“Can it, Spike. Glory paid me a little visit today. There is a meeting at my house tonight and we came to let you know. Be at my house just after sunset.” Before Spike could offer a response, Joyce noticed the soft glow of a television and focused her attention on it.

“Oh, is that Passions?” Joyce's excitement stunned the vampire, but seemed to have no effect on the her daughters. “Which episode is it? I missed Friday's; there were customers in the shop the other day and I couldn't get away to my office to watch it.” Joyce made her way over to the chair in front of the TV. Spike stared after her a moment but quickly gathered his wits enough to speak.

“Yeah, I taped it. I was getting some kip when it was on. Was just about to watch it, care to join me?” Spike perched on one arm of the chair as Joyce sat on the other, completely disregarding the two younger women in the room.

“Do you think Timmy's really dead?”

“No. He's a doll, for god's sake, she can just sew him back up.” Spike picked up the remote and pressed play as he answered Joyce.

“What about the wedding? I mean there is no way they can go through with it.”

“Um, mom? Meeting, remember?” Buffy tried to grab her mother's attention, but Joyce and Spike were deep in conversation. Realizing that she wasn't going to get anywhere, Buffy joined Dawn in exploring the crypt. “My mom is watching a soap opera in a crypt with a vampire who just became a Champion for the Powers. Can you say freaky?” She shook her head as she left her mom and Spike to their show.

Giggling from the youngest Summers finally broke up the conversation between Spike and Joyce.

“Oi, put that back!” Spike ran over to Dawn and snatched a book of poetry from her hand, glaring at Dawn before turning his attention to Buffy. “Slayer you said something about a meeting? S' dark enough now; I'll meet you there.” He escorted the three women from his home before they could find anything else that might make him look like a ponce.

Everyone trickled in just after sunset. When Xander arrived he spotted Spike sitting at the dining room table and immediately began to vent his feelings on the matter.

“What's the evil dead doing here?”

“Xander, do shut up,” Giles chided, exasperated with the boy's behavior. “There are serious things we need to discuss and your attitude isn't helping matters.” As he turned to face the rest of the group, Giles took a moment to get his thoughts in order. While everyone sat quietly at the table, he looked over the notes he had made the previous night, after leaving Buffy. Before he could begin, Buffy spoke up.

“Giles, could you take a look at Dawn's necklace before we start with the big explanations?”

With a nod Giles got up from the table and walked over to Dawn and examines the stone and setting. There was a symbol engraved in the stone that tugged at his memory, a feather.

“Willow could you look up...” He trailed off into silence because he knew that he had seen that symbol somewhere before. He stared at the ostrich feather for a few minutes before it suddenly came to him. “Oh! Maat. Never mind Willow.”

“What does Maat have to do with this?” Willow whipped out her laptop and quickly found a page about the Egyptian Goddess. “Oh, it says here that Maat was the Egyptian concept of truth and the ostrich feather represents that. But why would the Powers put a symbol of truth on Dawn's necklace?”

“I am not certain, my dear, but at least we can surmise that it isn't harmful.”

“Buffy and I spoke last night,” Giles continued hesitantly, knowing that what he had to say was not likely to go over well.” “She told me that the trials Spike completed had a number of consequences. Joyce is healed, as you all know, but Spike no longer has his chip.” The gasp from Willow was drowned out by Xander's panicked “Holy Moly.” Both teens pushed their chairs back from both the table and Spike, who sat across from them.

“Calm down and let me finish, please? We have a lot to go over and that news pales in comparison to what else I have to tell you.” Giles raised his voice, trying to move past the interruption.

“I think the evil dead being chipless is very important! How could you keep this from us?! Why does he still have an invite?” Xander was yelling; he jumped up from his chair and began looking around for a weapon.

“Duh, because he is a Champion now doofus,” Dawn told the resident comedian. “Weren't you listening last night? Plus, they gave him his soul, and Spike wouldn't hurt us without it anyway.”

“Xander, sit down!” Buffy commanded Xander with such authority that the young man found himself sitting against his will. “Spike has his soul and before you make any comments about Angel, Spike can't lose his. They said it was permanent. He's supposed to fight with me here in Sunnydale.”

Before the rest of the Scoobies could start talking again, Giles plowed on.

“We can come back to that later; we have more important things to discuss. First, we know what Glory is; the gentleman who ran the trials referred to her as a hell god. I contacted the council last night to see if they could provide more information about her. She is here looking for her Key. That much Buffy was able to ascertain from her this morning when she came here.” The gasps from the group interrupted Giles, as they finally noticed the repaired front door and the missing couch and table in the living room.

“As I was saying,” Giles began again when the room had quieted down, “Glory came here today demanding her Key. The Council returned my call this afternoon. Glory was exiled from her dimension a millennium ago. The key she is looking for was to be used during a ritual to open the barriers between dimensions so that she may return home. She was unaware until her visit this morning that the Key no longer exists. At this point I don't know whether the Powers have done us a favor or disservice in that regard.” At Buffy's shocked exclamation of “Giles!” he continued to speak.

“Glory needed the Key to perform the ritual on a certain date. By removing the Key, I fear all the Powers have done is anger a hell goddess. One which has beaten Buffy when they faced off. She is stronger than anyone we have faced so far. Now take into account that she knows she can never go home and I would think she is going to want to destroy us for thwarting her plans. She has nothing to lose.” Giles paused to allow the group to process the information.

“We had a slight advantage before; we knew where the Key was and could protect it. That gave us some leverage over her. Now, I can only assume revenge will be her primary goal.”

“The Powers took the key?” Willow's confusion was evident. “Was it an actual key? We had it? I didn't know we had a key! Did you know we had a key?” Willow turned to look at Xander, who could only shrug his shoulders in bewilderment.

“Only Buffy and I knew where the Key was,” Giles interrupted the babbling Willow, clearing up the confusion. “We decided to keep the information to ourselves for the time being but I believe now we must tell you what happened to it.”

Buffy moved from her spot against the wall and walked over to her sister.

“I came across Glory torturing a monk a few weeks ago. He told me they made the Key human, an innocent, and sent it to me for protection. Dawnie, you were the Key. When Spike finished the trials, they took the keyness out of you.”

“What?! No! I'm real. I'm not a key!” With tears pouring down her face, Dawn buried her head in her mother's shoulder.

“Of course your real, pumpkin belly.” Joyce soothed her youngest.

“How old am I?” Her question sparked looks of confusion on everyone in the room except two people. Giles was the one to answer the upset teen.

“We believe you arrived a few months ago.”