aired on: February 15, 2000

written by: David Greenwalt and Jeanine Renshaw

directed by: R. D. Price

As Cordelia and Wesley bicker over a pan of brownies, Angel asks them to stop - and accidentally calls Wesley by Doyle's name, putting a damper on things. Later, Angel admits to Cordelia that he misses Doyle - and that he feels he shouldn't have let him die. Suddenly, Cordelia's got a headache.She sees a house, where Angel and Wesley find a boy named Ryan sleepwalking into the middle of the street. Angel saves him from a speeding car, and his parents rush outside. But something is amiss - earlier, the parents locked Ryan in his bedroom for the night.

Ryan's mother, Paige, invites Angel in to tend to his cut shoulder and thank him profusely. They've just moved in, she explains; Angel is suspicious. Though the father, Seth, clearly doesn't like him, Paige invites him to dinner. He accepts. Outside, Wesley's suspicious, too - he snoops around in the garbage, and finds plactazine all around the foundation of the house. It means someone in the house is possessed by a demon.

Research reveals that the family has moved a lot in the last three years. Reports of disturbances have followed them. Wesley suggests they'll need to do an exorcism. He'll look into finding someone who can perform one, but first they need to get the demon to reveal itself. The way to do that is to have him ingest eucalypsis powder. When Angel arrives for dinner the next night, he brings brownies.

After an awkward meal, the brownies are brought out - and they bring out the demon in Ryan. Angel tells the parents that Ryan's possessed. Paige is upset, but Seth sees that Angel knows what he's talking about. He asks Angel for help.

Angel brings Ryan and his parents back to his place. They lay him on a bed, placing binding powder around it to keep him there while Wesley and Angel track down a priest. But the priest they're looking for, Father Fredricks, is dead. He was killed six months earlier, by an Ethros demon, just like the one possessing Ryan. There's only one option - Wesley will have to do the exorcism. While he's researching the ritual he finds out how Father Fredericks was killed. When an Ethros demon is cast out, it immediately seeks another body to inhabit. The demon is expelled with such force that the newly-inhabited rarely survives.

Back at Angel's, Ryan lures Paige to him and begins to strangle her. Angel and Wesley have returned, and they break in. Wielding a cross, Wesley forces the demon back into Ryan, and Paige is set free. Things are calm, for the moment. While Wesley prepares for the exorcism, Cordelia reads about an Ethros box, used to trap an Ethros demon once it leaves a body. Without one, the demon enters the nearest warm body, but unfortunately, authentic Ethros boxes are hard to come by. Fortunately, Angel knows a place that might have one.

As Wesley goes to work, the demon taunts him, bringing up all his life's failures. He's trying to win the mental battle; when he enrages Wesley and gets him to cross through the ring of binding powder, he stabs Wesley in the neck with his cross. While Paige, Seth and Angel tend to Wesley's wound, Cordelia comes back with a box. It's not quite an Ethros box, but it'll have to do. Then the demon makes the room shake - and speaks to Angel in Doyle's voice. Now Angel's pissed. Wrapping a black cloth around his hand, he picks up the cross - he's going to perform the exorcism himself.

The exorcism works, but there's a problem: while the demon headed toward the box, it didn't go in it. It smashed right though it. Angel has an idea of where it might be. While Ryan enjoys hot chocolate back home, Angel and Wesley track the demon to caves by the sea. There he tells a chilling story - though he was possessing Ryan, Ryan had no soul. That boy's mind, he says, was the blackest hell he'd ever known. He tried to get Ryan to end his life, even if it meant ending his own, but didn't succeed. And now Ryan is still alive, unpossessed but evil nevertheless, back with his family.

Angel slays the demon, then he and Wesley race back to Ryan's house. There, Ryan has stolen his father's matches, locked his parents in their room and poured gasoline all over his sister Stephanie's room. Then he dropped a lit match.

Seth and Paige break free to find Stephanie's room in flames. Then Angel breaks in, saving Stephanie from the fire.

As the fire fighters put out the blaze, Ryan is taken away by the police. Seth, in shock, tells Angel he won't be able to cover for his son anymore.