep.”

She smiles as she joins Buffy and Spike in the hallway. They walk solemnly, like warriors on a march. “Or as we call it, ‘Wednesday.’”

Meanwhile, somewhere else, somewhere different, a creature stirs and tells its tale to it’s unseen, captive audience…

In the din of the festival, the cosplay continues.

The Soul Glutton walks amongst the joviality, unimpressed by the disgusting insects around him. One of those that summoned him here, dressed like an idiot, stops to give his ‘outfit’ a compliment, but expected something bigger. Something more ‘Apocalypsey.’

The demon is not impressed, telling the humans that he has expended energy to reach this plane. His size is a result. When he feeds, he will grow. The more he consumes, the more power he will wield.

The summoners aren’t impressed. They’re concerned about their reputation, or the seeming lack of it. When the summoner worries that they won’t be able to deliver, that the Soul Glutton can’t do as it’s asked, the demon tells them he will keep his promise.

As he stabs the summoner to death with his trident for disbelieving him, he tells the scared others that he always keeps his promises.

Unaware of any of this, but used to the screaming, Andrew has ventured down, deep into the crater. He looks around, following directions on a device, beeping in his hand.

He realises he has the right place, but soon learns that what he wants is buried under heaps of trash. Moving some out of the way, he finds what he is looking for and smiles. He then yells out in jubilation.

“At last!” He laughs into the night air, his noise blending with the screams from the festival. He stops.

“Now that’s an evil cackle,” he whispers to himself. At his feet is a metal hatch. It’s circular shaped, just enough for someone to escape into or out of.

In the midst of the revelry, Buffy is amazed at the sight that greets her and Willow as they walk through the throng of partiers.

“It’s worse than I thought, Willow. Can you make all these people leave?”

“I’ve been trying,” Willow explains, “But that’s the kind of subtle spell I have a hard time pulling off with this raw, new magic we have now.”

Spike offers to turn vamp, frighten them away. He stops, turns to the nearest cosplayer and vamps out, roaring in his face.

The cosplayer grins at him from underneath his home-made antlers. “Outstanding William the Bloody, dude!”

Spike stops. But he takes the compliment. “Oh. You’re a fan?”

The cosplayer starts to talk, saying he loves the murder and the poetry, but Spike grabs him by his collar angrily. “You wouldn’t know iambic pentameter if it bit you on the arse, you Philistine!”

Buffy grabs his arm, drags him away. “Let it go. Don’t feed the trolls.”

Willow doesn’t look back, but notes that, at least, the party is happening away from where they’re heading for, into the crater.

As the trio reach the edge of the giant hole, they peer out into the dark, trying to remember what it was like.

“Welcome home,” Willow says quietly, the battered ‘welcome’ sign in a heap behind them.

Below, having entered through the hatchway, Andrew finds himself exactly where he was expecting to be: Trio Hideout #69. Andrew looks around.

“This place is almost a total loss.” There’s an empty box at his feet, a broken vial of blood. The name ‘Warren Mears’ is written on the side.

But Andrew still looks, stepping over the vial, ignoring it. Moving past old boxes and shattered remnants of geek memorabilia, Andrew finds what he’s looking for and pulls a tin box, similar to the open one, from the shelf.

“Almost a total loss,” Andrew says grinning. The box has the name ‘Jonathan Levinson’ on it.

Andrew opens it and pulls out two vials, both different colours. “DNA sample intact. Personality database intact.” He pulls a device from his bag. They would be a pair of ordinary spectacles, but one lens has been removed. A USB drive clips into the side, as Andrew prays aloud that this works.

He puts on the device and clicks it on.

Through the lens, now powered up, he sees an image in front of him. It’s his former best friend, Jonathan.

“What’s going on? Am I dead? Am I in The Matrix?”

Andrew is delighted. “We made digitised backups of our consciousness, like any good supervillain, remember?”

Jonathan stands before him now, engulfed in blue light. A hologram, like something out of science fiction. He turns to his friend.

“Then I’ve fallen. How’d it happen? In glorious battle? Was I treacherously struck down by a femme fatale after a night of unbridled passion.”

