When we return, the MoG have had enough time to set up a research party. Gunn, Angel, and Wesley are looking through books. Gunn says he's found thousands of references to the "dark soul," adding, "Four of them are about [Angel]." Angel marches over and starts looking at the book, grumbling, "That's not fair. I didn't even have a soul when I did that." Fred runs into the room with wet hair and tells them to cross-reference "dark soul" with "reaper." They ask why, and she quips, "It came to me in the shower." Oy. Angel quickly finds out that he can win R.E.M. tickets right now! And also finds a name: "Matthias Pavayne, dark soul number 182." Pavayne was an eighteenth-century doctor who got the "Reaper" nickname because he performed unnecessary surgery on his patients. That doesn't make any sense. Unless he used a scythe. Wesley checks the computer and finds a file on Pavayne in Wolfram & Hart's archives. Apparently, Pavayne fled to California and went on doing messy rituals with the pre-deceased for twenty years until Wolfram & Hart decided to build a new branch office on the grounds of a Spanish mission. This is a lot of exposition, too, but it's about stuff I actually haven't heard before, which makes it kind of exciting. Wesley explains, "[Wolfram & Hart] needed an appropriate sacrifice to deconsecrate the grounds." Fred summarizes, "So this place is built on the blood of a mass-murdering psychopath?" And now they've got another one running the place. Well, "former" psychopath, or "mostly-former," but still. Angel guesses that Pavayne figured out a way to avoid going to hell, and says, "What I still don't get are all the ghosts at Wolfram & Hart." Wesley says there aren't any. "That's what I mean," Angel says. It's like the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime! Angel says that with all the violent deaths that happen in the building, he'd expect it to be packed with ghosts. Gunn guesses that Pavayne is "munching on them." Fred is terribly worried that Spicule is in danger. You know what's particularly bewildering to me? It seems like the writers believed that people who don't care what happens to Spicule (either because they don't know who he is, or because they do) will still be drawn into this story because Fred cares what happens to Spicule.
Spicule, covered with cuts, melodramas his way across the floor while Pavayne watches. The lights come on, and Fred walks in. They're in the lab now? They were in the lobby. Okay. Fred grabs a jacket while Pavayne whispers threats at her. Spicule jumps up and swings at Pavayne, but his fist goes through Pavayne's head. Pavayne chuckles, "Still thinking like meat and bone. None here, boy."
Suddenly, Spicule's in the basement, and an unseen Pavayne says he controls their reality. Now it's like The Matrix meets The Frighteners. Well, I didn't hate The Frighteners. Spicule realizes that Pavayne is keeping the MoG from seeing him. Pavayne says these are "parlor tricks," just like Spicule's wounds, which promptly fade away. For someone who's supposedly been spooking people for over a hundred years, you think he'd have realized that it makes the whole thing less effective if you explain to the mark how the tricks are done. But no, Pavayne goes on about how it's all about will-power. The eye-punctured woman reappears and says, "Clothes you think you wear..." And woosh, Spicule is naked. Again. You've got to do more than that to bother him, lady. Pavayne and his ghost-chorus go over Spicule's history, concluding, "Then fell in love. Won himself a soul. No more dirty things. Thinks himself special." They add that he's still going to hell. Spicule asks if Pavayne killed the other ghosts (back before they were ghosts, that is), and Pavayne says that these people died in the service of Wolfram & Hart. Spicule guesses, "Their spirits hung on. Tried to keep from tumbling into hell. Till you gave 'em a shove." Then he realizes that they aren't "real" ghosts; they're just more of Pavayne's illusions. Pavayne says that they're real enough, and with that, the hanging guy stabs Spicule in the back.