"You can't go any faster than this?" Wesley demanded.

"Pedal's to the metal, buddy," the cab driver said.

The veracity of this statement seemed questionable to Wesley; the taxi's speed couldn't have been more than 45 miles per hour, and he was sure even this ratty old vehicle should have been able to go faster than that. But he refrained from complaining any further. He knew that, even if the taxi had suddenly flared into warp speed, they still couldn't have arrived at the library fast enough to suit him.

"Chillax, will ya?" Gunn said, sprawling in the seat next to him. "We don't even know for sure that Angelus would go there."

"Any chance is too great a chance," Wesley insisted.

"Thought you were done power-freaking about Cordelia."

"I am. I just -- think -- she should know all the facts as soon as possible. Know to be careful. You of all people won't argue with that."

"No, no arguments here," Gunn sighed. "Just tired of you fidgeting like a Mexican jumping bean -- what the --"

The cab began to shake violently, and for one moment Wesley wondered if the vehicle actually had been pushed to its limits and was about to break down, or explode. But then he realized that other cars were swerving on the streets, and that the palm trees were swaying wildly.

"Earthquake!" Gunn yelled. "Holy hell!"

"Pull over!" Wesley shouted.

"Like I didn't know to do that!" the cabdriver snapped. He began steering to the side.

"This is going to delay us," Wesley muttered.

"Let's live through the earthquake, then worry about our punctuality," Gunn said, bracing himself against the door.

And then suddenly there was no door; Gunn tumbled forward, and Wesley shot an arm out to grab him, pull him back into the -- into the --

Well, it had been a cab -- but the ceiling was gone. The seats were now a dark, polished wood, the same as the sides. Behind them was an enormous sack stuffed with -- what? And in front --

Gunn, still staring out the opening in the side he had nearly fallen through, said, "Is it my imagination, or are we flying here?"

"If it's your imagination, it's mine too," Wesley said. "Could you please take a look in here for one moment?"

Gunn sat up to see what Wesley was referring to. His jaw dropped.

In the front, where the cabdriver had been --

Wesley stared. Next to him, he heard Gunn gulp.

The cab driver was a fat, jolly man in a red suit. He had a white beard, rosy cheeks and a round belly. "Ho ho ho!" he cried merrily. "To the library!"

For a few long moments, Wesley and Gunn sat side-by-side and simply stared at the eight flying reindeer who were pulling them through the sky toward their destination. Finally, Gunn said, "You ever do any serious drugs, English?"

"I once drank three-quarters of a bottle of Crown Royal at a go," Wesley said.

"I got high this one time," Gunn said. "Ate two bags of Cheetos, watched an old Godzilla movie. But that's about it. That's not the kinda thing that would cause flashbacks, would it?"

"I don't think so," Wesley said. The breeze ruffled his hair, not unpleasantly. "I don't believe this."

"What?" the loud voice in the front boomed. "You don't believe in SANTA CLAUS?"

In an instant, the sleigh swooped lower and touched down to earth with a pattering of hooves and jingling of bells. Gunn turned to glare at Wesley. "What is your problem? You go telling Santa Claus you don't believe --"

"But you believe, don't you, Charles?" Santa said with a merry smile.

"How does he know your name?" Wesley muttered as he climbed out of the sleigh.

Gunn rolled his eyes as he followed. "Santa knows everybody's name," he hissed.

"Tell me, Charles," Santa said, "have you been a good boy this year?"

Gunn stared at Santa, apparently at a loss for words. He opened his mouth and closed it again a few times. His expression was one of the deepest concentration, as if a very great deal rested on his answer. Finally, very carefully, he said, "Yes."

"HO ho ho!" Santa gestured grandly to the huge sack behind them. With a twinkling of red and green glitter, something sailed out; Wesley was startled to realize it was a replica of Gunn's hubcap axe, now with a large crimson bow on it. "There you go, Charles! Merry Christmas!"

Gunn took the axe in his hands, his face split with a huge, open-mouthed grin. "Thank you, Santa!"

