The ash on the floor is still smouldering.

Andrew has covered his face in horror. Dawn weeps silently. Spike looks upset. Giles has sunk to his knees. Willow is repeatedly saying Xander’s name, as if it’s going to bring him back. Buffy is screaming between sobs at the demons still hovering above her.

“Anya, you… How could you?”

“She’s not really Anya,” D’Hoffryn snarls with a grin. “By slaying Xander Harris before your eyes, she has surpassed her.”

Then there’s anger and a flash of intense heat. Willow fires everything she has inside her at D’Hoffryn and his vengeance demons, but he raises a shield just in time. Anyanka turns to Willow.

“How stupid are you? Magic attacks can’t hurt D’Hoffryn. Neither can anything else you do. Because of the powers you gave the Council. You wrote in the magic rule book. You didn’t want the responsibility, so you gave it away. And this is what you get.”

Spike moves towards her in anger, but Buffy tells him she’s right. “I shouldn’t have trusted D’Hoffryn. Ever. I should have trusted myself. Us.”

She makes no effort to even attempt to stop the streaming tears. “I said it at the start. I don’t know anyone I’d trust more to decide the fate of the world than my friends. But I didn’t feel ready. So I let doubt and fear eat at me. Control me.”

Now she glares back at the demons. “God, I wish I’d never done that. Never given you those powers. Because then I’d show the Lord of Vengeance what vengeance really feels like.” She grits her teeth.

Suddenly, without warning, Anyanka’s face changes. The demonic features wrinkle across her smooth skin and she waves her hand at Buffy. “Wish granted.”

D’Hoffryn’s grin fades as he realises what words have been spoken. He turns to Anyanka. “What?”

But the light flares from her necklace, a bright, dazzling and pure white light which encompasses D’Hoffryn. He sinks to the ground slowly, wondering what Anyanka has just done to him.

“I think I know,” Buffy says, answering his question with a whistling swing of the Scythe. It scratches across D’Hoffryn’s chest, drawing blood. As he snarls in pain, he drops the Vampyr book.

“That shouldn’t have happened. My new powers…”

“Are gone, aren’t they?” yells Giles in realisation. “Buffy made a wish for revenge and a vengeance demon granted it.”

D’Hoffryn turns to Anyanka. She grins back at him. “Doesn’t hurt that it helps me get my revenge too. You made me to be a slave. A puppet.”

She extends her hand out. “I just proved I’m not, didn’t I?” she asks, her face back to human form. “And I’m about to do it again.”

She waves her hands and a blue glow emanates. In moments, Xander Harris is whole once more, as if nothing had happened.

“Am I back? You can see me? It was like being in a fancy restaurant where they try to pretend I don’t exist.”

Jonathan is confused. “But you killed him!”

Anyanka folds her arms, as if it was obvious what has occurred. “No. I said I made him a ghost. Invisible. Intangible. Like I was. Now he knows how it feels. Vengeance accomplished.”

D’Hoffryn, still on his knees, looks up at her from his spot on the carpet. “You faithless…”

He stops when Andrew aims a laser at his head.

The demon is unthreatened. He waves his hands and a magical wave of energy sends the Scooby Gang reeling backwards, weapons scattering. “No!” D’Hoffryn screams. “I am still Lord of the Vengeance Demons. My innate power is enough to erase you all!”

Anyanka moves forward. “The rest of us are pretty powerful too.” She fires a blast at D’Hoffryn, who shrugs off her spell with a wave. “You picked that up from me. Let me show you how it’s properly done.”

And Anyanka, just like Halfrek all those years before, is engulfed in flame from head to toe.

Anyanka screams in agony, one side of her on fire.

Jonathan and his fellow demons are horrified.

Buffy uses their shock as a distraction, reaching D’Hoffryn and swinging, ordering the team to hit the demon hard and fast.

Xander catches the charred form of Anyanka as it falls to the ground. He begs Giles for help, but the young Watcher tells him there is nothing they can do.

Cradled in Xander’s arms, touchable at last, Anyanka whispers weakly to him. “It’s okay. I only existed because he wanted me to. There was no other way this was going to end. He could make me. He could end me. But in between I did something only I could do. I made myself real.”

