Standing behind the bar, Angelus stopped pouring drafts of blood and beer and looked up abruptly, as though sensing Anya. Maybe he could feel the ripple of the closing portal. Or smell her pithy blood. Either way, his eyes locked on to hers. She lifted the Marnoxon gem. A smile appeared on his handsome face, smoothing the vampire bumps on his forehead and turning his eyes into dark pools.

Holding the gem over her head, she announced to the club at large, “The slayer is gone. For good.”

Applause thundered through the club. Triumphant hoots and hollers reverberated through Anya’s chest as she descended the stairs. She spotted Willow kissing Drusilla so passionately that it bent the clairvoyant girl backward, the tips of her hair brushing the bloodstained floor. The Mayor wiped his damp eyes with the back of his hand.

Demons of all sorts clapped Anya on the back and ruffled her hair as she made her way toward the bar to claim her free drink. One of the Miquot Clan offered their stool to her. She slid into it gratefully, pleased to once again be off her aching feet.

“What’ll it be for the lady triumphant?” Angelus grinned at her. “Anything for the slayer killer.”

“A pint of Black Frost, please,” she said. The Marnoxon gem glowed cheerfully against the bar, casting green shadows onto the high-gloss wood. “What are you doing pulling pints, Angelus? Don’t you have employees to do that for you?”

“Ah, Clem’s getting a stab wound healed up by the warlock Ripper.” He nodded down the bar to Spike, who was hunched over a mostly empty pint of something brown. “And my old buddy Spike decided to quit. Says he won’t work in the same place as his ex.”

“It’s time for me to be my own man,” Spike slurred, flailing a hand in Angelus’s general direction. “A hundred years I gave her. Nearly a hundred and twenty! Our love was older than sliced bread. Coca-Cola. The Ferris wheel. A great endeavor has ended tonight!” Liquid sloshed over his hand as he slammed his pint onto the bar, proclaiming, “‘Love or hate, to me alike, it deals eternal woe.’”

“He would have kept pouring drinks and quoting Milton, if I’d let him,” Angelus confided to Anya as he set her beer in front of her. “But he was overserving everyone even before he got drunk. I’m already hemorrhaging money on this free-drinks thing. Way too many demons survived.” He set his elbows down on the bar, leaning close enough that she could feel the wintry chill of his skin. “All so you could go and take down the slayer yourself.”

“Everyone else made an excellent distraction,” she said, blushing at the praise. She took a noisy slurp of beer foam. “And I couldn’t have done it with your assist. Well, I could have, but it wouldn’t have looked as cool.”