"And to all a good night!" Santa cried as he jingled the reins once more. The reindeer lifted up into the sky and flew away. Wesley and Gunn watched them go for a while.

"Man, I don't care if that was a dream or what," Gunn breathed. "Because that was incredibly cool."

"We -- I don't -- maybe -- we can discuss this later," Wesley said. "We still have to get to the library."

"Library, right," Gunn said, gripping his axe a little tighter. "This was a seriously good present, considering."

"We're still thirty minutes away on foot. Though I hate to mention it, we might want to look for another taxi," Wesley said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Then he drew out what he found there.

"What's that?" Gunn asked.

"Nothing," Wesley muttered, tossing the lumps of coal into the gutter. "Nothing at all."

It was very important to stay focused.

The convertible careered around a corner at high speed, ran a red light and made an ill-judged left turn across the stream of oncoming traffic. In the passenger seat beside Fred, Cordelia hugged her cut arm to her chest and blinked woozily, still half-doped on whatever pain medication the paramedics had given her. The emergency medical station set up on the road outside the library had been busy with casualties of the quake, and no one had questioned her injuries too closely. Behind her, Angel huddled beneath a blanket. They were both completely quiet, which fortunately gave Fred a chance to concentrate.

Foot on the pedal -- steering wheel -- it was all coming back now --

LA's City Hall loomed into view ahead, 28 stories of civic dignity and authority. Or it would have been, if every single one of those stories hadn't been decorated in pink and white swirls of icing, and topped in a blob of whipped cream so expansive it resembled a sugary rain cloud.

City Hall was a giant cake. Fred thought that must be awkward for the people who worked in it.

In the back seat, Angel lifted the blanket he was sheltering under long enough to shout a warning. "Fred --!"

There was a large staircase in the middle of the road ahead. It was carpeted in ugly floral deep pile and didn't seem to lead anywhere. Fred twisted the car's steering wheel just in time to swerve around it.

Focus. Gotta keep focused.

"Like riding a bike," she said out loud as she grappled with the mechanics of driving. "You don't forget, you don't forget, riding a bike --"

She knew that was a lie. You did forget. After five years, you forgot all kinds of things you never thought you could. Like your address, how to talk to people, your mother's maiden name, how to drive.

Or just what a "bike" was, anyway.

But Cordelia was hurt and Angel had to stay under the blanket (this is not Pylea, she thought, sunlight burns, remember that, focus) and Fred was driving the car. Badly.

Of course, three days earlier, she couldn't have said for certain what the words "driver's license" on the small rectangle of plastic in her cave meant. On those grounds alone, Fred felt reasonably confident she was making progress.

But she had to keep concentrating -- keep focused on what was important.

After half an hour of searching, Wesley finally had to accept that Cordelia, Fred and Angel must have already left the library; the emergency-medical workers had told them nobody died in the quake, which was at least vaguely encouraging.

But it was still no guarantee that Angelus hadn't spirited any or all of them away somewhere, against their will.

When he posited this theory, Gunn shook his head. "It's also no guarantee the Easter Bunny didn't give 'em candy. Today, I mean this literally. Wes, we ain't doing anybody any good hanging around here any more. We're just killing time in a weird-ass library."

"The disco on the third floor was a touch unusual, I grant you."

"Or this whole row of books? Printed on maple leaves." Gunn gestured at the torches on the wall. "And tell me L.A. fire codes don't have something to say about those."

"This universe appears to be unstable," Wesley said.

His voice thick with sarcasm, Gunn said, "No, really?"

Wesley ignored him. "And I believe Angelus is to blame for it."

"Angelus? How do you figure that?"

"What your counterpart was telling us in the sewer tunnels -- I think that was important." Wesley rounded a corner, Gunn by his side -- then stopped in his tracks as he saw what lay before them: the all-new library Dark Arts and Magical Forces section. "For once, I believe this instability is working for us."

"Speak for yourself," Gunn said. "I already got an axe out of this deal."