Closing her eyes, she gasps. “You’re a good man, Xander Harris. I forgive you. She would too.”

And then Anya is gone. Xander weeps as he holds the body close.

D’Hoffryn, struggling with Willow and Buffy’s combined assault, calls his demons to his side, but they don’t move. Jonathan grits his teeth. He summons courage onto his face. “After what you just did to Anya? Yeah, right. You’re a really bad boss, D’Hoffryn. We quit.”

With a grin, the vengeance demons teleport away, leaving their former employer stunned and angry. He snarls. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, waving his arm for another blast. “All on my own, I can…”

With that, Buffy slices his arm off. He screams in surprise and then realises he’s lost. His body begins to disappear into thin air as Buffy swings again. This time, the demon is gone, but his voice can still be heard, cackling on the air. “We will finish this on my terms, not yours.”

Back in his home dimension of Arashmaharr, D’Hoffryn is immediately treated by his employees, who rush around him, bandaging his arm, stopping the bleeding, stitching his wounds. He tells them to hurry — he wants to finish the job as soon as he can. Every moment is precious.

When he realises they’ve stopped attending to him, he asks them what they’re staring at. He turns, and stops again in surprise.

Buffy and her friends stand there, armed and dangerous. “You left something behind,” Buffy tells him sarcastically. “The magic rule book. And y’know what? We decided maybe we could handle being in charge of it after all.”

Dawn smiles. Her hands are glowing with mystical green energy — Key powers. “Penned a little sonnet about the Key,” Spike says, grinning wildly. “That would be Dawn here — retaining her powers to open portals, even on Earth.”

Buffy locks eyes with D’Hoffryn. “Surprise. We grew up.”

D’Hoffryn sighs and turns away. When he looks at them again he has a huge smile on his face. He waves his arms around in adulation.

“Well played. You impress me. Let’s come to an agreement, shall we? I’ll remain Lord of the Vengeance Demons. And I will grant each of you one wish.”

He looks them all in the eye, one by one, studying their features as he talks.

“I can do anything, if only a human wishes it. It need not be revenge. Ms. Summers, both of you, would you like your mother back, alive and healthy? And Ms. Rosenberg — your lost love, Tara?”

“Mr. Harris, I can restore Anya. The real one, or the one who just died. Or both. Merely wish it. Mr. Giles… You’d like to be an adult again? Child’s play, if you pardon the pun. And you…”

He stops. Andrew gets frustrated. “It’s Andrew! Andrew Wells. I’ve been here the whole time!”

D’Hoffryn ignores him. He turns to Spike. “Would you like to be human? The true subject of the Shanshu prophecy? Living happily ever after with the Slayer? I can give you all this!”

The group all exchange glances. They know the score. “We’ve been down that road,” Buffy says. “There’s always a catch. Instead of wishing for something that can never be, we’re gonna make the best of what is. And sometimes…”

She swings the Scythe, removing D’Hoffryn’s head in one fell swoop.

“…You get your wish anyway.”

Two weeks later, in Xander’s apartment. The group are relaxing. Xander makes sure that Anya’s new urn has pride of place on his shelf and he smiles as he returns to the game he’s playing with Andrew and Giles.

Spike and Dawn are playing chess. Buffy is annoyed. Willow has, for the latest turn, sunk yet another battleship. Willow laughs. “You’ve put them in the same general area the last three times. As someone who literally goes to war with you, I’m concerned about your strategising.”

Buffy sighs. She apologises for ruining game night, but she can’t take her thoughts from the book. She looks down at it, closed on the table next to her. She doesn’t know what to do.

Dawn says this time they have to get on with it, scary or not, before more people get hurt. Xander points out that not trying got them into trouble this time. They didn’t pull together — they, mostly him, fell apart instead. Can they avoid that this time?

Willow smiles. He brings up a good point. “Which I would like to take as a sign he’s never going to do anything stupid again — but the fact is, we’re human. Fallible. I think I speak for all of us when I say there isn’t anyone else I trust to take care of the book. I just don’t know if I trust us.”

