Author's Note: I live to confound assumptions, I guess.

Thanks to Ponder and Duchess for reading the first couple of pages of this chapter and letting me know that no, I wasn't cheating.

I hope y'all agree with them.

X X X X X

Almost out of instinct, I'd closed my eyes once I realized, too late, what Lynn had said.

How the hell could I have not considered this? That Lynn Echolls – who'd gotten scorned a hundred times worse than Viola Kerrigan ever had, no matter the disparity in their reactions – would be the one to make the wish?

But no. I'd stupidly missed her while concentrating on Viola Kerrigan. I'd breathed a mental sigh of relief once Dad had stopped Viola from stabbing Aaron, for Lynn's sake, and an even bigger sigh when she'd allowed herself to be dragged off without making a wish.

Lynn hadn't reacted this way the first time around. But then, the first time around, Dad hadn't gotten there quite in time (and it was interesting that all of my foreknowledge got Dad maybe five seconds' extra time to stop the attack), and Aaron had been unconscious and bleeding profusely, so that Lynn and Logan's main concern had been saving his life.

Here? No. Here, Aaron was okay, there was a larger crowd, and maybe Lynn had seen their faces, their knowledge, and in some cases, their guilt, because like I said, there were damn few women at that party who weren't at least possible bed partners for Aaron. Or maybe she'd had the time to process here, that what she knew and had thought was secret was in fact an open secret, and that the dignity she'd thought she'd had (and did have, to me) was in fact people laughing at her behind her back.

Either way, she'd gotten angry.

Angry enough to wish.

And neither Logan nor I had been able to stop her. Or Anyanka, behind me, who'd figured it out before I had.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Sweetie? Are you okay?"

Opening my eyes, I saw Dad.

And the inside of the Echolls' Mansion. Complete with Lynn Echolls, storming up the stairs, and Aaron Echolls, standing in the middle of the room looking like he'd just been punched in the gut.

"Um, thanks, Keith," he said distractedly. "I need to –" he moved towards the staircase.

"Under the circumstances, Dad," Logan said pointedly. "I think that's the last thing you need to do."

What the hell?

I knew I'd heard Anyanka say, "Done." I knew we should be in a wish universe, with Logan not here and maybe Lilly alive, and who knows what else?

Instead, it was like I'd simply closed my eyes and gone la-la-la-la-la for 15 seconds.

The vengeance demon had been behind me. I turned around to see what was going on. In the chaos of the situation, I really couldn't pick anything out.

A couple of people had been knocked down; as had a vase stand. The trail looked like it led to the back door.

Dad and Logan were busy trying to keep Aaron from going upstairs, so I took a couple of steps backwards and, dodging bodies and fallen furniture, followed the trail. Whatever had happened, it hadn't been especially neat, and Anyanka hadn't been happy.

I figured it out as soon as I got to the backyard.

And would have sagged in relief, had the situation in front of me not been sort of desperate.

Think about it.

Logan and I had been otherwise occupied. There were only two other people in the building who might have known what Anyanka was, and Mayor Wilkins one, was on the other side of the room, and two, wasn't going to confront a vengeance demon this close to his ascension unless he had no other choice.

So guess who, apparently right before Anyanka had said, "done," had ripped the necklace from her neck and gone sprinting for the Echolls' back door?

Got it in one.

In the backyard, to the cries of "chick fight!" from Logan and Duncan's half-drunken friends, Anyanka was doing her level best to run Cordelia down. So her powers included superhuman strength and resistance to injury, in addition to teleportation, but apparently not superhuman speed.

Or intelligence, considering that she could have teleported in front of Cordelia instead of simply running after her. (I knew damn well Anya wasn't stupid. I also knew right now that she must have been blind with rage, otherwise Cordelia would have been in a lot of trouble.)

It had been impulsive, it had been reckless, and it had saved all of us from being shifted into an alternate universe, so I wasn't going to tell Cordelia any of this.

Still, I needed to save her.

"Cordelia!" I yelled.

She saw me and, dodging very nicely around Anyanka's outraged attempts to grab her, ran towards me and threw me the necklace.

Anyanka saw all of this, of course, and now came barreling towards me. I backed towards the pool and knelt down on the concrete walkway surrounding it. Then, holding the necklace tightly, I raised my hand as though I was going to smash it.

She came to a sudden stop. "You'd better not do that," she said. Duncan had figured out that something bad was going on, and started to walk towards me.

Cordelia stopped him. I couldn't hear what she said to him, but within about five seconds Duncan was gathering all of his friends up and hustling them back towards the house.

She moved with them for part of the way, but stayed well within the range of my arm.

I had to give her a lot of credit. Later. Right now, I needed to stay alive.

"I won't," I said. "As soon as there's no chance of you granting any wishes."

She turned into her demon form and growled, "How do you know who I am? Who are you?"

"Just a normal human," I said.

"Don't lie. She's a normal human," she said, pointing at Cordelia.

"Hey!" Cordelia said.

Anyanka ignored her. "You're not. You look human, but you're not. I don't know what you are and that bothers me."

