It’s there. He’s sure of it.

Crawling up the side of the glass.

Not a spider.

What is it? A beetle?

In the darkness of his hotel room, Angel stares at the insect. He watches it so intently he doesn’t hear the voice calling his name. Once. Twice. A third time, sharper.

Angel snaps out of it. He didn’t notice the light come on, or Winifred Burkle entering the plain hotel room.

They’re in Dublin. Investigating a poltergeist. Angel is still staring at the window when he finally remembers Fred.

“I know you’re older than you look,” Fred says, her Texan drawl still warm beneath the years. “But I thought your kind was immune to hearing loss.”

Angel doesn’t respond. Fred sighs, rolling her eyes. “Sun’s about to go down. We should get to it.”

Angel barely looks up. Then he mutters an apology. Fred plants her hands on her hips, concern etched across her face.

“Are you okay?”

She asks again. He brushes it off and heads for the door. The lobby is where the ghost usually appears — right after dark.

Fred follows, unconvinced. “I thought you said this was a simple haunting?”

“It is,” he says without looking at her. “We’re in, we’re out, hotel’s clear, paying guests come back. No problem.”

As they leave the room, Fred muses aloud. “Famous last words. You don’t have to do this, you know. Not everything is your responsibility.”

Angel tenses. Fred asks if it’s Ireland. Angel shakes his head.

“No. I’ve been having these…” He hesitates, searching for the right words. “I guess you’d call them intrusive thoughts. Ever since we got here.”

Fred’s eyes widen. “Intrusive thoughts?”

Angel waves it off. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

He heads down the stairs — then stops.

He raises a hand to his head, as if hearing something only he can hear. His grip tightens on the banister. His knees buckle. He convulses at the top of the stairs.

“Angel? What’s happening?” Fred cries, flipping him onto his back.

His eyes are pale. White.

“Is it a… vision?”

Inside Angel’s mind, the world collapses inward.

Thin.

Thin.

It’s worn too thin!

Caught by the winding.

Don’t be a fool…

What’s on the other side…

No. No space left. No time left.

Don’t… Let… Them… Through…

The cascade stops. Angel’s eyes return to normal. Fred screams as he grabs her arm.

“What was it? What did you see?”

Angel rubs his temples. “A whole lot of bugs. A really disgusting flower and…”

“And what?”

“And me.”

“You?” Fred stares at him like he’s lost it.

“Pretty narcissistic, huh?” Angel jokes weakly, trying to break the tension. He adjusts his jacket and walks on as if nothing happened.

Fred shouts after him. “Wait! This could be important. You can’t just ignore it! What if it’s about this exorcism?”

“It’s not,” Angel calls back. “It felt more like a memory. Something that already happened.”

Fred catches up. “That’s not how visions work. We’re supposed to do something. We just have to figure out what.”

Angel turns. “I know you’re trying to help, but there’s no ‘we’ here. This is on me. There was a definite feeling of… something bad. And it was tied up with seeing myself as I used to be. As Angelus. Without a soul. So I hope you understand why I’d like you to stay out of it.”

Fred is taken aback. But she has another theory. What if she’s already involved? What if Illyria is?

She keeps listing possibilities — and Angel lets her talk. Because behind her, the wall ripples. A black hole opens, swirling with mist, expelling more and more smoke into the room.

“Fred,” Angel says calmly, “do you think maybe we could have this discussion later?”

“Why?”

She’s yanked backwards by an invisible force.

A second later, the same force slams Angel across the face, hurling him into the wall. He gets up, tries to kick the smoke — useless. He shouts:

“Still got the cage? Remember the words?”

Fred yells yes and pulls a small glass cube from her pocket. The smoke surges toward her, now more demonic in shape.

“Asa Nisi Masa!” she chants.

The smoke swirls above them. Fred frowns. “Shouldn’t they be going into the box now?”

Angel doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the dimensional tear. An insect crawls out of it.

“Does that look like a beetle to you?”

Fred sees it — and the cube hums in her hand. “Something’s happening!”

Angel suddenly finds the smoke creatures easier to corral. He smiles — briefly — then turns to Fred.

She’s collapsed. Eyes open. Hair shifting colour. Blue energy crackling at her fingertips. Pupils glassy.

“Illyria.”

Illyria stands with the cube. Within seconds, the smoke creatures vanish. She drops the cube like trash.

Angel demands to know what she’s doing here. He tells her she wasn’t needed.

She tilts her head. “No? Are you now an expert on what lies beyond?”

Angel sighs. “It wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle. Just some poltergeists. We were here as a favour.”

Illyria doesn’t move.

Angel tries again. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“Of course. I know many things you could not fathom. But about this, I know only what you refuse to accept. Something is coming. And you are the nexus around which it swirls. How, when — those are mysteries, as time always is.”

Angel stares at her.

“Then it does have to do with you,” he says quietly. “Fred was right.”

“I heard what was said, but you are wrong,” Illyria interrupts. “It is something you did, long ago, that is causing this. Only you can make it right. It is not of my making.”

She looks Angel squarely in the eyes.

“But even if I were at fault, I am not going anywhere. You cannot believe you could engineer such a thing?”

“No one said anything about that,” Angel replies. “I don’t have a quarrel with you. Aside from the fact you messed up my exorcism.”

Illyria tells him the entities he was chasing were trying to escape something far worse than themselves. What Angel should be concerned about, she says, is this—

Suddenly they’re on the street below. Illyria has warped them there so fast Angel didn’t register the movement. She’s staring down at a red flower — the same one from his vision — growing out of the concrete.

