Logan stopped short. "You don't have one?"

"Who do you think I am, MacGyver?" I said. "I've been a little distracted with trying to make sure Anyanka didn't make her wish right away to actually formulate something beyond 'wish bad.' I'm more or less making this up as I go along."

"What do you want me to do right now?" he said.

"Spell Cordelia."

"C-O-R-D-"

"Ha ha," I said. "Cordelia is better at this than you think, but she's not really all that subtle."

"I've been known to be fond of the sledgehammer myself, Mars," Logan said.

"True, that," I said; Logan had never smashed up my car, in this reality, but that was still an unpleasant memory. "But your styles are still different. I'll pry Cordelia loose. One thing. If you hear anyone in earshot say "I wish," interrupt somehow. Anything short of burning the building down."

"Aye aye, captain," he said.

We walked inside and I pointed out Anyanka; Cordelia was maybe ten feet away, now asking the vengeance demon where she got her hair done. Anyanka was looking as though she was willing to gnaw off her own arm to get away – or pick up Cordelia and throw her through the nearest wall – and was only restraining herself because that would bring the evening, and any chances of her getting someone to make a vengeance wish, to a sudden halt.

With Logan about ten feet behind me, I walked up to Cordelia and said, "Cordelia! Come over here, there's someone you have to meet!" Cordelia looked behind me, figured out what was going on, and said to Anyanka, "I'll catch up with you later."

The look on Anyanka's face was "Not if I have to jump out the window to get away." The look she gave me was one of confusion, but then she turned and moved to take an hors d'oeuvre from a server. Logan trailed after her.

As I walked away, Cordelia said, "It's not that hot guy you owe me, is it?"

"No," I said. "We're just tag-teaming her at the moment. And she looked like she was about five seconds from punching you in the face." After a second, I added, "Still, you did what you were asked to do, assuming no one made any wishes."

"No one else even had the chance to talk to her," Cordelia said. Dad came out of the kitchen and headed out the back door, possibly to walk around to the house to the service entrance.

"Good enough, then," I said as we walked back towards the bar. "Now all we have to do is figure out what to do next."

It was getting to the point where I was almost hoping for a truck carrying rabbits to break down outside. Unfortunately, short of that, I couldn't see getting rabbits from anywhere, and telling her that one had would be a short-term solution.

Still, it might be that short-term solutions were all I had. They'd worked so far.

"Couldn't we just keep doing this?" Cordelia asked. "Have the three of us just keep talking to her so she can't get clear long enough to make a wish?"

"If I can't think of anything better, that's exactly what I'll do," I said. "Still, she's going to get suspicious when she keeps seeing the same three people over and over again."

"Okay, so why have it be just us? Hello! We don't need to tell people what she is to get them to talk to her."

Hmmm. Good idea. I said as much. "Have anyone in mind?"

She looked around the room. "Anyone but Aaron Echolls or any woman who's been dumped recently."

"Do you know--?"

She gave a don't-be-stupid look. "Most of them, yeah. Who do you think you're talking to anyway? Xander?"

"Okay. My dad's coming over here and I'm supposed to be here helping him with something else. Could you take care of it?"

With a long-suffering "the things I do for you people" look on her face, Cordelia walked off as Dad came forward. "Well, that tears it," he said.

"Tears what?" I asked.

"I just talked to Nancy outside," Dad said. "She's not Viola Kerrigan either."

Terrific. "Which means we're out of suspects."

"Which means everyone's a suspect again," Dad said. "We're going to need to expand our suspect list to pretty much every female at this party above puberty and below 65 who isn't known to one of us personally." I knew she was one of the servers, which meant someone was using a really good fake ID.

Good enough to fool Keith Mars? Well, Anyanka had pulled it off, but then she had magic --

Well. That answered that. Every town above the level of No Horse, Idaho has someone selling fake IDs, ranging from the kind that couldn't fool your grandma with cataracts to the kind that could fake Gil Grissom. It didn't surprise me that maybe in Sunnydale someone had a line on "guaranteed undetectable" fake IDs that were made so by magic.

Shit, poop, and darn it to heck.

"Which rules out Lynn Echolls, Cordelia Chase, and Celeste Kane," I said. "And me."

"Dunno," Dad deadpanned. "Can I see some ID?"

I made a show of patting my pockets and then said, "Sorry, officer. You're going to have to take me in."

Serious again, Dad said, "There are a few other people it rules out, but you're pretty close. Way too many for us to check again. We're just going to have to stick close to Aaron and try to stop the stalker when she makes her move."

I couldn't do that, not and reliably stop Anyanka.

Then I had a thought. "So, we know that it's not Cordelia, Lynn Echolls, or Celeste, right?"

"Right," Dad said a bit dubiously.

"So we could certainly ask them." And you knew how desperate I had to be to suggest willingly talking to Celeste Kane.