"Are you delusional?" Cordelia said. "She's as human as I am."

Anyanka was obviously, somehow, sensing that I was magic-null. I wasn't about to spill that to her, though. It gave me an opening and I was going to use it.

"No, Cordelia," I said. "She's figured it out. There's no point in lying to her now." Cordelia looked confused for a second, but quickly figured out what was going on. To Anyanka, I said, "You're right. I'm not human. I am a master manipulator; I know the past, I know the future. And what I do not need right now is a vengeance demon mucking up the works by granting a wish. That is why I had my servant--" Cordelia's eyes narrowed when she heard me use the word "servant," but she didn't object at the moment, though I knew I'd have to answer for it later --"take your necklace and not to destroy it. The wish you would have granted would have changed history far beyond that which was necessary for my purposes." I had no idea what was going on inside; no one had followed me and Cordelia outside, and everyone else who'd been out here seemed to be out of range.

My guess would be that Dad and Logan were still mediating, trying to stop Aaron from going completely mental. I doubt they were trying to stop Lynn from leaving.

"I thought it was something like that," Anyanka said. "So you're not going to destroy my necklace?"

"Not unless you force me to," I said. "You didn't seem to be in the mood where you were interested in listening to sweet reason." She still seemed upset, but no longer blindly furious.

"I wasn't. I'm still not happy. Give me back my necklace."

Calmly -- a lot more calmly than I felt, which seemed to be par for the course in Sunnydale -- I said, "Guarantee me that you won't make that wish."

She rolled her eyes and said, "I can't, now. It's too late."

"Or any other wish that will change the past or hurt me or my -- servants."

"Only him," she said. "The man in there whose wife made the wish. He was the only one I was planning to hurt anyway."

"I know vengeance demons don;t care all that much about collateral damage," I said.

"What's the point? As long the vengeance is good, what else matters?"

"Maybe to you," I said. "Not to me. Do we have a deal?"

"We do," she said, shifting back to her human form.

This was a bigger bluff than in any poker game. I hoped to hell I'd pulled it off and wasn't making a big mistake, but my only other choice at this point was to actually smash the necklace, and I'd done quite enough damage to the timeline, thank you.

Of course, would Cordelia make the wish, now knowing who and what Anyanka was? Would she be fooled by a new student calling herself Anya? I highly doubted it; Cordelia was in no way, shape or form, stupid. None of which precluded Anyanka from pulling a Halfrek and doing it on the sly, which would probably mean an entirely different wish.

This one really wasn't my fault, though; this one was because the Adversary had decided to bring in my backstory rather than just dumping me in Sunnydale, and that was his decision, not mine, though I'll always be happy I still got my Dad, and Backup, and Logan, and (occasionally) Duncan.

Would anything have been different if I'd just decided to sit on my hands? Would someone else at tonight's party have made a wish that wouldn't have altered the future significantly, and would Anyanka then have gone on, satisfied?

I didn't think so.

If the Adversary was listening, I hoped he'd take note of this.

o, gingerly, I handed her back the necklace. She put it on, said, "That's better," and turned to walk back towards the house.

Wisely, Cordelia got out of her way, but Anyanka didn't so much as spare her a glance as she passed her.

I followed at what, based on the vengeance demon's temper, was in my judgment a distance safe enough that if she decided to lash out I wouldn't be the nearest target.

Cordelia stopped me before I got to the back door. "Servant?" she said.

"The best I could think of at the time," I said. "She seemed to think I was powerful, somehow, and I needed to explain why I'd had you swipe the necklace rather than doing it myself."

"Fine, I get that," she said. "But couldn't you have said, I don't know, 'superior being' or something? Cordelia Chase is nobody's servant."

"I agree," I said. "And, Cordelia, by the way?"

"Yeah?"

"Good job. Very good job. If you hadn't done what you did, right then, we'd all be in an alternate universe and only Lynn and maybe me would know what was going on, Logan would probably not be here, and I know you're not his biggest fan but I don't think you want him nonexistent. And who knows what else would have changed?"

"You're saying I saved the world?"

"Yeah. You did. And I'll tell anyone who knows about this kind of thing, too."

"You'd better," she said. "Because if I did this? I want credit for it. I want them to think I'm capable of it."

"You'll get it," I said. "And you are."

"I knew that," she said.

"I'm sure you did," I said. "Mind if we go inside? I'd like to make sure my Dad's not having too much of a hard time."

"Hold it," Cordelia said. "I have an important question."

"What?" I said.

"How do I look?"

I restrained myself from laughing. Cordelia didn't deserve it right then. What she did deserve was an honest answer, and right now, she looked like exactly what she was: a beautiful woman in an expensive dress and three-inch-heels who'd just sprinted about a quarter of a mile. I told her as much.

"Then I'll see you at school tomorrow. No way for me to make it to the powder room from here, and if you think I'm going to let those people see me like this, you're more nuts than I already thought you were."

And then she turned and walked around the side of the house. I forbore from mentioning that the party inside was almost certainly over; she was going to run into people either way.