Wesley began scanning the volumes; some of them were unknown to him, but others were reassuringly familiar. "There's one from Earnshaw -- he'll have something to say about this, I warrant."

He leafed through the fragile, yellowing pages until he saw the passage he sought; although it had been a few years since he'd studied this in Watcher's training, memory still served. "Here's the ritual Angelus is carrying out."

"What ritual?" Gunn said. His face was twisted with unhappiness. "This has got to do with livers, doesn't it? As in, Angelus ripping them out of people."

"That's the one," Wesley said absently, licking his thumb before he flipped a page. "It's a form of sacrifice to the ancient Phoenician gods of darkness. Designed to bring about the end of the world."

Gunn exhaled slowly, then said, "I'm gonna start my questions off small. Why take out the livers?"

"The liver is a symbol of regeneration," Wesley explained. "By sacrificing humans at certain points -- but removing their livers so as to further degrade the form -- a penitent to the darker powers could bring about instability in the universe. Eventually, he would be able to destroy it."

"Certain points?" Gunn said, frowning. "You mean portals, ergo the Class One freakout you went into when you figured out about the library."

"Precisely."

"So Angelus has been picking off my gang to try to destroy the world?"

"To judge from the strange events that have been occurring, Angelus has managed to do some damage already. This dimension is already extraordinarily unstable."

"So are we talking about put-on-a-sandwich-board, Jesus-is-coming-soon time here? How much time have we got?"

"Years," Wesley said. At Gunn's surprised reaction, he continued, "Fortunately for us, this ritual is very demanding. A sacrifice must be made on each of two consecutive nights, including the night of the full moon, every month for nine years for the magic to take full effect. That's how the legends have it, anyway. As we're all still here, I suppose no one knows for certain."

"So the guy is into long-range planning. How do we stop him NOW?" Gunn said. "I think this information is key."

"Well, first and best of all is stopping him from taking any more victims," Wesley said.

"On board with that plan," Gunn said evenly. "But I think we need a backup."

"If we should fail, then there's a counter-spell; it's actually better known than the Phoenician ritual, as it works against other forces of darkness and entropy as well. We'll need to take the liver that's been cut out --"

"I had to ask," Gunn muttered.

"-- and purify it with Veldar's Flame -- it's a kind of blue-white, magical fire," he added, seeing Gunn's bemused look. "It's simple enough to make. Lorne should have all the ingredients we need from his shopping for the disinvitation spell." Wesley paused, considering.

"You still all hot to toss Angel out of the house?"

"No," Wesley said quietly. "I'm still -- it's hard to face. To know what his soulless self has done in this universe."

"Tell me about it," Gunn said. "But you were totally feral back there, seeing as how it's not actually our Angel we're talking about."

"I realize that," Wesley said. Tension was knotting up his shoulders, but he forced himself to relax. "We'll have to deal with this later, I think. But for now, our priorities are simple -- stopping Angelus, saving Cordelia and getting home."

He did not mean the Cordelia who was, hopefully, waiting at her apartment. From the dark spark in Gunn's eyes, Gunn knew what he meant, and still didn't like it. Wesley looked steadily at him, daring his friend to argue.

He didn't. "Then let's get on it," Gunn said. "Let's get back to check on Cordy. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll get a real taxi this time."

"Turn left," Angel said. "Left here."

Fred swung the car off the road and on to the lawn in front of Cordelia's apartment block. She drove it through the communal garden and didn't brake until the whole vehicle was in the shade underneath the awning at the front of the building.

The car screeched to a shuddering halt two inches shy of Cordelia's front door.

Fred let out a slow, shaky breath. She took her hands off the wheel and twisted around in the driver's seat. The car's wheels had plowed two deep furrows in the otherwise neat lawn. Fred winced. "Sorry, grass."