"Well, we can ask Lynn," Dad said. "She knows about the case. We shouldn't give away details of the case to people who don't know about it."

"I thought there was no such thing as PI-client privilege," I said.

"That doesn't mean I tell everyone in sight, either," Dad said. "Clients in general tend to not go to detectives who blab the details to anyone who asks." Which I knew, of course, but I really couldn't afford to spend the rest of my time here wandering around the rooms trying to peg Viola Kerrigan instead of keeping an eye on Anyanka.

"So why give details? Just ask who they know and tell them it's a matter of security if they ask."

Dad shook his head. "No. Good idea, but no."

"Then what about Logan?" I suggested. When Dad seemed uncertain, I said, "He does know about it. I asked him if he'd seen any servers matching what we know Viola Kerrigan looks like, and he asked me if this was about the woman who was stalking his father." I left out the part about Logan not quite wanting his father dead. It didn't seem like that would help a whole hell of a lot at the moment.

Nodding slowly, Dad said, "Yeah. That, I can see." We looked around the room; he was standing near Anyanka towards the front of the room, munching on shrimp cocktail and keeping an ear on Anyanka's conversation with a tall blonde woman. He was being a lot more subtle than Cordelia had been, but still, eventually she'd get suspicious. I'd need to relieve him soon.

"I'll go ask him," I said. "As far the rest, you know what I'm thinking?"

"Go over the servers again," Dad said. "They're still the best way in. I'll just have to assume that someone out there has come up with a fake ID that can fool me." That's why he's good. Dad's proud of his ability to spot a phony ID, but he's not arrogant about it. He's confident in his abilities, not blindly confident. He knew Viola Kerrigan was there; he'd checked all the logical suspects; which meant he'd missed something his first go-round. "I'll do that after I talk to Lynn."

"Sounds like a plan," I said, and walked over to Logan. Along the way I noticed a guest I'd somehow missed before, or maybe he'd just come in: Mayor Wilkins.

His appearance didn't give me anything close to a heart attack, though; it was possible he was in the middle of some kind of evil plot, but there was nothing he did that I could do anything about before season 3, anyway (short of killing him outright, which would solve a lot of problems, but I wasn't quite ready to go down in history as "assassin" quite yet).

Pulling Logan away from his surveillance, I said, "Anything?"

"She's working the room," Logan said. "Determined to find someone, I guess. One woman bitched about her ex but didn't make any wishes, and the other just looked at the demon like she wanted her to go away."

"I'll take over in a minute," I said. "First – is there anyone here you don't know who isn't on the serving staff?"

"Still looking for the stalker?"

"We are," I said. "We know she's here, but everyone we checked had a legitimate ID."

Logan's eyebrows rose. "Someone's making fake IDs good enough to fool Keith Mars? Impressive."

"It is," I said. "Which means Dad's trying to get creative." I took out a notepad. "So, who don't you recognize that's even close to fitting our criteria?"

"Counting the demon?" I told him yes.

We spent about two minutes with Logan pointing out a half-dozen women in the room he didn't know by sight, and I wrote down the best descriptions I could. I handed him the notebook and asked him to give it to Dad. He nodded and walked off.

So now it was my turn to keep a surreptitious eye on everyone's favorite vengeance demon. She was circulating up a storm, talking to one person, then another. It seemed obvious that she knew someone here had a good wish out for a man who'd scorned them, even if she wasn't quite sure who.

She noticed me once; I smiled at her and she frowned back, but then turned back to her conversation.

After about ten minutes or so, one of Logan's friends from the poker game came up to Anyanka and started hitting on her.

Now, I knew Anya wasn't anti-sex, even as a vengeance demon, at least not if her reminiscences about Dracula were any indication. But this guy – his name escaped me, but he was on the football team and made Larry at his denyingest look subtle and nuanced – was most certainly not her type.

I was almost feeling sorry for her when a voice behind me said unexpectedly, "And that's just the first one."

I turned and saw Cordelia. "The first --?"

Her patented Cordelia don't-be-a-freaking-moron look was in fine form today. "The first distraction," she said. "I got six people to come along and distract her for us and keep her from granting any wishes. And not a single one knows a damn thing about why I really asked them to do it."

She sounded proud. Admittedly not a rare occurrence for Cordelia, who was firmly and partly correctly convinced she had a lot to be proud about, but this wasn't just her "I'm Cordelia and I'm better than you" face.

"What did you tell them?"

"Essentially? I told the women that I'd been talking to hot guy –" she pointed to where hot guy was talking to Aaron and Lynn Echolls – and that our demony friend over there had swooped in and monopolized his attention and could they please give her a hard time."

"And the guys?"

"I said I'd overheard her say she wasn't going to go home by herself tonight," Cordelia said.

I nodded my head appreciatively. "Not bad."

"Thank you," she said. "Also, none of the women have broken up with anyone recently, either."

"Good. Thanks. We might get through the evening yet."

