This summary is the intellectual property of Leoff

Night-time at Wolfram and Hart has Fred walking through the halls, looking all researchy. She says goodnight to a co-worker as she enters the main lab. Ominous music and stuff makes it seem like she's being snuck up on. Then "Aaahh!" she gets scared by newly popped-up Spike! Only not really cause she was humoring him, knowing he was following her since the lobby. The two talk, with some light flirting, about how she just can't figure out how to get him back, and how he is using all his strength to keep from slipping into hell. Fred briefly mentions the Angel Shanshu prophecy which gets a "figures" reaction Spike. Looking at some figures, she gets excited at an idea of how to get Spike back, which momentarily gets him happy. He leans casually against a lab table...

... and falls right through the table, through the ground, all the way to the basement! Dark, creepy, dusty, he starts walking down a hallway and comes upon a man sitting at a table cutting... something. Spike comes up behind the man and sees he's cutting his own fingers! The man turns to show a scarred up, beastly face, then he dissapears! Spike is, naturally, freaked a bit.

Opening Credits

Assuming it's the next evening: Lorne is on the phone to clients as he passes Fred in the hall into an elevator. Fred marches determined into Wesley's office and hands him a list, saying she needs the items on it as soon as possible. Upon a "hello Fred" from him, she turns and apologizes for the shortness, she's been occupied. He looks at the list and sees some very rare, mystical items on it, saying if he used all his contacts, he should have the items for her in about 20 min. Wesley lays down one condition to her as she starts to leave. He wants her to have dinner. Apparently she hasn't been sleeping or eating well, buringing the midnight oil almost constantly. She promises to have a good meal. She turns to leave with a smile, but is surprised by Eve.

Eve takes Fred to Angel's office where Angel is very business like in his talk towards her. Fred believes he is worried about her late nights and bad meals, but Angel says the problem is how much the science department has been spending. She overspent $800,000 in this quarter's budget. She apologizes, saying that she's just been trying to find a way to get Spike back to normal. Angel says he really wanted to find a way to get Spike OUT. Fred argues that Spike is worth saving for all the good he has done, he's a champion just like Angel. Angel says he still doesn't trust Spike. Some back and fourth (during which Buffy is brought up), but Fred wins the discussion by saying "it's about doing what's right." Angel concedes, but tells her not to be dissapointed if it doesn't work, some just can't be saved.

Spike walks around the lab alone, looking concerned, waiting for Fred, when weird things start happening. Lights flicker, shadows flash by. Spike tries to act cool, but he's rattled a little. Flashing lights in a hallway almost direct him down a path to where he finds a woman standing at the end of a hall. "Please.... hold me? Hold me, please" the woman says as she stands from a crowching position. The woman is dressed in 1800's garb and... only has stumps for arms. She then quickly rushes towards and through Spike, who's startled, then she dissapears.

Angel walks into his office and Spike is there to greet him. Angel's sick of him popping up, but Spike says he just wants to "hang" for a while. They talk about Angel's escaping from hell, Spike's getting sucked into it, the Shanshu prophecy, but basically it's all just some back and fourth barbs with Angel taking a very defeatist attitude, declairing that they're both going to hell eventually. Angel sits, tired and annoyed, as Spike "sits" next to him, trying to talk over old times they had together. Instead they start to list the things that annoy the other. They both act like babies, but Angel does concede one thing: he likes William's poems. "YOU like Barry Manalow" Spike fires back. Just then, Spike looks off into a corner of the office and sees a body hanging from a noose. A second later, it's gone. Angel asks him what's wrong, but Spike tries to pass it off as nothing. Spike sees a second body, a zombie-like person, walking up behind Angel. Spike starts to freak.

And freak big time! Fred, Gunn, Eve, Wesley, and Angel are all gathered in Angel's office as they all watch Spike go all freaky, seemingly talking to himself, yelling for "them" to shut up and leave him alone. The others cannot see that he is talking to various dead people who walk around the office, taunting Spike. Gunn says that they did a spiritual sweep of the building and that the only ghost-like entity was Spike, no-one else. "It's here..." one of the ghosts mumbles, which sends Spike pleading to Fred for help. Spike then fades from sight... or rather THEIR sight. Spike still walks around the office, wondering why the others suddenly can't see him. The others all split up to look for Spike or anything weird as Spike is left alone, except for the ominous voice of a stranger: "She can't help you now... no one can. Bwwaaaah haaa haaa!"

Commercial Break

Still spooked by passing shadows and weird sounds, Spike heads up from the lobby of Wolfram and Hart and walks down an empty hallway. As he passes an elevator, it opens, and suspicous, Spike enters.

