Whoa, you really had gotten behind, but some people have stopped reading until the resolution of the missing Spike story line, so I just chalked up your MIA status to that. Poor Ame checks the end of each chapter and then doesn't read it if she doesn't see Spike.

Xander has been through hell, and if this is part of Spike's plan, Spike is about to go through hell. Xander is showing a lot of strength here, but that strength is still pretty brittle. The wrong push could put him seriously behind in the mental health department. And I already have the next update up... so you can go read and decide if it's dream or nightmare worthy.