Behind her, Angel shrugged off the blanket and got out of the car. He didn't say anything as he lifted Cordelia out of the front seat and carried her into the apartment in the safety of the shade. Fred was quiet too; things were becoming clearer now, making sense in a way they hadn't for almost as long as she could remember. But her thoughts still had a frustrating tendency to fly around inside her head like butterflies, and she was aware of the need to focus, to concentrate -- she couldn't let the answers slip away --

Just as they came through the door, Lorne walked out of the kitchen, holding a coffee pot in one hand and a plate piled high with sandwiches in the other, and wearing a cowboy hat on his head. "This is one wacky universe," he said, "but I gotta hand it to 'em; they know how to have a sale. Like my hat? Got it in honor of The Longhorn, The Bar Formerly Known As Caritas. I thought it would make you all die laughing, be a little morale-booster for the gang, but in fact Cordelia just looks like death and suddenly my habitual flippancy feels strangely inappropriate."

Angel set Cordelia down gently on the couch, and Dennis moved a low box closer so she could rest her feet on it. "I'd ask for the gory details," Lorne said, "but I have a nasty feeling they might be gory. How's our princess?"

Cordelia nodded weakly. "I'm okay. It was -- scary -- but I'm okay." She looked up at Angel, smiled. "Angel was there."

Her smile was fragile, but so sincere that Fred wondered why Angel wasn't smiling back. As Cordelia beamed up at him, he simply stood next to her, his expression haunted.

As Lorne fussed over Cordelia and Angel, well, just stood there, Fred looked around the cluttered apartment. Some of the furnishings had changed (and, to judge from the orange and yellow floral drapes, not for the better) but no computer had materialized into existence. Fred grabbed a pen and tried to think where to look; finally, she just looked up at the ceiling.

"Dennis? Nice dead man? I have to do some math now. I can't do it in my head, and I kinda need to be able to pull back and look at the equations all at once. So, if you don't mind --"

No chill ghostly wind howled through the apartment, and the walls didn't start bleeding, so Fred figured it was probably safe to start writing on them. She started with the basics, began deriving from first principles the rules that should define this world. It was clear after the first few lines that the answers were crazy, but the math behind them made sense, and that was all that mattered. Fred had finally found a set of rules that worked; here was her focus, her structure. It was all coming back now.

Fred tuned in and out of the conversation going on behind her, following just enough to notice that Cordelia was telling Lorne what had happened at the library, Lorne was being sympathetic and offering to make hot, sweet tea and Angel wasn't saying anything much. Then a particularly stubborn derivative took up her full attention, and when she next surfaced, Lorne had returned to the kitchen and Cordelia was speaking to Angel in a low voice.

"I mean it, Angel. Thank you."

"I --" He broke off abruptly. "For what?"

"Hello? The whole stopping Angelus thing? You saved me." Cordelia's voice was slightly throaty, as though she might be trying not to cry. "I -- I just wanted to say that I feel safe with you."

"Oh, God." Angel did not sound as if he were going to cry. But he sounded -- strange. The way he had after he'd seen the monster inside him. Fred peeked over her shoulder at him to see if he would fall down and start shaking again. He didn't. She went back to work.

"Angel, did you get hurt?" Cordelia asked.

"No. No, I didn't get hurt."

"Well, then, at least tell me he got hurt. I mean, if he didn't even lay a finger on you, you must have just kicked his ass, huh?"

"We didn't fight. He just -- walked away."

"This Angelus is way more of a scaredy-cat than the other one. Which is definitely a good thing. We get some Halloween masks and a videotape of 'The Birds,' and he's history."

Fred thumped her fingers against the wall as she considered what she'd written, then quickly tore down a "Highlander" poster to make some more room and kept writing.

"I don't think it's that simple," Angel said.

"Of COURSE it's not that simple. I am trying valiantly to maintain my sense of humor in the face of a day that, on a trauma scale of 1 to 10, gets about a 98. Work with me here."

The door flew open with a bang, startling them all. When Fred spun around, she saw Wesley come in. When he saw Cordelia, lying bandaged and wan on the sofa, he went pale. Behind him, Gunn drew in a breath, as though he'd been hurt. Angel didn't even look at them; he just shifted his stance so that he wouldn't be in the way of the sunset light coming in through the door.