Fred, Gunn, and Wesley talk about how Spike is dissapearing more and more frequency, and how he's acting strange, more agitated. Fred seems very concerned, saying that Spike said that he's slipping into hell. the other two men "kinda figured."

The Elevator stops at the basement and Spike says that he's already played the chopping finger guy senario out already. Spike does hear the chopping sounds, but sees no one but a knife and fingers on a table. Suddenly Spike is startled by a new form, a woman dressed up in a business dress, saying "Reaper's gonna get you." She walks up to Spike, taunting him. He sees that she has a large piece of glass stuck in her left eye, which she slowly pulls out and slashes Spike across the face with. Spike is shocked a bit that he was just hurt!

Fred is in the lab doing some techno-geek figuring stuff. She's working hard to try and crack the Spike dissapearance problem. Spike comes up behind her and talks to her, even though she can't see or hear him. Spike talks about the Reaper coming to get him and how he'd like to thank her for at least trying to help him. Fred then starts to get momentarily excited at an idea to save Spike, but it is quickly found to be bogus. She turns and starts to walk away, frustraited, as Spike reaches out to her, telling her not to stop trying. Spike touches her shoulder and ZAP, a bit of a shock between them. He touched her! Fred can't see him, but she knows its him. Spike then starts to feel "them" taking him and just as he dissapears, Angel startles Fred, letting her know that the mystics of W&H can't pick up any other ghosts or anything strange.

Moments later, the group is gathered in a meeting room, along with Eve, as she brings in a clairvoyant-mystic lady who is a little bit of a smart-ass. they all sit as the woman tries to get in contact with Spike to find out what's up. While Spike does appear in the room (only to us, the viewer), The woman does come into contact with some dark force, but it isn't Spike. Spike thinks it's him at first, but then realizes it isn't as the mystic says a "dark soul" is there. Just as she's about to tell the group it's the Reaper, she is throttled by some unseen force, blood streaming from her nose. She then vomits up blood and falls dead on the table.

Back Wesley's office, He and Gunn talk, saying that it probably wasn't Spike who killed the mystic, but something else evil at W&H.

Fred is in a shower near her lab, tired and exausted. Spike appears (again, unseen to Fred) and wonders why "it" killed the mystic. He talks aloud to himself and Fred from outside the shower. As he tries to tell Fred that he thinks "it" is trying to hide something from her (that's why "it" killed the mystic), he reaches out to her and... touches the shower door! Spike concentraits and finds that he can touch things with enough effort. He slowly draws something in the steam on the shower door. Fred finishes her shower to turn and see "REAPER" written on the door, but only for a second, before the door glass shatters, throwing Spike back into the lobby of W&H.

Spike gets to his feet to find a figure aproaching him, a lawyer-ish looking man with a bloody, burned face! The woman with the glass in her face appears again, trying to scare Spike, but he says he's had enough! He's tired of talking to flunkies and wants to talk to the main guy. Suddenly Spike collapses in pain as a new figure shows up, a man dressed in an old coat, not looking dead, but definitely evil, saying that he is going to take Spike to hell, kicking and screaming, but first, he wants to "play."

Commercial Break

Gunn, Angel, and Wesley pour over books, looking up references to "dark souls", but there are too many references to even start. Fred walks in, hair still wet, telling them to cross-reference with the word "Reaper." They quickly find a reference to a being named Pavaine, around in the 18th century, a doctor who did unauthorized surgery and torcher and who was referred to as the Reaper. Turns out that, long ago, when the Wolfram and Hart firm was just getting started with the Los Angeles firm, the ideal spot to put the building on was concecrated ground and they needed to "de-concecrate" it by using Pavaine's blood, which is, like, really evil. An appropriate sacrifice. Pavaine was involved in the dark arts and the group reasons that he is trying to stay out of hell by coughing up the souls of others in his place.

Crawling on the floor in the lab, Spike is badly beaten and cut up, many cuts on his face, trying to get away from the man we now know is Pavaine. Pavaine taunts Spike, then, upon seeing Fred in the lab, taunts him further by suggesting he might want a taste of Fred. Spike takes a swing at Pavaine out of anger, but it still does no good, he's in Pavaine's world now. Reality bends to his desire. His rules, his reality. He transports Spike down...