Andrew hesitates and then gulps loudly. “Um… I stabbed you.”

“What? You jerk!” Jonathan swings for his friend, but naturally, goes right through him.

“I was totally being manipulated,” Andrew yells in his defence. “Like when Loki made the Silver Surfer fight Thor! But I’m gonna fix it. I’ve got your DNA sample here.”

He pulls the book out of his bag. “I never used it before because the best I could’ve done is make a test-tube baby, or a robot body. And I’ve had hiccups with those. But now magic is new again… raw and undefined. And I’ve got the power to bend it to my will.”

Jonathan doesn’t need telling twice. He’s sold on the idea. Andrew asks him for patience.

He has one more stop on his resurrection tour.

He tells his friend that he doesn’t want anyone to track him using the book. Jonathan makes a dig about his bag, which Andrew can’t help but defend.

It doesn’t matter though, as he pulls a metal briefcase from beneath some rubble. Jonathan recognises it as one they once constructed to be used as a miniature faraday cage.

Andrew looks back at the hologram and smiles. “Precisely. No energy transmissions can get in or out, including magical energy.”

He places the Vampyr book in the box and closes it, locking it shut.

Above ground, Willow loses the signal and floats down to where Buffy and Spike are, deep in the crater. She apologises to Buffy, but Spike calls them from out in front.

He knows where Andrew is.

Buffy is impressed. “Nice going. Heightened vampire senses?”

Spike chuckles. “If you like. Or the fact that the idiots signed their names.” He points at the open hatch. The names of the Trio are scribbled on a keep out notice, hilariously stuck to the top of the hatch.

As they descend, Spike smells the air. They just missed Andrew. “If he’s dropping in on old hideouts, that says to me he ain’t some helpless victim.”

Buffy nearly steps on something and looks down. “Oh, no. Andrew, you idiot.”

Willow looks toward her, fear in her voice. “What is it?”

Spike looks down. “Lock boxes. With his two pals’ names on them.”

“That’s a sterile vial,” Willow confirms. “The kind we’d use in science class for biological samples.”

Buffy grimaces at the thought. “Just tell me if where my brain is going is totally crazy.”

She turns to the others, goes through the facts.

“Last time we saw Warren, he was skinless, kept alive by a spell. When magic went away…”

“He would’ve died. No two ways about it,” Spike says. “Wells is an idiot, but no fool. He knows that.” Buffy bristles at the thought. “You really think he’s trying to resurrect Warren?”

No one answers her. No one except the Soul Glutton.

He’s upon them in moments, his trident in the air. “Slayer! Vengeance is mine! Your soul is mine!”

Buffy yells a warning to the others, but finds herself tightly ensnared in the demon’s grasp. Spike desperately tries to free her.

“For ages I have thirsted for your death!”

Buffy grunts in his tentacles. “Okay, I meet a lot of people, but I think I’d remember that face.”

The demon snarls, his voice squelching in anger. He pushes Spike aside like he was made of paper. “Not you! Your kind! You are the Chosen! I sense the essence of all Slayers in you. And so you must suffer.”

Willow throws magic at him, a powerful blast shrieking from her fingertips.

The Soul Glutton sucks it in from the air. “White magic. Goddess magic. Originating from the soul. Give me more.” He throws Buffy into a pile of trash, his eyes now directly on Willow.

She fires more magic at him, slightly more powerful, a darker shine to it. Her hair flows up in the air, transforming from copper red to raven black. Veins appear on her skin, her eyes go jet black.

But she remains completely in control. “Ask anyone… I can do dark too!”

Buffy gets up while the Soul Glutton is distracted, swings and strikes him with the Scythe in his side. “I just do mean,” she quips.

The demon yells in pain. “No! My vengeance will not be denied.”

He slams his trident into the ground and the cavern shakes violently. “I was impatient,” he roars at Buffy. “Unprepared for your allies. I have expended too much soul energy. But there is a ready source of more. Another time, Slayer.”

He chuckles as he leaves, into the very Earth beneath them, seemingly swallowed whole. Buffy yells at the others to move as she heads for the ladder, Willow unsure how long she can keep the ceiling above them from collapsing.