"Dear God," Wesley said, dropping to his knees at her side. "What happened to you?"

"Everybody's favorite evil twin decided to renew his library card," Cordelia said. "Tried to vamp me, tried to rape me." She took a deep, shuddering breath, then apparently got her courage back. "But he got stopped by everybody's favorite good twin."

"He got to you," Wesley said. "He could have --"

Wesley stopped talking and embraced Cordelia tightly. After a few moments, Cordelia laughed a little. "Jeez, Wesley, you're embarrassing me." Wesley didn't let go, and in a few moments more, Cordelia said, "Now you're scaring me."

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling back. "I needed to -- see your face --" He broke off, clearly uncomfortable. Hypothesis, thought Fred: Wesley doesn't make emotional declarations very often. Evidence: his unease, Cordelia's expression of discomfort. Evidence: overwhelming.

She looked back at the expanse of black marker now covering most of one wall of the apartment. Here too she saw the familiar pattern of hypothesis and evidence. Here, as well, the evidence was overwhelming.

"Put me down for one of those hugs, too," Gunn said. "But I'll let you get your breath back."

"Okay. Feeling the love just a little too much." Cordelia said, slowly, "What did you find at the hospital?"

Fred began to get a slightly uneasy feeling about all this; the math on the wall behind her was, for the moment, the least disturbing thing in the room, which was saying something.

Gunn and Wesley were both quiet. After a pause, Gunn stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. He said, "Sure you want to know?"

"I think you'd better tell me."

"Angelus," Wesley said, putting some bite into the name, "made you insane. And he -- Cordelia, he blinded you."

Angel made a small, strangled sound. None of the others seemed to hear. Cordelia put her hand to her throat. "He -- he cut out my eyes. Didn't he?"

Wesley grabbed her shoulders. "Did he try to --"

"I think -- I think he thought about it," Cordelia said. "But then he decided I'd make a great vampire. Which I now have to be grateful for. Oh, my God."

"How could you?" Wesley didn't look away from Cordelia, but there was no doubt who he was talking to now.

"Wesley, don't," Cordelia said. "Angel's the one who saved me. If it hadn't been for him --"

Wesley took a deep breath. He still seemed tense, but he was making a visible effort to calm down. "I'm sorry," he said. "This has all been so -- I'm sorry, Angel."

"Don't apologize," Angel said. His arms were folded against his chest in unconscious defense and when he spoke again, it seemed to Fred every word was an effort. "There's something more happening here -- I can't explain why -- but I'm sure now --"

"Your instincts are telling you much the same thing we found out," Wesley said.

Angel looked pale -- now that Fred thought about it, Angel always looked pale, but there was something else behind his eyes now, something truly stricken. She reluctantly turned back to her equations, but she kept her ears wide open.

"You -- you know?" Angel said.

"We've put it together," Wesley replied.

The room was suddenly very still. The only sound was the squeak of black marker on plaster as Fred raced through the final lines of the calculation. They were hardly necessary: the calculus was reducing and reducing to a single inevitable statement of fact. Fred felt her stomach twist as she scrawled the last symbols on to the wall.

"What is it?" Cordelia asked.

Everything made sense.

Fred dropped the pen and turned around. The math and the moment fused as she heard a question she could answer with perfect clarity and focus. She felt connected to the people around her, to the math surrounding her, to the person she'd thought she'd lost for good somewhere in the Pylean woods. How good it felt to be so clear, so sure, to be able to open her mouth and announce --

"The world is ending."

"I was just about to say that," Wesley said, peeved.

"Oh, crap," Cordelia said tiredly. "Here we go again."

Cordelia felt the familiar mixture of panic, determination and plain old annoyance settle in. "How long have we got before the world ends?" she said. "Because in cases like this, the deadline is pretty crucial. In my experience, you play the game entirely differently if you've got, say, two months, versus, you know, tomorrow. Or today." She put a hand to her head, fighting off another wave of dizziness. "Please, not today."

"Not today," Wesley confirmed.