Angel crouches beside it. “What does it mean?”

“No idea.”

Fred answers before Illyria does — though she doesn’t know how she got outside. She’s more disoriented than usual after the transformation. She’s also worried; she normally has more control over the demi‑god than this.

“Illyria seemed concerned about my vision,” Angel says, “and then she showed me the flower.”

Fred bends to examine it — a tiny, drooping thing, almost tilting over. “Nasty little thing. And it wasn’t here before. I’d have noticed.”

“Apparently Illyria did,” Angel murmurs. “Maybe she’s more aware of what you’re doing than you think.”

Fred straightens. “Well, this is easy. We kill the flower now before it gets bigger like in your vision.”

“What if it’s cursed?” Angel counters. “Or attached to another dimension? If something I did started all this, we can’t act without knowing more.”

“Then it sounds like we need a way to view the past.”

Angel insists he’d remember. Fred shakes her head — memory is tricky. Illyria remembered the flower when she didn’t.

“We can’t do anything about the past,” Angel says. “All we can do is figure this out now, so nothing bad happens in the future.”

Fred thinks. “Maybe there’s something local you know that can help?”

Angel clears his mind. “Supposedly a saint was interred with a scrying glass under the church near John’s Lane. I heard stories when I was young. He’d ‘clear the glass’ and see visions of the future. Sent from Heaven, he claimed.”

“Or sent from the future,” Fred says. “Great. That’s exactly what we need.”

In the ruins of the church, the chapel is nothing but old coffins. Even though it might be a colossal waste of time, they decide they’ll have to open them all to find the scrying glass — if it’s even here.

After a while, every coffin is open. No luck.

Fred wonders if they have the wrong church. Angel thinks they’re being stupid, chasing something based on faulty memory or a weird dream.

“That’s exactly why we need help seeing into the past,” Fred says. “Visions don’t happen for no reason. Otherwise where did that gross little plant come from? I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Illyria can travel in time.”

Angel is stunned. Illyria can time‑travel again? And even if she can, his past self isn’t exactly pleasant.

He looks around the room. Looks up. Stops.

“Maybe we don’t need Illyria anyway.”

A spider crawls up the wall. Angel grins and climbs after it, despite Fred reminding him his vision had beetles, not spiders.

With a loud thud, a section of brick collapses inward — a hidden tunnel. Fred shines her phone light into the gap. Spiders. Only spiders.

Angel is too big to fit. Fred, unfortunately, is small enough.

Angel watches her disappear into the darkness. He hears her crawling, muttering. Then—

“Wait a minute…”

Silence.

Angel calls her name. Once. Twice. Panic rising.

Then Fred’s head pops out, covered in cobwebs. She flicks them away with a grimace.

“I found something.”

She hands him a small circular object, thick with dust. Angel wipes it clean, unsure if it’s even what they’re looking for.

“Where was it?”

“In a little alcove. Looked like a reliquary. Bones underneath.”

“And nothing else?”

“Like what?”

“Well… does this look like a mirror to you? I have a disadvantage here.”

Fred smirks. “It had better be something worthwhile. We desecrated a lot of final resting places to find it.”

Back at the hotel, the sun rising, Angel holds the disc‑shaped artefact. He knows who they need to ask.

Soon, Angel and Fred are seated at the laptop. Sophie and Lavinia Fairweather appear on the screen.

“Angel, be a dear and let me talk to Winifred,” Lavinia says. “I have an important question.”

Angel moves aside. Fred leans in. Lavinia leans closer, filling the camera.

“Is everything okay?” Fred asks.

Lavinia screeches. “I wouldn’t say that. NOT AT ALL!”

Sophie nudges her aside. “Vin’s upset because she was stood up. Told her she couldn’t count on a demon.”

“And I bought the most charming dress too. Now I have nowhere to—”

Fred cuts her off. “Can we please get back to what we called about?”

Sophie eyes the artefact. “Fill it with water.”

There’s a knock at the door. Angel tells Fred it’s probably the owner wanting to thank them for the exorcism.

Lavinia’s voice shrills through the speaker. “If you’re going to ignore us, I’m hanging up — or closing down — or whatever this thing does!”

Fred opens the door.

No one is there.

The knocking continues.

The Fairweathers hang up.

Fred looks up. Angel follows her gaze.

The swirling black dimensional hole from earlier — bigger now.

The exorcism was less than successful.

“I was not wrong.”

Illyria stands in the room again. “I told you these things were desperate.”

More smoke creatures pour out. And bugs — the beetles from Angel’s vision.

Illyria looks up at the hole. “A breach is forming. Ripping through the walls of two worlds. These small entities you call poltergeists lived in the space between, and now they flee. Even they are not so foolish as to stand against what will soon arrive.”

Angel snaps. “Stop with the riddles! Just tell me what’s happening!”

“You are a fool if you think this tear can be easily healed. Already plant life has emerged. And small animals. You can guess what is next.”

She glances at the scrying bowl.

“That trinket will not fix this.”

Angel turns to her. She turns away. With a wave of her hand, the wall shimmers — and vanishes.

“What are you doing?” he demands as the air buzzes with energy.

Then he sees it.

A portal. His past. Twisting, shimmering, ghostlike.

“Let your mind go blank,” Illyria orders. “Let your subconscious guide us. I will take you where you need to go. Into the past, so you can ensure this does not happen in the present.”

Angel shouts, “No! I haven’t told you everything yet!”

But it’s too late.

Time bends.

The world folds.

And then they’re gone — vanished into nothing, as if they were never there.