They just about reach the outside of the hatch before the whole lab, or what remains of it, buries itself even deeper in the town’s desecrated remains.

Spike looks at Buffy as they clear the lab, smile on his face. “Only you could be part of a vendetta with someone you’ve never met, Slayer.”

Willow is anxiously searching however, from the skies. “Wild guess. That thing gets stronger by eating souls. The party up above will be like a steroid buffet. We need to stop it.”

Buffy agrees, but they also need to trail Andrew or they’ll lose him. Willow offers to complete that side of the mission: if Andrew wants to resurrect Warren, the DNA sample in the lab was broken and corrupted. He’d need a fresh source.

Spike points out that neither they, nor Andrew, know where Warren’s body ended up. Willow points out that when they thought she had killed him, his family held a funeral. But they didn’t have a body; they just buried what they found: pieces of skin.

She looks at the ground, feeling guilty for a moment. When Buffy asks her how she knows that, Willow simply tells her that she heard. And if she did, so did Andrew.

She looks at Buffy, tells her and Spike not to worry. To go after the Soul Glutton.

Buffy watches as she walks away, concerned.

Wandering around the crater some time later, Buffy looks at the chaos. Spike senses that the Soul Glutton has gone deeper, into the tunnels Spike used to know. Buffy doesn’t know how the tunnels haven’t collapsed.

As they walk, Spike starts to feel like the passageways and caverns are familiar. As they continue, Spike stops, recognising where they are.

“I’ll be double-damned. My old crypt… what’s left of it.”

Buffy turns to him. “Don’t get nostalgic on me. We’ve got a job to do.”

Spike reassures her – he was a different person then, someone he didn’t want to be. Buffy is glad, but makes a point of telling him that remembering their mistakes is what stops them from repeating them.

Spike turns sorrowfully towards Buffy now, sadness in his eyes. “Slayer. I… I’m sorry for… well… all of it really.”

Buffy tries to stop him, but she’s shushed by his raised hand. “No. Let’s not tiptoe around it. When I think of what I did to you, after you ended things between us… what I tried to…”

This time Buffy stops him with her hand, gently nestled on his shoulder. “Listen to me. You didn’t have a soul. I can’t hold what that guy did against you any more than I could blame Angel for Angelus spending a hundred-years slaughtering nuns.”

She turns, makes her way past a dozen headstones in the ground. “I’m not excusing what you did or what he did. But it shouldn’t matter now. You’re a totally different person. In a lot of ways, so am I.”

She leans against a head stone, not recognising the name. “I was in a terrible place back then. Willow had just resurrected me. Being pulled out of Heaven, or wherever I was… It was a kind of pain I still can’t put into words. I damn sure couldn’t face it at the time.”

She almost hugs the stone in comfort, Scythe still in her hand. “I couldn’t be mad at my friends. They brought me back because they loved me. So I hated myself. And did whatever I could to punish myself, to sink as low as I felt…”

She turns. Spike is staring at the ground. “Oh, God. That came out so wrong.”

Something squelches at her feet. She looks down and sees a fresh body.

Then the walls cave in and the Soul Glutton, carrying humans in his hands and larger now than before, with more power, appears, bearing down on them.

“Now,” he bellows. “Shall we try that again?”

Elsewhere in the crater, Willow finds Warren Mears’ headstone. There is no sign of any disturbance around it. Willow thinks hard.

The vial and thumb drive from Warren’s lock box were crushed. But the box wasn’t damaged. Andrew broke them.

He doesn’t want to resurrect Warren at all. But I can feel it. Someone’s prepping a resurrection spell. Not far away either. It has to be Andrew.

But he has Jonathan’s DNA. He can raise him anywhere. So why hasn’t he left Sunnydale?

What am I missing?

Elsewhere, deeper below Willow still, Andrew has found what he’s looking for. He smiles, opens the book and looks around at the candles and runes ready around him.

He then looks at the grave, smiling again.

This will make it all better. All okay.

He breathes out slowly, preparing.

The grave is marked.

The name says Tara Maclay.