Behind him, Fred looked puzzled. "Excuse me?"

Everyone turned their attention to Fred, who pushed her glasses up her nose and said, "I would appreciate it if you could tell me a little bit more about the end of the world. With the math, if possible."

"Math?" Wesley said, momentarily nonplussed. "I don't -- this is an ancient Phoenician ritual. I don't think they even had a concept of zero, so their math is probably -- well, it's not the point."

Fred pulled herself up straight. "The math is always the point."

"It's not an immediate crisis, Fred," Wesley sighed. "The ritual involved requires nine years to complete."

"And involves the extraction of human livers," Angel said.

"So you already know it," Wesley answered quietly.

Angel nodded.

Cordelia glossed over the potentially icky bit about livers; she was too relieved about the duration of the ritual to much care. Nine years seemed like a very workable time frame. But then Fred spoke again.

"I know one thing for certain. It won't take nine years," Fred said. "I think this universe is pretty close to collapsing. Within days, maybe."

Cordelia twisted up her mouth. Wesley gaped. Angel frowned. Lorne winced. Nobody said anything helpful. Fred sighed.

"Days?" Cordelia said. "We only have days?"

Fred blinked behind her glasses, and gestured at the math covering most of the wall behind her. "I've only derived the basic equations. I'll need to do more work to calculate the precise rate of decay. But that's what's happening. I mean --" she gestured at the impenetrable layers of code behind her, "-- it's obvious."

It wasn't obvious to Cordelia, and a quick poll of four other blank expressions established it wasn't obvious to anyone else either.

"What do you mean, rate of decay?" asked Wesley.

"Fred," Angel interrupted, "We don't understand this the way you do. You have to find another way of telling us."

Fred stopped. She nodded. "This universe isn't real," she said.

Cordelia breathed a sigh of relief. "So this really is all just a bad dream. I knew it."

But Fred was shaking her head. "No -- I mean, it shouldn't be real. It's here but it shouldn't be. The numbers are wrong."

"Which numbers?" Angel asked.

"There are certain constants -- numbers that are always the same, however you measure them."

"Like pi," Wesley said. "Three point one four one --"

Fred smiled. " -- five nine two seven. Except it isn't, here. M.I.T estimates pi at 3.14156. Oxford University puts it at 3.14163. They're having an argument over it in the journals."

Cordelia ran this through her head, hoping for some bit of wisdom gleaned in 9th-grade geometry to kick in and illuminate this conversation. "Okay, sure, that's weird. But how do wonky circles bring the world to an end?

"You can't just be a little wrong about pi! It's -- crazy!" Fred sounded distressed; privately, Cordelia thought that 'crazy' was a risky word for someone with a cheese phobia to be using so readily.

Slowly, Angel said, "In the library this morning, you said something about there being no structure, no foundation. This is what you were talking about, isn't it? The rules here don't make sense."

Fred nodded so eagerly Cordelia thought her glasses would fly off. "And when the rules don't make sense, the world they define can't make sense either."

"Which is why all this weird-ass stuff has been happening?" Gunn said. "You would not believe what happened when that earthquake hit."

"That wasn't an earthquake," Fred said. "It was -- I guess we could say, a reality quake."

"And we would be having reality quakes why?" Cordelia asked.

"I think this place is an offshoot of our universe, that it was created when we came through the portal. Possibly because we came through the portal. Something happened that made all the dimensions go hinky --"

"Glory," Angel said grimly.

" -- and this little sliver of reality we're in splintered off from the real world -- well, one of the real worlds. Everyone here thinks they have a history, but they don't. They didn't exist for very long before we got here. All the true universes in the multiverse are infinite; but this place is finite. Nothing finite can exist in infinity."

"Hence the word finite," Wesley muttered.

Fred continued, "And because this universe is inherently unstable, not only has it not existed for long, but it won't exist for very much longer either. The reality quakes will get worse until this universe implodes. It won't just cease to exist -- it never will have existed. And -- umm -- that's it."

