"I do have a soul," Spike said, glaring at Gunn. "And it stings," he added as an afterthought.

"That doesn't make sense," Wes said, rubbing his chin. "If Spike's still an ensouled vampire, then how...?"

"What?" Angel asked, puzzled, when his friends suddenly turned to him. "I still have my soul, too!" he exclaimed indignantly when the suspicion in their eyes kicked in.

"Maybe," Gunn offered, motioning his chin towards Spike, "he isn't really a vampire, after all."

"I am!" Spike exclaimed, frowning.

"Or maybe he doesn't have a soul," Wes pondered.

"I do!"

"Stop that," Fred scolded the grown ups. "You're upsetting him."

She kneeled down to Spike's level and said, opening her arms and motioning for him to come closer:

"Don't mind them, sweetie. Come on, give us a hug."

When Spike gladly threw his arms around her neck, she hugged him and kissed the side of his head.

"The heart's beating," she said, smiling at the others over his shoulder. "He's not a vampire."

"Am too!" Spike protested, pulling away in order to give her an offended look.

"Here," she said, taking his hand and placing it over his heart. She smiled when his eyes widened in shock: "You're a living little boy," she said, playfully tousling his hair.

"But I'm supposed to be a vampire!" Spike exclaimed, stomping his foot to the floor. Even as the words left his mouth, though, he didn't look so sure any more, and there was a hint of unsettlement in his eyes when he added: "Ain't I?"

"Maybe," Fred said, cautiously. "Or maybe not. That's what we need to find out."

"They made him shanshu," Angel muttered, shocked.

The others looked at him and he said, looking utterly disappointed despite his previous 'I-don't-care-about-prophecies' act:

"The Senior Partners stopped the apocalypse by making the ensouled vampire human again. Just like the prophecy said."

"I don't know," Fred said. She gave Wes an uncertain look. "Could it be?"

The others looked at Wes, but instead of answering he asked Gunn, motioning his chin towards Spike:

"Are you sure this was the Senior Partners' doing?"

"Positively," Gunn said, nodding.

"Then it has nothing to do with the Shanshu Prophecy," Wes said categorically.

"How can you be sure?" Angel asked, unconvinced.

"The Shanshu Prophecy is about powers that go back way before Wolfram and Hart," Wes explained. "It's definitely out of their league."

"He's human," Angel insisted. "Ensouled vampire turned human: how more shanshu-ed can you get?"

"It's the Senior Partners we're talking about," Wes reminded him. "I'd say all kinds of nasty side effects are to be expected."

"He seems fine to me," Fred said, gently patting the small hand that she still held in hers.

"He doesn't seem to have kept all his memories," Gunn remarked, giving Spike a critical look. "His mind may be pretty messed up."

"You know," Angel told Fred, "maybe you should take him to the lab and run some tests to..."

"I'm no lab rat!" Spike exclaimed, glaring at them while holding Fred's hand tighter.

"Will you stop?" Fred chided, giving the grown ups a reproachful look. "You're scaring him."

"I'm not scared," Spike protested.

"Fred, this is Spike," Wes pointed out. "He lacks the common sense to be scared."

Fred sighed, rolling her eyes at the three men who couldn't see through a little boy's bravado.

"Let's sit over there," she told Spike, pointing at the couch, "and we'll try and figure this whole thing out."

"I call the big chair!" Spike promptly exclaimed, letting go of her hand and running to the big leather chair behind Angel's desk.

"Hey!" -- Angel let out a cry of indignation and ran after Spike, but the boy beat him to the chair and quickly climbed onto it.

"That's my chair!" Angel protested, frowning down at him.

"I called it first," Spike replied with a smug grin.

"But it's mine!"

"Angel, he's five," Wes reminded him.

"He's Spike," Angel said, stubbornly. "And he's sitting on my chair."

"The chair likes me better," Spike gloated, sensing his upper hand. "It told me so."

"Chairs don't talk," Angel said with a sneer.

"They don't talk to you," Spike said, "because they don't like you. You're ugly and mean, and you use too much hair gel."

"Angel!..." -- Fred shot Angel an impatient look as she tugged on his hand and tried to make him sit on one of the several available chairs.

"It's my chair," the CEO of Wolfram and Hart muttered even as he sat on one of the other chairs, crossing his arms in front of his chest and refusing to make eye contact with Spike.

"Don't sulk," Fred gently chided, placing her chair between his and Spike's.

"I'm not sulking."

