I can't find Erynne.

Firewalled against those
who mean harm,
see the words,
obey the charm.

There are a million things that can go wrong in Sunnydale. Something is terribly wrong, now. I can't find Erynne - I mean, I don't know where she is. I don't know if she is...

The situation with Erynne and me is ... unusual, I guess. My mojo makes me tele/empathic, but I've been trapped in a dimension where most aren't. Lonely isn't a strong enough word for what that's like.

I have a mental/emotional link with Erynne that can be as strong as anything I've experienced, in an emergency. Mostly it's a background thing...
( How could I explain? )

Anyway, who would there be left to tell? We'd had that link for so long that I ... just take it for granted just took it for granted.

Now I can't sense her at all, and that's impossible, unless she's somehow been taken way out of my range, or ... there's ways to kill almost everything I know of... But we had the strong, strong emergency link - I didn't hear her call me...

Finding the body was worse...

Then I thought I'd found her - for a moment.

Then I thought I'd found her -
sitting alone, and I saw her smile,
sitting relaxed
looking free from guile...

The mind in that body's
not her at all!
Her body was there -
but that's not her soul!

How do you fight an enemy that is wearing the body of someone you love?

I knew that it was Erynne's body, of course - every detail, from the curl of her eyelashes to the shape of her hands.

I knew it as surely as I knew that it wasn't Erynne. The creature inside it was something else entirely. It'd said that Erynne was "on permanent vacation" - not dead. There was a feel of truth to that - and no way to use the singing mojo to get more, not then - maybe if I can get it off guard...

Never show your weapons to the enemy. I waited until it had gone before I smoked out. Maybe Demetria or Giles will know more about how to deal with this.The Watcher owes us for the anti-venom (at least, he'll help if he wants more of it.)