Dad came back up to me at that point. "Miss Chase. Would you excuse us for a second?"

Cordelia knew a dismissal when she heard one, told me, "I'll keep an eye out," and left.

Without preamble, Dad said, "Lynn knew most of the people Logan didn't. I'm still going to check the few that neither one knew on sight, just in case."

"Anything you want me to do?"

"Keep an eye on the Echolls. Shout if anyone pulls out a weapon, and then get the hell away from there. I'm taking enough of a chance just having you here."

"I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, Dad," I said.

"I know, sweetie," he said. "But if you stay near a stalker with a knife, you're grounded."

I stomped my feet. "You never let me have any fun."

"It's in the job description," he said.

Anyanka by now had made it painfully clear she wasn't interested in the man's advances, primarily by bending his hand back until his fingers almost broke. "Leave. Now."

He left, rubbing his fingers.

I watched her for the minute or so it took for Cordelia's next stalking horse to put in an appearance: It was one of the Cordettes, which one, I wasn't sure; the only ones whose names I remembered were Aura and Harmony, and it wasn't either one of those.

Well, I wouldn't say the situation was in great hands, but they were good enough.

I surreptitiously followed Aaron around the room, and yes I'm not happy with the fact that I am essentially bodyguarding a man I wouldn't actually mind seeing stabbed a few times, but I'm doing this for Lynn, not him. (And for the evidence Dad picked up along the way against Aaron, of course. We might not have gotten a smoking gun, but there were additional character witnesses, at the very least.)

In the meantime, Anyanka kept getting interrupted and stalked by various men and women, and not all of them were Cordelia's and my age, either. (There were a few teenagers at the party, mostly the children of the rest of the Neptune elite, but most of the guests were adults.)

Dad was patiently reinterviewing every server.

We had Anyanka stymied.

Unfortunately, in the end, we ran out of time.

In the end, also, it was that Dad had thought to have me hover near Aaron that helped things not end quite like they had the first time around.

Lynn Echolls walked towards the piano and said, "Everyone, if you could just follow the Santas outside, I have a special surprise for you." The servers were now all dressed in their Santa uniforms.

This was the key moment. I remembered this much.

"Come on, everyone! You'll miss the surprise," Lynn said

Aaron followed with, "And we know how much she loves a surprise."

Everyone began wandering towards the door, which opened and revealed, as I expected, Christmas carolers in old-style garb, with fake snow falling around them.

Right then one of the servers came up. Not one I'd talked to. "You don't even care, do you?" she said.

"Dad!" I yelled.

"I'm sorry?" Aaron asked.

"You sleep with me," Viola said. "You say you love me."

Lynn's eyes were narrowing and Aaron said, "Lynn, I don't know who this person is, I swear. Look. I don't know you."

She reached into her pocket and grabbed a knife.

The carolers were beginning Here we Come A-Wassailing.

And right then, Dad came up behind Viola and grabbed her arm mid-swing. She struggled and turned to try to stab at Dad, but Dad was bigger and more experienced, and all Viola had was a rapidly dwindling rage.

"He told me he loved me," she said as Dad took the knife away and she sank to the floor.

"I'm sure he did," Dad murmured, quietly enough that Aaron couldn't hear.

"Why would you do this to me?" Viola asked.

No one answered.

As the private security force came along and hauled off the weeping Viola Kerrigan, Aaron came up and shook Keith's hand. "Near thing, man," he said. "But she didn't get close enough to do damage. Good job."

"Thanks," Dad said. Also important was that she hadn't gotten off a wish. I almost collapsed in relief. My delaying tactics had worked. I hated having had to scramble like that.

In the meantime, though, Lynn Echolls had recovered her wits. "It's true, isn't it?" she said quietly.

"Huh?" Aaron said.

"All this time I've been fooling myself, telling myself the tabloids were lying, that whatever your other sins were, you were basically faithful. And you weren't. She's--" she pointed in the direction of the departed Viola Kerrigan – "Just the only one who decided to do something about it."

A sharp, angry look on his face, Aaron said, "Now is not the time, Lynn."

"Really?" she said, barely controlling her temper. "When's a better time, Aaron? When we're alone? When you can hit us to make sure we're doing what you want? No. Not this time."

Logan had forced his way to his mother's side, but he seemed helpless to stop the impending explosion.

"Lynn—" Aaron hissed.

"I said, not this time, Aaron. Enough is enough. I'm going upstairs, packing, and going to a hotel. I'll have my lawyers –"

Aaron grabbed her arm, a little too hard. Dad and Logan simultaneously moved forward, but Lynn managed to jerk free on her own. The red marks from the grip on the arm, though they faded fast, showed that Aaron had been holding on hard.

"Enough!" Lynn yelled. By this point every eye in the place was focused on her. "You know what, Aaron? Sometimes I wish to hell I'd never married you!"

Oh, shit.

And a smug voice behind me said, "Done."