“You smelled her collagen? Who’s being creepy now?” Angelus sneered. He turned his outrage on Jonathan and Andrew, who were noisily sorting through their bags, taking inventory of what they had recovered from the slayer. “And where were you during the fight? The slayer isn’t supposed to kill humans. You could have distracted her!”

“I’m only kind of human,” Anya reminded him. She batted her natural not-glued-on eyelashes, doing her best to look attractive and available, despite the ache in her face from where the bloodless woman had battered her. “And I’m four times your age.”

“Why’d you all tag along if not to help?” Spike asked the humans. “You came all this way just to hide like the Little bloody Rascals and sneak out when the fight got too intense?”

“We also stopped the slayer from ending the world.” Jonathan lifted the clay urn, his right hand still covered in the dented metal gauntlet. “By stealing the Black Flame flag.”

Spike’s eyebrows flew up. “Oh, did you? Well done.”

Drusilla crawled off Willow’s lap and slunk across the grass on all fours. Jonathan froze in fear as she pressed her ear under one of the urn’s handles and cooed, “I can hear the fire singing inside. Like carrion crows having their feathers pulled.”

“So less like singing and more like screaming?” Anya asked.

“She really can’t tell the difference,” Angelus lamented. One of his hands came up and rubbed his forehead, the same way Human-Mike’s did when Anya asked too many questions. Could vampires get stress headaches?

“So, it’s really in there?” Willow asked. “Good work, dorks. I’m almost glad I haven’t killed you yet.”

“Um, thanks?” Andrew said.

Jonathan shifted uneasily as Drusilla began scream-singing along with what only she could hear inside the urn. “Could we move this jar full of damnation somewhere safe? Somewhere the slayer can’t immediately portal back to? And maybe somewhere less on fire?”

Anya considered the urn, remembering how the black flames had twisted together and oozed out of the sarcophagus. Like it was making a choice to leave. It wasn’t just unpredictable for fire—it was unpredictable for something earthly. Since it was a threat to anything with a soul and a will to stay alive, they couldn’t just pour it out anywhere. And she got the feeling that it wouldn’t sit wherever they left it.

“Where do you store half the ingredients to end the world?” she asked aloud.

“The City Council has a backup plan on file,” Willow said. “But the Mayor isn’t going to like it.”