Fred trailed off, shrugging apologetically. Cordelia bounced up and down experimentally on the sofa. It felt solid. So did the cushions under her arms. She lifted the cup of tea Lorne had made her and sipped it. It was sugary and strong and far too hot, and burned her throat on the way to her stomach. "I don't get it. You're saying none of this is real?"

"It is real. In a sense. But this world is more -- fluid than ours. Malleable. Which means anything in it is susceptible to change or erasure at any moment. So the way we perceive reality might actually impact on its substance..." Fred trailed off, and looked thoughtfully back at the calculations on the wall. "That could be significant. I didn't introduce a variable to reflect it."

"Hating to interrupt the math master class," Lorne said, "but, you recall that part about the universe crunching in like a light bulb in a car crusher? Any thoughts on how we might NOT be here when it happens?"

Fred brightened. "Oh, that's easy."

Wesley blinked. "It -- is?"

"Oh, yes. Well, easier than it might be in a 'real' universe. The structure is so unstable that opening a portal in it should be fairly simple. Comparatively speaking."

Fred positively glowed. Cordelia sighed in relief. The atmosphere in the room lightened considerably, and even Angel seemed to snap momentarily out of the odd funk he'd been in since the library. Still, Cordelia thought, it was sweet of him to be so worried about her. Reminded her of the old days, the way it used to be, when they watched each other's back no matter what.

No, she told herself. That's not the way it used to be. That's the way it is again.

"That's very promising," Wesley said. "Fred here can figure out exactly how we'd go about opening up the portal. And then we can go, and when we leave, we can bring the other Cordelia back with us."

Cordelia looked at him. "Bring her back?"

Wesley nodded. "We can't leave her here to die."

"English --" said Gunn, and Cordelia had the sudden feeling that this wasn't the first time Wesley had raised this particular subject. She should have felt touched -- he only wanted to do this to help her, or some less fortunate version of her, at any rate -- but instead she felt profoundly uneasy, in ways she couldn't articulate. She thought about that other Cordelia, strapped to a bed somewhere, blind and crazy, and shuddered.

"I don't want to talk about this right now," Cordelia said.

To her surprise, Fred chimed in, "That's right. We have to stay focused on what's important."

"What's -- important?" Wesley said, his incredulity failing to mask his anger. "Cordelia's suffering isn't important? Her fate isn't important?"

"Not compared to our staying alive and getting home," Fred said.

"I suppose I shouldn't judge," Wesley said, and know his words were like knives. "You've been through so much of your own suffering. But I might have thought that would teach you some compassion. Some basic sense of --"

"Stop this," Angel said. "Wesley, she's telling the facts as she understands them. This isn't personal."

"Not personal?" repeated Wesley. "Are you forgetting where the responsibility rests for what happened to this universe's Cordelia?" As if to emphasize his point, he placed his hand on Cordelia's arm, resting it lightly on the belt still wrapped around it just above the elbow. Cordelia felt as if she should say something, but could not, for the life of her, think what.

Angel looked away. "No. Of course not."

"Very well, then," Wesley said stiffly. "We'll revisit this subject in the morning, when perhaps Fred can be convinced to re-examine her facts." Fred's face went dark, but before she could renew the argument, Wesley continued, "We should get settled in for the night. Cordelia needs her rest. I dare say we all do. Except perhaps Angel."

"Speaking of things that go chomp in the night, what about this disinvite spell?" Gunn said. "We need to keep Angelus out and keep Angel in. How are we going to swing that?"

"I have a theory about rewording the spell to bring in the concept of the soul --" Wesley began.

"We can't afford for you to test it," Angel said. "Besides, you -- you need to know this anyway --" He looked so strange when he said that, Cordelia thought, so sad --

"What's that?" Wesley said. "Something about Angelus?"

"That's not Angelus," Angel said. He was speaking so quietly Cordelia had to strain to make him out, but every word was clear. "Not the way you're using the name."

Cordelia felt her body go cold as Angel continued, "The vampire I saw today -- he has his soul. He's me."