... into the basement, then toys with him. Pavaine makes the scars and cuts on Spike's face dissapear, then makes Spike's clothes dissapear (whoo hoo, girls!), and taunts him with Spike's horrid past and more recent gentleness with a soul. The beings of the others now appear to Spike, the armless woman, the disfigured lawyer, the woman with glass in her face. All are people who have been sent to hell by Pavaine. Pavaine then has one of his ghostly beings stab Spike in the shoulder with a knife, pronouncing "it's feeding time."

Wesley, Angel, and Gunn walk in on Fred who has just finished final calculations of what she needs to do to get Spike back. TONS of figures and mathematics are scribbled all over whiteboards and windows. She tells the three men what she's going to need is some massively large "evil power source", a catalyst to make the thing happen. Wesley, Angel and Fred don't know where to find something like that, but Gunn does...

"The White Room?!?" Angel says, surprised. He and Gunn stand in the mysterious white void, there to collect a piece of the strand that connects Wolfram and Hart to the evil senior partners. The black panther appears, striding towards Gunn calmly, as Gunn bends down and pets the "kitty."

Spike now lays naked and in pain on the floor in the basement with Pavaine taunting him still. Suddenly a black, tendrilical void appears on a wall, opening up. A mouth to hell. It's ready to swollow Spike as Pavaine says "you go now William, so I can stay."

Commercial Break

Pavaine grabs Spike by the hair and keeps him down, saying that Spike deserves to go to hell. Spike suddenly feels strength and confidence within, saying that Pavaine is right, he does deserve to go to hell, "but not today." Spike throws Pavaine off, suddenly able to "touch" his foe. Spike stands up, strong and ready, as Pavain hears him say "Reality bends to desire. I just have to WANT it bad enough." Spike concentraits and suddenly his clothes start to appear on his body as the big hole to hell closes up behind him. Spike is PISSED and starts to beat the crap out of Pavaine, punching him, knocking him through the walls into the next office, kicking and punching him more. Pavaine does fight back, getting a lick in here or there, but Spike's got the upper hand.

Wesley and Fred prepare lab equipment as Gunn and Angel walk in with a large glass container filled with... evil? Looks like burned pudding, but it's evil. Fred hooks it up to a machine in the lab and, now that they've got their catalyst, they're ready. Fred turns a switch, we hear the hum of machinery, as the camera pulls back to a mystical-type circle in the middle of the floor, with wires running from quarter-cresent bricks that surround the circle.

Now Spike... doesn't have the upper hand. He falls into the Lobby of W&H and Pavaine vaunts over a now beaten up Spike. Pavaine raises Spike up, ready to really whollop him when a wave of energy comes over the entire room, distracting Pavaine. Spike punches him, Pavaine releases his grip, and Spike runs, heading towards the lab. "This won't do... this won't do at all!" Pavaine says as he heads after Spike.

Fred yells out into the air, telling Spike to get into the circle, saying it's the one shot they've got at making him corporeal again. Suddenly her words are cut short, she is unable to speak. Invisible to the others, Pavaine has grabbed Fred around the throat as he throttles her. Wes, Gunn, and Angel try to intervine, but Pavaine easily throws them aside. Spike finally shows up as Pavaine says he's got an interesting dilemna... Save Fred or become whole again. Spike stands there, looking at Fred and the circle, wondering what to do. Spike keeps eyeing the circle... "There's hope for you yet, dear boy." Pavaine says, but then Spike appears behind Pavaine, saying "not really!" Spike punches Pavaine into the circle, just as it does it's big bright flashy explosion thing. Pavaine gets up, starting to swear his head off, realizing he's corporeal again! He vows vengence on them all, but Angel comes up and punches him hard, shutting him up quick. Spike tells Angel not to kill him. If Pavaine becomes a spirit again there will be no stopping him. Angel agrees, and instead just punches Pavaine again.

Fred, Wes, and Gunn clean up the lab slowly, but Fred is distant and tired. Gunn tells her to take a break, so she walks up to her office. Spike appears "don't suppose you built a spare?" Fred tells him that the pieces to build this one machine were rare and there's no power source. Spike is down, but still thankful to Fred for trying. Fred tells Spike that she knew all along that he was worth saving. Spike then says he doesn't have it so bad. he's not dissapearing anymore, and he learned some new tricks. He picks up a cup to show Fred that he can now touch. "I guess there's worse things than being a ghost..."

"Permanent Storage. If there's one thing Wolfram and Hart excells at, it's keeping their unmentionables... unmentioned." Eve and Angel are down in a sub-basement, looking on at Pavailine, who is bound by coils and inside a box, very alive, very awake. Angel closes the box's door, muttering "welcome to hell." Pavaline's eyes glair out in shock through a small window in the door, trapped forever in the box.

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