Let me go out

Like a blister in the sun

Let me go out

Big hand I know you're the one

~Violent Femmes

I bent over the shapeshifter, patiently adjusting her garish spangled ruff and trying to prevent a fresh onslaught of tears. "You looked wonderful, my dear."

"I l-l-ooked like deflated funball!"

"It's a marvelous performance."

"I've lost my dignity!"

"Tut. Shh, Zuptya, you'll bring down the house. That's what we want, isn't it?"

"Mr. Giles!" The manager was darting through the tables, waving a cell phone. "Mr. Giles, we have a situation. The truck with the pigeons overturned on

Howard Street."

"Then call the humane society," I snapped, the stress of opening night beginning to fray my customary air of competent command.

The manager blinked. "I can't, sir," he replied, offering the phone. "It's for you."

I took a breath and summoned calm. No need to betray nerves, no need to suffer nerves at all, really. It was only showbiz. "Hello?"

"Mr. Giles! Mr. Giles, thank God I reached you."

"Ah, Mr. Dundee. Is something wrong?"

"I don't know what happened, Mr. Giles. I was calling a spiritual guide for my wife, and something happened to the living room ceiling. Water everywhere! It's like a pipe burst."

"Perhaps a pipe did burst, Mr. Dundee."

"But something else came down from the ceiling -- a man, it looked like a man. He went right through the floor and disappeared. Now there's just water. It's ankle deep in here, Mr. Giles -- what should we do?"

I closed my eyes and pinched my nose, marshaling my tone to its most even and reassuring. "I would suggest that you call your staff and mop it up, Mr. Dundee."

"But --"

"The summoning you recited is perfectly harmless. It appeals only to blessed spirits from the highest regions of light and even if you... failed to do it properly and happened to damage your plumbing, there's nothing to fear. Now," I said lightly, with that unflappable equanimity that has ever shown me up in such trying circumstances, trying to bring the aggravating interruption to a close, "May we hope to see you and Mrs. Dundee tonight? This is your show, really -- you own half the club and it simply won't be the same without you."

"I --"

I spoke a few more firm, soothing words, calming my chief investor and eliciting a promise to attend opening night, and finally got rid of him. With a weakened sigh I handed the phone back to the stage manager, who was hopping from foot to foot in an ecstasy of nervous tension.

"Jeffries!"

"Yes, Mr. Giles!"

"Take the van and go down to Howard Street. Gather what pigeons you may -- enlist the fire department, if you have to. We must have those pigeons, Jeffries."

"Yes, Mr. Giles!"

I turned back to the stage. Zuptya the shapeshifter had dried her tears and was attempting to perfect her routine. I watched her bounce spherically past the row of tiny footlights, pulsing and glittering.

She looks rather aimless, I thought. Perhaps if we -

Shouts of dismay erupted from the kitchen, followed by crashes, bangs and the roar of water. I started forward, only to narrowly avoid being mowed down by a panicked stream of cooks and helpers charging through the swinging door.

"Sacre Bleu!" cried the chef, rolling his eyes. "Life-threatening! This place should be condemned and have done, and be damned, anyway! Damn all aristos! Au revoir!"

I pushed past him and into the kitchen. Water surged from a burst oven in a powerful torrent, cascading onto the floor. It reeked of myrrh and violets and I had barely a moment to register this odd perception when the oven shuddered, cried out like a living thing, and shot a human figure out onto the tiles.

The gushing flow stopped. A man lay on the floor, drenched and immobile, clad in jeans, one tennis shoe and half a black sweater. His blonde head was curled into the crook of one arm, and his expression was as guileless

And peaceful as that of a sleeping child.

I took a cautious step forward, alarm warring with disbelief. Every instinct I possessed urged flight or at least preemptive attack, but I hesitated. A long moment passed in which the only sound was the drip of water and the hiss of steam. The sodden figure on the floor showed no inclination to stir. I reached out and my fingers closed around the handle of a sushi knife.

"Spike?" It didn't quite work. I tried again. "Spike?"

****

The Spike-like thing took a huge gulp of air and began coughing explosively. Then it began sneezing, and this fit was followed by a brief transitional period, if I may so frame it, of scrabbling blindly at the floor like a mudskipper of the American bayous.

