It's not a subject change that she wants to follow him on. She shakes her head and looks away, pacing past him a few steps on the concrete and folding her arms tightly across her chest. Breaking bad news wasn't something she loved doing to begin with. Talking about her problems, problems that she didn't even understand, was even further down that list.

"I told you," she responded, deflecting. "Something else was there with us. Messing with me." Her body trembled as she remembered the feeling, and it was almost like that all-encompassing death was washing over her again. She struggled to recall the image of the spectre. Dark skin, dirty hair, face paint. She looked like a monster. Spike looked like a monster.

Maybe it was just trying to warn her. That was the theory she had thrown around the most. Too many nights she spent tossing and turning as dozens of different kinds of monsters descended on her and killed her, vampires the frequent perpetrator.

Maybe it was going to happen to her. Maybe it was going to be Spike, and whatever that … thing had been. Maybe that's what its message was. Maybe that was why she felt so inundated in death when she thought of it. As if that was all she was. Because, if this kept up, it was all she'd be -- because of him. Maybe that was why it had made her hurt him.