"You're..." she started to say, but then she gave up with a sigh. "So," she said, turning to Spike instead, "what can you tell us? What do you remember?"

"He didn't let me play with the swords," Spike said, pointing an accusing finger at Angel.

"Before that," Fred coached him.

Spike bit his lower lip, furrowing his brow as he tried to sort out his rather cloudy memories.

"A big owl flew into the kitchen last night," he said, holding up his hands apart from each other to show the owl's size. "It was big and white, and the servants screamed."

"And then, what?" Fred asked.

"Then they screamed some more."

She exchanged an uncertain look with the others. This was clearly a memory of his childhood; still, the Senior Partners hadn't wiped out all his memories from that time until today, or he wouldn't remember that he was known as Spike now, or that he was, or used to be, a vampire.

"Can't you tell me something that happened after the owl entered the kitchen and before Angel stopped you from playing with the swords?" she tried again.

"Like what?" Spike asked.

"Like, hum, anything," she said, shrugging.

"Do the stars sing in this place?" Spike asked out of the blue.

"No," Angel hastily said, while the others just gave them puzzled looks. "That would be D-R-U," he explained to them.

"D-R-U spells Dru," Spike said brightly, and Angel mentally smacked his own forehead.

"Do you know Dru?" Angel asked, warily.

"Nope," Spike replied, his unappalled expression indicating that the name really didn't ring a bell. He hesitated, frowning slightly as he tried to remember. "But I do know Dawn."

"You remember Dawn?" Angel asked, arching his eyebrows.

"She's supposed to be little," Spike said, tilting his head to the side. "But I think she's bigger than me. How can it be?" he asked Fred, giving her a puzzled look.

"Uh... I think, uh... Who is Dawn?" -- she turned to Angel for help.

"She's..." -- Angel hesitated then turned to Spike again -- "What do you know about Dawn?"

"She's Dawn," Spike said. He looked at their flat expressions and sighed, rolling his eyes. Some people needed to be explained things in details.

"She likes pizza, and marshmallow, and chocolate, and she says 'I'm telling!' a lot," he patiently told them. "And 'Mo-om!' and 'Please, please, please, like, times ten, and cubed! Please?' he whined in a high-pitched very convincing Dawn impersonation.

"That's Dawn, alright," Angel said, nodding his head and biting back a smile. He hesitated, studying Spike's face with a pensive look. "Do you remember, hum... anyone else?"

Spike gave Angel an impatient look and sighed roughly, plopping himself back on the chair.

"This game is boring," he declared. Then, turning to Fred: "Is there ice cream in this place? Strawberry ice cream," he quickly added, remembering that he was supposed to be a vampire. "Bright, red strawberry ice cream."

Before Fred could answer, the door was opened with a flourish and Lorne came in.

"Angel-cakes, word out there is that you've got the situation under control," he said. "How did..."

"This is Lorne!" Spike clamored, pointing at the green horned demon. "I remember Lorne," he said with a proud grin. "He sings."

"Hey there, little one," Lorne said, torn between amusement and puzzlement. "I'm Lorne, alright, and you would be...?"

He gave Angel an interrogative look and the vampire sighed and said:

"This is Spike."

"I'm Spike," the boy said, climbing down the chair to walk towards Lorne. "I'm..." -- he looked at Fred over his shoulder, giving her a somewhat sheepish look -- "Can I still be the Big Bad even if I'm not a vampire?"

Before Fred could answer, Lorne found his voice again.

"Spike?!?" he uttered, his eyebrows shooting up.

"Are you going to do the 'Spike? Eek! Oh! Uh! Spike!' thingy, too?" Spike said, shooting him an impatient look. "Everybody's been doing that, and it's not so fun any more."

"You know what would be really fun?" Wes said, trying to infuse into his voice an enthusiasm he didn't feel. "If you sang for Lorne; I think Lorne would love to listen to you sing."

"I don't think that would be any fun," Spike said, giving him a disdainful look. "Unless," he added, his face brightening at the idea, "I sing a scimitar song!"

"No scimitars," Angel said firmly, promptly standing up and placing himself between Spike and said scimitar. "No swords, no halberds, no battle axes. No anything that can kill or maim."

"Then I won't sing," Spike said, glaring at him.

"Won't you sing for me?" Fred asked, smiling.

"Nope."

"Won't you sing for ice cream?" Gunn asked.

Spike's face lit up, much to Fred's chagrin, but he quickly regained his wits and coolly asked:

"How much ice cream are we talking about here?"