It looked like the devil, really. The preternaturally sharp face I remembered looked blurred, somehow, and there were deep lines of care etched from the brow to jaw. It looked bleached. Badly laundered. Bedraggled, is the word I'm searching for.

Buffy had told me everything, poor girl, about the final moments on the lip of the Hellmouth. I Knew that odds were vanishing small that the creature before me was actually Spike, but I thought it best to start with what I had.

Keeping a firm grip on the knife, I repeated: "Spike?"

The mudskipper scrabbling subsided and the thing rolled onto its back and exhaled prodigiously, surveying the upper reaches of the kitchen with astonished blue eyes.

"Fuck me," it breathed. "Oh. Sorry."

"What are you?" I demanded, with that note of authority for which I am not unjustly famed. "Whence do you come?"

The astonished blue eyes rolled and focused on me, and became, if that were possible, even more blue and astonished.

"Watcher?" croaked the thing.

"What is your name?"

"Good Christ, Rupert, is that you?" The Spike thing winced. "Oh, sorry."

"What is your name?" I roared, filling the kitchen with that echoing authoritative thunder that, objectivity compels me to record, has put not a few demons to flight in its day.

The creature blinked. "It's me. Are you all right? What's this, then?" With an effort, it managed to get its elbows propped and take a look around. "Where are we? Why you? Is this a kitchen?"

I must confess that this response dismayed me. With dark manifestations one may rely on a certain linear train, as it were, in the initial phases of the interview. One demands a name, and one gets a response such as Legion or C'Lothor, followed by a boast of unlimited power and a counsel to despair. I had never, in my experience, been confronted by a demon who seemed perplexed by the proximity of ovens and piping.

I took a breath. I took a step forward. I looked hard at the face before me, so familiar and yet so changed. The eyes were the same. Dazed, rather, but recognizable. Candid, steady and fearless.

I knelt and laid the knife between us. "Hard trip, was it, Spike?"

Spike grinned and every trace of care vanished. "Hell, no, Rupert. It was brilliant."

*****

A sort of interview followed, during which I assisted the subject to his feet and half carried him to the dank, lightless hole that served as my office.  Sentinel of Right that I am, I grilled him per forma on his last hours and agonies; his dispositions and intentions and so forth, keenly aware that this was an opportunity never to matched. He answered with an evasive, monosyllabic courtesy -- punctuated by profanity and apologies, in an uneven stream -- that I found rather difficult to retain. I am writing this after the fact, don't you know, and simply for posterity as I am the last of my kind, after all, one can only do what one can, can't one?

RG: Do you need blood?

WTB: Huh?

RG: Are you in pain?

WTB: Christ, what's eating you? Sorry.

I called the subject's attention to his mangled attire. He evidenced surprise.

WTB: Oh. Well, that's more than I started with. Alright.

RB: What do you mean?

WTB: May I have a glass of water?

I provided water.

RG: Did you die?

WTB: Like a nail in a door.

RG: What happened then?

WTB: More water?

I was taken by a wild surmise. I laid a finger on his wrist and found a pulse, and in an instant I was dragging him to the employee's restroom.

WTB: Oi! Watcher! Ow!

I am not a sentimental man -- the exigencies of my profession preclude it -- but that was a moment to remember. I held Spike up by the collar of his borrowed chef's shirt and watched the wonder, awe and realization dawn upon his naked face as he confronted his reflection.

More or less.

WTB: I look like shit!

I released him and coughed, shielding my eyes. "You seem to have regained your humanity. Astounding. I must salute you, William."

This endorsement seemed to leave Spike unmoved -- the great development was apparently old news to him. He examined himself in the mirror critically, poking and dragging at his lower lids. "Looks matter to her," he muttered. "That's it then. Oh, well."

RG: Spike, you have been reborn.

WTB: Yeah. Thanks.

RG: What happened to you? I must know. Do you understand what this means?  Where did you go?

Spike obliged me with a few more words: the flames of immolation, I gathered, had united him with the Oversoul as his corrupted form fell away, and he had spent a cheery span in Paradise. In that realm of light and peace he had found his cup of charity so brimful that when the reigning spirits offered him the chance to risk his life, soul and heart on a bizarre and unnatural - yet positive -- re-embodiement, he signed up like a trooper and popped on through. I inferred that a certain amount of blameless attachment to Buffy came into play with this -- but bear in mind, that is my opinion only and all of the foregoing is heavily paraphrased.