I realized how close a call I'd – we'd – had, there. Whether the Adversary had held me responsible for the Wish-Verse or not, it would have been a bitch and a half trying to get things back on track, and that would have involved a massive change in history: depowering Anyanka a full year early.

So thank all gods and goddesses everywhere that I'd brought Cordelia in on it, and thank them doubly for letting her be quick-thinking enough to snatch the necklace away while I stood around gawping.

As the universe kept spinning, I took a deep breath and opened the back doors of the Echolls Mansion.

Aaron was sitting on the front couch. Dad and Logan were standing there in front of him. Part of me wishes Dad had let Aaron go off a little more, but that would have been at Lynn's expense. I might be cold at times, willing to use people, but Lynn is the kind of person I will never hurt to get my way, no matter how important my goal is.

Sure, he might have attacked Logan or Dad instead, but them? Not so interested in getting them attacked either, even if I'm surer of how they would handle the situation. So on balance I was glad that Dad and Logan seemed to have calmed Aaron down.

Of course, his concern for his image probably had something to do with it as well. Everything so far could be explained away to a friendly reporter or two.

Through the front windows I could see sirens. The Sunnydale Sheriff's Department had finally shown up, presumably to haul Viola Kerrigan away. One of the deputies was inside questioning people, but I'd say about 3/4 of the guests had already left.

Including the entire Kane family, and apparently Cordelia's parents, though she was just as likely to have driven herself.

Mayor Wilkins, oddly, was still there, but it was possible he was simply playing politics; the mayor sneaking out of a crime scene, even if he was completely innocent, was likely to get around, even in Sunnydale; supernatural gossip might be at a minimum, but regular gossip was not.

For the few people that were currently there, though, Wilkins was politicking up a storm, making sure people saw him talking to the police. I don't know how many of them were impressed, but neither Dad, Logan, nor for that matter Aaron was among the group who was, and the media – whose vans I could see, in the distance – was being kept well away.

Anyanka hadn't left yet. I didn't think she was sticking around for what remained of the hors d'oeuvres.

"Dad?" I asked. "What's going on?"

"Hey, sweetie," Dad said. "What's going on is we've all been asked to stay until Don Lamb gets around to asking us questions about what happened."

"I assume L—Logan's mother is still upstairs?"

"Yes," Aaron and Logan said curtly, at almost the same time.

Logan continued by himself. "Lamb's up there questioning her. He's not letting her leave either."

"I hope she doesn't, son," Aaron said.

Logan opened his mouth and closed it, apparently not trusting what he was about to say. Good. The last thing we needed was a second undercard of Echolls vs. Echolls. Aaron, for his part, looked torn between dejection, outrage, and shock.

Dad had no such compunctions. "That's her decision at this point, Aaron. I'm not getting involved in the middle of the domestic part of this. And I'm sure the reason you grabbed her so hard that it left a mark was pure shock. Right?"

"Right," Aaron said. "Shock."

"Just saying, there were a lot of witnesses, so it might not be a good idea if you confronted her again. And I wouldn't touch her again like that. Just to be on the safe side." Dad's tone couldn't have been more jovial. His words were friendly advice.

And yet, me, Logan, and anyone else who happened to be in earshot would know damn well what Dad was saying.

Aaron Echolls was a murderous psychopath with a violent temper. He was surrounded by people who would, mostly, back his story if he decided to take exception to what Dad was saying; me, Cordelia, probably Logan.

And he just looked up at Dad and said, "I got it, Keith," and sank further into the sofa.

And that is why Keith Mars is one of the few people on the planet who would never be intimidated by Rupert Giles. If you can back down Aaron Echolls under these circumstances, you can back down damn near anyone.

Deputy Lamb jogged downstairs, looked around, and beelined for us. He didn't happy to see me, but with Dad standing five feet away he resisted the temptation to deliver any cheap shots.

To Dad, he said, "Okay, Keith. What happened?"

And Dad began to give him a more or less complete version of what had happened, from the time Aaron had hired him. The less, of course, was that he didn't bother mentioning our conviction that Aaron had killed Lilly. If he got around to talking to me, I wouldn't bring it up either.

If I need to say it, neither will Anyanka.

Dad was done with his narrative and Lamb was asking him questions when Lynn came downstairs, carrying a suitcase, a briefcase, and one other bag.

Logan got up and walked over to her while Aaron glared. He took the suitcase and said, "Let me take that, Mother."

She smiled at him, though it was forced. "Thank you."

Aaron got up and took a couple of steps towards her; Dad and, to my surprise, Lamb blocked his path. "Don't do anything that might look bad," Lamb said, while Dad said, "Don't do something you'll regret, Aaron."

"I just want to talk to her," Aaron said, then calling out, "Lynn! Don't! Please. You know how much I --"

"Care about your image? Yes, I know that," Lynn said. "It's always been about your image. Never about me, and never about Logan." She shook her head. "Don't worry. I won't go damaging it any more than it already has been. Sometimes, though – sometimes I just wish that wasn't all you cared about. I wish you were the person your image made you out to be." She sighed. "Come on, Logan."

Anyanka looked at me. I nodded my head slightly.

She nodded back and said, "Done."