Buffy says that the Council was a mistake. Magical creatures can’t make rules that affect all humanity. With the Council gone, killed by D’Hoffryn, a new one will soon rise… and who knows what ‘weirdos’ they’ll be.

Willow thinks she’s ready to be one of those ‘weirdos’. She thinks Buffy should also be one.

At first, Buffy is hesitant. But then she shrugs. “What the heck. Why not? But I don’t want to have to micromanage everything. I’d never have a second to breathe.” She will also need time for other things. Willow agrees.

Spike says that the previous lot must have had a vice president who did all the office stuff. They need a new one. “Someone whose sad, solitary existence would only be improved by…”

Giles sits up from the TV, backwards on the couch. “Enough! I accept. In spite of your gross mischaracterisation. Now. Let’s begin discussing other potential members…”

A week later, in a Plaza Inn — selected as neutral ground, the new Magic Council meets for the first time. They’re calling themselves the ‘August Council.’

Dracula appears through the door with his manservant, calling the hotel the most “revolting establishment” he has ever had the misfortune to behold. Xander and Dawn greet him and ignore his snarkiness.

“It is good to see you, man… Xander. I am pleased you and your child bride appear happy.”

“No bride. Just dating. Taking it slow. But…” Dawn links her hands with his, hugs him close. “We are happy. And we’re pleased about it.”

Dracula turns to Butterfield. Apparently, he has something in his eye.

A demon with a blazing eyeball for a head approaches Archduchess Venobia, asking her to take part in a survey about the importance of eating human flesh.

Before Dracula can vent his disgust at the conversation, he’s interrupted by Lilah Morgan.

“I’d like to offer you our lobbying services and legal advice in your new role as Council Member. Needless to say, with a Slayer‑dominated Council, the traditional base of our community must work together to make sure we don’t get marginalised and…”

Dracula silences the sales pitch. He does not associate with lawyers — unless they are prisoners in his dungeon. He does, however, simply adore Lilah’s neck scarf. As he walks away from Lilah, she heads straight for the Archduchess to start the pitch again.

In a room in the Inn, Buffy is worried. “What if they laugh at us?”

Spike and Willow are with her. “Turning them into toads usually works for me,” the witch jokes.

Buffy is serious. “What if they gang up on us and vote against everything we propose?”

Willow stops her. “That’s politics, right? You’ve got a reliable bloc of three, and Dracula’s beholden to no one, which is why we picked him over Vicki or Harmony.”

Spike assures her that she has this, wrapping his arm around her neck lovingly. “It’ll be intimidating and overwhelming — and at times bloody terrifying. But there’ll be good bits, too. And we’ll find a way to make it work.” He smiles at her.

“Subtext much?” she asks, as she snuggles closer to him, their faces touching.

“Not very well. That’s why I was such a crap poet.”

Buffy smiles. She’s glad they’re all as nervous as her. Their support holds her up. She kisses him before they move to the conference room.

Inside, the Council sit around a table. Dracula looks bored already. Venobia is displeased that the humans outnumber the demons. The Lucky Cat at the end of the table agrees. Cedric the Slime Man doesn’t look like anything.

A skeleton in a suit wants at least one human removed — the fleshsack at the end. He points out who he means and Riley Finn, sitting by Giles and Buffy at the end, yells back at him. “It’s about time normal people had a seat at this table, pal!”

Giles slams a gavel, like a judge, loudly. The meeting will come to order!

The skeleton doesn’t let it go. “Normal. Then what, dare I ask, are the rest of us? Your bigotry is intolerable, sir!”

Riley is appalled. “I’m not here advocating for skinning your constituents!” Giles’s shouts of order have no effect.

Suddenly, the Scythe hits the centre of the table, impaling itself into the wood.

“The man said order,” Buffy yells, standing and turning to face everyone around the table.

“This isn’t gonna be easy. Ultimate goal, we’re here to try to figure out a way of doing things that doesn’t mean us killing each other all the time. Which, let’s face it, is not how any of us are used to doing things. Me included. I’ll be honest, I have no idea how it’s going to go.”

She sits back down, the Scythe at her side. She sits at the head of the table.

“But that’s life, isn’t it?”