“You guys saved me,” Anya gasped as she limped down the steps into the aisle. “You chose me. Over another human.”

“You’re human-ish,” Jonathan said.

“Not that I feel good about leaving that old woman behind,” Andrew said, weighed down with the two bags full of weapons and money. “But she was hurting you. We had to do something.”

“You didn’t have to do something,” Anya said. “You could have just used my death as a distraction so you could run away. That’s probably what I would have done.”

“Well, you’re on our team, and teammates help each other out,” Jonathan said weakly. Looking back at his life, he couldn’t pinpoint another moment when he’d done anything remotely self-sacrificing for another person. The realization made him feel very small. He cleared his throat. “We should get the flag to the Mayor. He can keep it safer than us. Maybe the City Council has another demon who can protect it. An understudy guardian.”

“Then you can hold on to this,” Anya said, shoving the urn at him and claiming the corkscrew dagger in one fluid motion. “From here on out, I want to be armed. Without my powers, I can’t even kick an old lady’s ass. How do you guys deal with being so weak all the time?”

“You get used to it,” Andrew said with a shrug. “Or you get really into engineering so you can create overpowered weapons to even the playing field. You should have seen the perspective manipulator Jonathan made in high school. It was so cool. Before it melted Connor whatshisname’s eyeballs.”

“Eyeball-melting sounds more useful than perspective manipulation,” Anya said.

“That’s what Warren said too!” Andrew said. “But Jonathan scrapped the project.”

“It was really messy,” Jonathan said, guiltily remembering the moment one of Sunnydale High’s most popular kids had stolen his prototype sunglasses and stuck them on his own face. For a moment, Connor had appeared as tall as an NBA player. Before his eyes turned to sludge and dribbled out of his skull. “It was before everyone in town knew about magic, so I don’t think Connor ever got his sight restored. And the perspective spell could only ever make me like an inch and a half taller. Barely worth it.”

Staggering up the aisle, Jonathan tripped over a lost blood tube. The urn fell. His heart leaped into his throat as he dove to catch it. Sure, Ripper and Rayne had said that it was unbreakable, but what if the hellfire made it more fragile? What if the Black Flame flag was infecting his soul through the thin walls of the clay? What if the Ninja Turtle was melting?

“The sooner we give this to the Mayor, the better,” he said with a sigh.